If the public space is a theatre of collisions, then the New York subway – where there’s always a melee of temperaments – offers up a bustling stage. And as with all stagecraft, how the players react to a prompt is key.
A man with beery breath is standing a little too close to me. Do I risk seeming rude and move quickly away? With plenty of empty seats in a car, a large man deliberately sits alongside a pretty woman.
What should she do? A woman has her shopping on a seat in a crowded car. Should one have to ask her to move her bag?
Since a civil response to any intervention cannot be guaranteed, a person must envision, before asking, a scenario where the lady-with-bag might say no. In which case, would one insist that she comply with the request, starting, in effect, a civic debate on whether buttocks trump bags when it comes to seats on the subway?
These are, of course, the less malign examples of off-putting behaviour on the subway. The clatter of iPods, legs spread invasively wide, bulging backpacks that go bump with every jolt, smelly food, passengers pushing into carriages before others have had a chance to disembark, people blocking or holding doors – these are all irritations of the same low-grade ilk as the bag on the seat.
They jar fleetingly, but they don’t rankle for long. One rarely seeks to alter the behaviour of the person causing the annoyance, because – to use an aphorism that’s quite handy on the subway – life’s too short. (It helps that the ride is usually short, too.)
What of behaviour that leaves a deeper, more disconcerting imprint on the mind? Occasionally, one encounters conduct that is uncivilised in a sense broader than that conveyed by the examples above. I’m not referring, here, to threats – or actual acts – of violence. Those are clear instances of law-breaking and citizens should, and do, react in ways commensurate with the infraction. In New York, common sense dictates that it’s better to alert a cop than to embark on freelance intervention. There are too many madmen around for a citizen’s arrest to be anything other than foolhardy.
There is, however, a class of conduct that’s neither unlawful nor merely off-putting, yet which tests the civic resolve most strenuously. The other day I was one of scores of commuters in a crowded car who witnessed a misogynist rant so ugly that it took the wind out of me. A young man, talking loudly to two friends, was heaping abuse on women as a group, blaming them for all the ills of the ghetto and for the parlous state of black men in America. He did not once use the word “women”, instead deploying “bitches” as his noun of choice.
The man spoke at length, and there wasn’t a single person in his vicinity who didn’t hear him. I wager, also, that almost everyone will have reacted as I did, with an inward horror not merely at his message, but at the contemptuous public broadcast of it.
It will surprise no one reading this column to learn that not a soul in the carriage – man or woman – intervened to stop him. After detecting an initial darkening of brows, and flashes of revulsion in some people’s eyes, I noted that everyone quickly settled into a state of stone-faced impassiveness.
Was this a collective indifference or something more profound? Was there, in our restraint, a rejection of the man’s vileness? For a brief moment, I thought I detected a mulish dignity – a mutiny, no less – in our equipoise.
On reflection, this struck me as fanciful. After all, I was doing my utmost not to catch the man’s eye, and had to look mostly at my knees for about 10 minutes. New Yorkers – and subway riders, in particular – know that there are few words more fraught with menace than “What you lookin’ at, man?”
I was a coward, in a car full of cowards. And this was urban theatre at its most prudent.
The author is a contributing editor to the FT
