a roman road

I left my Oyster card at home. I feel my pockets, pointlessly because I know. But, I think, rather than go back and get it, I'll just walk. I'm thinking of that photograph I saw of myself not so long ago; I looked, I'd say, thick in the middle. Lucky I wasn't tagged in that one. But yes I could use the exercise. And maybe something will unwind in my mind, I think, as two buses pass and I walk.

I'm going to be walking the Roman Road, I tell myself, which these days is split into different street names as it passes through neighbourhoods that are hot or has been, washed up, up and coming; it's a route through which art types and nightclubbers have walked for years now. And still amongst them, the immigrant groups and the city's labourers. It's a Roman Road, I tell myself, and still barber shops advertise the '90s Ceasar haircut, and various gelled up styles that nobody has anymore, but I guess they do. This road is dotted with male haircut cards like Hollywood Boulevard and its cinematic stars. The Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jamie has always fancied the haircut men. We call them cheap models, along with the boys who model clothes for JD Sports and Peacock's. Very cheap, that one, I'll tease him as he glances. And often he fancies the Turkish barbers. They look swarthy and sweaty. Some are hanging out the doors and windows now.

I'm thinking about my melancholy, and about how forgetting my Oyster card might be the cure. Because it's making me walk. And then I think melancholy and oyster, are those words both in the title of a Smashing Pumpkins album? (I just looked it up: It's actually a Tim Burton book.)

Ermine Street is what is was once called; that was after the Romans, in Old English. Look it up. I don't know my history but I know this route well, have known it since I moved here, from the opposite direction then. It's where I bought things I needed for the bathroom. I've seen bands play up and down this road. I've never kissed anyone on this road. Not long ago, I fell and landed on my chin on this road and it was really bad and people stopped to check if I was ok, which was nice. When we first moved here, I took the bus ready to go and dance. It's when you could drink on the bus. Down to where it hits Old Street, which really is an old street, you know. That's the very first crossroads of London. Now if you want to dance you go back up to where I used to come from.

I've stood on this route on innocuous summer days, bored. Oh, the luxury of that boredom. I remember Jamie taking a picture of me on one boring day, waiting for the bus; I think on our way to something benign, a barbeque? A maybe barbeque. We were newer in town, it was a fresh start. Every single day felt like maybe.

Just last weekend, I lost something somewhere on this route and that's what I'm thinking about today, and wondering if there's any possibility I could ever get it back.

Walking forward I'm trying not to regret.

Past the mosque and a crazed woman is terrorising a young mum pushing her pram. Can you yell at a young mum like that? Can you do that? "Motherfuckinwhore," she yells at the woman with the pram. I glance back. She wouldn't dare become violent, would she? With a baby, or two, there? I glance back but everyone is probably thinking the same thing: This will amount to nothing. An apparently more well-to-do mum, also with her pram, gazes vaguely at the ruckus with the hint of a smile on her tired face. She may be thinking I'm lucky that's not my life. But she's on the same street.

Up the street, things begin to smell of incense, and then the raw stench of the sea: The young fishmonger has got a moustache and his jeans are tucked into white Doc Martins. It's a good look for a fishmonger, no?

Without a pen, I try to remember shop signs: The notion of "new" gambling at a betting shop. "New roulette." It seems to promise better luck. One sign says, "Fantasy Unisex Hairdressers." What does it mean?

I'm carrying some of our cards and notebooks over my shoulder. I'm going to drop them off at a quiet and pleasant shop and get paid for them. I arrive and the friendly shopkeeper tells me her laptop was stolen a couple weeks back. And she chased the kid out of the shop but she was barefoot, and what could she do. Life has become so complicated on returning to her small old laptop. I see a display of beautiful hand-drawn plates and I'm tempted to request part of my payment in trade. A peacock, and a grizzly bear with the caption around the rim: "What you leave... I EAT!" Who does those? I ask. James just around the corner is the answer. It's on my wish list now. Yes, I think the bear.

I get a couple of looks from cute girls, I think. "It's always an awkward one," Kyle used to say about girls who give looks. When I was with him, he got all the looks, being as many years younger as he was inches taller than me. When they think you're straight, we talk about that. Complimented, of course. Once a girl insisted Kyle could be mistaken for straight and he said, "Me? When I open my mouth, my handbag falls out."

But when I walk past schoolkids I think to myself, don't look at me. Don't look at me. It would just take one to think my jeans are too tight. I don't want to hear the noise of kids yelling, certainly not at me.

So I stop at the gallery and ask, I was just passing by, have you found my thing? They're all being really nice so I try to be relaxed and not say have you found my thing, it's got really important stuff. Instead, I feel like I'm talking in slow motion. The girl giggles at me and we say bye.

But looks can be deceiving. Even this girl I met recently, and I had decided was perfect, she said something in passing the other day, about how when you go deeper, you find the mess. And then when gays are thinking a girl is looking... Well, we were hanging out once and one gay guy said about girls looking at him on the train, and how they're thinking he would give me good babies. And Jamie's sister cried out, you think that's what we're thinking?! Touché. We were drinking Fruli. And on the other hand, someone else I thought was looking at me defensively, and two days later she asked me to hang out. So.

On the way home, I cut through the square with a name like Sartre's lover. I could be in a European suburb, I'm thinking. Except the boy behind me is so typical London. In his straight black jeans, plaid shirt of dark greens and shoes that must be either dirty white plimsolls or faded grey desert boots. One or the other. I can't look back too much to decipher. That'd be staring. So I can't tell you exactly. He's on his mobile speaking with the confidence of a boy who looks like all the others. I wish I looked like that. Long and just slightly wide in the middle, sand coloured and scruffy, just like all the others, and I bet he's got a pair of RayBan Wayfarers somewhere at home if they're not stepped on and broken, and I bet in the winter he wears the same clothes, only maybe with an olive green Barbour. The kind with the shape that you can wear if you've got better shoulders than me, like he does. I've got the one with structure at the shoulders to compensate for my stoop. And, stupidly, I've got it on now; it's actually become warm. It could be mistaken for an actual summer afternoon. Could it be L.A.?

And I'm thinking yes the walk did do me good. I walk over the canal and wish that I had someone with me to go to the Towpath Cafe. You know who. Yes, I'd stop on the canal and it would be so bourgeoise to drink something with foam.

Could it be L.A.? Not when you're scanning for The Shard or The Gherkin to make sure you're turning down the right streets. And not on dirty Hoxton Street, where a sign for a Jamaican jerky joint advertises Guinness Punch. I walk past a salon like a sigh and inside, a black girl sits in front of the mirror, her face absolutely fallen from boredom, her hair sticking straight up while her hairdresser attends to something else. I bet she wouldn't want her friends to see her hair like that. I wonder what she'll look like when she leaves.

I think it was different walking past windows in San Francisco. Everything is magical, enchanted there. Like Stevie Nicks kept saying on the radio the other day: Magical, enchanted. The hell with it, I'm here now. It's a different kind of pleasure. Bigger, wider. There's more room for the drab in-between bits. London, it's like real life on a map.

One last stop, bread. Then to home where I will try to avoid letting sadness sink in. (I'll wind up doing stuff in the kitchen to Bob Dylan, the usual. Just fine.)

The woman at the bakery, as always, calls me young man. Will she call me that forever? I count out one pound twenty in change.