Whoo. What is it with me and hijinks on the CTA? Some background - which may make this a little long…
There’s this guy I’ve seen frequently over the last year or so. He’s fairly normal-looking, seems clean, groomed, and not homeless, always wears khakis and a jacket, and decent shoes. Whenever I’ve seen him, it’s been on Saturday night (Sunday morning) after work on my way home, between 2am and 5am.
He’s memorable because the first time he caught my attention, he was catching the attention of a bunch of other people (most drunk partiers on their way home) by sitting on the floor of the El car and masturbating through his pants. He did this over the course of a couple of stops, then left the train after he seemed to finish. I didn’t think all that much of it, he was openly mocked by the drunkards but otherwise nobody really thought that much of it.
I saw him several more times after that. Sometimes he seemed like whatever, just a dude riding the train like everybody else. Sometimes he seemed odd and restless and would change train cars at different stops. It got so I recognize him easily and saw him just a month or so ago doing the masturbating thing, again, on the floor. I was like, “whaaat?” to myself and he left at the next stop so didn’t really give me any chance to do anything about it. He didn’t expose himself, and that time I’m not even sure the people around him quite realized what he was doing besides being a weirdo sitting on the floor.
So there’s the background.
Tonight, I get on the train. It’s crowded and I’m standing by the doors with about 6 other people. This guy comes through the emergency door, switching cars and entering ours. I recognize him right away and notice he’s in “weird mode” tonight. He stops right where our little crowd is standing and starts mumbling, “can I sit?” and moving around to where people are standing, crowding them out of their spot and mumbling “can I sit?” again. He finally backs into a corner where a short-skirted young woman is standing minding her own business and would have just smashed into her with his backpack if her friend hadn’t grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the way. Now he’s got everyone’s attention, because the girl yelped and people were looking over to see what was up.
The nutter then sits down on his bag, assuming the position I had seen him do twice before. Only this time he was directly in front of me, at my feet. I was like “Oh, hell no,” because I could see he was staring directly at that girl and was just going to stare at her and whack off. The first thing out of my mouth? Well, I wasn’t thinking very far ahead and what popped out was, “Don’t you do it, or I will stab you.” Very loudly. When the girl and her friends made some noise, I looked over at them and said, “This guy’s a masturbator, I’ve seen him do this before, and he was going to get his rocks off right now while looking at her,” pointing at short skirt. I looked back at Masturbator and told him I would call the cops and that I recognize him if I ever see him again. Or something close to that.
We were about 30 seconds from pulling into the next station, just enough time for Masturbator to scramble back to his feet, looking like a cornered mouse, and run to the wrong doors, realize he’s at the wrong doors, cross the car again, and run out. Screaming his fool head off. Just screaming and running down the platform while the doors closed and we were on our way in peace.
Miss short-skirt and her three friends proceeded to call and tweet their friends about their new hero, and joke about feeling safer with me on the train (silly drunks). And seriously thanking me for “saving” them from the man (sheesh they were trashed). I guess they never heard a woman yell an empty threat about stabbing someone before!
What a weird ride home.
I bet he slinks in quietly and doesn’t make eye contact.
Never seen him myself but I’ll know what’s up now if I do!