Affected

You had the book tucked in your back pocket and you hoped it would be a conversation starter. You could have carried a briefcase to school or smoked a pipe or any of a million other possible affectations, but you carried that book.

You always wanted to be different to everyone else, socially superior perhaps, or socially inferior. I never knew which and I suspect, neither did you. I liked you. I liked you a lot.

‘I liked the baseball glove description,’ I said to you one day when I saw you slouching home.

‘What?’ you said.

‘Allie’s baseball glove.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ you said.

‘The book that’s in your back pocket, it’s my favourite.’

You looked at me for a long time and then very softly said ‘Oh.’ Then you let me talk for ten minutes about the themes, the characters and their motivations. You just looked into my blue eyes with your brown ones. Finally I ran out of steam and just smiled.

‘I haven’t read it,’ you said. ‘I just know Mark Chapman was carrying it when he shot John Lennon.’

‘Huh?’ I said.

‘Yeah, sorry, I just carry it, but you’ve got a nice voice, I thought I’d just let you talk.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, taken aback, ‘was John Lennon in The Beatles?’

You squinted at me like you were trying to tell if I were joking or not.

‘Come with me,’ you said, ‘you can walk me home.’

So I did.