Auto-Sear

There was a guy on the 7 train today. The Guy bears describing in-full: he was a tall guy in, well, I’ll go from top to bottom as best I can: in Elvis Costello glasses, and a black billycock hat wherefromunder some of his gray buzzcut showed, and a silver nose ring, and big silver hoop earrings coiled like the cord of an old landline phone, in a black and white hooped shirt like a mime might wear, and a felt black vest like a mime might also wear, and a pleated black jean skirt. Actually he’s not so tall after all- he’s wearing big shit-kickin’ platformed jackboots with 5″ heels. And he’s covered in tattoos: squids and snakes and butterflies; pentacles and an hourglass and an Aum.

But the centerpiece is what he’s wearing around his neck: on an asymmetrical silver chain the bleached jawbone of some creature. Biggish creature, by the looks of it; a caribou or deer or some other woodland ruminant. It’s this centerpiece in fact that sets the scene to motion: someone else on the train comes up to ask The Guy about the jawbone. Why a jawbone? Because The Guy has always been fascinated by teeth, and the Tooth Fairy, and the fact that they’re our only visible bones. Before you know it, two other people are talking to The Guy as well, about childlike wonder, magical realism and teeth. And what of The Guy himself’s teeth? He’s got an endearing gap- slightly stage left of center. Odd spot for a tooth gap. I wondered what it must be like to be a Guy like this. (Whose name, I overhear, is either Rhett or Brett. I prefer to believe it’s Rhett- something slightly more magical about the name Rhett.) 

Rhett’s got a suitcase with him; he’s either from somewhere or going somewhere. I wonder what it must be like to be him, human conversation canopener,  attracting and entertaining fascination and conversation wherever he is, wherever he goes.