Less Gentle Manliness

In 7th grade during Mr. Moore’s math class I would sit in my assigned chair-desk-combo behind Shannon Janowsky. She was a red-headed, freckle-faced athlete into running and softball. When other girls were becoming rounder and, dare I say, chubby, Shannon was fit and lithe and strong. And she was such a smartie pants I wondered whether she was THE ONE. Except I didn’t wanna bang her, just, you know, spend the rest of my life with someone LIKE her.

One afternoon, I arrived in class to find that Shannon had put her bookbag on the floor next to my desk. It was right next to my seat, so that if I wanted to get into or out of my seat, I would have to climb over her stuff. So I moved HER bag next to HER, sat down, and dropped MY bag next to ME on the floor. Shannon pushed my bag out of the way and insisted her stuff needed to be next to my chair because there just wasn’t enough room on the floor next to her. In fact there was plenty of room. About 3 square feet of room (Mr. Moore encouraged visual estimates of area).

Like Sisyphus with his stone, I again put her bag back next to her and brought my bag next to me. And she again protested, but this time she threw my bag to the side, before nailing her own bag next to my chair with her foot. As I tried to move her stuff out from under her shoe she grabbed my arm. “Let go.” She muttered, in a tone worthy of The Godfather. A murderous “or else” was embedded in her words. Believing myself to be in the right on the matter of bookbag placement, I didn’t let go. She dug her nails into my flesh, digging and tugging so hard she scraped off my skin in five spots, one for every fingernail. Five bloody skin flaps over five bloody holes that were growing by the second. My whimpering alerted Mr. Moore, who intervened with a roll of his eyes, and told us to quit it and to put our bags by our sides.

My parents had always taught me I wasn’t supposed to hit girls or curse around them or be rude or insensitive. Females were innocent and helpless, they would say. And I was supposed to go out of my way to ensure the comfort of all types of females: young and old, fully-formed and burgeoning. And so, in spite of the fact that Shannon was being a crazy freak, I felt remorse that day because I had broken a cardinal code of gentlemanliness: I didn’t let a girl have her way.

This twisted childhood lesson explains why yesterday I felt the same paranoid guilt after an encounter on the V train. Upon boarding I noticed a row of three seats. The middle one was free. I sat. At each of the two ends sat two similar women: both shorter and narrower-bodied than I, both taking up more room than necessary. They had to scoot over when I sat down to make room for me, and I’m a short skinny guy.

Whether it was because the train’s stop-and-go movements were shoving us onto and off of each other, or because of an eclipse of whatever planet governs subway etiquette, the woman to my right began pushing up against me. At first I figured she was just adjusting. But the pressure increased. First she pressed against me with her forearm. Then her upper arm. Then her thigh, her ankle, her calf—until she was pushing against me with every inch of skin on her body’s left side. My shoulder was crushed by hers. No longer comfortable, I adjusted my shoulders back and what followed between me an Little Miss Putz was this:

PUTZ: Oh no no no no no! You are not going to do that to me! No no no no no!
ME: Excuse me?
PUTZ: No no no. I know what you are trying to do, I know!
ME: What am I trying to—
PUTZ: Shoving your elbow into my side, knocking me off my seat!
ME: Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you fall.
PUTZ: Just don’t be jabbing me with your elbow anymore.
ME: My elbow? I was adjusting myself.
PUTZ: Jabbing me with your elbow.
ME: Well it’s too bad you interpreted that as an assault. I’m sorry you can’t reason enough to realize it.
PUTZ: Hm!
ME: Do you need help?
PUTZ: No, I don’t need help.
ME: Oh, so you’re okay then?
PUTZ: I’m fine.
ME: Good. Well listen if you need me to move—
PUTZ: I don’t need anything from you!
ME: If you need me to Move my bag or readjust myself so I’m not in your way, just let me know. Obviously you can speak, so you should use that—
PUTZ: I don’t need anything from you except for you to stop shoving me off my seat with your elbow!
ME: And you know a thing or two about shoving, don’t you. And you’re still in your seat, so you know a thing or two about exaggerating the truth, too. In fact, in a court of law, that’s called a liar. You lady are a fucking liar.
PUTZ: Stop talking to me!
ME: Okay, I won’t talk to you anymore, but remember, if I’m in your way, you can always open up your mouth and let me know.

I get a kick out of being passive aggressive in these circumstances because maintaining an air of politeness while simultaneously exposing someone’s shit-headedness makes me feel so accomplished. I’m a multi-tasker. Everyone else on that train, though, probably thought I was an asshole.