Yesterday the city seemed particularly stressed-out.
The sunny, spring day everyone had been anticipating had blown away and people were left underdressed and disappointed–one more thing that hadn’t gone quite right.
On Queen Street West people waited impatiently for the streetcar. Growing chilly as the temperature fell, they obsessively stepped out onto the street to check for the car. Stepping back into the queue– frustrations mounting at the delay– people would shake their head and give the situation a good think, like they were going to count to ten and then do something rash, like start to jog home.
When the streetcar finally arrived it was packed.
Everybody was uncomfortable and tense, lurching into one another with the jerks and heaves of the streetcar. One man, in a tone of accusation, shouted out, “Now that was a full-on ass grab!” People tried to ignore one another, but it was difficult.
Beside me two middle-aged women spoke. In a relentless monotone, one of them talked in slow, unbroken paragraphs about how happy she was that she bought a house ten-years ago. “ But that doesn’t mean it would have been the right decision for you,” she added unkindly, “ you probably did other things with your money that were important to you, like travel.” The other woman, her eyes now faraway, stood there nodding, trying to remember where the last ten years of her life had gone and how she, now 50, inhabited this life.
Near the back of the car, a woman shouted, “ WILL YOU KEEP YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS OFF OF ME! “ Equally enraged, a man shot back, “I can’t help it, I’m being pushed! I’m not trying to touch you, dammit! I’m disabled! I can’t even walk properly! The pitch of his voice was rising, each word filling with tears, “ You can walk, goddamned it, you’re lucky!” and the hurt in his voice hung over us like a cloud.
And then the streetcar stopped and people toppled upon one another again.
The exasperated driver kept repeating herself, her irritation rising, “ Please, will you PLEASE move to the back of the vehicle!” And then she would sigh, certainly thinking about the end of her shift and the small pleasures into which she would dissolve.
A woman with three young children sought to distract them, pointing out various things through the window. “Look, a police car!” But the children were excited and impossible to manage, squirming and shrieking and spilling juice boxes onto one another. On her cell phone, the woman hissed through gritted teeth, “ No, this is complete torture. YOU. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND. I cannot do it anymore.” And then, to one of her children, “Where did you get that? Jesus! Put it down, you do not know where it’s been!”
As the streetcar moved east and passed by the DVP, a handful of people got off near Broadview. One woman looked up to the sky, and releasing all the anxiety and tension of the commute, of the day, of maybe even her life, just howled.