It was a hot Wednesday afternoon in early August. I had just
finished a painting job out in the Beaches, and was waiting on Queen Street East
for the bus to take me up to the Main Street subway station, and
from there home to Spadina and Bloor. Just as
I was opening a battered copy of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man
to pass the time, a shaky voice addressed me from barely outside the
bus shelter. When I looked up, I saw one of the most pathetically
enfeebled old men I had ever seen. He was impossibly skinny, but with
one of those old-man potbellies that just screams of malnutrition. The
tremors in his voice were reflected in his movements, as he seemed
barely able to keep his ancient body standing, let alone walking for
very long. "Excuse me, but are you going to the subway?" he
asked. I answered in the affirmative, adding that I was going west.
"How far?" he asked, although it might be important to add
here that even that tiny, two-syllable utterance took him five or ten
seconds, addled by Parkinson's as he seemed to be. Wracked by pity at
this point, I told him, and he immediately, albeit aggravatingly
slowly, replied "Oh, well, I'm going to Christie station. Say...
do you think you could help me? I don't walk so well anymore, and I
could really use some help getting onto the bus, and then around the
subway station." From behind giant coke-bottle glasses, shaded
mildly by a tattered fisherman's hat, his big blue eyes emanated quiet
desperation.
Now, some would say that agreeing to help the
old half-skeleton was my first mistake, but how could I not? I have
never been in the presence of anyone in greater need of my help, and I
have never been in a better or easier position to provide it, and so,
being the good ethics student that I am, I assured him that, of course,
I would help him along.
We got on the bus, the old fella clinging to me with almost all his nearly
negligible weight, and sat down near the rear entrance. What followed
was an entirely pleasant conversation of about ten minutes on the way
to the station. My initial suspicions that Bill (he introduced himself
as such before I ever said my name, so it was in fact just a
coincidence) might be in the advanced stages of senility, turned out to
be completely unfounded, and despite the difficulty he had with
speaking, he told me a number of stories about the work he had done
when he was younger, about how his father worked for the railroad, and
about how he passes his days now that he's retired and a little less
mobile (I'll say!) than he once was. He asked some interested but not
impolitely prodding questions about me, and I answered, all the while
glowing with fulfillment in the knowledge that I was doing my moral
duty, imperfect to others in the Kantian sense as it may have been.
After arriving at the subway station, he
again used me to support himself as I took him on an arduous journey
down to the westbound platform. The train arrived and we boarded.
Now, when we sat down, he didn't really let
go of me. In fact, he didn't let go of me in the least. He was sitting
on my right side, so tightly adhered to me by the requirements of the
trek that he was turned right into me, holding my right arm with his
right arm, and with his left arm sort of free behind the two of us. I
guess I should have clued in right about then, upon witnessing such an
awkward way to be sitting on the subway, but I still wasn't quite ready
to grasp what was going on. And we were still way out east, just a few
stops from Kennedy station at the far east end of the Bloor/Danforth line...
Within about two stops, his head had come to
rest on my right shoulder. Initially, I dismissed this as a feeble old
man being tired and resting, because he has the chance and feels safe with me... as he should, my
still-inflated conscience assured itself. This didn't quite jive with
the way he carried on our completely mundane conversation ("Where
are you going to school? Oh, that's nice.") without
even missing a beat, but shit, what do I know about Parkinson's?
Well, I know it isn't quite an excuse for
what happened next, because right around the time we hit Greenwood
Station, I felt that previously (and, come to think of it,
suspiciously) free left hand press against the left side of my head,
coupling itself with my paralyzing shock to hold my head in place as Ol' Bill continued our conversation as it had
been... except that now, his lips were pressed right up against my
right ear as he spoke. By now, I was creeped
right the fuck out, and wondering just how I had gotten to this,
from a wholly pleasant bus ride, in under
fifteen minutes.
This continued for some time, the rush-hour
subway car's occupancy increasing almost as quickly as my sense of
dread and shame as we approached Yonge
Station. Right about the time we got there, he took his left hand away
from my head and his lips from my ear, and he looked me right in the
eye, just as sad and needy-seeming as when I had first laid eyes on him.
"You're a real interesting guy, Bill," he said, his voice
still riddled by nervous degeneration. "I've had a real nice time
riding with you... I hope I can see you again some time?"
Well, that was about enough, as far as I was
concerned. "Busy!" I exclaimed. "I'm a real busy guy! I
couldn't possibly find that kind of time!" On I went like this for
about thirty seconds. Sure, it was a pretty rough and guileless
brush-off, but my brain had gone into emergency fight-or-flight mode,
and I was about ending this quickly, not gracefully. Of course, I've
still gotta hand it to Ol'
Bill: he's a smooth old bugger (possibly in the most literal possible
sense of the word), seeing as how we had apparently been on a date the
entire time and I hadn't realized it until he asked me for a second.
Still, I had about two stops left of sitting next to him in the packed
train, and while I could no longer come anywhere near looking him in
the eye or addressing him directly, he still managed, before I stormed
out never to look back, to do the hand-against-the-head thing again,
except that this last time, when he brought his lips to my ear, they
came together in a soft kiss on the lobe, instead of saying anything at
all. That kiss alone kept me in the shower for about forty-five minutes
after getting home.
Was I asking for it? I don't think so: it was
a hot day, and I was sweating a little in the white t-shirt I wear for
painting, but that probably just made me stinky, not sexy, and it's not
like the shirt was particularly tight or anything; ditto for the baggy,
thick, spotted-white painting pants I was wearing. I was one fuck of
long way away from a short skirt and a tight, low-cut halter, that's
for damn sure.
In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have helped
him after all... but then I would still probably be here writing about
how terrible it felt later on, unable to sleep, haunted by images of a
nearly crippled, emaciated, vulnerable senior, dehydrating at a Beaches
bus stop on a hot Toronto summer night. Granted, it probably would have
resulted in a little less weeping in the shower, but in actuality, I
probably wouldn't be writing about it at all, for the simple reason
that I, and anyone else, have very little to be ashamed of for being
sexually assaulted (and that's what it was, trust me), but we should
all be very ashamed when we pass up those few moments we all get, once
in a while, to do something decent without having to really sacrifice a
thing. Sure, it was a little embarrassing: a strapping young guy like
me, a rugby player no less, being felt up like a reluctant Mormon girl
at the prom by an impossibly old geezer. But there's a difference
between embarrassment, that sensation of looking weak or inferior in
the eyes of others, and real shame, the knowledge, inside
yourself, that you are not as good, in
some sense or another, as you should be. Take that from a professional
student of moral philosophy... but it shouldn't really take one of us
to tell you that.
Oh right... I guess there is one last detail
to address... just how old was Ol' Bill?
Well, he never told me exactly, and I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing
everyone above seventy as roughly the same age, but he did give one
clue: remember that father he talked about? The one who worked for the
railroad? He specifically said that he retired in the forties.
So let's do a little math together, shall we? Maybe lay out some fairly
reasonable assumptions?
So, let's just say Bill Sr., or whatever, retired in
1946: it's near the middle of the decade, so we won't be off by too
much either way, and it gives us some nice, easy math. Next thing:
let's assume that this loyal railroad employee retired at sixty-five,
as anything else would have been almost unheard of at the time,
especially for railroad labourers and the like. Third assumption: let's
just say that the dude I met was born when his father was
twenty-five, which I think is a fairly reasonable age for the time, and
that's being conservative; having children much later than twenty-five
or thirty would have been very unusual for the day. That puts my
assailant at forty years old when his father retired, in 1946.
I'm sure you can all do the math from here, but for those who don't
want to, that puts this dude's age at a cool century. One hundred years
old. Any younger than ninety-five would be exceedingly unlikely, and
because all my estimates were fairly conservative, there's no telling
how far up into the triple digits he might have been. For all I know, I
may have been accosted on public transportation by a motherfuckin' dodecagenarian!
Since doing these calculations myself, I've been wondering whether or
not this constituted pedophilia: I am twenty-two, after all, and not a
minor, but still, I'm sure the good people over at NAMBLA are willing
to fudge the line a few years older in special cases... like
prehistoric pederasts who remember laying bets on who would win World
War One... back when it was just called The War. Seriously... the only
thing that lets me get out of the shower is the near certainty
that a dude that old needs a whole hell of a lot more than Viagra to
get it up at all... like maybe some type of genital scaffolding.
Now there's a coinage that I hope doesn't follow me
for too much of my life: "genital scaffolding."
