Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [133]
280 Encounter, Catharsis, Flight
But messages, he thought, were different. In having something written on one’s clothing – written on the outside, be it noted – one was effectively making oneself into a walking billboard. This meant that one’s clothing could make both a passive and an active ideological statement. The red shirt with the head of Che Guevera said: I sympathise with the struggle. And if this message was not clear enough, one could add the words la Lucha underneath. If one was really radical, then an exclamation mark could be added to that. Thus people whose shirt said la Lucha!
were likely to be seen as far more credible activists than those timid souls whose shirts merely said la Lucha. And of course Spanish was mandatory for such messages. It didn’t sound quite the same to have on one’s shirt the word küzdelem, which is Hungarian for “struggle”.
The whole point, though, of having writing on one’s shirt was an exhibitionist one. To draw attention to oneself through clothing is exhibitionist, and of course, as Dr Fairbairn knew very well, exhibitionism was a substitute for real giving, real intimacy. The exhibitionist appears to be giving, but is actually not giving at all. He trumpets out the message Look at me, but he does that only to avoid having to engage in a real encounter, a Encounter, Catharsis, Flight
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real human exchange, with the other. The external is all that is on offer with the exhibitionist; the internal is hoarded, protected, Freudice: retained. The last person you see when you are confronted with an exhibitionist is the real person inside. That person is not on display.
Dr Fairbairn glanced at the young man’s shirt with its negative message. NO was perhaps not too bad a message to be proclaiming. At least it was modest. At least it was not like the obscene messages that some people wore on their clothing. Such people were shameless exhibitionists, but they were also polluters of our common space.
He shifted in his seat, which gave him a better view of the seats at the back of the bus. It was an average group of people: a young man in a suit (a bank-teller, perhaps, thought Dr Fairbairn), a person with a full shopping bag and a look of resignation about her (a woman, perhaps, he thought), an elderly man who had fallen asleep. And then, very near the back, sitting alongside his mother, whom Dr Fairbairn recognised after all these years . . . Wee Fraser himself.
Dr Fairbairn caught his breath. He had prepared himself for a meeting with Wee Fraser, but had not prepared himself for a meeting on the bus. And now, faced with the reality of this 14year-old boy, with his short hair and his aggressive lower lip, Dr Fairbairn was not at all sure what to do. Should he wait until they got off the bus, at which point he could himself alight, or should he go and speak to them now? Would it be awkward to say what he had to in the bus, or would he need privacy?
He thought about this, indifferent to his surroundings, but when he looked out of the bus window he realised that they were almost at Burdiehouse. In fact, now they were there, and Wee Fraser and his mother were rising to their feet. Dr Fairbairn waited for them to pass, before he got up. As they made their way past, Wee Fraser looked at Dr Fairbairn, and his eyes narrowed. Somewhere, in the very recesses of his mind, a memory was at work.
Dr Fairbairn stood up, and in so doing he inadvertently jostled Wee Fraser, who spun round, muttered aggressively and then, 282 In the Café St