Jul 26, 2010
Overheard on the late night tube
[I recently upgraded to a new phone. In the process of scrubbing things off the old handset, I found this word sketch of a tube journey home from an evening out a while back.]
Men on the northern line coming from the awards dinner I’ve just come from. I’m sober(ish), but they’re drooling on each other, discussing the best satellite porn channels and the acts they’re going to perform on their wives when they get home. It’s charming, in a ridiculous, pissed, shouty, colleaguey machismo bullshit obnoxious kind of way.
The bald northern one calls everything and everyone a cunt. The fat one apologises for him repeatedly, explaining “he’s from Leeds”, before leering at girls on adjacent seats and trying to persuade the other to stop off for a final pint at Charing Cross.
This, I feel, would be a bad move.
It seems that several pints, absinthe and champagne in (their words) “less time than it takes to have a wank” are a recipe for lurching, leering and idiocy.
“Have you got a mirror?” Baldy asks every female on the train. No-one has.
“Have I got bloodshot eyes?” he demands. He does, but no-one will tell him, because no-one wants to get involved. Wisely, it seems.
“You’re an ugly, fat cunt,” drools baldy.
“Yeah,” says fatty, “but at least I’ve still got hair”
Thank heaven for small mercies. And my stop.
Thank heavens for your stop indeed. I remember a similar incident just before I left Sydney, having the misfortune to stand directly in front of a man who was literally seething: hissing, breathing heavily, muttering about how the bus was full of stupid cunts. Fortunately, I was also standing in front of the door, so I could watch him to make sure he didn’t whack me one, but damn if I wasn’t counting the seconds until I got off at my stop.