Nathan

Old before his time, condescending in the utmost, incomprehensibly loved by many, asexually approached. He wears skinny jeans with the cuffs rolled up, exposing several inches of sock between his loafers and the hem. The socks are always colour coordinated to his t shirt and he walks with a rat-like expression on his face and his glasses perched over a thin moustache and even thinner lips. His cheeks bloom like the English rose his mother might have been, and he walks in a quick forward trajectory - almost a shuffle - with his head leading and a hint of a stooped back predicting his future form.

He spent a year in China teaching English to under-privileged children, which I felt was his primary redeeming feature when looking for any qualities in him that would counter the way he ignored me if I approached him in query or conversation, how he evaded conversation with new hires except to briefly and brusquely call them out on minor infractions, how he appropriated my West Coast slang and mannerisms with no awareness of whence they came.

I avoid him at all costs. Occasionally the previous-night’s indulgences would crash over me in the new day’s paranoia, sending me cowering in corners when the whippet-thin Nathan approached. He is the least like anyone I would aspire to be: demeaning, ingratiatingly sweet with an aftertaste like Splenda to customers, business oriented and dismissive.

However, his favourite film as a child was Fantasia and he and his brother would practice the Russian mushroom dance together in his Nan’s living room. I liked that about him, and in the last few weeks before I fled Portobello he started calling me “V.”