The Bus Ride From Hell With A ‘Nice Guy’
It was the longest three minutes of my life. I think what I did at the bus stop mattered.
I hadn’t been long in Canada while I waited for the bus, sitting on some low stone steps, on a lovely sunny warm day. He approached, carrying a McDonald’s bag.
I immediately went on full red alert. He was large, scary-looking, and black.
Yeah, that last part’s not supposed to matter but it does to an American. I got hassled by black guys more there than I ever have in Canada. I only ever felt racially targeted in Toronto by Indian and Middle Eastern men. I’d been American all my life, and Canadian for maybe a year.
To be fair, he’d have been scary in any color.
But still. Point taken. He was every stereotype about big scary men you can think of, sans the gun or bloody knife.
Nevertheless, there I was. Alone at the bus stop with this huge man.
Just treat him like you would anyone else, I thought. Show no fear. Predatory men can smell fear and act on it.
He greeted me and I responded easily. He sat down a few steps from me and made conversation. I went along with it, prepared to say, I have to get home to my partner if he tried to push anything romantically. It’s been my standard go-to rejection since high school, when someone claimed to have a girlfriend to get me to leave him alone. Never told Mark I knew he’d never had a girlfriend.
This guy was from Ghana and I’m from the States and we did what Canadians do as soon as we realize we’re talking to a fellow immigrant: We bitch about what a pain in the ass it was to get here!
He was perfectly lovely and we continued to chat until the bus arrived.
He didn’t sit near me — in fact, he was so large I think he had to stand — but shortly after that he took offense to something someone said or did, and a loud threatening verbal fight ensued.
Soon, several others joined in, screaming and yelling at him and at each other. He found himself in a battle with several passengers and I sat there terrified that 1) It would get physical 2) He’d want his new BFF to defend him against what he thought was disrespect and which I privately thought was triggered by his delicate ego and anger management unskills and 3) The American in me always worried about the Angry Man With A Gun, and although Canadians are a lot less likely to pack heat, what if he pulled a knife?
“Oh dear Goddess let me get to my stop!” I prayed.
I couldn’t even get off at the next one. That was mine, kilometers down the road, in the ‘burbs.
The screaming escalated, the curse words flew loud and clear and Formerly Nice Guy turned into Raging Psycho. He physically threatened the men, and they returned the favor.
Why didn’t the bus driver do anything? Why didn’t he turn around and tell everyone to pipe down and return to their seats? Why didn’t he threaten to pull the bus over and call the police and no one was getting home on time?
Probably he was doing what he’d been trained to do. Also, there was no place to pull over, unless it was a real emergency rather than a nobody’s-dead-or-bleeding-yet crisis.
It was the longest three minutes of my life, and I mentally pushed the bus down the street. Goddammit why was he so slow???
Blessedly, we came to my stop and I disembarked with relief from the Helltrain.
Toxic masculinity sucks!
I don’t remember what triggered this guy’s outburst but it wasn’t racial. I didn’t hear anyone call him anything, nor did he initially respond like someone racially insulted. Whatever started back then, it sounded like a pretty minor issue, and perhaps the offense was all in his head.
Another guy would have to be an idiot to pick a fight with him.
The lesson I draw from this is it matters how we treat others.
I’ve never forgotten how nice he was at the bus stop, and he didn’t even hit on me for a date. That’s a big risk women run when we chat with strange men, they often mistake politeness or friendliness for encouragement. It’s a primary interpretation disconnect between men and women: Men often miss or don’t understand the subtle cues women send to indicate romantic interest or lack thereof.
But he was fine. Didn’t act like an American pain in the ass at all!
The racial dynamics hung between us on the sunny stone steps. He could have ‘messed with me’, a much smaller white woman, as some American blacks have done, hitting on me not because they wanted a date but because they hoped to ‘scare the white girl’.
But he didn’t mess with me. I treated him like a fellow traveler, hiding my initial fear, and he treated me well.
It could have gone down many different ways, although, being out in the open and near the street and a mall might have limited his options too.
Still, I don’t believe he had evil on his mind. He offered me some of his sandwich which I recognized as a friendship offering. But I refused, citing my disinterest in fast food and adding that I’m on a diet. And I wanted to be sure he didn’t mistake ad hoc friendship for encouragement.
I don’t know what other women should have done. Male strangers, regardless of their size, color, or how threatening they look can be scary to women under different circumstances. I’m blessed with never having suffered any serious meaningful assault by a man. I can afford to be a little braver.
What I did then, and what I’m trying to do even more now when Pandemic Brain has turned many of us into threatening strangers, not even counting the potential mass slaughter merely from the act of breathing unmasked, was to see the approaching stranger as a human being, rather than a potential threat. I had good reason to be at least a little afraid and he proved later his scary look wasn’t false advertising. Yet for five or ten minutes he was a perfectly normal human being. I guess I didn’t say anything to trigger him.
I suspect not acting scared helped. I could be wrong. But predators, animal and human, can detect fear, ergo someone they can bully, or worse.
It’s a delicate balance and women have to be hyper-aware of threats from all men. It’s true almost every last one can rape and kill us, although black men and white women share a weird Cold War dynamic: Mutually Assured Destruction. A black man can rape/kill me, and I can get him killed with the power of 911.
In Canada, it’s different, even in the Black Lives Matter era. The movement is here too but the racial dynamics differ. Slavery was never as common here and it was abolished earlier, in 1834. We’re a motley melange of, well, everybody. Even when I moved here the racial demographic in Toronto was roughly 50% white.
Also, this guy was from another country where whatever psychological legacy he lives with isn’t American slavery.
In the end, maybe he appreciated a white woman treating him like a normal person without clutching her purse defensively or recoiling slightly. OH MY GOD HERE’S THE MAD BLACK RAPIST!!! I appreciated talking to a guy who wasn’t trying to get a date or mess with me. Maybe we both smashed some stereotypes that day.
It sticks in my craw not only because of the painful bus ride but because he acted perfectly normal in conversation. He’s a toxic masculine man, for sure, with an anger management problem. But I played it cool and nothing bad happened. I offer my experience as one way to handle this situation. Your mileage may vary. Your experience handled the same way may have gone down far worse.
Here’s another story I wrote on how women can potentially avoid male threat.
How To Turn Down Men Of Any Age Macking On You - Without contributing to misogyny, or juicing your own misandry
When I’m not riding the bus, which I have a lot more time to not do in the work-from-home COVID era, I help women reclaim their power on my website, Grow Some Labia.