The strange intimacy of crowded mass transit

Since I moved and started f/t work in midtown, I've had ridiculously crowded commutes every day. I realized that people mostly zone out on subways, but if your alertness is up, it can actually be a very sexy experience -- you make brief but intense close eye contact, you brush against people, smell them, and even when you're standing still you wind up in strangely close positions, like yesterday I was standing opposite a very pretty woman with maybe a foot between us and the way our arms were extended it felt like we were on the verge of grabbing each other and dancing or something.

Yeah, this only belongs on ILTMI...

http://0.tqn.com/d/altmusic/1/0/v/E/-/-/interpol.jpg

lol.
subway connotes *way* more creepy sexual energy than it does anything positive.

my alarmedness is up.

feel like a lot of this intimacy is one-sided

yes, yes it is

but hurting otm -- i mean in some ways this is about the only thing that makes train rides tolerable, unless you happen to catch a relatively empty car

sometimes i'll rub up against a girl and have the desire to say "don't worry, i'm gay" but alas

I felt a boner once. It was not pleasant.

Pls don't take that out of context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groping

In Japan, street groping is called chikan (痴漢, チカン, or ちかん); and a man who commits such acts is also called chikan, while a woman is called chijo (痴女). Crowded trains are a favourite location for groping and a 2001 survey conducted in two Tokyo high schools revealed that more than 70% of students had been groped while travelling on them.[1] As part of the effort to combat the problem, some railway companies designate women-only passenger cars during rush hours.[2][3][4] While the term is not defined in the Japanese legal system, vernacular usage of the word describes acts that violate several laws. Although crowded trains are the most frequent targets, another common setting is bicycle parking areas, where people bending over unlocking locks are targets. Chikan is often featured in Japanese pornography.
The issue of groping in Japan does not just affect females but males as well. Such is the concern about groping that a film has been made about it.[5] The film I Just Didn't Do It by Japanese film director Masayuki Suo, based on a true story, focuses on a male office worker acquitted of groping after a five year legal battle.[6] The criminal courts have traditionally been lenient in cases of groping and have only recently made efforts to combat the social problem with tougher sentences.[7][8]
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one of my best friends (small gay asian) was on the paris metro and was looking at some girl's clothes and she thought he was checking her out, laughed and whispered to her bf

he was so pissed

JayMC's recent story about a similar thing to thread.

somebody told me, or maybe I read somewhere that there is a company in japan that bought a single subway train that they keep in a warehouse. they pay women to stand inside and then ask men to pay to be allowed to stand in the train and grope to their heart's content.

Yeah, well I'm not talking about, like, rubbing up on girls with my boner, I'm just talking about very subtle things. I mean I basically stand as still and unobtrusively as possible on subways and bury my face in a book. But some days it's just like you break concentration for a moment, and you realize that there are like three beautiful, nicely dressed people practically on top of you.

so you will admit to having a boner on the train

i was about to say lol

lol, I was torn between phrasing it that way and having you think that vs. writing "rubbing up on girls with a boner" which makes it sound like the girls have a boner

for the record, yeah, a few times

Dang why you guys gotta cramp my fleeting morning fantasies I'm not hurting anyone

"Dang why you guys gotta cramp my fleeting morning fantasies I'm not hurting anyone"
"please stop rubbing against me i am trying to read"

"hello, I'm hurting two"

We should have called this board I Love My Own TMI And No One Else's

Yesterday, I was in a low cut shirt and the packed streetcar necessitated me standing directly beside/underneath the gaze of the only person taller than me on the train. Oh boy. I felt very exposed.

This morning, all I could manage was a literal 'toehold' on the topmost step of the streetcars (our doors won't close if anyone is standing on the steps themselves) and I had to hold my entire body on with my right arm & a pole. Hell of a workout, but less intimate. Could see dude standing in exact same place I'd left him yesterday. Heh.

er, train=car in my first sentence. Or maybe Toronto has fancy streetcarsubways!! We do not. We do have one (1) new open-concept train in operation, and I've yet to ride it, three months in :(

Strange, well, yeah I guess so but intimate? I know the feeling of being jammed tightly in a subway sometimes against pulchritudinous ladies and I don't hold it against myself for fantasizing about them but I sure as heck wouldn't want them to know it. You know how sometimes you're on public transport and ppl are loudly talking on their phone or playing songs on their phone or they insist on chatting when you're visibly reading? That feeling of imposition? Yeah, maybe she just wants to get home or get wherever she's going and I can't think of anything that would make me feel like more of a heel that realizing that I was making someone's already crowded commute worse.

so what you're saying is that I should stop giving subway backrubs? ;_;

No, just stop charging for them

i was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago as i was standing directly next to a woman who had a seat and was going through her entire makeup routine on the train. i basically watched her change from one person to another (she was a very heavy makeup user) and it felt very intimate to observe.

not in a sexual way, just in a way that it's not something you normally observe unless you live with someone.

god I hate people doing their makeup on the train

I love watching a woman put on her makeup. In a totally sexual way, too, unless I don't fancy her, in which case *yawn*.

I'm remembering now that there was some movie that used to show on Showtime or HBO that consisted of a bunch of vaguely arty short films about NYC, and one of them involved an anonymous relationship between some dude and Rosie Perez where they'd rub against each other on the subway every time they saw each other but never actually spoke to each other or knew who the other was. It was kind of (1) gross and (2) how the fuck do you think no one else sees the hand-crotch contact going on here?

I should get a note that says that and hand it to any woman I see putting her makeup on next to me on the train xp

god I hate people doing their makeup on the train

Sorry to be all 'suburbs, classic, ickey etc...' but this is not nearly as bad as watching ppl put on their makeup in commute traffic.

if i see someone on the subway doing their make-up, i assume my alluring sexual transit presence has inspired them to look their best

public sexual transit - "I'll take you there"

i've seen this a few times recently, it is weird. especially when they're in a hurry and they are just RAKING that shit into their face, looking annoyed and horrible.

It's really, really odd to me since makeup is a kind of artifice and they're totally giving away their game.

Hurting i saw the premiere of that in Bryant Park! i can't remember what that particular short was called but i think it was by... Abel Ferrara?

Either that or a sign of contempt. "I will do my best to look nice for the ppl at work but I couldn't care less about you transit scum."

Re-applying lipstick is fine but it's completely weird when someone does a full face of make-up on the subway. It weirds me out.

I'm remembering now that there was some movie that used to show on Showtime or HBO that consisted of a bunch of vaguely arty short films about NYC, and one of them involved an anonymous relationship between some dude and Rosie Perez where they'd rub against each other on the subway every time they saw each other but never actually spoke to each other or knew who the other was. It was kind of (1) gross and (2) how the fuck do you think no one else sees the hand-crotch contact going on here?

― Disraeli Geirs (Hurting 2), Thursday, October 13, 2011 10:54 AM (9 minutes ago) [IP: 38.99.207.82] Bookmark

I REMEMBER THIS!!!

The guy was that dude who just looks like a total asshole. He has asshole face. I'm going to figure this out if it kills me.

My commute is WAY too crowded for someone to put on makeup. I mean I think I never noticed this sort of thing until I rode the L in the morning, where people are so close to you that you have to tense half the muscles in your body not to be pressing against them or leaning into them, and where your way closer to people than you would be in any other not-actually-intimate context. And of course I do everything I can to avoid staring, imposing on someone's space, perving, etc., but that can just make the whole thing seem more intense.

I was going to mention it last night but could only remember that Rosie was in it and I thought maybe I was making it up.

Actually I kind of like the tension when someone's applying mascara; will the bus/train jostle her and leave her a mess?

OK well that wasn't too hard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_Stories

lol https://www.facebook.com/pages/Love-on-the-A-Train-TV/144083692320352

LOVE ON THE A TRAIN

Subway Stories. HBO. 1987

"Love on the A Train"
Directed by Abel Ferrara, written by Marla Hanson
Starring Rosie Perez and Gretchen Mol, this humorous short follows a newly married man who develops an utterly silent, distracting, sensual relationship with an attractive woman on the subway. Although they never speak, they spend their morning commute lightly rubbing against each other, while appearing to only lean against a pole. Will his marriage survive this odd, but addictive morning infidelity? Will he and the woman ever speak?[1]

Yes! It was the dude who is in Ed Burns movies. This one: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0569458/

... Gretchen Mol was the guy?

xp: aw, joke ruined

I think it was 97 not 87. Also, I remember thinking it was pretty good. I was young though so it was probably shit.

Dude from the Geico ads

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJ-BRrPu4r16MMpP4kyRMesOA6ntyPfMkTjGrhIp6BLGuooUsSwgMXvcm-eA

He even looks like that damn lizard.

It was 97, ENBB

I am so happy that was easily googleable. It would have bothered me all day.

Man the idea of a zipless fuck between Rosie and that dude is like the polar opposite of erotic to me.

Actually I kind of like the tension when someone's applying mascara; will the bus/train jostle her and leave her a mess?

I would be so worried about poking myself in the eye with my mascara if I were applying it while on a train or bus.

I guess to the extent that I'm going to get on board w this concept at all, it's that the train does offer opportunities for surreptitious examination of parts of people you wouldn't normally look at if you were talking to them, but are easier to appear to not be looking at when you're packed in like sardines. Like the back of someone's neck, or a hand, or their shoes or calves...something it's not conspicuous to gaze at (or that they can't see you gazing at).

there was a woman on the train next to me today who had what looked like a little bit of dried toothpaste on her jaw. i couldn't decide if i should tell her or not. would it be more embarrassing for a stranger to point it out on the train but reduce the time it was on her face, or let her discover it herself later and think 'well maybe no one saw it"? i erred on the side of silence.

My ass is about where many shoulder purses fall. I get so much buttlove on the streetcar from the short people.

FFM, what a great post!

I mean ass.

Anyway, isn't there a whole Japanese subgenre of porn based on real-life phenomenon of men groping women in crowded trains and metros? Not that I've ever watched these movies, since they seem to have that rapey vibe that's common to this sort of "reality" porn.

Yeah I too have heard that's a thing in Japan. Not much of a problem in Toronto..people are just ignorant and few hold their purse straps in their hand to streamline the space they take up. :( But...thanks!