Saucy Puttanesca

There were two empty seats right next to each other and I was standing right by them. She, on the other hand, was halfway down the train but she saw me make the move and darted towards the seats as if there was only room for one. There were TWO SEATS. Towards the end of her little race against me she tripped over my foot. In fact she didn’t actually fall, she more, like, bumped over my foot. We didn’t look at each other. She sat, then I sat.

She was a slinky woman of average height. Thin bones, short hair, jeans too tight to take off and some kind of wretched vanilla flavored perfume. That is NOT real vanilla, I almost scoffed. Small as she was, Little Miss Slinky Dink took up more space than a mack truck. She sprawled her legs and put her pink high-fructose corn syrup drink on the seat in front of her crotch. Of course since she just left it there like her vagina was some super market shelf, it fell to the floor. If she’d at least squeezed it with her thighs it would’ve stayed put.

She was quietly angry and started movie like a bitter queen. Suddenly her arms swept open a newspaper, the corners of which swiped me in the face. Oh, is that the game we’re playing? I remarked in silence.

The book in front of me was tiny: Margaret Attwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. And I tried to keep my body framed within the confines of my seat as I read, not like Trippy La Asshole next to me who was now jabbing me with her knee, waving the corner of her paper in my face (it was one of those free papers, so I don’t know who she was kidding reading it like it was legit) and the last draw was when I lowered my right shoulder blade so that it wasn’t scrunched up into my body anymore—she pushed herself against me, digging her elbow against my arm. And as the train swished my body side to side, she held firm, pushing and pushing that elbow. Finally, Puttanesca Fresca jerked her paper open wider, as if she was on her own private toilet seat. Of course, this meant now I couldn’t even read my book because her paper covering it.

I know what she was thinking. She was thinking I was pressing up against HER space—never mind the fact that she was taking up more than her fair share. I was to step aside, let her breathe, give her room. But what her petite brain cell didn’t count on was that I am the queen of passive aggressiveness, not SHE. So I smacked her paper to the side and out of my way and gave her the look You Worm!. She gets up and tramples past my body to move to another empty seat, almost tripping over (again) in the process. I should’ve spit on her ass crack as she shuffled away (yes, it was showing above the low skinny waistline of her jeans) but it would’ve been a waste of perfectly good spit.