The who-rahs

Two of them. Stak­ing out their ter­ri­tory in the car­riage like they would do at Glasters or Glyn­ders or Class WarDers (just a lit­tle pun there, mes amis). Overnight bags stuffed full of cos­met­ics that have Never Know­ingly Been Sold to Poor Peo­ple. You can tell this by the pat­tern on the front of their bag. Both have bouf­fant Wine­house hair. Except it is blonde in both cases, and the effect is some­what lost by them both being sober and indeed, not singing sewer-jazz.

They chit-chat, flick through style mags at a speed that sug­gests read­ing may make them incon­ti­nent and demol­ish a small land­fill of Marks and Spanks best oral fix­a­tions. Or what is com­monly known in the trade as Not Very Good Sushi. I am pre­tend­ing to be a top per­son and Des­tined For Great Things. I do this by eat­ing jelly while read­ing The Econ­o­mist. In your face, Tory puds!

One of them has fat ankles. Well, in fact I have no idea what a fat ankle looks like. But they sound like a bad thing. And she deserves them. Unless she helps out at a puppy farm. An aban­doned puppy farm. That is, the pup­pies are aban­doned, not the farm. Although the farm could have been aban­doned at some point in time. Yes, that would be allowed. Also, the pup­pies must not be exper­i­mented upon. Espe­cially not for Fat Ankle Syn­drome. Because they were aban­doned. It would be all right if they were bred for it and were pup­pies in name only – in fact being bun­dles of fur that shit every 23 min­utes, yelp and try and fetch a test tube. That would be all right. I think. Well, I don’t know really.

But I digress. Var­i­ous small groups of men get on the train dur­ing the jour­ney. All are mag­net­i­cally, or per­haps pheronom­i­nally (or just plain nom­i­nally), drawn to sit in the next set of seats to the girls. Because, ya know, it’s too fetch to actu­ally sit with them, or engage with them in any way but slobber.

I watch their eyes. Three dis­tinct groups, from dif­fer­ent eth­nic and social back­grounds. And ther eyes betray all of them. Their pupils slide and slither from under­neath sun­glasses or stoned-lids. The sheer force of will by which they are try­ing to alter the path of light­waves so that they Might See a Bt of Muff is incred­i­ble. It’s like Lynx for Physics. I begin to won­der if I am being drawn into a blonde con­tin­uum where men will lose their dig­nity for a hint of gusset.

I feel rather sad, and a lit­tle angry. I want the boys not to look. To show restraint. Despite the tuts and know­ing looks to each other as each group departs, they clearly thrive on atten­tion. And like a fly to a moth, I find myself stor­ing lit­tle details away for future use. And slowly, surely, I fall into their whore-hoorah trap.

Leave a comment