Of Juvenile Concern

The stool is so tall that I have to strain to even see the floor below my imitation Converse high tops. Clutching a steaming coffee and some fries, I stare listlessly into the courtyard ahead, my stomach churning and protesting inside me.

The station is busy – it’s still early. Commuters are rushing around in suits grasping Benson and Hedges Silver between shaky, stressed out fingers. There is a woman asleep on a bench. Her clothes – although rags – are so colourful and cheerful, it makes her seem so significant, so profound considering we are in such dire surroundings.

The light is brisk and dancy. It reminds me of how summers were. Like when you’re a child, and everything seems to move in such an inaccessible way. Like everything’s designed to be out of your reach. Once you’re grown up, everything’s just as out of reach. Only in a different way, in a sadder way. When you’re young you don’t mind so much because you think ‘soon… soon I’ll do that’. But you get to thirty before you know it, and it’s sad because you know you’ve missed your chance.

I never really went out with people much. It always felt ridiculous, to me. There was all these things I said and did, because that’s what you are supposed to say and do. I never felt real with anyone. Holding hands and faces and kissing. And lying together, touching each other’s backs and arms and stomachs. Getting all sweaty and itchy but not wanting to move in case of waking them up. I realise what my problem is, I fall in love too easily. I know all the right things to say and do. And I say and do them like I mean it. But I’ve never meant it yet. Not really anyhow. Maybe they work it out in the end. That I’m playing them. Maybe that’s why they always leave. Maybe they just realise I don’t really care for anyone, that I’m incapable of caring for anyone. Except myself.

My coffee’s gone cold now, but I don’t mind – I wasn’t going to finish it anyway. My chips taste like cold cardboard, so I force them down without chewing. They are the skinny ones, coated in gritty salt. Some of them are battered and black. I throw these ones away, and later squash them under my feet as I stretch my legs down so I can get a lighter out of my tight jeans pocket. My jumper sleeves feel damp. Im sweating and uncomfortable, but there’s no way im taking it off. I like wearing so many layers, I feel more comfortable. It covers me up. My pale, thin, weak shell. And inside this thin, weak shell is some sort of spirit, some sort of control centre, which makes my body feel bad, just by thinking. By making me think. I felt the heat of the cigarette get close to my lips, almost close enough to singe. I dropped it onto the floor and lit another. I wish I had a Sovereign t-shirt to match. I used to hate people who walked round with Marlboro umbrellas and holdalls. Now I realise how much the brand means, like a label on your personality.

The pubs are almost open. I sit down on one of the marble benches opposite my favourite pub here and light up again. My legs ache from the short walk across the station and from the dizzy ride up the escalator into the air. Men walk past with their briefcases and sling me filthy, burning looks from the corner of their eyes, trying to turn their face away. Women are a bit less brutal, some of them pausing to offer me a cigarette or some coins. I say ‘Thank-you Ma’am’ in a foreign accent and act sheepishly grateful. Then they shuffle off, all pleased, thinking they deserve a Nobel Prize or something. I guess it means a lot in their world. The world I refuse to be part of.

I am looking for the signs I have been given; red mohican, stripy jumper, Goth. That’s all I know. I think I’ll recognise him as soon as I see him, and I do. Because at this point he appears, he’d been talking to the Romanian woman who later grins at me as I walk towards him. He is shorter then I imagined, almost comical looking. I watch him shifting from one foot to the other underneath the tall marble column he stands beneath. He looks expectant, not nervous. I didn’t know how long to wait. My body stood up, threw my trash in the bin and left the safety of the MacDonald’s restaurant. I don’t remember how I approached him, or what I said.

We drank cheap half pints ’til we ran out of money. Then we slept in the station under the colonnade by the escalator, until a special moved us on. We ventured back outside into the sunlight and wandered further up the hill towards the main road. We were holding hands and walking through the heavy traffic, surrounded by suits. I said aloud ‘Do you ever feel like you’re in the Matrix?’ People cocked their heads to listen to us, as he instantly answered ‘Every day’. We laughed. I don’t think they got it. The banks, the skyscrapers, the suits, the chardonnay, the leather couches and air-conditioned offices – it was real to them. They saw us as scum. But they were – are – the real planet cancer. He was my soul mate.

I told him I didn’t want to go home. He hugged me and said ‘are you sure you want to stay?’ I nodded miserably, hanging my head as he gripped me in his short, scarred arms to his flat, hollow chest.

I changed my mind. I pulled out my rail ticket.

He held my hand painfully tight as we walked towards the gate. He grabbed my pathetic, weak, hungry body to his. We held onto each other so tight for so long, bathing in the misery we shared – as virtual strangers. I don’t even remember what our last words to each other were. Tears rolled down my face, dragging my feet, stepping up onto the train. I sat in a corner seat and wrapped my arms round my body to try and stop myself from shaking. I got looks, some were sympathetic, most weren’t. I didn’t care. I didn’t expect anything. I longed for the train to de-rail, for the lights to flicker off and for there to be an end to my misery. I have never known a hunger, a desperacy so strong.

And then I was back. And I got off the train, walked home, got in the bath, and stared. Stared until my eyes were strained, stared at nothing. I cut his name deep into my arm, as deeply as it is in my heart. The bath is so hot it stings, and I lay in it reading about columbine, until the water is cold. Or maybe it is a different kind of cold chill that makes the water feel cold, because when I look it is still steaming.

I force my head under the water to silence myself, failing of course, to realise the voices were coming from inside my head. Jumping from the bath I stand at the sink and stare into the mirror. Blame and guilt run through me in torrents, amongst the flock of wild emotions fighting for the forefront in my tortured mind. I tear at my hair and cry out, but my cry echoes and freezes in the midair before me. I reach out and touch its now solidified form, feeling my fingers fuse to its icy coldness. The suspended icicle confetti which spins around my head now falls and is replaced by images of murder and betrayal. Of pain and torture. My eyes burn with these images, but they do not stop. They roll on like in ending torment, like a natural flowing

stream.

I am feeling for my legs but they are gone. My hands grope blindly in the dark searching for any remaining physical part of myself, yet none seems to exist. I reach up into the medicine cabinet and swallow what comes first to hand, before falling into a fitful sleep. if you already guessed that this is a tale of young love you couldn’t be more accurate.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Staggering along the road I could feel beads of sweat forming a moustache on my upper lip and as traffic rattled past it forced grains of sand and dust to plant themselves deep into my oily pillar box red lipstick – giving it a grainy feel as I chaffed my lips together in the sun.

I stopped to lean against a wall and light a cigarette, glancing across the street to stare at a stone on the opposite pavement. It looked as though it had been laying there peacefully for years. Just as I thought this a boy ran past, launching it gracefully into the path of an oncoming Toyota. Somehow – I considered – that represents life.

Voices from the train station, a few feet away, began to echo in my ears. They all seemed to want the same thing, to go home. The very thing I’d been avoiding all day.

I walked on into the high street, threw my bag down upon a square concrete plant box and hitched myself up onto it. Pushing my hands into the sandy dirt it was filled with, I cringed as I felt the grit get under my nails.

The comforting familiarity of the burn of beer in my stomach, a heavy footed-light headed strut and the cancerous presence of sticky smoke fumes laid down in my nasal passages, I decided to walk myself home after all. Unable to hear past the deafening ring in my ears, I had become virtually blind to the dangers surrounding me. The thrill, the hazard, the lack of expense yet cost of consequence left me breathless and bitter. Staggering, stumbling, falling. I landed with a crash on a curb, settling with a sigh into unconsciousness I put up my hand to stop the sun’s rays from hurting my already closed eyes.

I was once crossing the road with this homeless guy I went to meet at Liverpool Street station. We were holding hands and walking across through the heavy traffic, surrounded by suits. I said aloud ‘Do you ever feel like you’re in the Matrix?’ People cocked their heads to listen to us, as he instantly answered ‘Every day’. We laughed. I don’t think they got it. The banks, the skyscrapers, the suits, the chardonnay, the leather couches and air-conditioned offices – it was real to them. They saw us as scum. But they were – are – the real planet cancer. He was my soul mate. I realised once you are never destined to meet your soul mate. If you do meet then you destroy each other, your separation keeps the world turning in equilibrium. I’ve not seen him since.