I always thought of myself as more photogenic.
I was riding the subway last weekend when a guy got on, sat across from me, and started rubbing himself through his pants in my general direction. Since I had just returned from a month out of town, my reaction was less "reach for my cameraphone" than an odd mix of nostalgia ("awww...I really am back in New York City...*sniff*") and pride ("Gawker was right! NYC is edgy again!"). Even more than either of those, though, I felt confused - I am 99.9% sure this guy was gay. He was wearing a tight black-and-white striped sailor top, tight black "look at my ass" pants, and was impeccably groomed. So, he was either gay or a mime. Either way, I have to wonder how I became the object of his lust.
Here's the original along with the woman's first-person account.
This part really makes the story:
"I saw him massaging himself and then he unzipped and pulled it out. I thought, 'I can't believe he's doing this in the middle of the day!' "
If he's masturbating at you on the subway at night, well, that's just a matter of course. But jerking off in public before sundown? That's bad pervert ettiquette.
Well, maybe stories like this will get the MTA off of their recurring ban-photography-in-the-subways kick. (It's either "For the Children" or "For National Security" but they try it every year or so regardless.)
So, he was either gay or a mime.
Maybe he was a mime pretending to be a pervert? Was he making any moaning noises, or was he just mouthing them?
Oh, and just for old-times sake, I should mention that during my years in Shanghai I heard several stories from female students or colleagues about similar incidents (sans camera phones, of course, they weren't around back then) while riding public transportation.
Los Angeles is not alone in being concerned about transit perverts. Subways in Seoul, South Korea, have broadcast warnings against seamy behavior. Train operators in Tokyo, where riders are often crammed together so tightly that they can hardly breathe, have set aside cars for female riders to create a groper-free zone.
In New York City, the subway's 3,000 patrol officers made more than 400 sex- crime arrests last year, 285 of them involving incidents of public lewdness. There are no special crackdowns in New York on transit perverts per se, but the conduct is discouraged through a "strong uniformed presence" on station platforms, said Deputy Chief Ronald Rowland of the LAPD's transit bureau.
Perhaps he had asked for directions and was told, "get on the R line and get off at Canal St."
(Yea, I know.)