Passing Judgment

This happened a little over a month ago. I wrote this that same night and am posting it just now. Names have been changed, but everything else remains unedited.

Sometimes I worry that I’m too judgmental, too stuck-up. My first thought when Renee, Kate, and I were figuring out how to get home from Oak Park at 11pm on a Wednesday was, “Do I really want to take the blue line from this side of the city, this late at night?” Then, “Who the hell do I think I am? People ride the train all the time, and nothing happens. And it’s 11pm on a Wednesday, and I have two other women with me. I’ll be fine.”

We got to the Harlem stop and waited for five minutes for the next train to approach. Kate was transferring to the red line at the Loop, and Renee was riding up the blue line with me to California. At this point, I was more or less glad I had friends to pass the time with on the commute back home.

We entered the car, which had a handful of other people on it. I sat by the doors, Renee sat across from me, and Kate sat in the row of seats next to Renee, so all of us had an empty chair next to us. Within the first few minutes of the train ride, a couple of guys who were saddled up in the back started smoking. The conductor stopped the train and threatened to call the CPD on them. We sat at the Cicero stop for several minutes as one of them idled in between the doors next to where I was sitting. His body was completely shriveled up, and his gaze was fixated somewhere, lost in his own head.

I felt a lot of different things. Annoyed that these guys were elongating our commute. Sad for whatever life these people had fallen into. Guilty for making assumptions.

As we stalled at the Cicero stop, other people started milling into the train. The three of us were acutely aware that we were the only women sitting in a sea of men. We all had our bags in the seat next to us, and we were nearing the point where seats were limited and the polite move would be to take our bags off of the seats.

We opted for impoliteness.

Two guys boarded the train, a Puerto Rican and a white guy, both of them wearing sunglasses. The Puerto Rican sat in the row of seats next to me. The white guy sat behind Kate.

“Nice boots,” the Puerto Rican said to me. Renee and I looked at each other, in the middle of a conversation about stage managing. We stopped talking about what we did and began talking about Netflix.

“I said, nice boots,” he said again, this time a little more forcefully. I glanced out the window to see where we were. Western. Not the right Western. Still a way to go before Logan. Getting off to move to the next car would be too obvious. And Western was not the stop I wanted to get off at to wait for the next train to come.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“You ladies look lovely tonight,” he continued, motioning towards Kate and Renee. Kate glanced down, avoiding eye contact with anyone. I noticed the white guy giving her a look that I can only describe as leering.

“That’s bullshit. We look tired,” Renee said.

“Well, tired suits all of you.”

Women all have different ways of dealing with men. Some are nice. Some opt to ignore them. Some are straight up combative. And experience has taught me that the latter two can lead to violent outbursts, and when you’re stuck on a train for at most another half hour with someone who clearly won’t give up, you learn to play nice.

So we played nice. We listened to his story about making a living selling weed and pushing it through a coffee shop in Uptown. We nodded our heads as he told us how rich he was, that he never actually rode the train because he could afford Ubers.

“I’m super intelligent. Like a super human.”

There were some parts of the conversation that were actually interesting, like when he claimed to be a human rights activist. And then I thought, maybe I was passing judgment too early.

“I don’t believe that black lives matter. I believe that all lives matter,” he said loudly, in a train car full of black people.

Nope. Didn’t pass judgment too early.

We got to Clark and Lake. Kate got off, but not before the Puerto Rican hassled her about what her race was.

“You Egyptian?”

“No,” she said in a fake accent, “I’m from Ethiopia.”

“No, you’re Egyptian.”

“I Ethiopian brotha.”

“What’s your name?”

“Nairobi,” she peaced out.

“That was rude of her,” the Puerto Rican said.

“Maybe you were rude by telling her what race she is,” Renee countered.

Things turned from ridiculous and slightly uncomfortable to concerning once we passed Division. The white guy, who had not said a word up until this point, got up and manspread himself next to me.

“I was in jail from ages 18 to 22 for pushing cocaine,” the Puerto Rican was telling us.

“Man, that’s nothing,” the white guy finally spoke up. “I was in a psych ward for two months.”

“Why was that?” I asked.

“The police locked me up because they all know my dad. He’s one of the top five coke dealers in Chicago. They wanted to get to him by getting to me, thinking it would draw him out. But it didn’t. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Yeah, he’s just bipolar,” the Puerto Rican said.

“Fuck the police,” said the white guy.

“Weren’t you guys getting off downtown?” Renee asked.

“Oh shit. Where are we?” the Puerto Rican laughed as the automated voice announced Damen as the next stop. We passed Damen. They didn’t get off.

“So what’s your name?” he asked me.

“Janice,” I lied.

“Are you on Facebook?”

“Nah, I don’t like social media.”

“Yeah, I don’t either, but I’m single now, so I’ve gotta play the field, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Western. They stayed on the train.

“So what do you do for a living? You work?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Downtown.”

Next stop, California. I looked up at Renee with a sinking feeling. She shook her head.

“So what do you do?” he pressed on.

“I’m a freelance photographer,” I said, standing up.

“What stop is this? Logan Square?” he asked. “This is our stop, too!”

The two of them followed us off the train.

“You know, I could make you famous. I need new pictures, I’ll pay you a lot of money to take them for me,” he said.

His friend stepped between Renee and me, separating the both of us.

“I don’t need new clients. I’m booked solid for several months. I actually have an early day tomorrow,” I tried to catch Renee’s eye, but the other guy was pushing her away from us.

“Well, name a price, and I’ll pay it. I can make you rich.”

“I’m okay. I think I’m heading out.” I started walking towards Spaulding. He followed me.

“Give me your number.”

I stopped. “No thanks. Maybe we’ll meet on the train again one day.”

“I don’t ride the train. Give me your number.”

“Hey, which way are we going again?” Renee asked.

“Oh, I live over by Kedzie!” I exclaimed, bolting in the opposite direction.

We booked it towards the Kedzie exit, hoping the guys would stop following us. They started screaming.

“You fucking cunts! Fuck you! Go suck dick, dumb bitches!”

And there we go. We walked faster.

“Fuck you…go to hell… get gang-banged…”

“Crap, they’re still following us,” Renee said.

“What do we do?”

“Keep walking?”

This is the train to Forest Park —

“Oh, god, I’m not fucking getting on that train,” Renee said as we walked up the stairs. We looked behind us. The train sped away. The guys were nowhere to be found.

“Did they get on the train?”

“I have no idea.”

— — — -

We emerged outside and stood on Milwaukee for a moment. She didn’t want to go back into the train station and decided she felt more comfortable walking back south on Milwaukee. We both agreed to text each other when we got home. As we went our separate ways, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. What if Renee hadn’t been there? What if she had opted to get off on California like she was supposed to? I didn’t quite believe that those guys were coke dealers, but this was more than just your run-of-the-mill cat call. They were aggressive, they clearly followed us to our stop, they tried hard to get personal information from us, they tried to pull something at the train station by separating us, and they were angry when we stopped playing nice.

I spend most nights commuting home by myself, at times, much later. During these times, I stay off my phone when I’m walking. I avoid making eye contact with other people. I cross the street when I feel like someone’s following too close behind me. And the rare times when I do think I’m being followed, I call someone.

I was 99% sure they got on the train, but that 1% chance that they hadn’t and were waiting for me around the corner freaked me out. Fuck them for taking away my sense of safety and reassurance. Fuck them for making me feel so insecure with my surroundings.

The shitty thing is that women are taught to blame themselves for things like this happening. Maybe I shouldn’t have been taking the train from Harlem this late. Maybe I shouldn’t have responded to him when he complimented my boots. Maybe I should have been a bitch up front. Maybe it’s my fault for being nice, for being a tease, for leading him on by simply acknowledging him.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe this isn’t that big of a deal. I mean, it’s not like I was actually raped.

Except, I’m not overreacting. Both Renee and I knew once we passed Damen and those guys were still on the train, that they planned to get off when we got off. But how are we supposed to react in those situations?

When we were at the Logan Square stop, and they started screaming obscenities at us, we weren’t the only people at the stop. There were other people there. But they didn’t do anything, or say anything. They kept their heads down and minded their own business. Same with everyone on the train.

I need to learn how to fucking take care of myself.