HOW TO OUTRUN A TSUNAMI
It’s our last day on tour and I’m listening to GLAMOROUS by Fergie in my Airpods because today, I’ve made it to First Class.
Not quite what I expected. Ours is a self-important tweed carriage on a train that’s streaming through somewhere my grandmother would have loved but that’s making me smell shortbread and long term regret.
I’m sat opposite a woman wearing a beard and a Linlithgow Canal Society sweater. We’re both staring through a stately window at what is usually probably grass and quaint countryside but that the speed of this train humbles to a flat green streak.
I treat myself to a moment of private wonder, which is the most underrates benefit of public transportation. I consider the possibility that if I concentrate hard enough, my grandmother Betsy, dead for 20 years, could see what I’m seeing when I think of her. As if conjuring her memory would open a window somewhere in heaven that lets the world in, for her eyes only.
Maybe being dead for a while comes with a tiered loyalty scheme, similar to Scientology’s, which is, by all accounts, a religion not dissimilar from death’s.
What if, after two decades in the ether or being missed intensely by several people at once, whichever comes first, you reach Level 2. The second floor of Death earns you the option of being able to hotspot into the eyes of the people who still remember you, like afterlife WIFI, to see the Eiffel Tower or the next blue moon or the stars in the desert if you never got around to visiting, or if you did.
Maybe that’s why we’re all so hellbent on legacy, on doing something or being someone worth remembering – so we have more perspectives to stream if heaven’s plain or we’re not vibing the scheduled entertainment.
Just a thought.
Speaking of scheduled entertainment, I’m now on the toilet Googling EMIRATES MOVIES LONG HAUL AUSTRALIA. Googling because I have a 46-hour flight from Melbourne to Heathrow tomorrow night. Toilet because the man I’m sat next to keeps looking at my laptop screen and reading along with this.
Yes, hello.
I know you’re not sleeping.
You’ve got pumpkin dip on your tie, by the way.
There’s no reception in the toilet but that doesn’t matter because I’m suddenly incredibly busy trying to stay standing.
It always surprises me how arrogant I can be in these situations. Oh, the train’s writhing around like a garden hose that’s just slipped someone’s grip 300km/h? Of course I’ll be fine to make it to the bathroom without falling into someone’s mushroom tortellini.
For me, living is a 24-hour cycle of giving my body too little and too much credit at the same time. YOU’RE FAT, LAZY AND A WASTE OF CHILDHOOD PROMISE, OF COURSE YOU CAN LIFT THAT 200 POUND BARREL OUT OF THE WAY INSTEAD OF ADDING A FEW MINUTES TO THIS JOURNEY BY WALKING AROUND.
If I’m absolutely honest, I genuinely believe that I could outrun a tsunami. Despite the fact that I’m a hugely poor sprinter and have a tried and tested freeze response to trauma, if I ask myself bluntly, I respond that I’m confident I’ll make it up the mountain with time to spare to lasso up a couple of kids.
Back at my seat, several elbows to heads later, I’m reunited with my primary partner, 4G. New tab. Incognito Mode. Nope, that was for porn. Okay. LINLITHGOW CANAL SOCIETY. Next tab. EMIRATES NEW RELEASES 2022 LONG HAUL PROGRAM.
Bingo.
FEATURE FILMS
MARVEL
ANOTHER MARVEL
MARVEL SEQUEL TO THE PREVIOUS MARVEL
SAD WOMAN BUYS A DRESS THAT CHANGES HER LIFE
BATMAN
Fuck, I miss Jessica Alba. And pre-Ben JLO. And Alicia Silverstone. They raised a generation of films that were televisual prosecco - bubbly, brash, a bit cheap but good company. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that the people need a sequel to Honey. Mostly millennial lesbians with an extra-curricular dance background but let’s be honest, that’s most people. Marvel doesn’t make sense to me. Too much hope and muscle. Romance is the only thing that’s going to get me through the next two days of wet wipes, 50 ways with penne and new levels of neck discomfort. Only a barely plausible storyline set in a New York that doesn’t exist scored by Mark Ronson understands how I’m feeling on this October Wednesday on my train through the lovely villages of the British class system.
^ OKAY I DID NOT KNOW THIS EXISTED BUT I HATE IT
.
Because, after a year long distance, three months on opposing continents and a shotgun wedding in Vegas, I’m finally coming home to my wife.
Here are some facts about this:
1. I haven’t been to my wife’s house since she was my girlfriend.
2. I spent what should have been our honeymoon eating nacho cheese and impotent hotdogs through middle America.
3. I left as ‘separated’ but can now tick both ‘divorced’ and ‘married’.
4. I can’t picture her shoulders.
I can imagine literally everything else – my brain is a circus of faces and phone numbers – but what is the shape of her fucking shoulders? Think.
Blank.
Think.
No, that’s her waist.
Fuck.
I’ve got time, so I decide to do the visualisation exercise that one of my sister’s friends taught me when I couldn’t stop shaking last year for the month of November.
Name three things you can see.
Cup, crossword, menu.
Good.
Now, name three things you can smell.
Sausage, marriage, mothballs.
Good. Now, what do her shoulders look like.
There they are.
I’m starting to picture other parts of her body now so I quickly cut them off. You know, in case Nan’s watching.
Being a wife alone is a strange experience. I think a lot of heterosexual women born before 1984 understand that. My absence is physical but it’s not always this way. Now, standing before the towering fact of being able to touch my wife after six weeks, there’s a dumb joy spreading into my stomach like dark alcohol.
I’ve eaten all the First Class snacks so I fish for the Xanax in my bag that I wrapped in plastic and saved for tomorrow, hoping it will wrestle my excitement into submission. If all else fails, I’ll count the stitches in the headrest in front of me, like always.
I decide to go to the other bathroom before we arrive in Newcastle to take the Xanax. Also see if there’s better WIFI in that one. Of course there is. There’s also a lake of piss, several tissues featuring unexplained short hairs and a nappy holding a full shit in it wedged into the wastepaper basket. The nausea brings my attention back to my body and I realise that Fergie’s still singing G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S in my ears as I sit there with my pants around my ankles in a train toilet trying not to think of my grandmother.
I plan a small routine to perform down the aisle back to my seat to make my travelling companion laugh. He’s doing some very serious work on his laptop and barely looks up as I wave my arms like a particularly awful and unconvincing drag queen.
FIRST CLASS
(arm wave, arm wave)
UP IN THE SKY
(butt jiggle, hip pop)
FIRST CLASS
(gyrate against snack cart)
UP IN THE SKY
(swing on safety bar)
FIRST -
On my last fabulous note, the bastard train swerves hard to the right and I fall straight into the beard of the woman in 16A . She was sleeping soundly and the impact made her cough so hard, I could tell what her choice from the lunch menu was. The chicken, interesting. I’d picked her as a shoe-in for the lentil pot pie. Instead of apologising, I decide to press on and finish the song sentence instead, which would be better and more entertaining for everyone, and half-sing, half-gag the word CLASS! into her left shoulder as the train swerves again to complicate my recovery.
I sit. My phone has opened a new Incognito tab, as if masturbating in front of everyone might be the fix here.
I want to ask the woman is ‘Canal Society’ is code for lesbian club but before I can open my mouth, she gets up, muttering something about the price of a First Class ticket and never comes back.
Despite this, I would like it noted that I will still be outrunning the tsunami.
X TN