Friday Night Nausea

I've been feeling strange ever since I caught the train home. Dizzy. These little bouts of nausea come on me every now again, make me wonder if perhaps I have a propensity like my Mum towards a bit of vertigo. Jollyness. Or maybe I'm just fighting something off, one of the flu bugs that are going around, like the one that has laid my dad low for the past few days and given him a blessed legitimate excuse to feel weak and talk about it (sickness has some positive elements to it, for sure). But whatever the reason, I came home and felt uninspired and lethargic, unable to concentrate, cloggy headedly dizzy.

Like the guy I saw on the train on the way home. Who leant over into the aisle and vomited. Leant back in his seat after he hurled three or four times all over the ground. Didn't lift up his face, whether because he was too wasted or too ashamed I'm not sure. Probably because he knew what he would see when he did.

And my heart went out to everyone. Because you're pretty stuffed up if you're off your face and it's just gone 7pm and you're heaving on the train. Because his shame lies right there in the aisle, in the water and the half digested food. Because no one went to help him but we all chose to make ourselves feel superior in comparison to him. Because I had no water on me to take to him and even if I did I didn't think I could traverse the vomit without adding to it and then it would turn into some kind of crazy Monty Python movie (or was it The Simpsons?) with everyone throwing up, and I was already feeling dizzy as it was. Because all the people around were grossed out and switched carriages (through the door connecting the carriages so they didn't have to venture through puke zone). Except for the one older woman sitting diagonally opposite him whose eyebrows were raised right up near her hairline but who seemed bemused rather than frightened or turned off. Because they're all ashamed too but they just have better ways of hiding it, or they've been through that deal already in earlier years, or they managed to miss it completely. Because some of them think that because they go home and watch television every night and nothing else that they are somehow more superior than the boy who vomits in early evening public. Because I once threw up under a coffee table when I was at a nightclub and just kept on drinking. Because once years ago I hung around on a couch with some guy I hardly knew in a darkened nightclub allowing him to do things you shouldn't do in public until we got caught by the club's security person and asked to desist. And I didn't even like him that much. Because the guy who rolled his eyes standing opposite me in the train carriage maybe thought that he somehow missed out on the shame stick but forgets he's ashamed that he can't get off unless it's to porn. Or maybe he's ashamed because he doesn't care about anyone else but himself and he doesn't know how to change it. Or maybe he thinks he's hiding it under Armani and Prada and a nice pair of expensive sunglasses.

Because we all got our little bits of shame and patheticness. Some of us just know how to hide it better than others. Or if we're lucky, some of us got some sort of healing for some of it. And my heart went out to everyone because God's heart goes out to everyone. But surely a little bit extra for that boy.

My dizziness has passed somewhat now, just some residual bits hanging around the edges. Hopefully I will wake up tomorrow and feel good. I hope the boy will too.