Imagine if you will that you are doing an hours commuting into work on a train. This is an extremely boring way to start a day. It’s so boring in fact, that you could easily spend the entire journey intently reading the label on the jacket the guy in front of you is wearing. “40% wool, 60% polyester” becomes the latest blockbuster. You read it eight times in case you missed something important in the plot. You discuss it later with friends in an attempt to figure out the moral. Actually no – you will only do this if you are the type of person who doesn’t find their own conversation amusing (see above). And worse things can happen on train journeys. Sometimes, as your eyes wander, they can meet with somebody else’s and you actually make eye contact. This is awkward for both parties, but more so for the person who was actually caught doing the looking (i.e. The Looker). That person should feel like a pervert or some other class of social outcast. He must take a mental note to never look towards that person again. If he does, he must poke out his eyes with Mr Robinson's cattle prod.
Anyway, the point is that these people are very bored and don’t know what to do with themselves. So it is entirely understandable that they be delighted at the sudden appearance through their windows of a real living person with a big smiley head on him. “At last,” they sigh, “something we can all stare at together” and they divert their attention towards the poor misfortunate outside. So there I was – a smiling distraction for a load of unexcited train occupants. As you might imagine, being unwillingly made the star of the show didn’t go down well with my self-conscious nature. My smile vanished and I got mildly embarrassed. Actually I blushed a little. What am I talking about – so much blood rushed to my face that it became an erection. Then the usual happened. In situations like this, where it’s clear that embarrassment is inevitable, my composure deserts me. It sizes up the situation and decides it’s better off on the other side. “You’re on your own mate” are its parting words and, if I listen carefully, I can sometimes hear it mutter “loser.” So in its absence, my body went haywire. I started to sweat. I went through a series of hot and cold flushes. My face began to twitch like a worm during orgasm and my pupils dilated like a hedgehog’s in headlights. None of this helped to divert attention. So I tried to talk myself into believing nobody was looking. It’s a trick mammy taught me when the big boys in school laughed at my 'faded salmon' t-shirt or my brown cardigan. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy wipe the window with his sleeve and point at me. Goddammit, mammy’s “trick” didn’t work back then and it doesn’t work now. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. I’m grown up now and I have to look cool. Wanting to look cool is natural in these situations. Particularly if there is a babe on the train. Then you’re under real pressure to be slick. I mean, you’re sitting in a rail-station waiting for a train so it’s unlikely you will have too many opportunities for slickness. And yet you feel like you must ceremonially kill the nearest bull with a red cloth and penknife, catch the congratulatory flowers between your teeth, and walk away in the limping manner caused by the enormous crotch of a hero. Back in the real world however, you just sit there with the words “Hi, I’m Toby and I’m seven” written in blue crayon across your face.
So what did I do, when faced with this pressure? I started humming to myself and staring casually at everything in the vicinity except the faces on the train. Cigarette butts and really small pieces of dirt became fascinating. My hope was that if I stared for long enough at something, my audience might do so aswell. “Oooh look,” I said, “a squished piece of chewing gum. I wonder whose mouth that was in? Do you think it might have been a famous person’s?” Of course they never buy it. They’ve been in the same situation themselves and want to exact revenge. They speared me with their stares. “Squirm, little man,” they said. “Squirm.” They said this to themselves, of course. Saying it out loud would be crazy, and they’re not crazy. Just evil. Trying to out-stare them was useless. I was outnumbered. I felt like a caveman surrounded by raptors. So I just gave up and laughed at my embarrassment. There was no way out. Unless I was airlifted by my pet pterodactyl. The thing I noticed though was that I was being stared at an abnormal amount, even by my paranoid standards. I feared that there must have been something really embarrassing about my appearance. Mentally I ran through a checklist of such things that had happened before. Were my Superman Y-fronts visible through my open fly? No. Was there a big booger doing a bungee jump from the end of my nose? No. Was there a dog “rubbing” himself against my leg? No. So what was up with these people? “Stare at the goddam chewing gum, you bunch of wierdos!” But they didn’t. They continued to stare. Eventually, after about nine years, the train left and took all the scumbags with it. My composure reappeared, apologised, and asked if I’d have it back. I accepted and soon I was feeling cool again. My smile returned because I was talking to myself again and, God knows, I am a fierce, funny man.
Then my train arrived and I jumped on-board. I took a seat by a window. It was directly in line with the seat on the platform at which I’d been. There was nobody to see me, so I began pointing and staring at some pretend sad fool sitting there and staring at chewing gum. Then a guy sat on the bench. He couldn’t settle for some reason, and started to shuffle to exactly where I’d been. I guess I’d left a warm patch. Bums are very good at detecting warmth like that, "Thermotropism” I think it’s called. Our science teacher was prompted to lecture us on it after Matthew Jones, who’d been out the night before and came to the lab to sleep, lost his eyebrows in an entanglement with a Bunsen burner.
Anyway, as soon as this guy settled I saw what had been so interesting to the people on the train. On a poster behind him was a sign bearing the station name. But his shoulder obscured part of it. Suddenly it all became clear. The train people hadn’t been unnecessarily curious – I would have done the same in their position. And then I asked myself: “Should I tell him ?”
“Nah, shag it!” I answered. “Let him sit there in Arse Station”.
