Train Stiffy

It's difficult to write when, five time zones and an ocean away, far beyond hugging range, someone is wandering around, picking up pieces of her heart and trying to reassemble them into something that works.

That situation is just too awful for words, so I'll be my usual facetious and offensive self and write about my embarrassing stiffy on the train.

It's last friday morning. This time of year, daylight gets rationed and it's dark for the journey to work. A girl takes the seat in front of me. Not a regular commuter. Pretty. Late teens. I'm dozing, in and out of sleep. Joan As Police Woman is playing on my iPod; that nice track where she duets with Antony, you know the one.
After Manningtree, the train is full as usual. Sweaty Bike Man sits next to me, engrossed in his sports pages. Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General sits next to the girl.

Historical note: Manningtree is where Matthew Hopkins, self proclaimed Witchfinder General, started setting fire to any woman with an independent mind; a repulsive perversion which spread rapidly through this country, then across the water to Salem.
Mary Hopkin was a folk singer in the sixties with long, blonde hair. The woman who gets on at Manningtree looks just like her, hence, Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General.
I know I'm not alone in giving other commuters nicknames (I dread to think what they call me). In my carriage, we regularly have have Spike, Wiggy (the toupée from hell), Underbite and Backspace (two dim sports fans from Ipswich), and A Woman Called Horse, among many others.

Anyway, back to the girl … (WARNING: My regular dear readers had better skip the rest of this post as it's unnervingly like porn and I'm deeply ashamed of it, but there you go. God, I'm disgusting. Old Knudson might like it, though) …
She has fake blonde hair and a pageboy bob. I notice that much as we pull out of Manningtree. When it's dark outside, the train windows act like mirrors (albeit filthy ones), and I gradually become aware that the girl in front of me is acting strangely.
She keeps looking all about her at the other passengers, most of whom are dozing like me, then turning furtively to the window. If she'd turn her head a bit further, she would realise that the bloke behind her has a life-sized mirror image of her, not eighteen inches in front of my face (and not just me, but all the blokes behind me) …
What she's doing is this: she is very furtively and alarmingly erotically, sucking her thumb.
She has flicked her hair round to cover her face from the front. Her thumb, already glistening and wet, slips between her lips and, well, she's sucking away like there's no tomorrow.
Normally, I would find this faintly nauseating. I am extremely disturbed, however, to find myself fumbling with my iPod in a desperate attempt to cover a whopping stiffy!
Luckily, Sweaty is more interested in England's dire football team than the trouser mayhem beside him, so I manage to cross my arms over it to hide my embarrassment.
Concentrating hard on the mental image of George Bush doesn't help. I cannot stop myself watching the girl. What the hell is a girl her age doing sucking her thumb? Every time somebody stirs, her head whips round to the front, wet thumb diving for cover. Then she's back again, putting on a private porn show for an old git who is discovering a perversion I didn't know I had. The pretty girl, her eyes darting nervously in every direction but mine, her wet lips, her thumb, the … er … sucking bit …
Suffice to say that, when the train stops at Liverpool Street Station, this newly pervy old man has to sit there for several minutes, rummaging through my bag, shuffling papers, thinking of George Bush and blocked drains and washing up, until my trousers are a more socially acceptable shape and I can walk to work without being pointed to and giggled at.
I am disgusted to discover that I'm a voyeur. Eww! I'm also ashamed that I didn't cough or something to let the girl know I could see her. Yet another justification for my self-loathing.
So mea culpa. A public confession of my pervdom. I throw myself on the mercy of the court …