Things That Get You Punched:

I forgot my book and my newspaper at work today, which meant that my ride on the R train was spent blatantly staring at other passengers. First, I was stuck in the midst of a group of teenage Dutch tourists, all very badly sunburned and speaking gibberish. When the left the train, predictably at 42nd St-Times Square, I had a whole new group of people to stare at: The Urban Douches.

There's a lot of douche baggery going on in this city. Something about the tri-state area makes guys wax their eyebrows, hit the tanning beds, and live completely oblivious of the fact that their appearances and habits are a constant source of parody. I'm sure if they just pump equal parts estrogen and machismo into the water or what, but something about guys here makes them preen themselves like 14-year-old girls while inhaling steroids and putting up weight like cons.

I think that women, and not just bitchy ones like myself, are built with an innate Douche Detector. It's similar to the Terror Alerts on Fox News, only triggered by serious things, like bad cologne and rub-on tans. Today's observations yielded two specimens from different levels of douchiness. I post this not only for women whose Douche Detectors have faltered in the past, but for men who may have latent Douche Bag tendencies.

First we had the guy in the suit leaning against the doors ever so casually. Nothing wrong with him at first, until you notice that he's wearing his sunglasses in the subway. Not only that, he's wearing them backwards. As in, he's wearing his shiny metallic Oakley sunglasses resting on the back of his meathead neck. Douche Alert Level: YELLOW.

A few feet down we had the guy (and he most certainly was a guy, not a man and not a dude) who can only be described in the simplest terms. Gotti Boy hairstyle, which thankfully apparently has not spread west of New Jersey. Sideburns manicured to be sharp arrows ending along his jawline. A thick shiny gold chain rested on his waxed chest. But the real icing on the cake was the white satin shirt with sheer striping. Apparently this guy completely missed the popular Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey skit from SNL. The thing was, the longer I stared, the more sure this guy became that I was picking up what he was throwing down, when really I was just trying not to throw up in my mouth. Douche Alert Level: RED.