The good fucked up 2nd Draft/revised version

I’m watching a boy on an escalator. He’s about my age, maybe a little younger (maybe more than a little; it always forget that stuff – I don’t think I’ll ever catch up with myself). He looks tired, but when he walks off and past a couple of emo looking girls – who are pretty much all perfect skinny legs apart from their amazing eyes and cheekbones that make you feel like a camera held from above no matter where you stand – he perks up in this really complicated way. It’s like his body’s way of dealing with its horniness is to take everything in but process it so that he looks more apathetic than before. He slouches upright, all these physical contradictions; cocks his head a little bit, lets his wood brown hair flop over his eyes. It looks like he’s attempting to set off a kind of radar – one that emphasises fucked-upness but it’s ok because it’s genuine. It only comes to the surface so easily because it’s really there. I think I’m trying to say that it isn’t an act. And if it is then it’s just a projection, like someone on a stage that already has a voice but is trying to get it to the people at the back – it’s still the same voice – like I said: a projection. It isn’t a fabrication. As his eyes rip up the stockings and short black skirt and skinny black jeans as the girls go up the escalator I realise that this is an intensely genuine interaction.

The girls must have spotted him. I want to step inside their heads, see how they’re moving his body, how they imagine it to be under his black metal t-shirt.

Everyone has their own reference points. It’s impossibly perfect.

The shopping centre feels cold. The fake air and light doesn’t help.