An evening in London: Pissing in the Train

It is a lazy day, although my evening is over-booked. Despite days in a car during my road trip to Ireland, my feet have still not recovered from the day that I went overboard, touring everywhere with Tomer early in my visit to London. This osteoarthritis bothers me more here in London than back in Boston where I have a car. Just striding a few blocks to the bus stop provokes my feet at the start of each outing.

Today I have cut things close. I’m racing to a West End theatre to meet the author Elizabeth Woodcraft, who is accompanying me to see the comedian Daphna Baram. I met Daphna on Facebook. She’s an Israeli who’s been living in London for 14 years and openly calls herself an anti-Zionist, leftist atheist – all descriptors that warm my heart. Her show is fearless and funny.

It lasts an hour and then I part from Liz at Leicester Square tube and head to Hammersmith for a group West Coast Swing lesson and social dancing with Catriona Wiles. Three of my favorite teachers back in Boston are very fond of her. It’s a long ride on the tube and from there I ask a transportation worker where to get the bus and he sends me upstairs, but they tell me up there that, no, the bus I want is downstairs at the end of the station. It’s a shitload of walking for foot bones that hate contact with hard surfaces only slightly less than they hate stairs.

I arrive for the second lesson, which is fun and well-taught (whip variations, no less). People are welcoming; no one makes much of an issue out of my leading; I dance happily for two hours. The teacher arranges for a young man who has just graduated from college to walk me to the station, which she assures me is quicker by foot via the shortcut than via bus.

Unfortunately, it turns out that said lad doesn’t know the shortcut. We’re walking the very long time. We arrive at the mall where the station is and he guides me to its far side where the station entrance is to be, but there we encounter metal gates. The entrance to the Tube is closed. “I guess it closes earlier than I thought,” says Recent Graduate.

I see a worker and yell through the fence: “How can we get on the Tube?” I am picturing myself stranded alone so far from my bed that it takes 95 minutes on public transportation. “The front entrance,” he yells back, waving vaguely. We hike back the full length of the mall and find the entrance. The main entrance. The one we apparently passed on our long way to the far entrance. I’m limping visibly by now. We get on the same train. He’s going three stops. I’m going triple that. We have the lower end of our car to ourselves and we sit opposite each other.

At the next stop about eight or nine very drunk, very large, ruffians stumble into our car. They sprawl on the seats all around us, legs claiming all the public space. Recent Graduate and I lock eyes. These men all have cans or bottles of beer in their hands and they are loud and loutish, tussling with each other. I tuck my feet as far under my body as possible as no toe I own could withstand their trampling. I remember back to the first time in about 1989 that I was on the subway at pub closing time and the vomit that plastered men splashed all over my shoes.

Then one particularly loathsome loud-mouth struggles out of his seat, stumbles to the corner closest to me, pulls out his dick, and pisses.

When we pull into my Recent Graduate’s stop, I get up too. We stand at the glass doors, very anxious to get the hell out of there, but the doors don’t open. We can see the other people leaving their cars further up the train but our doors don’t open for some reason. The legless wonders are hollering “Where you going? What’s up?” Finally the doors open and I run out on the platform and up the full length of the car to the next car and, despite the tooting sound warning of closing doors, I throw myself through the door, but not fast enough. The doors close on my backpack. I’m inside; it’s outside. My back is pulled tight against the concave glass door.

“Shit!” I scream, fighting against my sturdy backpack, knowing my bones will give before these tried and tested straps will, and trying without success to wedge my foot against the body of the car. I believe I will be killed or maimed if I fail to keep the door open.

A handsome young man with bright eyes – his name is Mark; I asked him later – leaps over the large suitcase he is holding between his knees where he is seated opposite the doors. He manages to stop the door from closing all the way and then wrenches it back far enough for me to fall into the car. Another man – who himself turns out to be drunk and will lean intimately on me mumbling something – pats the only empty seat – it’s next to him and across from Mark – and I fall into it. In the struggle I’ve done something to my ass muscle and something worse to one ankle. My feet are throbbing. I’m grateful, so very grateful, to Mark.

Then I realize that in fact he was the only one who jumped up to help me. Sobering.

I get off at King’s Cross and it is a very long hike along corridors and platforms out to my busstop. As I am walking across the concrete plaza, my bus pulls up, so I do a doleful version of a sprint. It’s now well past midnight.

On the way home I stop at the 24/7 grocery store, on the suspicion that despite allocating tomorrow for shopping for household needs, I will not in fact want to walk another step on concrete, and will stay home.

Inside the house, I check Facebook. A friend of mine who is an accomplished Black professional writes of being on a crowded subway train in DC (about the same time as I was surrounded by sloshed white men on mine), when a cop entered his car with his gun out! How vulnerable both Black people and women of all colors are on public transportation.

Comments

[Marj]

Oh, Katz! London can be a harsh mistress.

I still love her.

[Sue Katz]

Well put. And I agree 100%.

[Sue Katz]

I'm away for some time. I will have intermittent email, but if you haven't heard from me, consider re-sending your message at the beginning of September. All the best, Sue