I enjoy a post-work commutation lubricant as much as the next passenger, but the drinking on the train may be getting out of hand. Last night I was a party to two situations where the police were summoned, all within the space of about 40 minutes.
Granted, the first incident was set on an Amtrak train, not an LIRR rattletrap. On the three-hour haul from Washington, a group of four was getting increasingly louder as the three men—apparently two twentysomethings and a guy in his thirties—downed more beers. They had a running joke where they’d call each other slang names for female genitalia. This was on a packed train, scheduled to arrive in New York at 8:30.
Finally, one woman asked very politely that they refrain from using words like twat, poontang, vagina or crim. Which prompted the eldest of the bunch to start getting abusive, telling the middle-aged, well-dressed woman that she could just go find another seat and to get out of his face. And then he and a buddy started up again with gleeful cries of “Muff!” and “Beaver!,” like 12-year-olds on a backyard sleep-out.
When we got to Penn, I started to exit the train and found myself between the head dope and the woman. He started in again, telling her, “Hey, you have a nice night now,” and laughing in a menacing way.
I couldn’t help myself.
“You out to be ashamed of yourself,” I told him.
And then I was the target. Though other people on the train chimed in, and soon he was hurling abuse at several more people. I could see that two of them, both young women, were clearly scared.
I didn’t take his taunts. Instead, I walked up to a conductor outside the train and told her, “Look, this guy is threatening us. I think you need to do something.”
She was nice, but said the window of opportunity for her was closed.
So I trudged on, heading up the escalator. Sure enough, he was waiting for me at the top of it, and started in again. I cut him off with, “The police are on their way.” He dusted.
Curiously, I did see a cop right then and stopped him. I explained what happened, and he clearly didn’t care if I had a knife sticking out of my back. He wasn’t going to be bothered. He treated me like a crazy person.
So off I went to the LIRR section of Penn Station to complete my journey home. The 8:49 was loading, and I could see that it was a crowded train, with lots of kids tugging balloons on ribbons. There must’ve been some type of event at the Garden.
I sunk down in an empty two-across and cracked open a beer. All was right with the beer until the low-level hum of dozens of conversations was interrupted by a very loud, “Fuck you! You ugly piece of shit! You pimply fat-assed, ugly bitch.”
I looked to see a guy who looked like Vito from The Sopranos. He was standing near the door, yelling at a heavyset woman, about 5’ 3”, sitting about three seats away.
The guy kept at it. There was a kid on my car who looked like she was ready to break the window and jump out, she was so scared. And the yeller’s anger was clearly climbing as his control seemed to be slipping away.
Finally, he crumpled up his beer can and threw it at the woman, who reminded me of the nurse at my grammar school. And then he stepped toward her.
In front of the woman was a middle-aged couple, a guy who didn’t exactly sport the build of a gym rat and, we were to learn in a minute, his wife.
The husband told the yeller, “Okay, that’s enough.”
The guy kept coming, now threatening the husband. So the hubby stood up, in an act of courage that went beyond admirable. Because there was going to be trouble, clearly.
I and another guy walked over, though I had no idea what I was going to do.
Meanwhile, the woman who’d been the target of his abuse slipped into the next car. Soon a conductor charged into the car with a kid in a knit wool cap and jeans. He opened his coat and showed his badge—an undercover cop.
The abuser immediately turned into an altar boy, denying that anything had happened. But now the hubby and his wife were telling the cop what happened. At that point, the doors opened at Auburndale, and people started to get out. One of them was a tall lanky guy who said to the cop, “I saw exactly what happened.”
The abuser smiled and told the cop, “Now you’ll get the real story,” as if he was suddenly in the clear.
The guy exiting turned to the drunk low-life and said to him, “You were a threat to this car, and what you did and said was outrageous.”
Then he turned to the cop. “You should arrest him.”
With that, the guy exited. Unfortunately, the rest of the crowd was not as sympathetic. The cop told us that the train would have to be held there until backups arrived, and he turned to the wife whose husband had stood up to the creep and said, “You’re the one who wanted this.”
I could see that the cop was losing his enthusiasm for doing right.
The husband suggested that the perpetrator just be kept off the train and that the train proceed.
Unfortunately, the perpetrator’s stop was Auburndale, so he got off essentially scot-free—no doubt to tell the tale the next night over a few beers down on Track 16.
–PeterFromPort
