Dogtooth Trousers

You wore dogtooth trousers that Sunday at the train station. We sat drinking coffee facing one another. Shy, smiling, unmoving. You said two words. Two words now of very little consequence, but I knew then and know now that I liked you. I liked you, you were nice, a little silly and you laughed boyishly although you were 25. Your voice was the loveliest combination of runny honey and moronic excitement. I was 19, a little sad. Watching the way your body pervaded the chair and running my thumb along the corrugated takeaway cup, I asked you questions about your stay in my city. Inane questions, really. Something to fill the gulf of silence between us, despite the plentiful noise around us. Inaudible chatter from other passengers and pre-recorded announcements over the speakers - “Do not leave your luggage unattended.” - that sort of thing. When you weren’t answering my questions, we smiled. Beaming broadly at one another with an impermeable air of disbelief hanging over us. Weeks of conversations via texts and Facebook messages; questions, statements, snippets of poems we were inspired by, funnelled into this single event. The distance had never meant anything to me and I spent some time wondering if it had meant anything to you. 

Then it was time for you to go. We stood for a while before your train would leave and rattle back to the capital. Throngs of travellers passing us. Coming, going, running to and shuffling against each other all in aid of getting to their platforms. We stood for a while searching for something. I knew that it was there, somewhere in the grey specks of your eyes. Nothing slows but the world melts away, highlighted by the caustic yellow lighting of the old New Street station. There it is, the means of the moment cast upon us, conditions ripened by your smiles. We didn’t kiss, and it was in that was the moment you revealed that there was a girl. A girl in London. “It wouldn’t be fair on her,” you said. Instead, we hugged and a surprising feeling of content appeared, closing the curtains on our mutual whimsy. The eventual letting go, soon to be parting ways and lastly, waving goodbye to you, to the almost “us” came. The swell of travellers swallowed you whole. I took our small exchange, the sound your heart made when I pressed my cheek to your chest and ambled back to the 50 bus stop. On the way home I listened to The Reverend Al Green. I scrolled through our most recent exchanges. I thought about you, sitting ruefully on your train, taking up the legroom. I thought about her, the girl you wouldn’t kiss me for. You were right, it wouldn’t be fair to her. I watched the world through the bus window, not looking at anything in particular as the buildings melded into one another. It wasn’t fair on me either. The bus pulled in, the sermon ended, and the world continued in the funny way that it does. 

Years later I heard a something about you. 

I read… a story. Except, it was not a story, it was a truth. A collection of instances where your actions described did not match up to the person I knew you to be - thought I knew you to be. The thing about these things is that they are often not. We cannot marry up versions of people that we see with the version that others experience. A different girl, a woman in London, shared her truth with the world. Something you did, some things that you said, blind actions, ignorant words, forgettable to you but internally lucid markings for her. Did the flirting stop when the fun stopped? Did you ever wonder if it was fun for her? The truth was relayed to the world by you. You shared her story. You told us that you were sorry. Was it enough? Is it ever? Can regret only displayed when the world can see the truth of your capabilities be a true form of repentance? There were no boyish hallmarks. There can never be any boyish hallmarks: boys will not be boys. Years of silence have passed between us with a disperse of new friendships and relationships all leading to this. I imagined us both sitting in front of our screens. You watching the comments of abhor and support flood. Myself reading the statement in multiplicity. The distance meant everything and simultaneously, nothing at all.

More recently we have spoken, about a year ago now, I never asked you about the woman in London, the post, any of it. We talked idly about what we were up to. You told me that you were coming up my way for work. I said that it would be lovely to see you. You agreed: We could meet, grab a coffee, catch up. Neither one of us meant it. You asked after my family. I asked about your fiancée. We bid each other a customary, “See you soon.”, but we never did. You came and went, blending in with the rush. That day now so long ago bears no relevance in the strands of our lives, a memory cast out onto sea, fading with the passing of time.