Turnpike Lane, drunk, 2007
Tears, Kissing and iPods
The journey, as it starts, is just about the most thrilling incident of recent memory: the board says I have 60 seconds to catch the last tube back to my place. Haring it down the escalator I process, Scotch-drunk, that to hit the platform from the exit route will be quickest, so I leap onto the metal that divides each moving stairwell and bounce to the floor, running down the vacant corridor.
As I near the platform the emptiness becomes a thick knot of people who have obviously just disembarked. I figure it’s the last train, and seeing the closing doors makes my little heart seize up. They re-open as my eye catches the sign that says it’s actually the second to last, but I fly on anyway because the adrenaline’s pounding too hard to ignore. It’s a powerful sensation, little short of awesome.
Uncollected thoughts on the way home to an empty bed: __________ I guess we spend our lives preparing to say good-bye, and it’s always worth saying farewell, to everything, just in case. _____________ Self Destruction can be beautiful, but it’s often just another fuck up. ________ Nobody’s really fit to share the standards you set yourself. _____________________ The last tubes home play host to every stage of relationships: Tears, kisses and iPods. __________ There’s the guy who plays Elvis covers _____________ and the woman with terrible teeth who trawls the Piccadilly line with her daughter – who’s less than two years old but already possess sparse, grey hair – in grotesque pursuit of pocket change. ________________ And I’m in a corner mouthing away to another string of self-important Pop Songs, part of the scene.
I close my eyes and I see a flaming neon arrow on a blank background. The shaft is sketchy and fractured. I turn to a blank page in my notebook and write it down underneath a note towards another story, a note that reads “When I die I don’t, and can’t, know what happens next”.
© Matthew Sheret, 2008
