Two firsts.

[written w/o editing when I got home b/n 5 and 6 in the morning]

I have lived in Toronto almost all of my life. I’ve lived in downtown Toronto now for going on 8 years. Early this morning was the first time I have ever, ever, felt genuinely frightened here. That’s first number one.

We (my husband and I) were coming home from our friend’s New Year’s party. Taking advantage of the free TTC ride to cross the city — back from the Danforth to the west end. Even before we headed over though, I’d expressed hesitation about what coming home on the Rocket was going to be like tonight. “As though the whole line is the Vomit Comit” I said.

But I always feel better when hubbie cajoles me onto public transit over, say, a warm and speedy cab. So this time I thought I would be urban and savvy and good and we all (husband, I, and another couple) managed to get on one of the last trains running west from the Danforth, at about 3:15.

There was, as predicted, a good amount of vomit. We got onto a subway car total passengers about 6 or 7 (including us). At the far end of the car was one clearly drunk, probably homeless, man. The other couple was riding with us as far as Yonge, and it wasn’t for a couple of stations before the drunk man began being loud, playing a harmonica, yelling and lurching around a little.

But that’s not unexpected on the TTC. It happens all the time, often during the day actually. Drunk, lurchy, loud people are 9 times out of 10, only that. They don’t especially bother you, or accost you. So we weren’t taking much notice of him.

Our friends got out at Yonge. At this point on the car there’s us, another older well-dressed couple, and maybe 3 other people.

At either Bay or St George a group of young men rushes onto the car. I’m sympathetic — there’s probably about 8 of them, and 2 of them are still running down the stairs and the other guys are trying to hold the subway for them. They all make it on.

They start being loud. Whatever. Young teenaged men, New Years. Annoying, but not a big deal.

One of them sits down next to the girl opposite me. I’m not really paying attention and sort of wonder if she got on with them — he’s draped his arm around her back. I catch part of what she’s saying which is that she has someone and she’s good thanks. She’s quite composed. Then I realize that she’s not with them at all and he’s just marked her to harass. It all takes about 15 seconds, and I’m ashamed that I didn’t realize sooner. Her boyfriend comes over and she points him out and between the two of them, they deal with the situation as the guy (slowly) gives up the seat, smiling creepily, and eventually moving on.

Then all of them (about 8, and unfortunately mostly black) start clustering and hooting and clumping at one end of the subway car. The nearly empty end. The one with the drunk homeless man on it.

It gets louder and aggressive sounding. It becomes obvious that at least some of them are harassing this man. Yelling at him to get off the train. Pushing his bike to the ground. Shouting at him that he’s drunk. Telling him to get a house. A job. Jeers to “get him!”.  All the horrible and obvious things you’d expect and still may be shocked to hear thugs saying.

I don’t know what to do. There are 8 or more of them. They’re young, and not huge, but not small. Definitely almost all very aggressive. What do you do?

The train stops at the next station and it continues, but getting louder, as they’re trying to threaten him off the train. One of them I notice is actually shielding the man somewhat. He pushed the thuggier guy away and kept him from actually grabbing the man (I don’t know if they had been successfully grabbing or pulling at him before that). This one keeps protecting him until some of the boys throw the man’s bike off the train, at which point he sort of turns back, shrugs his shoulders and joins in shouting. This guy is one of two who might be partial dissenters. The other being a guy who, when they began harassing the man with the bike, distanced himself physically — going straight to the other end of the car and sitting there.

A woman traveling alone, with far more presence of mind than I had, reached up and pushed the “in case of harassment” button. Which I had completely forgotten existed. It had gotten very very loud, and very threatening. There was definitely shoving, though between who it was hard to tell.

When the alarm sounded you could feel a small anticipatory breath of relief go through the rest of the car (6 or 7 people). But the sound of the alarm did not seem to have noticeably changed the tone of the aggressing thugs. If at all, only slightly.

It is New Years on the subway, on a 3oclockish train. Every Friday night the club district is crawling with police — 3 or 4 patrol cars a block. On our way out I spent a good part of the ride staring at an ad for “Special Constables” — uniformed TTC staff riding the cars, ensuring your safety.

So what do you think happens when you push the emergency alarm?

One TTC employee shows up. One. Not a special constable, not even a team. One guy, on New Years, comes to see what the problem is.

He assesses the situation terribly, and though I don’t blame him for being alone and intimidated, he determines (incorrectly and in about 5 seconds) that the homeless man pushed the alarm, and tells him to get off the train and go home. The TTC employee leaves. The train continues on its way.

Besides that there was only one TTC staffer sent out, that there was very obviously a quasi-gang of thugs on the car (who continued to be just as overt and aggressive the whole time the TTC employee was there), and that the man with the bicycle hadn’t pushed the alarm, he was being physically harassed he would have been entirely justified in doing so.

I don’t frighten easily. I’ve been in many confrontations, though not any that were expressly physical (that I wasn’t heading into knowingly and for recreation). I walk through alleys, deal with drunk guys, lecherous guys, mentally unstable guys who take a swing at you for no reason as you walk down the street. I ride transit with groups of loud and aggressive teenagers all the time. I walk past thugs on the street, stand behind them in line, have to handle situations with them directly and assertively. But I have never, never ever been so scared as I was on that subway car.

I don’t know exactly why. But my husband shares the sentiment. In the whole time we’ve both lived in Toronto we have never felt scared for our physical safety until tonight.

For one, being on a subway can suddenly feel very confining. You are trapped in a very finite amount of space (the size of a subway car) and if the doors aren’t already open at a station, you’re not getting out of whatever’s going on just by walking away. Two, there are people who get aggressive, who get loud, then there are people who are trying to be menacing. Who are clearly practiced at making people feel scared and unsafe, and who get off on it. Three, I was very tired. Being thrust into a frightening situation at 3:30 in the morning is a very unpleasant experience. Four, and maybe most importantly, the pathetic response to the emergency alarm left you with a very palpable horrific feeling that no help was coming. All of a sudden all of the safety of infrastructure falls away and you realize the TTC is operating with a skeleton crew, no security, and no one is calling the police.

After the homeless man is left behind on the platform, the thugs get a bit louder. They don’t have a target anymore, and they’ve had a small victory. Two of them go over to the couple sitting diagonally from us and start aggressively asking for cigarettes, which soon devolves into asking for anything. It’s clearly posturing, trying to intimidate the young man and make him appear weak, and frighten the woman by extension of the same. But the young man handles himself well and they eventually move on.

After the incident with the man and the bicycle, and the harassment of the couples, there’s nothing specific to point to to explain why my hands were shaking. They just continued to be loud (very loud, screaming loud), eventually deciding to move between cars. Though notably they mostly stayed at one end of the car.

So. What do you do? My hands were shaking because I could not think of anything I could do. All logic said that the right thing to do was not to engage. That the more all of us could stay non-confrontational, the safer it was all around. Not to say, in the least, that I wouldn’t have been much more comfortable with a confrontation. I might have been shaking, but all I wanted was an opportunity or excuse to physically make these guys go away, or at least assert my (and all our) space. A verbal confrontation would have made me feel less useless as well. But the people around me were handling themselves well, and no one needed saving.

And so I get to it — the one guy who needed saving, the man with the bicycle, I couldn’t and didn’t help. When that happened there were 8 of these bastards, definitely less of us (counting an older couple). It seemed very obvious that anyone, even a woman, who got in the middle of their exchange, could only have ended up being the target themselves. In a nearly abandoned subway car, with abandoned subway platforms. And for the first time, in my life I have had to really deal with what it is like to watch something horrible happening and know that I wouldn’t do anything about it. That’s first number two.

I feel no peace about it. I wish I had stood between them anyways. Or that I had taken a chance that it would have made a difference that I’m a woman. That I would have thought of the thing to say that would have diffused the situation and everyone would have been fine. But that would have, without question, meant putting myself, quite literally, in harm’s way.

What happened to the man with the bike was awful, but he was not actually physically injured. Is that where my line is? Do I get in the way if I think you’re going to be hurt? What if getting in the way makes this worse, and makes it more likely that you or I, both of us, or us and others will get hurt? I feel quite sure that if I had gotten in the way all I would have done was increased the odds that someone would get hurt. I read situations pretty well and everything about this one said ugly and dangerous, that there was a very real chance it would escalate quickly into violence. Real violence. Herd violence.

For an unrelated reason, the train stayed stopped at the station before ours for a very long time. My husband and I briefly discussed getting off the train and just walking. And I wanted to go. The doors were open, it was still going on, loud threats now being shouted between the cars, pounding on windows and doors. We could just as easily walk home from here as from where we were going.

But then my husband did the thing he does that makes him in some ways a smarter and better person than I am. He said we should stay. Because it was safer for everyone if we did. If we get up and leave, we leave people behind. We start a ‘who’s going and who’s left behind’. If we stay, if we quietly hold ground, we add numbers that actually make a difference. More so than my vigilante desire to fight. We stay, and we make sure that we’re there to actually help people we can, intervene if anything else happens – if anyone gets harassed who can’t handle themselves. As he said, the thugs clustered at one end of the train for a reason. There’s an unspoken barrier that is keeping things from getting even worse.

Inexplicably the thugs decided to get off at the stop we were delayed at. We finally got going, and rode one more stop where we left the TTC and walked home. Really knowing for the first time what it’s like to find yourself suddenly in an un-handleable situation, and knowing what it’s like to really and truly be afraid for your safety.