Sleeping With Drag Act And Lefty

I bumped into Drag Act in the car park this morning.
We smiled and said good morning and headed off to the train together, parting as we sought out our regular seats, which prompted me to continue where last week's "Some People I Slept With" post left off, describing the many and varied denizens - fellow damned souls - with whom I share my seven-hour-a-day commute from Hell.

Drag Act has been journeying with me across the Styx for at least five years now, yet I still have no idea what her name is.
She is a lovely, friendly woman who I imagine is in her late fifties, but it's difficult to tell because of all the make-up.
Not that she plasters it on, trailer-trash style; oh, no! It is immaculate, as is her hair and her clothing.
All three are merely unfortunate, that's all …

Let me describe her …
She must get up around midnight each week-night to give herself time to do "that" hair.
She wears a massive, and I mean MASSIVE back-combed, eighties, peroxide "blonde" frothy confection on her head.
It is a work of art but it is also strangely hilarious.

Her make-up is, as I have said already, immaculate; it's just that her lipstick is a leeetle too vampirically red and her mascara just a teensy bit too lashy for comfort.
I may have been watching too much Buffy, but when she smiles I want to take a step backwards just in case she goes for my throat.

Her suits - she always wears suits - are beautifully tailored; navy or black single-breasted jackets (and yes; shoulder pads are big for Drag Act) and pencil skirts with a white, slightly frilly blouse.
She completes her ensemble with seamed stockings (black) and black stilettos.

All of which probably makes her feel fabulous but actually makes her look the spitting image of Lily Savage (Colonials should Google our Lil … a truly glorious drag queen).

Drag Act is a lovely lady but I can't imagine her doing the washing up in anything other than long, black gloves.

Sharing a carriage with Drag Act and me is - among others from last week's post - the bona fide baffling nutjob that is Lefty.

Lefty had been a regular for many months before I noticed anything strange about him - other than that he is in his late thirties but still mistakenly wears that stupid "footballer", flicky-up-at-the-front gel hairdo, that he will look back on in years to come with deep and deserved shame and anguish.

Lefty is a therapist's wet dream; he has the most wonderful and entertaining affliction; one that I couldn't quite believe the first time I noticed and that took me several days of frankly obsessive stalking to verify.

This is what makes Lefty the strange and … er … special person he is:
Lefty simply cannot bring himself to turn right.

This is absolutely true.
When faced with a 90º right-hand corner the poor bastard instead turns 270º to the left to end up facing the way he needs to go.
He seems to have developed quite a cool little pirouette that doesn't attract much attention; he just looks like a guy who's realised he's going the wrong way and changes direction.
But the truth is - and I've travelled with him for years now so I know whereof I speak - the guy simply will not turn right.

At all.

EVER!

He has, however, developed coping strategies.
When he exits the turnstiles at the end of the platform at Liverpool Street Station he has to turn right and right again to head down onto the Central Line, but the canny bastard craftily SIDLES to the right while still facing forward until he reaches the Central Line entrance and then spins a 180º left turn to head down the tunnel.
Cunning!
On numerous occasions when the weather has been too crap for my five mile walk across the city I have caught the tube with Lefty.
Jammed like sardines into the stinking morning carriages he very gradually shifts and shuffles around to the left until he is facing the correct door. Almost imperceptible unless you are actually watching him do it.
What's more; he never faces the door straight on - just in case someone like me nudges him off line and forces him to turn all the way around again … no; he always faces about ten degrees to the right of straight on, so that when the doors open he has a little lefty leeway in the scrummage to get out safely.

I have no idea what psychological trauma in his childhood might have kicked off this tic; this unfortunate loss of the ability to turn right, but I know that an awful lot of people suffer from similar compulsive actions - though rarely one as amusing to watch as Lefty's - and cannot find a way to stop once they've started.

I once had a girlfriend who - if we were walking along, holding hands - would freak if it looked like we were about to walk one either side of a bollard or some other obstruction like a dog or a small child.
She confessed to being scared shitless that if that happened she would suddenly find herself all alone in an alternative reality with no way of getting back.

The mind is indeed a wonderful, strange and hugely amusing thing.

Anyhoo … Here's to Drag Act and Lefty.
One day I'm going to have to kidnap Lefty, carry him to the middle of Somerleyton Maze and then film him trying to get out.