Part of me believes him, most of me in fact but the rage keeps pouring from me. ‘What would you have done? Let him take you over a urinal? I mean that’s how queers like it ain’t it?’
‘Dom, I didn’t do it on purpose.’
People are looking, eyebrows raised, slowing their paces in interest, eavesdropping. I continue, ‘What next? Walk down the street and jump in the car with a wanking stranger?’
‘Dom, calm down.’ He grabs my arm. ‘I wasn’t doing anything. I swear.’
I stand in silence. The rage is fading away inside me, I need a smoke. ‘I need a cigarette.’
‘Okay.’ Sam smiles. ‘Dom, I really wasn’t...’
I hold my hand up to silence him. I’m calming myself, I’ll do it in silence.
We’re walking. Moving towards an exit. We walk through and let the cool air rush over us. Sam pulls out the packet of Marlboro Lights, he hands me one, I take it in silence. He pulls one out for himself.
Click, flame, inhale. It’s not calming me down medically, raising the heart beat isn’t calming, but mentally its poisonous kiss melts away the rage, allows me to think. It’s not addiction, it’s medication. The things we do to our bodies to escape the boredom of reality. I pass Sam the lighter. He takes, he lights, he inhales. I don’t know why we’re standing outside, you can smoke in the station.
Sam’s voice. ‘Dom, I wasn’t trying to rent myself. Why would I look for anyone else when I have you? You’re all I want.’
I know he’s telling the truth. A protective override in my head pulled him away from a situation. Maybe I’m angry because I allowed a stranger to approach him in that way.
‘Dom?’
‘Yeah, I know, but you must understand how it looked from where I was standing.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t even see the other guy, that’s how unimportant he was.’ He smiles, leans in and whispers ‘I love you.’
I look at him and smile. ‘I know you do, I love you too.’ It’s decided we won’t talk about it again. Let it disappear into a haze and be forgotten. There’s no intention of letting it ruin the high we’ve been on for so long. One mistake, one miscommunication, one bad to a thousand good.
The cigarettes burn to a stump. Drop, stamp, twist. The thing about cigarettes is that they are forgotten so easily. You smoke it, it burns, it ends, you move away. It exists for just a moment and then is discarded once its use has been fulfilled, in a sense it is a good metaphor for life. You light your passion, burn brightly, fall to the ground and are soon forgotten by the world around you.
I look at Sam, it’s time to move on. Time for a new location, a new adventure. We’ve been at Waterloo far too often. It’s time to explore unknown territories. We start to move, re-entering the station and aiming our bodies in the direction of the Underground.
We haven’t moved too far when I hear Sam giggle. He’s not following, just standing there staring. I follow the direction of his gaze. Surely not. Wipe my eyes and look again. It is. I feel those giggles rising up through me. Bursting to the surface. I’m laughing, Sam’s laughing, people are looking.
‘You’ve seen him haven’t you?’ Sam says in between his chuckles.
I nod my reply, I can’t speak.
Stood amongst the crowd, staring up at the notice boards is Osama bin Laden, looking exactly the same as the pictures we’ve been shown in all the newspapers. His greying beard, gaunt face. No wonder American troops haven’t been able to locate him, he’s been living here in the United Kingdom. His nervous glances around him show the guilt of a man always in perpetual fear of a hit squad jumping out of nowhere and filling his body full of lead. Despite that, there he stands. One of the most infamous faces in the world, the planet’s most wanted terrorist standing in the middle of a crowd, and in pure and typical London fashion everyone is too consumed with themselves to even notice. After all, no one is more important than one’s self.
We stand, watching him wait. His white garb making him look like the Jesus of terrorism, the messiah of needless pain and destruction. A number appears on one of the screens and he nods to himself before gliding off in the direction designated. The man who disrupts the world controlled and scheduled by the timetables of South West Trains. We watch him fade away into the distance, he’s obviously on his way home to his harem of blind, misguided followers. My eyes flick to Sam, his flick to me.
‘What the fuck?’ he says.
I laugh. ‘And to think we let him get away.’
Sam shrugs his shoulders. ‘Oh well, not our problem.’
We turn and walk. I stop. It’s all running in slow motion. He’s walking towards me, two men at his side. This is crazy. His eyes are looking at me, he nods a greeting as he passes, frame by frame, slowed, extended. No, this really is fucking crazy. Why would he be at Waterloo?
I turn to Sam, time returns to normal. ‘Did you just see him?’
He nods. We watch the figure move further away, everyone else oblivious to him. Saddam Hussein in Waterloo. What is this, the world’s most wanted day in London? Dictators and terrorists mingling with the common ‘free’ people of England. It’s crazy, surely not. That old man over there, he looks surprisingly like Pol Pot. I wipe my face. He’s still there, sat on a steel seat. ‘What the fuck?’ I breathe.
‘Tell me about it.’ Sam’s turning on the spot searching the station with his eyes, who knows how many of the world’s leaders he’s seen. ‘This is way too fucked up.’
‘Let's get moving,’ I say as Heinrich Himmler complete with pince-nez glasses marches past with the formal steps of self-importance.
Foot after foot, we try to make our way to the escalators, trying not to get distracted by the who’s who of the world’s most notorious. Sam stops, a snort of laughter bursting from him. He’s once again just stood there staring, his face dropped in a look of incredibility. His mouth’s trying to move but he can’t word what he wants so he just lifts his arm slowly and points. I look. No, this is getting fucking stupid. I can sense my facial expression mimicking Sam’s. Two people stood like zombies as we watch the figure before our eyes. He can’t be real, there’s no way he could be. How can no one else notice it? He’s stood there like a pink elephant in a room, his thick hair sprouting out everywhere, the poorly fitted suit unable to hide his true identity. Standing before us, at the back of the screen watching mass of people is Bigfoot, the Sasquatch. No one has that much fur on their faces. All you can see is fur, a little nose and beady eyes staring out. He yawns, a mouth full of sharp canine-like teeth on display for a moment before they’re hidden by fur. Obviously even forest dwelling creatures of some intelligence have decided to buy into mankind’s vision of life, the freedom of nature traded in for the slavery of a wage. In a way seeing Bigfoot dressed for the office is a saddening image, a sign that money conquers everything. Pay for unnecessary home comforts, surround yourself with needless crap, drink enough alcohol and eat enough food to make the loss of freedom and dreams feel like an acceptable loss. The blindness of mankind, lives rambling forward without personal meaning. I’d rather die than give up on my dreams. I’d rather let Bigfoot rip me apart than exist knowing I’ve let my dreams die.
A number on the screen and Bigfoot stomps off in the instructed direction. ‘Let's get out of here,’ I say after a moment. Sam’s look makes me know he’s thinking the same.
II
We’re on the Jubilee line. I can’t remember where we are exactly but I know it’s the Jubilee line, you can tell by the space age feel of it. High ceilings, glass barriers preventing you from crossing the yellow lines unless there’s a train docked at the platform. There’s no way of throwing yourself into the path of an oncoming train at this station. Everything about the walkways is modern, a past design set with the future in mind. Even now it looks futuristic, well, at this precise moment it does, you expect to see creatures from different planets to be s
haring the escalators with you. They probably are only we don’t notice it as we’re so accustomed to it, but then I guess it all depends on your perception of 'alien'.
So anyway, here we are, a long tunnel, a really long tunnel, so long they decided to put in a moving floor. A flat escalator, a conveyor belt. Step on and don’t bother moving, let yourself be taken at a designated speed along the tunnel. Make life easier for the masses, what a stupid concept to actually make people walk to their destination. I mean you could walk along these floors, move at twice the speed you would normally, it’s still less effort than walking unaided but you’d get some exercise at least, but looking around me it seems no one can be bothered. Please stand to the right. Why bother? No one’s walking, you’re not blocking the way, yet still people obey. If no one’s fucking walking then the ‘keep right’ is surely a redundant command. They say, you do. Obey and follow. Move at the pace we dictate and work for just enough to live but not enough to want to stop.
We’re walking, as we pass people they turn up their noses. Obviously the thought of some movement offends them. Sam by my side I couldn’t be happier, fuck what they think. We’re like two kids in a fairground, a theme park. This metallic floor part of a ride. I’m half expecting objects to fall from the ceiling, arms to fly out from