Suppress the expletives, for the common good...?

I could tell you about our midsummer celebration yesterday (dinner w. 6 people and stolichnaya on the 25th floor - very successful).

Or I could tell you about the Pixar movie Up, that I just came back from seeing with Anna ( I was moved to tears after the first half-hour...) - or the slightly astonishing discovery that a well-mannered chihuahua had been in the audience, two seats away from us.

But I need to get the following episode from today out of my head.

I was riding the streetcar into downtown in the early afternoon. It was pretty muggy in the car because it was raining outside, several seats were so wet that people couldn't sit on them, and people were sort of tolerating the inconvenience as well as they could.

Suddenly we all registered the mildly aggressive voice of a tallish 20-something guy saying across half the car:

"Dude? Seriously, tell your girlfriend not to look at me."

Murmurs from the curly-haired guy this was addressed to - understandably with an air of confusion.

"Yeah, tell her to NOT f***ing look at me. I didn't come on here so some stupid brunette bitch with brown eyes could come stare med down."

More murmurs, but this time they were weaker and softly rustling over the lips of people all around the car. Everyone's heads turned a slight angle to align themselves and thirty-something glances darted toward the rude speaker and immediately diverted, like fish. A lot was being said between passengers' eyes, without a word. One girl in a plaid hoodie with her back to him had a grimace of worry and disgust on her face. Her friend twitched her eyebrows and bottom lip in reply, but they remained silent. I felt torn between staring at the back of the rude moron's head, and keeping my eyes averted. I bit my lip because my inner voice kept wanting to tell him to SHUT UP, IDIOT. But instead he continued his unnecessary diatribe, longer, whinier and louder.

"Yeah, man, keep your girl under control. She has to learn how to show respect. Seriously, I'm telling ya, if you can't keep your BITCH on a leash, then you shouldn't be bringing her out in public."

The non-sound of thirty-something people tightening their jaws. The humid air in the cable car hardened and became almost unbreathable. More face-twitching from the hoodie girl nearest him, she was obviously uncomfortable being back-to-back with this guy, and shifting around was not an option.

Like everyone else I kept my eyes averted and my mouth shut in a passive-aggressive line. In parallel, my thoughts swarmed around the most probable diagnosis: is this dude HIGH? Yeah, must be high. HIGH. And Paranoid. Oh wow, the atmosphere in here is horrible. That poor girl. He is such a f***ing bitch. (My eyebrows tighten involuntarily) Poor poor girl, she just got in his stupid, paranoid way. I would probably have started crying if I were her...

I caught a glance of someone's clenched fist somewhere to my right, and my hand tightened in response. At the front of the car a retreating brown ponytail was seeking the shelter of the curly guy's taller figure. He drew her near to him, murmured to her downturned face and they both retreated to the front half of the car. He managed to throw a last look of disgust at her attacker, whose unconcerned swagger spread ill-will through the silence like a stench.

My mind started yelling at the top of its indignation and I could hear my own voice loud and clear in my head:

Hey, loudmouth! You're a complete bitch and an idiot, and if you can't take people looking at you when you're so obviously f***ing stoned, then wear a f***ing burkha.
You deserve it more than anyone.
...F***ing diva.
Leave the poor girl alone.

But of course, my feeble string of expletives stayed corralled in my heated head. I was no hero. Reason muzzled me and whispered, "If he's high, there's just no use. He won't understand he's being a bitch, he'll likely come at you and punch everyone in the way before he gets to you, and you'd probably end up slashed by a person who won't be held accountable afterwards. Just ignore him. Ignore him. That's what he deserves."

And the longer I said nothing, the more his insults rang like the last word.

He got off at Spadina.

That's when the uneasy tension in the cable car was exhaled collectively, and the words on everybody's lips that bubbled up intermittently throughout the streetcar was:

"What a jackass".

Jackass? That's the best we could come up with?
But I regret not saying it too, out loud, LOUDER. For the girl's sake. For her to at least feel vindicated.
Will I do it the next time? I don't know.

It's so heart-numbing, seeing drugs burn an innocent bystander's day to the ground. And I'm not sure what I learned from it.