The two worst times for dicks on the New York subway: when the train car is empty or when it’ s crowded. As a teenager, if I found myself in an empty car, I would immediately leave – even if it meant changing cars as the train moved, which terrified me. Because, if I didn’ t, I just knew the guy sitting across from me would inevitably lift his newspaper to reveal a semi hard cock, and even if he wasn’ t planning on it, I sure wasn’ t going to sit there and worry about it for the whole ride. On crowded train cars I didn’ t see dicks – I felt them. Pressing into my hip, men pretending that the rocking up against me was just because of the jostling of the train. The first time I saw a penis on the subway, I was on the platform for the N train three blocks from my house in Queens, on my way to school. I was 12. I had just missed a train, so I was the only person there other than a man all the way at the other end of the platform. He was so far away that I could see only the outline of his shape, but soon I noticed his hand moving furiously – and that he was walking quickly towards me with his penis in his hand. I had always thought myself prepared for something like this; I knew I was supposed to yell or run, but I just stood there. I didn’ t look away or turn around, and even though I felt my knees giving out, my feet felt strongly planted to the ground. As another train started to pull into the station, he stopped midway down the platform and zipped himself up. The doors of the train opened and he walked on, normally. My feet still in the same place, I tapped a man in a suit coming off the car on the shoulder and asked for help in a small voice, but he didn’ t stop moving. So I stood there. When the next train came, I got on, figuring I should get to school, but I got off one stop later, to call my parents from a station phone booth. I noticed that my hands and face had pins and needles. *** It’ s called the cycle of violence, but in my family, female suffering is linear: abuse is passed down like the world’ s worst birthright, largely skipping the men and marking the women with scars, night terrors( and fantastic senses of humour). My aunts and my mom joked about how often it happened to them when they were younger: the man who flashed a jacket open and had a big red bow on his cock; the neighbourhood pervert who masturbated visibly in his window as they walked to school as girls.( The cops told them the man could do whatever he wanted in his own house.)“ Just point and
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