Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Invisible girl becomes visible

Okay.

I think I snapped today because I finally decided I wasn't going to put up with disgusting, fat men who decide to sit next to me (and who smell like metallic stink).

Let me back up and quickly write about what happened yesterday. It was a minor incident, not even worth two seconds of thought. I was really tired going to work yesterday and pretty much slept the whole way to work. When there was about 20-15 minutes left of the train ride, this man decides to sit next to me. He made his presence known by sitting down like he weighed 500 lbs. I think I actually jumped out of my seat a bit because of his body slam into the seat. I was so tired that I just opened one eye to see how big this man was (not very) and went back to sleep. Usually I get mad and can't go back to sleep, but again, I was dead tired yesterday.

Today, I was tired again because my beloved cat decided 3:15 am was the perfect time to get up and act like she's a kitten. When I get woken up, I have a really hard time going back to sleep. So my beloved kitty took about an hour of sleep away from me last night. She owes me. I fell asleep after Dublin/Pleasanton. Nice, peaceful snooze. I made it on the earlier train today, so that generally means no one will sit next to me.

We arrived at Fruitvale (I remember hearing this way in the back of my head) when SLAM! someone sat down next to me. I think I was airborne again for a few seconds. I opened my eye and looked the person sitting next to me. It was a man (of course -- women, unless really overweight, do not sit down like this). He was looking at me. Now that's kind of creepy. I generally don't look at the people who sit next to me, but let's just say I kept my eyes closed. That means creepy man would be peeping at me while I slept. He looked like an older white man. Didn't think anything of it except that he, like my beloved kitty, woke me up and now I was mad and now I wouldn't be able to go back to snoozing.

I tried to go back to sleep, but I slowly started feeling this man's leg pressing against my own. I looked down and his legs were spread wide open and getting wider. I contemplated my situation. Do I start smacking his leg with my leg in hopes he gets the point? Do I just deal with this man invading what little space I have and let him lean his disgusting body into mine?

Then the snapping happened, and I got really mad. No. NOOOO. This was not going to happen to me for the millionth time! I was not put here on this earth for disgusting, fat, sloppy, stinky men to lean on and not care about!!

So I looked around.

THERE WERE SEVERAL, SEVERAL EMPTY BENCHES SURROUNDING US.

Then I looked at the man again, and I realized whatever I saw before (older, white man) was totally wrong, and it was this serial slob that has sat next to me before and done the exact same thing. This man is disgusting. He's fat, he doesn't wear socks, and he eventually falls asleep and loses all control over his body. His mouth hangs open, and I wouldn't be surprised if he started to drool. The only weird part about him is that he is dressed as business man would be, albeit a disgusting, fat business man. You would think whatever job he has that he has to dress this way, he'd have some common decency and not sit next to young woman and press his fat leg against them.

When he sat next to me before, I got really mad and started banging my leg into his leg repeatedly in hopes he'd either get the point that I really didn't want him touching me or that he'd move. Neither happened. He would move his leg away and then it would slowly move right back. I had no where to go that time, so I just put up with it while feeling slightly violated on some level.

Today was a different story. I decided there was no reason for this to be happening to me, and that I, ultimately, had control over the situation.

Invisible girl became empowered.

Since there were so many available benches to sit on, I shoved this man slightly with my bag to wake him up and told him to excuse me. He looked flabbergasted! At this point we were in the tunnel going through Oakland, so he was probably thinking, "where is she going? There's no where to go!" He moved his blubber body out of the way (still not wearing socks -- hey, it is summer time), and I moved to my own bench. Sleep at this point was not going to happen, so I sat and fumed over the situation.

Next I take on red haired guy.

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