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If there’s anything that makes me want to go on a mass killing spree no-prisoners style, it’s getting on a crowded CTA train at 8:30 in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a violent guy by nature, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never hit a woman. But nothing unleashes the darkness in the pit of my being quicker than the clash between personal victory and the death of chivalry that takes place every morning, resulting in my having vivid fantasies of punching as many hot girls on the train in the face as possible.
Let’s lay out the scenario. When I work in the Loop, I wake up at about 7 o’clock every morning, and hit the snooze alarm several times until between 7:30-7:45. Now I know I have to be out the door by at least 8:15 to make it to work marginally on time. If I snooze past this, I have reached the point of no shower. Given that I’ve probably only slept a maximum of six hours the night before, and am up before ten to go to an office I don’t want to be at, I wake up already hating most of humanity.
I throw on some clothes and book it out the door. If I can’t catch a bus going down Belmont, I have to walk six blocks to the train, sometimes in the shittiest weather imaginable. It’s not a huge deal, but since I’ve timed out everything to the minute, if I miss a bus, I’m going to be at least five to ten minutes late to work, and since I’m half asleep anyway, exerting myself by walking at full speed first thing in the morning is not my idea of a good time. By missing the bus, I am also putting myself along a sidewalk that fits two people comfortably side by side, that is now occupied by a hundred people power walking to get to the train, which only turns my rage up even more, especially because sprinkled throughout the power walkers are people who are completely oblivious to anything going on around them and strolling without a care in the world while taking up the entire goddamned sidewalk (strangely this is usually college/hipster/emo kids even more than old people).
Now by the time I’ve reached the turnstiles that lead to a set of staircases taking you to the above
ground platform, there are hundreds of people spilling in, many of whom have either seen a train they need to board (which they’re not going to make by this point) or hear a train coming, and regardless of which train or what direction it is coming in, take off RUNNING.By the time you reach the platform, one of three scenarios will happen. 1) A choir of angels will deliver a completely empty train as soon as you reach the top of the stairs. 2) You will run into a completely packed train right before the doors close and the train departs, or 3) You will stand on the nearly empty platform watching as a train takes 15 minutes to show up as the platform slowly fills with more and more people as you check your watch cursing the fact that you didn’t get up earlier and then the train shows up PACKED with people, and THEN, the real fun begins.
Hopefully at this point, you have won the shitfest lottery and picked a good spot on the platform,
a spot that a door on the train will randomly stop at, giving you a good vantage point to get on. If you miss, you will watch as twenty other people who arrived after you swarm around either side of the opening doors. Now, there are usually about ten to twenty people who will get off the train at this point, and it’s always fun to see the people closest to the doors prep like they’re about to take off in a track race while eyeing a potentially empty seat on the train. Because the seat is vital. The seat is victory. The seat is salvation. The seat means that you will be able to ride to work in peace. You won’t have to move around at every stop. You won’t have to spoon random people on the way to work. You won’t have to try to turn the page on your newspaper really fast between the train stopping and the train moving or else end up flailing like you’re having a seizure and lose your balance and bowl down twelve other people. You can sit, read, turn on your headphones, if you’re hungover or just tired you can sleep, and tune out as much of the experience as possible until you arrive at your destination. (And get ready to experience CTA heaven if you can snag one of the single seats, where you can cross your legs!)Really, riding the train is like working out at a gym. Everyone’s in their own little world. Rarely do people talk, unless they met there or recognized each other from somewhere else. Everyone has headphones and an agenda, and everyone’s passively and quietly pissed off at anyone who gets to something they were going to use first. And if anyone starts talking, everyone not on headphones around them will eavesdrop on the conversation.
The time between people exiting the train and people boarding the train is where the real dilemma begins. This is where lines are blurred. The lines of politeness, of chivalry, of standing up for yourself, of doing what your mother taught you, and of being a complete asshole. The reason for this is because though these small minor assholish things are happening, NO ONE EVER TALKS. They just brood.
The best is when people try to get on the train PAST the people who are getting off the train. These are the people who are scraping for seat survival. They know the stakes, have been through this enough that any notion of chivalry is long behind them. There is only the seat. My personal favorite is when a hot entitled girl will not only do this, but walk THROUGH the middle of the people who are waiting on either side of the door, THROUGH the people getting off, and stroll onto the train, causing me to have to restrain myself from karate chopping them.If you fail to get a seat, you can do one of two things. 1) stand against the walls on the inside of the door so that you don’t have to hold on to anything, you just lean against whichever way the train is heading, and hold onto it for dear life by remaining still as additional passengers get on at additional stops, and ignoring the glares from passengers getting on because you won’t move, else lose the wall to some person who will steal the spot and then stare straight ahead like they’ve been there the whole time or 2) get ready for the suckfest as you walk into the middle of the train, grab a bar, and thrust your butt or crotch into someone’s face for 20 minutes.
The plight of the bar holders is a grim one. This is where good men become doormats and pussies, and the death of chivalry becomes apparent every morning. When holding a bar, you are subject to receive one of the two to four seats that people are occupying nearest you. However, so are about three to four other passengers on your flanks, all of which are passively watching the
movement of these seated passengers out of the corners of their eyes like a pack of vultures circling a carcass. If one of the seated passengers makes a move to put a water bottle or a newspaper away, these bar holders will snap to attention, ready to attack their prey. It could be a false alarm, or someone getting ready to exit the train way too early. But in the event that one of these seated passengers decides to stand up, the game is on.If, as a bar holder, you are a white 20 something male, consider yourself at the bottom of the totem pole. If your mother taught you right, you should be offering your seat to the nearest woman or old person who looks like their feet are bothering them. And about 3 out of 5 times, I will offer the nearest person who fits this criteria the seat. But because of the nature of the beast, no one gives a shit about politeness anymore. This is a competition. This is a battle. This is a war of the seat. Nice guys do finish last here, and will spend the rest of their commute standing awkwardly having backpacks and elbows thrust into their sides until they can get off the train, swearing they need to save money to buy a car. Even when you offer some girl a seat, the thank you is more a passive statement or declaration of victory than anything else. Chivalry isn’t dead because guys don’t do it anymore, chivalry is dead because people don’t give a shit about what used to be considered chivalrous.
However, on one of the 2 out of 5 times the quickdraw of grabbing a seat happens, I put all thoughts of politeness out of my head. I’ve stood on the train and offered a potential seat to any woman or old person I could for the past week, I’m friggin tired and I’m going to take this one as it opened up right in front of me. So regardless of the quick motions of the girls standing next to me, I spin as fast as I can and plop down in that seat and I taste victory. The bittersweet taste of victory as the glares from my defeated opponents set on me like heat rays, and the guy sitting next to me is so big I have to angle my torso, and the woman whose crotch is in my face is holding a newspaper which flaps almost directly in my eyeball, and I can’t reach my bag to get my headphones to block out the shitty metal music I can hear clearly from some jackass’s iPod, and all of this is too much to allow me to focus on my book, so for 15 minutes I silently brood along with the rest of the train as we ride off to the concrete jungle of the Loop, silently and singularly hating everyone else, or just trying to block everything out entirely.
In the CTA Seat War, there are no winners. In the battle, the only people who emerge victorious are those who have shed all but their sense of self. Because to be polite on a crowded CTA train at 8:30 in the morning is to admit defeat.
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