Impotence

I’m on the bus. It is about 1:30 am. I sit down where I can see other passengers because while I try not to be paranoid, I also try to have some situational awareness at 1:30 am on a Friday night. So, when I sit down to read the Wodehouse I have with me, I make sure that I neither bury my nose in it nor look like I do. Across from me is an attractive young woman, engrossed in something on her mobile phone.

Another stop. A large, slovenly man steps on board: Sweat pants, looks unclean, missing front tooth. He speaks to the attractive young woman; he sounds like he’s drunk or drugged. His presence is clearly unwanted and uncomfortable. Still it’s nothing overtly offensive. He tells her she looks good, what’s her name?, his name is such-and-such, shake hands; where is she from?, he’s from so-and-so…I’m sure you can imagine.

She’s uncomfortable, but fends him off with minimalistic courtesy: Answers questions briefly, not coldly; offers no more, and leaves no leads in her replies. He persists somewhat.

I’m uncomfortable. I don’t want to watch this. That is, I don’t want it to be happening. But what can I do? Part of me wants me to look the man in the eye and tell him I don’t think his advances are welcome. But, realistically, what good will that do? If he were inclined to take a hint, he would have taken one already. If I step in—what will be the woman’s first thought? Gratitude that someone takes her side? Annoyance that someone is presumptuous enough to think she needs protection? Concern and upset that the situation will escalate? —As, of course, it may. This is a large, drunk-or-drugged man making clumsy advances toward a woman; odds are excellent that even a diplomatic approach will be either ignored or met with belligerence, and I am hardly capable of diplomacy.

So I say nothing, do nothing. It’s not cowardice; I’m not afraid, whether or not I might be after due deliberation. At the time the notion doesn’t occur to me one way or another; it’s not courage either. On a public bus, other people around, me with a sturdy umbrella—significant risk of personal injury does not occur to me at the time. Rather, I think: What good would anything do anyway? If I do nothing, the attractive young woman will continue to politely brush off the man until either he or she gets off the bus. If I speak up, I will perhaps make her remember the bus ride as the horribly upsetting one where a shouting match or a fight broke out, rather than one of the many bus rides on which she had to brush off some drunk, obnoxious lout. Or maybe she’d think of mine as the uniquely offensive gesture, as the stranger who decided that she couldn’t take care of herself.

So I do nothing and say nothing; not because I don’t want to, nor because I don’t dare to, but because I figure that the odds are overwhelming that if I do anything, it will improve nothing and perhaps make matters much worse. I get off at my stop; and I walk the rest of the way home to write this. And for the moment I don’t particularly like the world we live in.