Every day from my window I see a young man walking home in the afternoon. His skin has a sallow pallor to it, bleached white from interminable hours spent in front of the computer (most likely levelling up his Paladin on Dungeons & Dragons online). He is rotund – not portly or jolly of which those particular words imply years of eating decadent meals and laughing heartily amidst grandchildren. He is fat in the pathetic sense. His calves are strong and sturdy like that of a weightlifter, enlarged from having to carry the burden on extra weight for so many years, like the strain a net may feel when it holds too large a mass of roiling tuna.
His face intrigues me. He is baby faced, and his ginger beard has the hallmarks of a man who is still a boy and has never shaved once in his life. It is that soft, limp growth: a fuzz, if you will, grown too long and yet still distinguished as a beard. My facial hair is bristly and hard – it reminds me of a stout English soccer fan. His beard is reminiscent of a vegan thespian, too poor and ethical to afford a sirloin. And his eyes, a startling blue even from a distance, are beady behind thick glasses. They remind me of a Teddy Bear’s black button eyes: all gloss no glimmer.
His Akubra hat speaks volumes of Indiana Jones worship. He lionises the subject, made it his own as no other could. A daring outdoor explorer trapped in this fleshy prison (which rarely sees the light of day).
He walks in a slow gait, ambling almost. It’s as if he has all the time in the world. Maybe he delays himself from his reality? A solitary existence, living with his parents.
He wears a backpack, nostalgic and so apt for this innocent and naïve man-boy. I wonder what he carries in it? Fantasy and Sci-Fi books, thick tomes of escapism. I wouldn’t know.
To me he is a contradiction, a curiosity: chubby cheeks, wearing a beard; a carefree tempo to his pace, yet an internal monologue riddled with self-doubt; a man not quite a boy not quite a child.
And every day I see him walk past, his existence somehow pertinent in my thoughts.
He intrigues me so.