I wanted to tell them to shut the fuck up. Loud, annoying, obnoxious, obscene, and if not drunk, definitely on the right path to it. Yet since I am - at least in public - a reasonably tactful person, I sat in silence and fumed. I listened to injoke after raunchy injoke, growing ever more frustrated with the whines of the girls in the group, wanting to wash out the mouths of the guys. Eventually the next station arrived, and I could depart.

"Excuse me!" the loudest guy exclaimed. Was he talking to me? I wasn't sure. I turned around anyway.

"She," he thumbed over his shoulder to one of the girls, "wants your hair."

The girl to whom he gestured looked at me with a smile. "You have great hair."

I returned her smile self-consciously and mumbled, "Thanks," leaving the train and flipping my ponytail over my back.

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