Standing in a bookshop flicking through a book when a man comes up to me. He says, “Good book?” I say yes, no eye contact because I’m not interested. He says, “Where are you from?” I say here, not looking at him. He says, “I thought you might be Dutch.” I ignore him. He looks me up and down and then says, as if I’m not there, “Cute, but probably taken.”
I say “I am,” put down my book and walk away, but inside I’m seething.
The book I was reading was Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things To Me.
…….
On a train, a middle aged man is sitting with his two teenage daughters, swearing at them, telling them, “You don’t fucking know what the world is like, you fucking bitches.” He goes on like this, and people are exchanging looks, but not doing anything. An older woman, visibly distressed, leaves the carriage. No one says anything, so I feel I have to. I get up, although I’m scared, and I say, “You can’t talk like that.”
He says, “Why the fuck not, they’re my fucking daughters.”
I say, “I don’t care.” (I do care, but I don’t want to involve them.) “This is a public place, you can’t talk like that here. You’re upsetting people.”
It shames me that my voice shakes while I say these things.
He tells me to fuck off, but he stops in the end.