Anyway, afterwards we were waiting for the train, not totally sure of the direction the night would take from there on. We were mulling it over in typically classy fashion, each with a can of imported 'premium' lager in hand (there's just something good about casually drinking on a train, right?). We were discussing (I can't remember what we were discussing, so let's just say we were talking about the merits of cans) when I heard the guy on the next bench over make a spitting noise. It was the sound of what in common parlance is often called 'hocking a loogie'. I then felt something land on my back.
I could not fucking believe it. It couldn't be true.
I stood up. I turned round. I heard myself say 'did you just spit on me?... You have, haven't you?' Unbelievable as it was, I knew it had happened before I dared to look. I took off my jacket, and presented a man dressed in a suit with the spit and phlegm he had just fired onto my clothing. The man was jabbering, 'that's well out of order... that's really out of order' like it was someone else that had done it. I assume he said sorry and acknowledged his guilt at some point, but I can't really remember. My senses were dulled by shock. I said something along the lines of 'I think you'd better wipe it off, don't you?'.
Then, for what seemed like an eternity, this unspeakable nitwit actually tried to pick off the spit (something between a solid and a liquid) with his forefinger and thumb. After the aforementioned eternity, he realised he was going to have to wipe it off with the sleeve of his hopefully expensive suit, which he did.
Eventually we sat back down, the world seemingly the same as before the event. But somehow it wasn't. At some point Dave had run away - the poor lamb couldn't handle the embarrassment. Upon his return, Dave, Alex, and eventually me, couldn't stop smiling. We needed to laugh. So we did. The situation was just so fucking ridiculous, we had to. To add to the hilarity, after about a minute of this, Johnny Spitz got up, walked down the platform and stood somewhere else. But we could still see him. And we kept laughing.
I don't know what we said in the aftermath. I think we discussed how the man had managed to spit on me, seemingly by accident. He was surely aiming for the floor, and it wasn't like it was windy. We went home and I think we had a reasonably deep conversation about something else entirely.
Being spat on was strangely life affirming. Because it was so weird, so unlikely, and ultimately so funny, It felt like confirmation that experiencing life sometimes includes things that can't be fully explained.
Yes, that's right: I'm concluding that one's life experience is all the richer for having been spat on by a man in a suit.
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| Illustration by Alex Spencer |
