Forty Lashes

I kept to myself on the train carriage at Bethnal Green by at least 2 seat spaces from anyone else, a vaguely tactical manoeuvre on the morning commute. Get on at Liverpool Street and you're standing for the half hour journey. Get on a stop before though and one can sit comfortably if one just pretend's one can't see the pregnant woman or pensioner. I read Money held up in the air, as though examining it, a deliberate pose to try and show as many people as possible how thoughtful a person I was. It was a second hand copy as well, of course, as though to suggest I'd bought it way back when. Amis fascinated me, the way someone so ensconced in privilege could write so well about the people at the bottom. Until Yellow Dog, that is. I think the dementia must have set in by then. 

...With a flinch I looked up: still no weather. Sometimes, when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really, of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more than the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.

I folded the page as though it was the ear of a scolded dog and looked up. Wonderful. Sometimes I like to soak a good passage in like a delicious morsel of food. As I considered Amis' words I coalesced my thoughts with my surroundings. No grey skies to speak of in the underground tunnels of London, but the sentiment was the same. I gazed across the carriage. Strange. A young man in a baggy coat was leaning against a pole, reading a book of his own, I couldn't make the cover out. He stood, yet there were countless seats around him. He looked up as the train slowed and stopped at Liverpool Street. Commuters poured in, sat themselves methodically in every available space, first leaving gaps where possible, succumbing to social etiquette, then slowly filling in the blanks as convention allowed. Still a couple of seats remained and the man remained against his pole, deep in concentration. I returned to Money.

And so my mind was free to wander unpleasantly, as it always  wanders now when unengaged by stress or pleasure. My thoughts dance. What is it? A dance of anxiety and supplication, of futile vigil. I think I must have some new cow disease that makes you wonder if you're real all the time, that makes your life feel like a trick, an act, a joke. I feel, I feel dead.

Before I know it we've pulled into Bank. The platform is saturated with expectant, then disappointed commuters, all wishing each morning they could bring themselves to get up even ten minutes earlier in the interest of not being half boiled and tenderised by the time they start work. The train carriage moved slowly, carefully picking out the group of commuters it would allow in. It settled on a large group of tall, long haired blonde girls, in their late teens. They towered above the rest of the crowd on the platform as though perfect genetic specimens, perhaps a Swedish model convention was in town. Not one of the girls had their hair tied back, they had the quality of a relaxed, well manicured cult, blonde locks lifting slightly with movement before settling back into their conditioned cascade. I was mesmerised by the sight of them. Beautiful, every single one. They smiled and laughed as though they had no conception of worry or sadness. They seemed to be the only people on the train not affected by its confines. Instead they seemed to take the train over, as though a new empress were in town.

My gaze went over to the pole-leaning hermit, doing his best to concentrate on his book. His eyes darted back and forth between page and teenager, before finally he gave up on whatever words he had tried to concentrate on and like every other male in the carriage became transfixed by the saturation of young beauty in one place. Moments later he inexplicably stopped staring and went back to his book, cheeks painted with red embarrassment. Despite his efforts, the man's attention was suddenly drawn back to the group. One of the girls, paying him no heed, flicked her hair to the side to let it lie over one shoulder, whipping the man in the face with her hair strands in the process. He recoiled in shock, a few of the girl's stray hairs still stuck to his lip like an implanted leash. Two of the other girls had noticed this. They whispered to the culprit and shared a few Swedish secrets to which they all smiled still staring at the man, who suddenly seemed more like prey than anything else.

I put the book in my bag, now instead transfixed by this developing predicament. Now pinned to the corner between a pole and the doors, the man had nowhere to move. He tried his best to divert away from attention and towards his book. As he searched within for words of comfort or solitude the same girl, beautiful straight hair flowing like a waterfall into an elven fjord, whipped her strands across his pages in a thinly veiled act of aggression. The man ignored this as best he could and a look of pain spread across his face as he tried to read harder, to concentrate more, as if the book could swallow him whole and away from such horrors. Other girls began to turn and a murmur of quiet amusement spread across the group. Without any communication they began to swap places, all taking it in turns to adjust and whip their hair around with a collective expression of mild amusement. Like a Lynchian shampoo advert one girl after another beat the man across his face, hands, knocked his book to the floor, each carefree twirl of youthful exuberance sapping the man of life-force. The laughter became palpable and some commuters began to look on with bemusement and interest, this pathetic fellow trying to make himself as small as possible as tall, lithe beauties seemed to reduce him with hairstrikes. The man struggled to pick his book up as waves of blistering blonde and auburn smashed into him like so many waves. As the train turned a corner the man lost his balance. Feigning concern, one of the girls moved to help him back up again, her hair stabbing him constantly in his face on the way up. He coughed and spluttered as her perfect ends found their way into his nostrils, his eyes, stuck to his lips. The girls crowded around him, helped him with his bag, picked his book up from the floor, giggling innocently amongst themselves.

This assault lasted but 30 seconds but it was plain to see that it had reduced the man to less than the sum of his parts. Utterly emotionally destroyed he feebly made his way through the giggle of girls and virtually threw himself from the train at the next platform, clutching his bag like it was his only possession in the world. Tears of either relief or terror were glued to his cheeks, his face flushed, eyes bloodshot. The girls smiled at each other and soon settled back into silence. The train moved off, leaving the injured gazelle behind on the platform for the city to swallow whole. The girls looked at me with a quiet, prehistoric intelligence, as though they needed no thoughts to know that I was less than them in every conceivable way. I was inclined to agree with them as I fumbled to find my page again and avoid eye contact at all costs.