On the corner of Tottenham Court Road’s many exits, you stagger with a thrash of pain that twangs in the corners of your chest — a sharp object named anxiety lodging itself into your ribs as the sky descends, fading into the night’s abyss. A fairly young, unshaven man approaches you with two packets of unopened, Boots own-brand razor blades, his palm stretched wide-open as if to invite me into a skewered version of Narnia. “Do you want to buy?” he slurs, lips barely prising themselves apart in the pathetic effort he makes to sell all he has.
“No thank you,” I politely reply, and shuffle gently in the opposite direction — one I hope is free of men selling razor blades on street corners. A couple with no consideration for an individual’s private space or acknowledgement for the existence of anyone but themselves, bump into me constantly — their kisses elevated in a drunken stupor, stances like newborn baby deer — fragile and volatile. Moving to the side, you see your two saviours. Two people whom you trust dearly, and place your faith in them because this evening your wallet is vacant, and theirs is not.
You lost your mind in a train journey, in a story of poverty and violence, which lead you to the screams you heard on more than one occasion. You wonder if his negro knuckles ever touched the delicate, pale skin of her Caucasian sheath. You recall the holes in doors in Barcelona, and with every memory, you remember a couple more. Your mind is a loose faucet that trickles in dribs and drabs, releasing a ping of lost chronology with every droplet. You remember the cheap blinds and thin windows that did nothing to shield you from the bustling life that lay a few floors beneath you — a city so alive, just as you should be sleeping. We would peer out with our mongrel eyes — dark, enchanting brown, the same colour as our skin — as we gazed into the European night. Over bars and couples our vision took us, away from the fields of our real home, and into the foreign city we began to call home. We watched the lady below in her struggles with nothing but a dimly lit road to listen to her whimpers — her arms entwined with a man’s far stronger. At first she seemed hesitant to scream, her facial expressions pounding out every reason she could think of for him to stop. But he never did, and those glares buried with fear soon turned into elaborative whimpers, followed by high screams that emanated through the windy streets, the dark alleys that haunt the night, and those places that were off limits to our little nigger legs.
What did she do? we asked each other, our eyes peeking through the shifty venetian blinds, scared that we may be spotted up high. Maybe it was her dress, one of us said. Or maybe that’s just what happens here.
Her cries, pleads in a language so distant from ours shrank into the night, the same way the pace of a city did with our heads gently hitting the soft pillows. She just became another memory, something to speak of tomorrow.
And so at times throughout the night you felt that twang — the twitching feeling in your ribs that reminded you of what it was to be surrounded by so many people (let alone so many gay people) in one of Europe’s most famous cities. Considering that I had visited this place so often, it seemed a little unexpected to be possessing this perturbing feeling of claustrophobia in a place I had began to grow so comfortable with. As glasses of wine flowed and shots of sambuca were carelessly dribbled down our youthful throats, my leg dangled on to a busy street in Soho. I think he was right when he said that I was probably just eager for attention that night. Admittedly, I felt like the third wheel in a hetero-relationship (through no fault of my friends). Perhaps I longed for a tender hug, or a passionate kiss under the stars that once shined with Mars. Or perhaps I was bored and simply pining for attention of any sort.
The lights above would not work, as I held my book in my left hand. This seemed typical for me as pretty much every plane/coach journey I have been on, when they announce that you may now use your overheard lights — mine never seem to work.
“Do you know how to use these lights?” I asked a plump, suited man in the seat before my own.
“Of course you can,” he slurred, words slithering from his mouth as I quickly realised his levels of intoxication and ceased conversation. I watched him pray on a young girl, close to the driver — both him and the suited man competing for the young blonde’s phone number. Looking down in a pensive state, my mind reeled through years here and there — the time spent between here (England), there (Barcelona et al), and there (Cologne), and the places I had experienced.
“So many steps to take in life,” I heard someone say as we climbed the many steps to the top of the Döm. “But it’s worth it — isn’t it?” I never knew how to reply to this man — afraid that my foreign accent would shine straight through. And even now, my only words would be, “I hope so. I really do.”
