I knew there was going to be trouble when I heard the singing.
The Eastbound Frankford El was crowded, as it usually is at 5:20 p.m. on a Monday. But making matters worse was an old drunk guy perched on the handicapped seat with a Colt 45 tallboy in his gnarled hand, belting out a confused medley of R&B classics while leering at any nearby lifeforms who happened to be female. Nobody wanted to be near him.
I squeezed into an empty space near the side doors and grabbed a pole. A young woman with an unusually full backpack slid in next to me. Her backpack, for some reason, came to a point in the back. This point, unfortunately, was aimed at my crotch.
The drunk guy kept singing, and leering, and drinking, and leering some more. I wished he'd stick to one song. It was confusing trying to identify each with only a single line to go on. I thought I heard a little Peaches & Herb in there, but it was hard to tell.
By Spring Garden Street, he'd goaded a beared guy in a red parka into a rare display of chivalry. They exchanged words.
"You got a girlfriend?" the drunk guy asked.
The bearded guy thought about it, probably wondering how much he should reveal in a crowded train.
"Yeah," he said. "I have a girlfriend."
"She your girlfriend?" the drunk asked, pointing at the object of his affection for the past 30 seconds.
"No, she's not. But if she were, I don't think she'd appreciate you..."
"She ain't your girlfriend, she ain't your girlfriend," the drunk guy crooned.
At Girard Avenue the beared guy exited the train, leaving his non-girlfriend to fend for herself.
By Somerset, even she'd had enough.
"Leave me the fuck alone," she snapped. She stepped out of the doors, rushed down the platform a few yards, and re-entered a different car.
Another woman took her seat.
He started in again with the songs, this time, invading his new victim's personal space to an astounding degree. You better back the fuck off, she said, and the guy responded by taking another hit of his beer, and leaning back in even closer. By the time the train was rocketing towards Erie-Torresdale, the woman stood up and told him, again, to back the fuck off. The drunk guy did not back the fuck off.
So the woman pulled out a cansiter of mace and nailed him in the eyes.
Now for most of the trip, the occupants of the car, myself included, pretended to not notice the drunk guy and his crooning and leering. But the mace attack was a little harder to ignore.
The rows surrounding the drunk guy immediately cleared; people herded toward the middle of the car. "That stuff travels," someone said. "That's mace."
I wondered how long it would take before my eyes started burning.
The woman who'd sprayed the mace looked vaguely satisfied, as if she'd fulfilled a civic duty.
Meanwhile, the drunk guy threw his can of Colt 45 onto the Erie-Torresdale platform, where it exploded spectacularly. He rubbed his face. "I'm burning," he said, though not in the voice of a man who was in fact burning. "I'm burning." He whipped off his belt. It was a thick black leather belt. What, was he going to start swinging it around now?
"Push the emergency button," someone said, as the train raced towards Church Street.
No. The guy wasn't on the attack. He was stripping.
After his jacket came off, and then his sweatshirt, he staggered back to where I was standing. I held out my hand, palm up, to brace him in case he knocked into me. Which he did. He bounced off my palm and tilted to the right. I tried to catch him, but then he suddenly fell to the left and curled up in a ball on the floor of the train.
We were approaching Margaret-Orthodox.
The drunk guy made it to his feet, reached into his pants, presumably to relieve some longtime itch, or to check that his gentials were where he'd left them. He took three steps forward, then proceeded to blow his nose onto the floor of the train. First the right nostril. Then the left.
Then he fell backwards.
"Will somebody please push the emergency button?"
Someone did. Not me. I thought it was bad strategy. We were one stop from the end of the line, and the last thing we needed was to be stalled here in the middle of the freezing tracks, waiting for SEPTA police to show up to escort Mr. Colt 45 off the train.
"Can I help you?" a voice said.
"We need help back here. There's trouble on this train."
"Which car."
"The front car."
"Number 1215," someone else said.
"Thanks for your patience. We'll send help right away."
The train ground to a halt for a few seconds, but it was only to let another train pass. We pulled into the final stop, Bridge Street, and the doors opened. The drunk guy seemed content to lay in front of the open doors, then thought better of it. Wearing only a t-shirt, pants and shoes, he crawled out of the car and made his way to a metal bench on the platform.
The SEPTA cops were no doubt on their way, but I didn't hang around to file a report.
I was just glad my eyes weren't burning.
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