big city living

Lately, I’ve been trying to lose weight.  It seems like I gave myself a break from dieting and exercise to do my GMAT preparation, and then let it slide for my application papers, and then let it slide because I got into Oxford, and then let it slide because I was chilling at the end of my tenure at wamu (ok that was for 6 months, I know) and then of course because I was having my summer off before school and then during school and then when we were travelling the world and then when I was trying to get a job in London and then when I had just started a job in London, and now 1 year after that I’m 100% out of shape and thinking it’s time to get it back together again.  So, I’m eating light and not drinking during the week, and also even thinking about joining a gym.  So I had NO plans of having any wine tonight.

(Cut to Monday morning this week)

I was pissed off and yelling at people Monday morning on the 9:30 AM standup conference call because things aren’t moving along and my project is behind schedule.  I guess a 9:30 is better than Tom Bolger’s daily 8:30 back at wamu, but still, this current one is a daily bummer.  (a note on 8:30 meetings: while it is supremely useful to get your team together to talk through what issues are on the table each morning, assign new issues, close out old ones, remove blockers, humiliate people who didn’t get their work done, etc., the REAL reason for having an 8:30 is a demonstration of dominance.  Basically, it’s saying: “I can make you show up to an early morning grilling every day of the week and you have to come.  I have power over you, and I’m now punishing you for xyz.” )  In this way, the week has progressed in a uniform fashion: most of Monday was futile and hostile, while Tuesday was born, lived and died in much the same vein.  At 7pm tonight I was applying the last of my flagging will to resolving a did-it-work or didn’t-it-work question which you would think ought to be pretty straightforward but isn’t.  Despite my shitty attitude today, it really wouldn’t be fair to my employer or colleagues to go into any more detail than this.

I left the office demoralized and frankly a bit angry.  Thoughts of “I’ve had it with this”, “ENOUGH” and similar writhed in my mind, growing incrementally less poisonous with each meter I put between myself and Canary Wharf.

I got on the tube and broke out my copy of Foreign Policy magazine, which is a sort of less serious version of Foreign Affairs, but still cool.  A gaggle of Spaniards were sitting on the chairs, checking their tube maps repetitively, chatting, and assuming that no one else on the train knew what “de puta madre” meant.  I love listening to the Spanish language being spoken, it’s fun for me to test how much I can pick up when the Iberian is conversational and fast. 

10 minutes into the ride, a seat came open at the end of the car, so I went to the end of the seats and sat down.  I brushed against a sitting fellow passenger on my way.  This is typical since the trains are cramped and bounce around a  lot when they are moving.  As I sat down, the guy to the left of me turned and made a nasty comment about me sitting on his coat.  I apologized and turned back to the FP.  This is where the ensuing 20 minutes became fuzzy and I have a hard time remembering exact details. 

I BELIEVE the guy wouldn’t let it go, and began a barrage of verbal abuse ending in “I’ll mash up your glasses”.  I remember his face very well: brown, balding, and thin with the type of hearing aides that poke little plastic tubes out of your ears.  He was wearing little rectangular glasses that were rounded on the edges.  I think the thin metal frames were brownish too.  His left eye was closed, and didn’t stick out as far as a closed eye should.  It seemed sort of deflated and there was pus coming out from where the lids joined.  I think he was a bit disheveled in his dress as well, but that’s hard to picture now. 

He turned away from me and back to a very attractive 20s-ish woman who he was grossly hitting on despite the fact that he was obviously much older than she, and way not in her league.  He was holding 2 cell phones in one hand and gesturing to her while he told her something about how she should call him.  The woman was just smiling and shaking her head no.

Rejected, eyeguy turned back to me, even angrier.  He shouted that I was a “prat”, which is a stupid English term for “jerk” or “asshole” or whatever. 

I nearly never ever get into confrontations with anybody.  I just avoid trouble, it’s something I can usually sense and steer wide from.  I suppose that my angry day led me to ignore my surroundings, ultimately letting me sit next to a psycho without noticing it.  However, when these rare situations do crop up, my heart races and my mind goes cloudy.  Thus, I can hardly remember the details of what happened next.

Eyeguy continued on with his verbal abuse, but stepped things up by reaching for the handrail to the right of me and holding it so that his arm was in front of my face.  Then, as the train stopped he stood up and faced me.  I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to let this guy take a swing at me while I was sitting down, so I stood up and he stepped back a little.  At this point I was just staring at him intently.  He started shouting about something that was in his pocket and demanding that I touch his pocket. 

In a raised voice I said, “I’m not touching your fucking pocket”.  I was really starting to get worked up at this point.  He kept demanding I touch his pocket, and then took out this little wooden box.  Holding the box up and shaking it at me (kind of like those guys with the bibles downtown) he shouted that there was something very important in the box, I just stared.  He then put the box back in his pocket and started grabbing my jacket.  In retrospect I guess he was either working himself up to something or else testing how far he could push me.  I remember shouting something about not touching me (ignored), and then grabbing his hand off of my jacket and holding it away from me at the wrist.  At this point the door to the train was open, and for whatever reason I rushed him, slamming his body up against the wall.  This should have been easy as he was smaller than me, but it was oddly easier than I would have thought: he crumpled up against the wall with me pinning him.  I think this guy was even more frail than he looked.  I vaguely remember shouting at him to get off the train.

At this point, my head was so fuzzy and I was so agitated I don’t think I could have answered “what’s 2+3” correctly.

Immediately a woman standing near us put her body between mine and the eyeguy, asking me to “please sit down” and the guy to please get off the train.  I let him go, and went back to my seat as he let out another barrage of abuse, closing with “if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you”.  To really end his day on a low note, the tube doors then closed on his chest, pinning him once more.  These doors only look like they would crush you, what really happens is they close fast at first and then slow down, totally stopping if the encounter any resistance.  They don’t give much though, so he was trapped.  The doors then opened again, he stepped out, and the people around me on the train all started saying how there was clearly something wrong with him, it wasn’t my fault, I did the right thing, etc. 

Walking out of the tube station, one of the women who was sitting near me took a few minutes to talk to me about the incident and was really very warm and supportive as we walked along.  I think she could tell that I was really upset about the whole thing.  I asked her if I had hit him, because it was hard to remember details, but she said no I didn’t, and repeated that I had acted very well, etc.  It’s funny how I saw such a crappy awful side of Londoners and such a wonderful, kind side of Londoners all in the space of just a few minutes.

This whole scenario really upset me.  I don’t like conflict of any kind, and typically get a belly full during my work day.  Physical conflict with random strangers just turns me off completely, and I’d go through a lot to avoid it.  Then in the one case where I do decide I’ve had just about enough today and stand my ground, it turns out the guy is some physically and mentally sick loser, and I just ended up feeling like crap for possibly hurting him.  I guess you have to deal with this kind of thing living in a big city and riding the subway all the time.  In fairness, I have taken the tube at least twice a day for the last year, so if this only happens once in 500 or 600 rides, it’s probably not something I have to worry about running into again.

So, even though it was the middle of the week, I had a nice big glass of red wine when I got home.