This is a repost of a blog I wrote for Medium as part of their writing partners program. I am sharing it here because maybe you like reading me but don’t know where else I am writing because I stopped being a self promotional writer like a year ago for no discernible reason. I write there more than I write here. If you like this you could sign up to read me there but only if you want, I’m not your mom.
I am not a person who enjoys yelling or being yelled at. I have a loud talking voice but not approaching yelling levels, just the kind of loud that requires my boyfriend to gently remind me that there are neighbors when I’m loudly talking in bed at midnight and everyone else in the building is probably trying to sleep. I once left a Flywheel class (RIP Flywheel) and walked out onto the street in Williamsburg without taking off my little cycling shoes because the male instructor was yelling too much and it was a little upsetting. But for the past week I keep finding myself in situations in which I am yelling at strangers.
On Tuesday last week I went into the office in Soho, which is both very invigorating (a lot of socializing, a lot of in-person connection) and also a little bit exhausting for me (see above). On my way home on the Q train a guy in business attire was talking very loudly into his phone, which was on speaker. Maybe the train car was just preternaturally quiet but I don’t think so, everyone was just doing the thing where they don’t intentionally make eye contact with you to indicate annoyance but they happen to catch your eye and then look over at the source of the noise and it’s apparent they are annoyed. An entire car full of people was doing this in regard to the man next to me who was shouting into his phone about, I don’t even know, work? Something else? For several minutes. Before I could consider that this man could probably punch me in the face if he wanted to I turned to him and shouted, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” and he did, and a few seconds later our train rolled into the tunnel and then to DeKalb Avenue and I got off the train because I was shaking and mad and did not know what had come over me. I told some friends about this and they were either bewildered or amazed and in one case said “I’m glad you didn’t get stabbed.” I guess I’m glad too.
A few days later we were going to get coffee from the coffee place down the street. They remember Chase’s order but not mine. I appreciate that nobody there seems to want to work that hard. Their pastries aren’t in a case, just in the big white pastry boxes they come in from some bakery in Clinton Hill, and you open the box and kind of just gesture to the almond croissant you want or whatever. It’s a decent system and a good coffee shop. Until a few months ago at the intersection in front of the coffee shop there was a sort of suggestion of a sign to cars approaching the intersection that they should stop. It was not a stop sign. It was a sort of “pedestrians crossing” sign. But a few months ago they replaced this with two very unambiguous stop signs and now cars need to stop there, which is a net good because it is a very high-traffic area for pedestrians and bicyclists and even other cars . We had our coffee and were crossing the street in front of this very intersection with the newish stop signs when a car came barreling through, only stopping for us after it had crossed into the intersection and begun to careen toward us. Instead of simply continuing on my merry way I turned towards this car and its driver and was prepared to give him a piece of my mind. I gestured angrily with my arms open towards the car, I yelled “we’re WALKING here,” like some caricature of a person living in New York City, I gave him the finger, and then Chase grabbed my hand and was like “we are going to keep walking now” which was probably the right thing to do but not the cathartic thing to do.
It is at this point in the story when I should tell you that I didn’t really react a week and a half ago when Roe fell. I didn’t cry. I was clearly upset but I’m also a master compartmentalizer until I’m not. Maybe there is another reason for why I have been screaming at these men in varying degrees of justification over the past week. Maybe I am a hysterical woman, or maybe New York City is becoming as bad as some people say, and now you can’t walk down the street in Prospect Heights without some lady yelling at you. Maybe this behavior isn’t connected to that particular piece of news, or maybe it is. I have been a lot madder since then, though.
Over the weekend we were going to meet our friends who were in the city visiting from LA on Vanderbilt Avenue’s open streets, which is where we meet up with or otherwise take friends from out of town on the weekend during the summer. The street is closed off to cars and sometimes there’s like, a brass band or kids with a bubble machine or something on the street. It’s very nice. Chase wasn’t feeling very well that morning and consumed a green smoothie before we left his apartment, and then we walked over to my apartment so we could feed Carmichael and sit in the air conditioning to kill time until we had to meet up with Katie and Adam. Finally we left my place and were walking up Classon until Chase very suddenly needed to vomit, which he did on the street next to the curb, which was no doubt the best place to have done that (Chase, I’m sorry I’m writing about you vomiting). I went into the bodega to grab him a small bottle of water to drink while he was regaining his composure standing against the building on the corner and also a large bottle of water to clean up the scene a bit. As I was dumping out this large bottle of water so nobody would have to spend their Fourth of July weekend stepping into street puke, these two idiots in a sedan pulled up at the green light in front of me and started street harassing me verbally in ways that are honestly too humiliating to repeat in writing. My general rule about street harassment is that I don’t engage in 95% of cases unless the aggressor is insistent upon making a spectacle out of the whole thing, and then I will as well to prove that I, too, can be a psycho if pushed to be. This situation fell into the latter bucket. I also firmly believe that the only thing street harassers react to is the feeling of shame, and even then it’s like maybe a 50% chance that you’re going to effectively shame them, but you might as well try if you feel safe enough. They certainly feel safe enough behind a car door to be gross to a woman they don’t know who’s minding her business.
You are possibly wondering how the story of the street harassers ended. It was in all a bit disappointing. I am neither victor nor saint here. In response to this guy and his friend being disgusting pigs I started yelling at them. There is a small audience for this, a girl on a bike, a woman at the bus stop, a smattering of pedestrians. These guys are holding up traffic northbound on Classon being generally awful and loud and embarrassing and annoying to me and I am screaming and giving them the finger. I don’t think I said anything particularly insightful or devastating, but by the time the cars behind them were honking at them to start moving and get out of there I hope I had made one thing clear to them: I can be an insane woman, and they should not yell at women, because some of them might be insane and cleaning up bodily fluids.
very relatable, find myself at my most irritable these days!