His suitcase (large, hard-shelled) looks like a giant speaker blaring august nothingness to a crowd of uninterested strangers on a westbound tube. He doesn’t look like a DJ but a music fan (if he plays an instrument, my bets are on him being a jazz musician). I’ve spotted him as I look up from my book, ‘First Floor Volume 1; Reflections on Electronic Music Culture’. (I always find serendipity on the Hammersmith and City Line.) There’s nothing particularly interesting about this man, and for a moment I question whether I’m writing about him for the sake of saying something (nothing). Then I notice his eyebrows. One is peroxide blonde - nay, white - the other jet black, reminiscent of a time where middle-class kids shaved slits in their eyebrows, except that he is early 30s (I’m guessing), reading a book (language undecipherable from where I sit), and wearing an AC MILAN // LONDON sweatshirt that looks very Acne Studios or APC adjacent. His pupils look as though they’ve seen 24 hours of class A drugs, but no one that high could sit and read a book genuinely. )Everything about him is unassuming and uninteresting and I mean that in the way that brings comfort). He scratches day 2 of his stubble and plays with his lips, clearly engrossed in the novel. The story I want to know is how he got his right eyebrow to look like it has been Tip-Ex-ed out and why my only thought about it is, “hmm, obviously”. What kind of music does he listen to? And what is the sound of his voice? What’s inside his suitcase? And where his chunky gold ring is from when his undertones clearly scream silver. Again I am perplexed. What is his ‘role’ in his group of friends and was he an introvert as a child? Why is there a Sherlock Holmes lookalike on his AC MILAN jumper? So many questions and yet he doesn’t look up long enough for his eyes to give away the answers. I think he is french, but he’s gotten off at Euston rather than St Pancras and definitely noticed me staring, singled-out amidst the sea of other uninterested strangers.
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