Domestic bliss in our household was distorted by Dad's angry rages as my eldest sibling traded Civvy Street for a trip across the Irish Sea; gone but never to be forgotten. Our family disintigrated and I asserted my independence by running away to the big city with its leather strap-hangers and hot labyrinthine world.
The over-populated tunnels represented my badge of courage, of growth and self-reliance and in my immaturity I fled my youth in the clunkety-clunk of the red Circle Line.
Pushed and crushed, people everywhere, surrounded me. Men with grey, careworn faces and brief cases banged my shins.
"Don't cross the yellow line. Stand back and mind the gap."
The horrors of the third rail awaited the unwary, so I kept well back from the edge with its push and crush. Death crept down the steep, rickety escalator one early morning in June, into the bustling hub below, a man ran breathlessly past, tripped and fell. Crumpled in a bloody mess at the bottom, he'd reached his final destination. I became a fully-fledged commuter that bright, sunny morning with averted eyes. Life in the big city.
A romance ended in Bakerloo-brown,
"I'll never love you enough." A bravura performance as the doors closed with a defining thud; a curtain call with an electric whine. He remained on the platform as I nursed a broken heart and boldface screamed from above the crease,
"Bolan is Dead!" The sun continued to rise in the east and I survived, as the world still turned, although I was a little sad about Mark.
Some said my adventure was reckless and would be the end of me, but they couldn't see the freedom I thought it would provide. Strange freedom, commuting to the 9-5 grind, shoe-horned in, air so heavy and fetid, uncomfortably close strangers--what a way of life. I tried to ignore it but never could feel safe, just vulnerable and far too exposed, arm in the air hanging on to that bloody strap. And desperately remembering to mind the gap.
Hot,putrid breath on my face with no escape. Acrid stench of sweat and unwashed bodies in my nostrils. Panic pushed its way into my consciousness while I tried so hard to avoid breathing in the stink, wanting to retch over and over.
I'd heard the stories of course, dismissing them in my naive way--until that moment--until the dismembered hand on my breast, between my legs--groping, pinching,squeezing. At first I couldn't tell who he was--where he was-- but then I saw them, eyes so cruel and mocking, lustful, hard. Disgusted, humiliated, I wanted to shout.
“Why can nobody see this perversion ? Do something--somebody!” But nobody gave a damn down there in subterranean hell-- no eye contact, no involvement; the commuter's law. Embarrassment clawed its way up from the centre of my being and lit my face with burning crimson fingers.
Oh how I wished I could have reached his groin with my knee, but instead I took an earlier stop and in all my glorious independence, stepped across the gap, weeping and quivering to core, dirty and defiled. I laugh about it now but somewhere between Bond Street and Oxford Circus I aged ten years that morning in my quest for adulthood and life in the big city.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.