September, kids are back at school and the tube is packed so I’m pressed into the end of a carriage, with three women and some guys. One guy looks like Blackbeard, if the Pirate had a job in The City he’d look like that. The girl right in front looks like Lily Allen, in a figure-hugging jumper dress. She has a nice body which trembles pleasantly as we rattle along the Central Line.
It’s a humiliating crush of bodies, though, with little love going spare. A girl in a seat is putting on some slap, making a sideways face as she flicks her blusher brush back and forth. It’s a stranger’s intimate moment, blatantly put on view. Am I supposed to watch, to appreciate the effectiveness of her technique? Or am I obliged to look away? I don’t know the rules, which has the effect of making this act unnecessarily provocative.
I look around for answers but nobody else seems to be taking a blind bit of notice. Perhaps they’ve each already employed a look which looks like they’re not looking at all, I can’t tell. Hell, now she’s making me feel like a bumpkin. I simmer silently, switching back to Lily Allen, the tendrils of her bob cut curling around iPod wires. Then I remember that I always felt kind of provoked by this behaviour, even when I was a city dweller. Sure, I used to down a cold can of Special Brew on the tube, as a precursor to a big night out, which may also be distasteful, but it hardly qualifies as an intimate moment.
When I get home I’ll ask Jane what she thinks. She’ll probably laugh and call me over-sensitive, and ask why I don’t just read a book or something if it annoys me so. I’ll sulk a bit and switch to my Big Mac attack – we’ve all endured that sickly smell on public transport. She might quietly remind me of what gets her goat; stupid old men having a go because deep down inside they feel life didn’t deal them the cards they were led to expect, that they were promised even.
And she'd be right. As I get off the train I tell myself there isn’t much in my life worth getting upset about, not really. I am the rider of the Black Bullet and I have everything I ever wanted. And yet somewhere in the world someone is wriggling their toes in the sand, slugging on a cold beer and waiting for a plate of blackened prawns, and that person isn’t me, godammit, it isn't me.
