The Train Rage

I nearly got into a fight on a train the other day. Well if it had happened it wouldn’t be so much of a fight and more of a beating. Receiving, not administering.

I was on the way to take my better and lovelier other half for a birthday dinner and was nearly carrying flowers (but I was late for the train and was not – I did buy some in the end though… don’t judge me).

My back has been sore from some heavy (not really) lifting (not really) at the weekend and I really needed to sit down on the train.

The carriage was full of people and there were no totally free seats, instead of my normal quick thinking of checking out all the people I could possibly sit to (no one scary, no one sexy in case i look scary, no kids, no one with knives, no one smelly, no one sexy in case I am smelly) I just took the nearest seat.

It was occupied by a manthug who had spread his tracksuited legs right over his seat and into what was now mine, leaving me with maybe a third of the seating that I had probably paid for or something.

I have a tactic to deal with this. Like in judo when you use your opponents energy back on them I use latent homophobia.

The trick is to make body contact so that thug man is touching another man (albeit inadvertently), so I make sure my leg is up against his and push everso slightly.

Manthug will then usually process the following flowchart in his mind

Man is touching me… am I gay? If no move leg.

And so I get my full seat.

I don’t know what went wrong on this day, maybe I met my homophobic nemesis, maybe my bad back meant I misjudged the amount of squeeze I gave, either way I got careless. Manthug looked at me and said “Do you want a fight?”

Actually that, not an “oi”, or a “do you mind?”, or even a “hello”. but right in there. I said no, looking at him with a rollie stuck to his fingers, scabs on his lips and a vacant half stare I figured I’d use my wits like Odysseus.

He then said something along the lines of “a bit of a squeeze” but less jovial (the actual words have been muddled in my memory as fear was setting in.

I said “Yeh, it is a bit.” Meaning that the trains really don’t make these seats big enough do they harumph? But then I realised that he had been complaining about me squeezing and I had just said “Yes, I’m squeezing your leg like a gay man” or “Yes, let’s have that ding dong.” or words to that effect.

He said I was taking the piss, I stood up for myself and said I was just sitting down, he was all over the seat. There was a pregnant moment as the rest of the carried eagerly anticipated/dreaded the guy without flowers being hit by the man who definitely didn’t have flowers.

Amazingly he then said get out of the way and I shifted over with a “sorry mate” and he stood up by the door for the rest of his journey.

Slightly shaking I realised I’d won (unless he punched me as he disembarked… he didn’t) and in celebration I spread myself liberally over both seats until a businessman got on and I awkwardly shifted over, apologising.