SUBWAY CRUSH

  ...the need to work with our dark twin (the unconscious) who accompanies us through life is as important as ever. 

---Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD. Author of Spell Bound: Modern Science, Ancient Magic, and the Hidden Potential of the Unconscious Mind.

 

DREAM: A Bunch of Men Are in my Dream. (March 8, 1990, Six months after my memory returned.)  

All of a sudden there are a bunch of men in my dream.  I have to walk across the room nude, and I am embarrassed. 

SUBWAY CRUSH

In 1969, I was thirty years old and still working at a United Airlines ticket counter. One night I had stayed with my then boyfriend, John, at his apartment in the Ansonia Hotel. To get to work I had to take the subway from 72^nd and Broadway to Times Square, where I transferred to the cross-town shuttle. I wore a belted light-weight gray raincoat that came to just above my knees, the style at the time. My hair was opera-diva long and bleached blond. (I wanted to look like Mary Costa, who was a beautiful well-known soprano at the time.) I was carrying a large purse and a briefcase full of opera scores.

It was rush hour. The subway platform was extremely crowded, and when the express train arrived, a push of humanity fought to get onto it. I was crushed among a mass of commuters, the car so packed that the door barely closed, and I couldn’t even see my feet. Suddenly, I felt something rubbing near my upper thigh, which, I assumed, must have been someone’s bag. I turned so my briefcase provided a barrier, only for a tickling to begin on the opposite side. I turned a little more. A third rubbing started below my back. I looked at the faces around me. I was surrounded by three late-teenage boys, their faces blank with innocence.

It must be my imagination. Surely these boys wouldn’t be touching me. I began to feel more and more uncomfortable as the rubbing increased in intensity. Because I couldn’t see what was happening, I began to panic. Should I scream? People will think I’m crazy. 

The five-minute ride became an eternity. The rubbing kept getting stronger, and I was near hysteria when the train finally came to a jolting stop. The doors opened and the crowd fell away. In one split second, as I looked down, I saw that all three of those boys had their pants unzipped and their penises out. In a flash they were gone. Stunned, I stumbled out of the car and in a daze on the shuttle train to Grand Central. The first person I saw when I walked into my office was a male colleague. 

“I was just molested on the subway by three men who were rubbing me with their penises,” I blurted out. 

Embarrassed, he responded, “You know what they say, just lie back and enjoy it!” 

Later, when I told Otto, my beloved opera coach, he didn’t give me any understanding or support either. I expected more from him, but that’s the way men dealt with these types of issues in those days. Matter of fact, get over it.

I told no one else about this incident for many years. When I eventually told a therapist, I learned what these young men did is called “frottage,” meaning “the act of rubbing against the body of another person, as in a crowd, to attain sexual gratification.” Back then, no one thought that kind of thing was a big deal—it was just some stupid guys rubbing up against me. But I was troubled by the boys’ intent as much as the act itself, as well as the lack of respect behind their actions, and their attempts to obtain sexual gratification from an unwilling participant. They picked me out on the subway platform, plotted their actions, and trapped me where they knew I probably wouldn’t defend myself.  

Some experiences don’t go away. I never got onto a crowded subway car again. As with other disturbing experiences in my life, I just moved on. Nevertheless, the incident threatened my repressed memory, and it wasn’t the only one.  

 

I'm photographing along a Napa County, California, back road. 

Onward and upward.