Manspreading: A Very Real Problem

Thanks to New York's taskmasters and stealth photographers, the subway epidemic of "manspreading" has finally been brought to light. Of course, I'm not referring to those who need an extra seat for a purse or bums urinating on the platforms. I'm talking about a real issue: tall men with long legs letting their nuts breath.

Monster

What are women, or more respectful men to do? Ask a stranger to scooch down a bit? This is New York we're talking about. You don't talk to people, you save that for Jezebel or Gawker. And if you are going to talk to anyone, you bring a camera.

Knowing how trends spiral on the internet, I grew concerned that the plague had "spread" to Philadelphia. Worse, was I myself part of the problem? After all, I'm six feet tall, I have long legs, and depending on how cold it is outside, I usually have a pair of descended testicles. After pondering this, and cupping my genitals to make sure they were still there, I immediately decided to stand up during that fateful Broad Street subway ride. 

It's like chlamydia.

I was afraid. Someone might have a camera pointed at me just waiting for me to mess up. But then I wondered, "What else could I possibly be doing wrong?" Was I "manhovering?" I looked at the passengers below me, face to face with the faint scent of Axe body spray emanating from my junk...all holding phones just begging to be Twet.

Quickly, I exited and headed for the street, above ground where it was sunny and safe. Then I remembered, I recently posted my own blog about "siewalkspreading," a crisis that our trusty watchdogs from the north have renamed "manslamming." Was I guilty of committing a crime that I myself find so annoying? Was I...a manslammer?

Right then I wondered how my broad shoulders might be threatening, even misogynistic. As I traversed the crowded sidewalks, I looked at the Starbucks cups in the hands of harried commuters, both of my shoulders eager to spill coffee in those Kate Spade bags headed straight for me. I was a magnet for disaster. 

I tried hugging the walls of buildings like a kid clinging to the carpeted walls of Skatetown USA. "Be invisible," I whispered to myself.

Scaling the bricks and concrete along Arch Street, I was smacked in the face with a glass door at the Wawa. "How dare you?!" yelled a woman walking a dog in a raincoat and four little shoes...I was "manblocking!"

Manspreaders: PLEASE, think of the kittens!

I tried to get off the streets as fast as possible.

Climbing a fire escape, I leaped from rooftop-to-rooftop across Chinatown and beyond, constantly aware of the loathsome manhood dangling between my thighs. Those on the sidewalks below pointed and stared, filming and Tumblring, "Look! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, he's MANFLEEING!" 

And manflee I did!

When I found myself perched high above the streets, watching my fellow Philadelphians smoothly return to strides free from my disease, I realized I was no innocent resident, I was the villain, the Joker's syphilitic half-brother. A blight amongst the better.

How was I so blind to the chaos? I had no idea that, without my cojones, Philadelphia and New York were utopian ideals of pleases and thank yous, SEPTA and MTA sparkling trains brimming with courteous etiquette. I should have known better, it's not like anything bad ever happened on a subway before the outbreak of manspreading.

Defeated, I slid down a storm drain behind my small house, I "manbroke" into my rear window, "manstumbled" down my staircase, where I "manhid" with my "mancat."

Six weeks later, unshaven and living off "manhoarded" canned tuna, I sunk into a dark despair of evil undoing. I began to accept my fate, my destiny...my gonads. This house, this "mancave," is now a reclusive lair for me to plot my next move on the good people of this city. A place for me to sit and "manwonder" how can my balls can next make this world grieve?