15 - Freedom of Space

I ride public transit everywhere. I didn’t even learn how to drive until the age of 30, making me one of those terrible overly cautious (and thus somewhat dangerous) drivers. But I’ve always been vaguely offended by the cost of owning a car anyway. Also, without public transit I’d probably regress into illiteracy; most everything I’ve read in the past 15 years has been read while traveling on a bus or subway. I actually find it hard to read at home at all.

Having sung the praises of the service, however, I’m not always a fan of transit. Waiting for buses in the winter sucks and it’s not uncommon for transit vehicles to smell bad in the summer time. In addition, I can assure you that no one with a major psychological issue in this city owns a car. And there’s a reason that the 300 Blue Night is called the Vomit Comet. But my last beef is the issue of space.

Seats on public transit vehicles are really not made for people my size. I don’t tend to ride in rush hour so this is (thankfully) not an everyday issue for me. I’m often able to get what I consider prime seating on my bus to work—one of the four single seats on the left hand wall. And if the subway isn’t too busy, most (sane) people will observe appropriate spacing—meaning, in a row of three seats the middle one will be left open and you only sit in the open spot of a two-seater if there are no other reasonable options. This allows people like me to have a portion of their ass taking up part of the next seat. Regular sized folks put bags, dogs, children and other sundries there from what I’ve observed.

But when it’s busy, it’s a whole different story. If I’m stuck on the outside of a two-seater, about a quarter of my body will likely be hanging out into the aisle. If I’m on the inside seat, I’m folded up like a contortionist trying to avoid inappropriately touching my neighbor. As for a three-seater, if there are already two occupants, only enormously extenuating circumstances will make me sit (i.e. spontaneous conception or my leg suddenly breaking all on its own). Which brings me to a story.

The other day I was on a rush-ish hour bus that was required to take on the disgorged passengers of an out-of-service vehicle. This newly, exceptionally crowded bus was going to be nuisance enough, but then this dude gets on—and he’s huge. Not just overweight, but just an impossibly large man. I look at him in dread because I know the seat next to me is the best one left. I hold my breath a bit, anticipating being squished into the wall, his thigh melding with my own, as the two of us compete for too little space.

And then it happens. He manages to not only sit next to me, but to pass the entire remainder of the ride, without ever touching me. At all. If it wouldn’t have remanded me to the ranks of the insane, I would have thanked him—thanked him for understanding that we all want space, no matter how big we are and how the small the space is. I wanted to thank him for respecting my space even in rush hour. I wanted to thank him for understanding the hierarchy of seat comfort based on first arrival.

This strange happening got me thinking about personal space in the public realm and one’s right to it. In North American culture there is a bubble of personal space that we all strive to maintain. Only in very specific contexts do we give that space up, like crowded vehicles or schools or Black Friday sales. It’s why, when a dude sits in the seat next to you on an empty bus, you move the hell away toute suite. But the bigger you are, the bigger your bubble and I wondered to myself, did I forfeit the right to my personal space bubble when I got a little too big for one seat? And if that’s the case, is that fair or right?

Ironically, as a fat gal, I tend to walk around trying consciously not to take up too much space for the simple reason that I don’t want to be reminded of how much actual space I take up. There are days when I don’t even want to be seen, let alone felt to be encroaching on someone else’s space based on my size. It makes me wonder, did the man on that rush hour bus keep from touching me out of consideration, or was he just trying not to take up too much space that day? Maybe he just didn’t want to be seen or felt either.

I used to love air travel as a kid. As an adult who’s watched too many episodes of Seconds from Disaster and Mayday, I know too much to enjoy it much anymore. Also, my hips are becoming too wide for the standard airplane seat. Before every flight that I take, I send up a small prayer that the seat next to me will be either empty or occupied by someone insanely thin so that my time of terror in the skies will, at least, be comfortable.

So of course, after all this thinking about how much I attempt not to take up any space, I couldn’t help but think about people who want to take up more space than anyone should need. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some large folks who have zero qualms about taking up all kinds of space, but, in my experience, I see this propensity for being downright weird about the issue displayed most often by thin people. Maybe it’s just because, despite the “epidemic of obesity,” there are more average size people than any other kind. Whatever the reason, this seems to be the state of things. Some examples that come to mind: people who cross their legs (in any variety of ways) on public transit, as if the aisle was some sort of lounge area rather than a through way; the dudes (it’s always dudes) who sit with their legs two feet apart; the huge purse girls and the backpack boys; and the dreaded “SUV-baby-carriage” people*. These people appear to function with the idea that they are not only entitled to the space that they need, but to as much space as they might possibly want. I go about with the feeling like I should be grateful that I’m allowed to take up as much space as I do, and maybe, in light of these people, I’m being overly grateful. On the other hand, if everyone were as grateful as I am, public transit would be a lot more pleasant for all of us.

*Credit to the editor for that one.