CTA Tattler

Cheap haircuts on the CTA

A friend shares this story with us. Thanks Tom!

Several years ago I was on a relatively crowded CTA car. However, there seemed to be plenty of room down at one end. I pushed past some people into the free space, leaned against the doorjamb, and spaced out.

Ten minutes later, a woman sitting in a window seat began screaming at the man reading a newspaper next to her in the aisle seat: "Oh, no you ain't! Get da fuck out my way!"

The man silently and calmly moved his legs and his newspaper, and the woman stormed out of the seat, continuing her stream of profanity as she headed for the opposite end of the car.

The car had cleared out a bit, and I thought about moving, but the man had returned to sitting calmly with his newspaper, so I went back to my musings. Mostly.

A minute or two later, I did look back down at the guy to check on him. He wasn't reading the newspaper - he was using it as a blind for a fetish. He had pulled a small hank of hair from the long tresses of the woman in front of him. The newspaper hid a small pair of scissors that he was using to trim tiny snippets of hair off the end the strand he had captured.

Without thinking, I smacked him on the shoulder and said, "Dude! What the fuck are you doing?" Why "dude" I don't know - lack of guidance from Emily Post, I assume. Anyway, the woman turned around and I said, "He's cutting your hair!"

The entire car turned to stare. The woman bolted for the other end.

A second later, so did I. The weirdo left the train at the next stop, leaving me and the woman staring at each other across the car, down at the other end. The strangest thing is that I either know this guy, or I know someone who looks a lot like him. Not a close friend, but someone I see 3 or 4 times a year. Every time I run into this guy, I rack my brain to figure if it's him or not. I don't think I'll ever know for sure.