04/12/04 - Going Bald
I rode the last tube home and stared at the ashen faces lining the blackened bough of the Northern line. I love looking at people. I know it won't last for ever. But right now, I like to read furrowed brows and construct imaginary lives for anonymous faces.
That night the whole row sat opposite me were bald or balding. Like a line of boiled eggs and sparse cress heads. They were blank, miserable or drunk. There was a sebaceous suit boy, an old bloke and a man wearing tap shoes. Tap man had clearly seen a few lovers and lost a few friends. I decided he was a fallen star. He'd been a floppy-haired head boy, captain of the footy team, blond teen love god. Now he was going bald and struggling to deny it under a nasty high-hair do that strained to fulfil its duty of coverage. His face was beautiful but desperately sad.
Maybe losing your hair is like losing your vision. It can't be nice, can it? Do you feel something that's rightfully yours is being forcibly yanked from your possession? Do you mourn the loss of each clump that falls? Do you wonder what it would be like if things had been different; if you'd stayed the way you were? Do you worry that you might become less attractive to everyone else? Are there days when you don't care? And days when you feel so sad you could almost choke on your own throat? I wouldn't know. I've got hair, and lots of it.
11/12/04 - Driving
When I was 16 I had a boyfriend who was a Dutch earl. His father liked giving gifts. One morning over breakfast he presented his wife with an original Matisse, just to say, 'I love you.' On his 17th birthday, the young earl received a sports car to call his own. I counted the days until I was old enough to drive, too. I hoped my dad would give me a 60s Lotus Elan or an Alpine Sunbeam. Instead, I got insured on a 'perfectly good' Capri. But then, after just three lessons, a doctor put a stop to my motoring career before it had even started. My eyes failed their MOT and the diagnosis of inevitable blindness was made. I was wretched with the sadness that I'd never drive. The earl took me to a disused cattle market and gave me the keys to his car. I drove until the tears burned out. I knew it would be the last time I'd be in a moving vehicle alone.
A while later, I dumped him.
Now I wonder if I made the right decision. I could've been rich. I could've had a Matisse. I could've been inaugurated into the landed gentry. Most of all, I could've had a boyfriend with a car to drive me places. Instead, in some cruel twist, I've spent 10 years dating men who can't drive.
I asked my last boyfriend to learn. He said he'd think about it, and put 'learn to drive' along with 'work out how I feel about Rebecca' on a list of 'things to do' that I found shoved down the back of the sofa.
Needless to say, I still walk everywhere.