A CLEAR NIGHT’S MOON

We’d been on the train less than five minutes when Jimmy said to me,

‘Look at him across there, swinging that fucking phone around, nobody bothered by it, by what it can do.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Anything!’ he shouted. ‘You can go online. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. I read about a nine-year-old kid who got addicted to sniffing up his mum’s hairspray because somebody on some message board told him it was better than crack.’

My mate stares across at the bloke across, stood up, still blabbering into his phone, something about self-love. I’m trying to process how I’ll never look at a can of hairspray the same way again. Nine.

I suppose he’s right. Maybe he’s broadcasting the lot of us. We can’t really know. We’re all worn down. Desensitised to just how much we’re losing touch.

‘You could pick up 5G at a Buddhist retreat, and coordinate an explosion in a shopping centre if you knew where to message someone angry or skint enough, all while reciting mantras under a memorable sunset…’ I nod, watching the bloke who’s sat back down now, checking his video, adding graphics to it. ‘But it’s not enough. It’s all second-hand. Distant. Stretched headlines and recited over-reactions.’

‘Yeah deffo.’ I mumble, not quite understanding him.

‘But if you really wanna make someone squirm… if you really wanna strap someone to everything they spend their lives running from - this moment…’

He reaches under his seat and from his bag, pulls a pen and pad. There are sketches of people on most of the pages and he finds a blank sheet. I never had him down as an artist, but he’s been surprising me all my life, so why not this?

‘…draw them. Doodle them into an anxiety paste. Here, watch.’ He starts to sketch the bloke’s outline, scrawling fast lines, charting the shape of his trendy haircut. It looks like a child drew it, but you can tell it’s him. The bloke doesn’t notice, brings the camera up again, and raises two fingers in a peace V. Then he glances sideways, drops his hand, and gets twitchy. He wheels around.

‘Erm… excuse me, sorry mate, excuse me, what are you doing? Are you drawing me? Don’t you think that’s a bit weird?’

I lock onto my mate and kick his feet under the seat. He turns to face the outraged bloke and to my disbelief, inches a little closer, holding his concentration.

‘What? Am I, like, not here or something?’ He starts scratching himself, visibly overwhelmed by this real thing, this flesh, this confrontation with humanity. He stops talking, thrown by my mate’s composure, needled by this offending object, something he had to use at school, this pen, recording a different truth.

‘If you really want someone to be here with you, to twist them into focus, just draw them.’ The selfie man rives his coat down from the overhead rack and storms out of the carriage, chuntering about being rude.

‘They fucking hate it. People get so used to running around the internet, screaming for eyes, then they get made to sit still, look into a real set of them, and they feel as naked as a clear-night’s moon.’