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'My Corduroyed Life' - Mark A's Journal
This is an experiment in my ability to use third person and metaphor...
Have fun,
M
As he walked down the street, the twenty something young man couldn't help but smile. He was on his way to meet the guy who he'd been seeing for a couple of weeks and had his most recent musical purchase, Enemy of the Enemy by The Asian Dub Foundation, playing at granny upsettingly loud levels in his personal CD player. Retail therapy and the affections of a fit guy: it had been a good couple of weeks.
With his short brown hair that was due a cut and week old stubble, complemented by part rimless glasses and the aforementioned smile, whilst clad in bootcut khaki chords, a T-shirt proclaiming his love of the Band Gomez, and a somewhat battered suede coat that looked like it had seen a lot of good nights out, the man strode through Eccles towards his bus stop. Upon arrival, he noticed an old man, maybe late fifties, sitting on the bench underneath the bus shelter.
The man then gave out an almighty cough: a horrible, hacking cough that sounded like it was extremely painful. The kind of cough that you might associate with someone who was very, very ill. The kind of cough that can distract a music obsessed twenty something from his loudly playing combination of hard ragga-jungle rhythms, indo-dub basslines, searing sitar inspired guitars and 'traditional' sounds gleaned from parents' record collections, shot through with fast-chat conscious lyrics (ADF Website).
It was at this point that he noticed the older man's fingers, and was close to retching. Between the old man's forefinger and middle finger was a cigarette: pincered so tightly, with an obvious desperate need, that the soft filter was squeezed into a deformed vase like shape. The ash flaked off like a miniature, grey, cancerous snowstorm. His fingers were like the young man had never seen before. The foul discoloured yellow of a two day old bruise a permanent fixture over the entire two fingers and the majority of the rest of the hand. Even worse were the nails on those two fingers: yellow, withered and cracked with visible ridges running through like a freshly raked part of a Zen garden that someone had pissed in. By far the worst was the two dark brown marks that spanned from just above the middle knuckle and just past the second. Two dark brown marks either side of the cigarette where the skin had literally cooked, and resembled overdone sausages on a cheap barbecue.
The young man watched in awe as the old man hacked out another cough, and spat phlegm into a riffy handkerchief, and then proceeded to light another cigarette from the still burning end of the previous one.
The young man had always prided himself in his 'each to their own' carefree attitude and belief in liberty, but the sight of the old man had sickened him. He thanked goodness that he had never smoked...
Current mood:
distressed.Current music: Fortress Europe by Asian Dub Foundation.