I was running a bit late after my swim so decided to get the Hammershit and Shitty Line back to Shepherd's Bush from Hammersmith. It's only two stops and often it can be quicker to walk, but it was after 6 and I needed to get home, get changed, have my dinner and be in Soho for 7.30 for my gig at Too2Much. I took the chance that the tube would be quicker. It was a foolish risk.
I had just missed a train and an announcement warned that the line was experiencing serious delays and I was considering leaving and walking, but had already Oystered my way into the station and wasn't sure I wanted to go through the rigmarole of getting someone to remove that information from the card. Then the man sitting in the little box said that another train was pulling into platform 1. So I carried on with my risky strategy. On this humid day my panic levels were starting to rise with my body temperature.
I got on the hot carriage and sat and waited, fanning myself with my G2. My exasperation was clearly making itself evident to the world as the young woman opposite kept looking at me in a way that indicated that she shared my frustration and pain. She had the palest blue eyes, but now was not a time for lust or falling in love. It was a time for getting home, changing out of my smelly T-shirt, eating some pasta parcels and salad and getting on my way. If we had met in different circumstances perhaps we could have been married, but fate (
or possibly my Red Indian spirit guide) had engineered things wrongly. I did find myself idly thinking that it is important to choose a life partner with beautiful eyes, because as the rest of the body degrades, these will generally stay as lovely and fascinating as they always were (not entirely true, but there's truth in it) and you will in any case be looking into them a lot for the remainder of your life so it would be a good thing if the eyes of your lover were endlessly enchanting. But although this woman's eyes were spectacular and mesmerising, I knew she could not be the one. Her tits weren't big enough.
Ha ha. I am funny.
As the train waited and waited I became more aggrivated and impatient. Up til now I had been sitting next to an empty seat and so at least had some body space in this awful heat, but then a man came and plonked himself down right next to me. He deliberately postioned himself in such a way that his thigh was right against mine, not just touching, but snugly pushed up against me. He made no effort to move it, to give me some of my body space back. This wasn't a sexual thing (even though I do have lovely eyes). It was territorial. He was clearly indicating by this action that he saw this space as his and he wanted me to concede the ground to him, acknowledge he was the alpha male and move my leg. There was certainly room for me to swing my leg away (especially if I moved the bag of shopping between my legs) but I felt I was still pretty much within the border of my seat and there was room on the other side for him to move his legs and I had been here first, so I was not going to budge. Of course this kind of macho posturing over borderlines is what causes some of our most senseless and bloody wars, but that was not going to make me move my leg, however uncomfortable I felt with this unwanted body contact, with someone I was not attracted to in the least, in the unbearable heat.
Even though our enforced touching made me feel massively uncomfortable I felt I could not bend to him on this, because that was exactly why he had done this invasive thing. I was better than him. I only had to hold my ground for two short tube stops - although worryingly the train was still not moving. Could I do it? Could I hold my ground long enough for his own levels of discomfort to force him to move? He seemed fairly sturdy in his resolve. Our legs remained pressed against one. I was hating every minute of him, but I had to prove I was the alpha male.
I lasted about 45 seconds before I squirmed away in disgust. In fact he was so the winner that I had to stop myself getting up and standing by the doors. So it was some small kind of victory to at least keep me seat, even if I had had to move my legs in a totally different direction.
He made no outward sign of his triumph, but I knew inside that his heart was singing. And though she probably didn't know why, the pale blue eyes of the woman opposite me were now trying to make contact with those of the wily, wiry, fifty-five year old man to my left.
The tube trundled out of the station (I wouldn't have had that long to maintain my leg contact) and I was soon home, changing my T-shirt, bolting down my dinner and heading off to Soho. I couldn't stand the heat or the likelihood of more macho defeats and I was running late, so I got a taxi.
