In riding the MRT I choose to stand. Even in an empty coach, I would still choose my favorite spot – that corner nearest the last door from the driver in the women’s coach. There, I’m completely safe from being crushed to death every time MRT gets flooded by passengers. Standing there, I could read, look the salivating guys from the men’s coach, pretend I can’t move when being pushed over by space-hungry ladies who actually often forget they wear their companies on their ID laces or blouses. I will never forget an embarrassing situation when I almost kissed a woman in her mid thirties when the driver totally forgot he was driving a mass transpo and made an abrupt break to the end of a station. My face was already too close to the woman’s face in the first place because I could not find any more space to put my head in. Her face was the next possible option.
I never wanted to me an actual sample of Katy Perry (oh, Katy, what a shame you are to the Christian world) and like a possible kiss with a women I barely know. But that intimate moment made me think. If I were a terrorist… Never mind. Erase that.
The reasons I like that spot are simple.
1. Unobstructed view of the metro. Manila is beautiful city; with its sky always almost dim that you’d wonder if it’s always gonna rain. But it’s not the clouds that make it dark, as a city denizen, you should know by now that we are people of pollution and we simply cannot live without carbon emissions and smoke belching.
2. I can go out the door anytime there need be and there are not much ladies to push. I just need to squeeze my fattening self to the side part and free myself from possible stampede.
3. I can put my baunan bag at that-space-at-the-end-of-the-coach and actually act as if it contains explosive. I do this. I would put my bad there, text someone, look around, look at the bag, move away a little, and occasionally inspect it to add more suspicion. I particularly like this when the men’s coach beside ours are the ones without the driver’s compartment, and the men – squeezed as they are leaving them no room to move their heads– have no choice but to see all my actions. One of these days, I may actually bring an extra bag and leave it there. For fun.
4. I can read. Sitting down makes me look/notice at the crotch area of women at my book’s edge. Reading while standing in that corner makes me face the wall and have the world to myself again. Plus, I actually have an audience on the other side and I can act as an ambassador of reading to a typical MRT commuter.
5. Sleep. I actually almost fell over the steel railing because of the lack of it.
