The Punk by Stephen McEwan
The only punk our town ever had was sitting two seats away and for five minutes I didn’t notice. Well, ten years had passed since I’d seen him and anyway I was half-asleep, only after dragging myself up and peering over did I glance once then twice at the familiar face. Studying him for a number of seconds, I assumed at first he was an ex-neighbour or maybe the elder brother of an old schoolmate. It took me some time to realise; I mean he couldn’t have looked more different if he’d worn a disguise.
Then it clicked.
Actually, he kind of was wearing a disguise.
He was wearing a suit.
On that early morning bus, coming back from a rare hometown visit, I thought back to my early teens and to when he’d first turned up. That’s what he just seemed to do; he strolled out of nowhere, his hands tight in his bleached denims, his hair spiky and gold, and his jacket splattered and bright. By this time, the mid-eighties, punk was completely dead, but the way he'd make his way around that new town concrete, shooting back grins at the dreary, predictable insults, he seemed the only one there who was alive.
He didn’t hang around the town much, I didn’t see him near the pub or the older kids’ disco, instead I mostly spied him, as if he knew he didn’t belong and had no intention of doing so, either heading towards the bus stop or coming back. But it wasn’t always like that. Sometimes, hanging about the shops with my mates, I’d notice him visiting a girl in the chippy, and as he hung chatting over the counter I’d read the bands scrawled on his jacket, memorising the ones I didn’t know. I might sneak a look at some of his badges as well, or find out what I’d previously just guessed at, like there was really was a green bike-lock around his neck, and he had toast crusts, yes, toast crusts, taped to his back. And he also had a frayed leather strap around his wrist that always looked quite close to coming off. It never did though, and I thought he loved that strap so much he fixed it back every other night.
And as I stared, the depressing ordinariness about him now made clear that all those years I’d been wrong. I’d always assumed he’d moved to my town when I was about twelve, I mean one day he didn’t seem to exist and the next he just did. But I now knew this wasn’t true; he’d lived there as long as I had, I only hadn’t known from the start because he hadn’t always been a punk. And not only was I wrong to think he’d just suddenly turned up, I realised he hadn’t disappeared either; he hadn’t gone away and he was still there now- it wasn’t the town he got sick of, it was punk, he'd just shaved his hair, dumped his clothes and melted back into the crowd.
And I’d have thought that was fair enough as well, I mean it’s understandable if it had happened after hearing something exciting and new. But although he might well have ditched X-Ray Spex for acid house, I thought it more likely it was Thatcher he’d got into. Well, why not? He wouldn’t have been the first punk to pack it all in at a whiff of cash and besides, what was I looking at now? I mean really, moving on is fine but did he have to move on to that? Did he have to be wearing a suit and going to work in an office? Did he have to put as much effort into polishing his shoes as he did creating his jacket? And did his hair really need to be in a neat, dull side-shed?
Monday mornings were usually bad but this felt like a thousand of them had landed on my lap, my day felt ruined and I hadn’t even got to work. I couldn’t help it, I just wasn’t able to believe this had happened to the guy who’d once looked like he lived on a different planet, who’d sprang round the streets while everyone else trudged, and who’d influenced my record buying just by scrawling names on his back. I felt like screaming out Babylon’s Burning down the bus just to see what he’d do, but I didn’t of course, I just kept gazing sadly at the back of his head, and after a while he pressed the buzzer, stood up and straightened his jacket.
He moved slowly down the bus and I realised, as he did so, that he was right, that this kind of thing happens to everyone, you’ve got to do what you can to get by, and dressing smartly for work, it’s hardly a crime. I still wondered what had happened though, I really wanted to know. But I realised I wasn’t going to find out.
The bus came to an unexpected shuddering halt then, and he grabbed for the pole above, the sleeves of his suit and shirt sliding up his arm.
And I saw it.
I saw where he had gone.
Nowhere.
He was still a punk.
The leather strap was hanging.
It was more frayed than ever.
But it was there.
