Blowing one’s nose without a tissue…and other disgusting encounters

As a resident of NYC, I sometimes have to deal with peculiar and unpleasant encounters with my fellow New Yorkers. The New York City Transit Authority is rife with such challenges. I was recently on the southbound #1 train and found a seat in a sparsely populated car. I sat down at one end, with two empty seats between me and the nearest human. Though sitting in the corner-most seat, often favored by the homeless for its relative privacy, this man was probably not homeless – he had clean, tidy clothes, was well-groomed, and was looking at a cell phone. Just as I had settled in, he began blowing his nose, not into a tissue, but into the air right in front of him. He accomplished this by alternately holding his left and right nostrils shut with a finger, expelling his breath, and spewing God’s knows what else. I must add that he was not breathing/blowing in my direction. After a minute or so of indecision, I got up and moved halfway down the car to another empty seat. I felt slightly guilty about abandoning him. Won’t he wonder why I chose to move? Will it make him feel self-conscious? Should I care about the feelings of a fellow passenger with questionable hygiene? (Don’t all public transit passengers have potentially questionable hygiene, even if less obvious than this gentlemen?)  Was my hyper-active superego at work yet again?  I didn’t want him to feel bad about himself – as if there were something wrong with him. I conceived that he might experience that feeling of rejection which I’ve felt many times in my life. After weighting the pros and cons of changing seats, I concluded that my health comes first. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t think to give him a tissue before fleeing halfway down the subway car. That might have been a kind and subtle hint that he needed to step up his game for the rest of humanity.