Khaki Man

The tall man in various shades of khaki tries to make his legs shorter in the train seat opposite another tall man so as to avoid the embarrassment of their legs touching.   He wears a khaki beanie pulled low to the level of his greying eyebrows and the lobe of his ear, which still bears the mark of the gold earring which had previously resided there.   His sage green hand knitted scarf is knotted under a large clean shaven face on which live two blue eyes each fringed with dark eyelashes, a large nose, and a long mouth held tight in a thin line across its bottom quarter.  The deep sagging skin below each eye and his florid complexion tell of a longish life thus far.

He clutches a faux leather briefcase tightly to his stomach with his large hairy hands, the fingers of which are adorned with an array of silver rings, and from each wrist dangles a bright hand knotted friendship bracelet reminiscent of school girls in some long lost youthful summer.  On his left wrist is a large white strapped watch which he taps every couple of minutes with one neatly manicured finger.    The legs in his faded black jeans jiggle with impatience, and his white sneakers with criss-crossed laces are keen to go.

He used to be a long distance truck driver hauling freight overnight between Melbourne and where ever else it needed to be by dawn.   He had been a man’s man back then, booze and birds and late nights in truck stops.  He’d had a fight in a pub up at Gonn Crossing sometime in the mid 90’s, when a fierce ugly bastard had punched his face and broke a couple of his teeth.   The local dentist had repaired his chipped incisor with gold the following day. 

 Now he works for the Government as youth services counsellor.  He’s gay, and was always gay but it took a while to figure that out. He’d had a couple of kids with a woman who lived in a dusty little town just across the border in SA but he never married her.  Hasn’t seen the kids for more than a decade, they didn’t want to know him when they found out he’d turned gay.