Corporate flight

That morning flight back from Zürich was a glimpse into the macho, bullshit, business life I suppose I could have had. Corporate men compared cocks. I was the only thing that came without a pinstripe. The only person happy not to be alpha. To be seen reading a novel was to look a loser. The plane flew on testosterone. When it landed, it was necessary to move fast, to demonstrate your own importance. It was seven a.m., but no one dared look tired.

So that was perhaps the life I could have had, except I might hate myself all of the time instead of only most.

In the seat to my right a man was busy with a ball point pen, underlining what he must have seen as key sections of a mystifying business' annual report. He underscored almost every word.

Returning home

I returned home to fresh but uninspired graffiti under the railway bridge. To a shirtless black guy sitting on the drug-dealers' bench, unmoved the second time I went past half an hour later. To supermarket queues of every skin tone, united in surly aggression. To avoiding that group of lads spitting.

I returned home to a house that doesn't quite feel the right shape any more, and to a life which doesn't fit as snugly as it once did.

I returned home knowing that what happened never happened.