(vignette 14) Paramour

Boy jes stan prety an i no wo u be, read the graffiti scrawled on the station wall.  It was a language that predated the social network, yet was all the more social in its intent.  A deviance from the impersonal society of the underground.  If there was anything at issue with the words, other than the spelling, it was that too many boys were making themselves approachable.  And, it wasn't clear just who the narrator was.  Some mornings, it seemed that everyone was watching while everyone was tempting.  The narrow platform was at once a stage for those headed in the opposite direction while, on their own side, a Gaza Strip or, more like, Amalfi Coast.  It was both their prison and their playground.  Something to perk me up in the morning, Johnny's friend, Jeremy, confided.  To ensure that I am at the top of my game before I set one foot in the office.  This came from the man who vowed that he'd never seen an off-Broadway play without at least one naked man.  There came a point at which Johnny stopped listening, stopped caring.  And, that was when he banished himself to, as his friends called it, "the hinterlands" of a college town.

This morning, as the A14 slowly tread its way toward the city's edge, the queues were verbal, not scrawled out on a wall.  Spittle rather than a marker painted words that spoke of desire.  A more matured desire.  One that lusted after objects rather than bending to the objects of lust.  Concretized, it lacked the subtlety of the subway platform.  It was as crude as a bad joke while being innocent of double entendre's playful turn of phrase. 

The old married couples who'd boarded the bus together while still not far from Johnny's home personified this new paradigm.  Boisterous to a fault.  The volume of their voices edged up on foundations of poor hearing and road noise.  The mobile-phone voice of the man, confessing his infidelities, at the back of the bus, was more private.  Man, she had a sweet cunt, he objectified the woman he'd slept with the night before.  The old couples, oblivious to his crude boasts, had already lost themselves in their own conversations.

The first couple boarded the bus, the old lad following his wife, guiding her up the steps, his hand on her elbow.  Though she regarded it as a kindness, it was clearly something of a hindrance.  He followed her up the steps and to her seat, waiting for the next couple who followed in similar manner.  Their actions had the casual appearance of a bye-gone chivalry.  The women took seats together while the men shuffled away to sets a few rows back.  Johnny was amused to think that their generation suspected same-sex bonding of leading to simple sex.  They suspected men in particular.  A man not tied down in marriage was a man who gave way to idle hands and a quickening penis.  It was an open secret that even marriage was a lock that could be picked, pried open perhaps with sweet words at work, or, more like a dogwinkle, a salivated tongue slipping at first into the throat of a working girl after a few drinks celebrating the end of a hard day.  Men who found themselves together, both in public and private places, were expected to talk about masculine things, to review the previous night's football game in the way that the man at the back of the bus was reciting every acrobatic tumble over the woman whom he referred to as a lumpy mattress.

These two old codgers held forth to their generations norm.  With the summer sun beating down on the passing streets, the first spoke as if a younger man in love.  I've a new paramour, he proclaimed excitedly.  She's a bute! he continued.  A troubled look slid over the face of the other man.  Like a novice in a Mexican wrestler's mask, he responded cautiously.  You're wife doesn't know? he asked.  Does she?  The answer was shocking.  Of course! The question puzzled the first man.  Why wouldn't she? Eve Margaret, he spoke proudly, knows everything.  It was a curious case.  The second man would never tell his wife.  Hell, he thought, I'd never do such a thing.  Couldn't.  Not to Georgie!  It seemed the first man wasn't even trying to make a secret of his affair.  Evie knows I bought her.  His tone seemed crassly matter of fact.  I think she's even seen me ride her.  The conversation was becoming crude.  His friend spoke, That kind of language just debases you, Freddie.  What! Freddie protested.  I'll let ya have ago on her too if it makes ya feel better.  The second man felt no better at the suggestion.  Why do you even need a paramour at your age?

The boy listening from the seat across the aisle held a puzzled look on his face.  One eyebrow drooping while the other was raised.  Paramours, Johnny surmised, must have gone out of fashion.  People didn't have the time anymore, he thought.  Even hookers were now hos.  Lover, Johnny turned to give the boy a definition.  Someone's gotta cut the grass, Freddie replied.  And, I'm too old to push the damned mower across the lawn.  I should have a heart attack, he demanded, to keep you becoming jealous?  The boy smiled, thinking of his granddad: LOL, he thought, meant "Lots of Love".  You bought a power-mower! Freddie's friend shouted!  And, you should see how much he loves it, Eve Margaret testified.

A bus ride is like a border crossing.  For Johnny, who didn't drive, it was a life-line.  From home to work, he was a day-tripper whose home country was bisected by another.  Many of the conversations he overheard came from a foreign culture, with a logic different from his own.  Ladies, Freddie had excused himself as he and his mate trundled off toward their seats, was a term that not only came out of foreign customs but out of times past as well. 

From seats unconcerned with the forward progress of the bus, the women looked out onto the passing shop-fronts and yards.  The second wife was the first to speak.  My, how lovely, Georgie said without a reference.  I know.    .  .  .  I know.  said Evie, the first wife, unintentionally evoking Fawlty Towers, the British sit-com.  Theirs was the language of two people who'd known one another for some time.  They endeavoured to think as one.  Whomever spoke first, the other would offer her support.  A pause gave cause to complete the other's thought.  And, the logic of conversation flowed like a watercourse, wending its way around impediments, seeming to avoid them, all the while wearing them down.  Today, as the bus passed estates with grand front lawns, the women saw the world as if paintings framed by the bus windows.

I have seen that one before! Georgie announced.  She was already searching her memory of fading images for the exact one when Evie suggested that it reminded her of a masterpiece recently stolen from a Dutch museum.  Prin temps done mid-E, she suggested.  Yes! Georgie was pleased that Evie knew her well enough to read her mind, that's the one.  It is, indeed.  They shared a giggle at the thought that they should notify the "po-lease".  Her accent gave Evie away as a southerner.  Whatever do they do with a stolen painting? she asked.

Both women, as both men, were smartly dressed.  It appeared as though for a garden party while sitting for in a nineteenth century painting.  They, themselves, might have been accosted if not for their age.  The women styled themselves as the British Queen.  They wore dresses that defied wrinkles.  Cut to hide the faults of their aging bodies.  These were masterworks of off-the-hook design.  Obviously, Johnny told himself, the work of a gay man.  Even the selection of cloths of pastel colours complimented their pasty skin.  The colours, as their voices, demanded recognition.  It was as if, Johnny thought, he was looking at an Andy Warhol interpretation of a fifteenth century adoration.  "Made for the modern mature woman." he imagined the ad campaign launching the designer's work.  Front button design freed them both from the acrobatics of zippers running up the back and from husbands, whom statistics suggested would soon be dead.  It appeared that the women had made some effort as well to acquire copies of the Queen's hats.  Though not in colours matching their dresses, they were an extravagance nonetheless.  All they wanted for were the delicate white gloves that the 1960s put aside.

What would they do with a stolen painting! Georgie seemed to have been reproached by the question as she turned from her idle.  The question sullied the view.  Left it violated, as the museum had been violated.  Her head turned with a crispness lent to it by irritation.  A sharp, mechanical motion in which Johnny saw her hat transformed into a gunner's turret.  Why, she fired off, they cut it up into vignettes, of course.  The logic was as unassailable as the view from the window.  A landscape sniped and parsed into snapshots.  Gone in the blink of an eye.  It fell to a school girl, seated opposite, to explain, That's daf!  Whether or not the word made sense to the old girls didn't matter.  It might have been intended to say "deft" or "daft" or something wholly new and foreign.  The old girls fell silent on the news.  Johnny, himself, was learning to cope with the new language, the rise of the metaphorical as it fell from the mouths of those around him.  This was age.  Need had replaced desire even in patterns of speech.  People today, he told himself, would die if un-sated.  It was as though everything was a morsel of food in the footpath of a starving man. 

The school girl was dressed in the uniform of one of those inner-city schools that was trying to turn itself around.  She was a tough girl.  That much was clear.  Scuffed shoes gave her away.  The chipped paint of fingernails suggested even that she might be a fighter.  She'd drawn herself into the old woman's sphere.  It is, isn't it, darling.  Evie agreed.  The tenor of her voice was forceful but not scolding.  Yes, ma'am.  the young woman replied, using language she probably reserved, Johnny thought, for her grandmother or for Sunday services.  Always lovely, Georgie popped in as though the second of a tag-team wrestling duo.   .  .  .  Always lovely to meet an out spoken young woman.  If the school girl understood that these were fighting words, she didn't let on.  In our day, Evie rejoined the battle, women weren't expected . . .    Allowed, dear, Georgie interjected.  Yes, allowed, Evie continued, to voice their minds.  This emboldened the young woman.  Kidnappers don't carve up children, she argued.  Everyone on the bus except for the man at the back, who was still relating the details of his conquest, knew that the girl was wrong.  Tut-tuts and coughs of disagreement rippled through the bus.  The fate of children, Evie said, now scolding, is quite another matter.  Not that we don't care, Georgie interjected feigning a pause to catch her breath, to wish you well.  But, Evie returned to the fray, a painting is so much less precious than a child.  They were, Johnny thought, being kind.

No! shouted the man at the back of the bus.  No, damn you!  He was standing now.  A stud, thought Johnny, not objectifying the man as much as he felt he had a right to, with disdain.  She's younger you, fucking prick.  It seemed he was going to get off at Johnny’s stop.