I’ve mentioned this guy in previous posts before, but quite often when I ride the bus there’s this man on it who will constangly turn and stare at me for extended periods of time, and always give me these little half smiles. I’ve tried ignoring it, openly glaring at him, and even telling him, out loud, to, “Stop staring at me; it makes me uncomfortable.”
But still, he hasn’t gotten the message.
Today as I was standing near the door waiting for the bus to pull up to my stop, he was facing completely away from the bus door, but turned around, looked at me, and gave me his creepy half smile. I was freaked out and tried to just ignore him, when I hear a laugh behind me. When I turn around, I see this big man chuckling behind me. When he sees that I saw him, he gives a friendly smile and says – loud enough for the other guy to hear him: “that guy… just a little half smile and staring” and does a funny imitation of the guy’s smile. The other guy stopped staring at me and turned around when he heard that. The guy repeats, “just a little half smile” and laughed again.
This is a story of harassment, and a story about when other people recognize the harassment. That big guy behind me made me feel safe by vocally calling the guy out on what was making me uncomfortable, and even made fun of him about it. I’m not sure if he even meant to have that effect, but he made me laugh at his imitation, and he got the guy to stop staring, which is more than I could do. And he was genuinely friendly when he spoke to me. I’m so happy that, after months of this happening, someone finally stood up for me.
Though, this wasn’t a happy ending type story. Five minutes later, as I was crossing a busy road, a taxi van passed me, and some college guy leaned his torso out the window and shouted something incoherent at me as I passed. I caught “HEY!” but nothing more.
– Emmaline
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
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