I get hit on.

Not the actual train where I met a creep. Photo by Elke Oerter.

Or at least I used to, back when my regular routine included late night commutes to Toronto for a magazine-writing course. I don’t mind creeps, really. It never occurred to me to be afraid of them, especially in a well-lit GoTrain car.

I was looking through my old notebook from those days and found what I at first thought was dialogue from a story, but upon reading it discovered that it was an actual record of an encounter I had on a GoTrain after dark. The following is the transcript I recorded.

“Miss, mind if I sit here?” asks an average-looking white male. (I assume he’s average-looking as I forgot what he looked like immediately after this encounter). Anyway he sits without waiting for a response.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” I respond. Ah, so this happened seven years ago, when I was pregnant with my oldest. I think pregnancy made me give off a certain vibe, a creep-attracting musk. Perhaps this is because I went up a cup-size or two before I ever started showing.

“Sorry that was rude of me, eh?” He says. “That was a rude question.”

“I’m a little young yet to be embarrassed by my age,” I respond.

“Jamie,” he says, as though I asked his name. “Sorry for my sniffling and sneezing. I did a little bingeing last night,” he says.

He pauses and when I don’t answer he continues. “Guess what I binged on?”

“Um…chocolate?” I guess, though I’m quite certain that’s not the substance he’s referring to.

“No, eh, wrong colour. If it was the opposite colour maybe.”

At this point I imagine that the man has been snorting white chocolate.

“You shouldn’t do drugs, eh?” he tells me. “Especially not cocaine.”

“Yes, that’s bad stuff,” I agree.

“I’m not going to do that anymore,” he says. “My nose is so dry I can’t stand it.”

“Good for you,” I tell him. I have no idea why I’m continuing this conversation. Politeness? Boredom? Mild amusement?

“My boss pays me in cocaine. He’s a cheap bastard.” He seriously said this. I wish I’d asked him what kind of job he had, but I didn’t. It’s probably better this way, because if he told me, he would have probably had to kill me.

“You married?” Now that he’s established what a catch he is, it’s time to hit on me.

I hold up my ring. “I’m married.” Thank Spock.

“You’re pretty,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“How old is your husband, Miss?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“That’s good. At least he’s not some creepy forty-year-old. I hate people like that,” he says. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t really hate anybody.”

“Who diddle little kids and shit.”

Apparently this guy thinks that marrying someone ten years younger is the same thing as being a pedophile. “We’re not little kids.”

“No, man, but someone so much younger than them eh?”

He changes the subject, time to ask me for love advice! “I met this girl on the bus yesterday and we really hit it off. And she was really cute. And she gave me her number and shit.”

“That’s good.”

“She…I called her this morning because she told me to call her the next day so I did. And we arranged to meet somewhere,” he rambles. “But when I went she never showed. I waited for like half an hour. What do you think that was all about?”

I shrug. “Maybe something came up.”

“Maybe she just wasn’t interested.”

“Well, she gave you her phone number,” I point out. “I don’t see why she would do that if she wasn’t interested.” In fact, I was later told that some women do, indeed, give their phone numbers out to men they have no interest in, their real phone numbers. I don’t know why. Probably for the same reasons I engage in conversations with cocaine-addicted creepers on the GoTrain.

“She didn’t leave me a message saying why she didn’t show.”

“Oh, well,” I say.

“I like your personality too, eh?” He says. “You’re a nice girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Too bad you’re married. Shoot,” he says. “Tell your husband I that I said you were cute.”

“I will.”

“Ha. Ha. Just joking, eh?” He says. “If you weren’t married would you go out for a coffee with me?”

I’m not sure what I answered, maybe nothing, maybe a noncommittal smile. In any case, the transcript ends there. Now if you’re a lonely-hearted man looking for love I want you to read this over again and remember it as a classic what not to do when approaching women. Study it carefully. What was his first mistake?