There was the time when PENIS

There was the time a bloke hissed “stuck up bitch” in my face because I told his friend I wasn’t single. The time when a man followed me from the tube station to my road, hassling me for my address the whole way. The time a train journey ended with a guy pinging my bra strap and kissing me on the lips. All the times I’m told to smile, assured that someone would happily do me (thanks!) or generally feel uncomfortable for being female and in someone’s eyeline.

I spoke about times like these in 2011, here – the relatively low-level, everyday harassment countless people put up with. But up until now, I’d managed to go through life without going through one particular, extremely common experience.

It happened to my grandma when she was a teenager walking by a field with her friend. It happened to my mum on a hospital ward when she was training to be a nurse. I thought I’d got away with it. Ladies and gentlefolk, I made it to the grand old age of 31 before I got wanked at in a public place. Last night, I looked public masturbation in its one, weepy eye and ticked off another square on my OhForFuckSake bingo card.

Now, I can say that there was the time I was walking home from work and saw in my peripheral vision a man in the entrance of a public toilet, a cubicle with a door that opens out on to the street. My first instinct as I barely registered his hand in his crotch area was that he was still doing up his flies on his way out, which happens surprisingly frequently. I also registered he was looking at me, but I didn’t look back. He could have merely glanced up and done a double take at a foreigner. Getting closer, it was obvious he hadn’t glanced, he was staring intently. I looked up properly and took in the scene in all its hairy-palmed splendour: Mr Masturbator over there having a not-so-private workout.

For a moment, the scene stuck at that. I froze right in front of him (dangerous place to be looking back), realisation dawning and starting to shake with anger, while he continued, top off, belly out, one hand up against the wall, the other throttling a fleshy slug in my direction. I snapped to, flipped him the bird and gathered myself to scream obscenities, whereupon he suddenly looked terrified and scarpered backwards into the cubicle, slamming the door.

I now, perhaps uniquely, understand the frustrations and illogicality of shouting “Fucking pervert cunt!” through a smog mask in English at a Chinese man tugging off behind a toilet door. I hotfooted it away, simultaneously swearing loudly, getting my phone out and trying to disentangle my mask from my hair. By the time I walked back with K, of course he was gone, off to another darkened, literal shithole to wait for a lone female to cross his tissue-strewn path.

It happens a lot. It’s connected to the everyday harassment. But I’m not going to go into that again now. What I’m going to do now is write down the things I wish I had done when it happened.

WHEN I SAW THE DESPERATE MAN’S SAD WILLY, I WISH I HAD…

… Whipped my phone out, taken a picture before he knew what was happening, and got my Chinese friends to share it on WeChat and Weibo with the aim of stoking netizens into a human flesh search and identifying the sadsack in question. Sadly, my crappy Nokia Windows phone takes forever to warm up, so I would have had to have asked him to hold that thought.

… Done a high kick right in his nads, which would firstly cause a lot of pain, and secondly pitch him backwards into the squat toilet behind, jamming him in a shit bucket with his pants down and whatever dignity men like him profess to have withering away like his useless erection.

… Not left hurriedly, but started hammering on the cubicle door, mustering the worst demon voice I could drag up from the depths (I can do these voices, really) and gone utterly batshit. Given he had already looked freaked out when he locked himself in, hopefully he would start crying and call the police himself.

… Said what my mum said to the guy who did it to her (but in Chinese of course): “No wonder you have to do that – I’ve seen bigger things crawl out of a cabbage.” Love you, mum.