To Speak Up, or Not to Speak Up, on BART

Today, I called someone out in public, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I spared two women some harassment, but I lost control in the process. Fortunately, I’m back home safely in my apartment in the Mission, my body shaking from how quickly everything happened.

Around 2 o’clock, on an otherwise quiet Saturday BART ride home from San Francisco Airport, I get the sense that a young teen is looking at me. I look behind to see if maybe she is looking at the door between the cars, but I can’t tell. A few minutes later, I glance up from my phone, and again, she is looking at me, and again I return to my phone. She then says something, which, in the corner of my eye, seems as if it’s directed towards me. Sensing something amiss, I take my earplugs out.

Her friend sitting across from her then throws something small, maybe the size of a spitball, across the aisle at two East Asian women with suitcases who were seated with their backs to me, diagonal from where I am sitting. I then tell the girls, “Please don’t do that,” which begins an escalating playground shouting match. I end up repeating four times, “Please don’t do that,” while they curse at me along the lines of, “Shut the fuck up” or “I can do whatever I want.”

At one point, I yell so loud that I could be heard across the whole train car. “DON’T THROW SHIT AT PEOPLE,” I…