Cigarettes and meat
Some moments define lives, shaping people into fresh forms from their growth. Others go unnoticed. They are the trees at the end of streets, creeping upwards inch-by-inch, but unseen.
One of my favourite things about writing is that inspiration can hit you from everywhere. Most of the time it’s coerced out of its hiding place by hard work and consistency. But there are other times when someone brings you a plate of it. That’s what happened one morning in Antwerp. Thanks, Nathan.
There are stages in life that separate us from old habits and routines. Good or bad. One day we wait in the wings. In the next, the audience is gone, and we are on the other side. Upending our lives without prior warning or despite it. These are the moments we discover the differences between loving someone and being in love with someone. Or our parents’ lessons, changing from torment to treasure. We will never know who, but someone walks ahead, scattering seeds of change for us to find. There they wait, ready to be watered and grown into another chapter.
Sometimes, you see a new seed. Resting atop a mound of displaced soil, waiting for you to arrive. These might just be the most exquisite moments of all. They are like diamonds - cut, coloured and crystal clear. Once the light hits their surface, they sparkle, a secret for you and it. Once it is by your feet, it demands you to stick it in the soil and water it.
Some of these moments are less significant than others. Some moments define lives, shaping people into fresh forms from their growth. Others go unnoticed. They are the trees at the end of streets, creeping upwards inch-by-inch, unseen by those who live around them. A tree like that grew at the end of my road. I never noticed it until it was so obvious I could not help but point it out and gasp. In my example, the road wasn’t a road, nor was the tree a tree. Instead, my story’s made of bricks, noisy Ikea furniture, meat and cigarettes.
It had been a while since my brother and I packed our bags to travel together. Ten years of empty bags and unstamped passport pages. I suppose it’s normal. Most people don’t travel with family after they reach a certain age. It can be a balancing act. But we were brothers who only travelled with each other; it was our time together, the only time we had to spend. The last time we stepped out into the world with our backpacks pulling on our shoulders, we were not old enough to understand where we were. It was before adulthood. Back then, letters never arrived in the post with our names and work emails were a thing of fiction. Neither of us had a gold ring on our finger, and we only spoke one language. We had been bubbling with energy and determined to prove we could navigate the world alone. For our first trip, the Sahara. For our second, we decided on an altogether different scene. Antwerp. It was a city in which we could meander around without concentration.
The trip was shorter this time around. We have lives to return to now. And wives, too. I’ve not much to say about the city; a browse of Google images will show you the charm and beauty of its architecture, and a search on Wikipedia will tell you more than I can about its chequered history. I will say the coffee is excellent. The weather is miserable. If you ask me, there aren’t many better combinations out there. Our trip took on its shape at the hostel. We might have become adults in the time that passed since our last adventure, but we’re still cheap.
Hostels are peculiar places. ‘Hostel’ is no longer a word that tells you too much about the premises. Nowadays, hostels can be a menu of things: cheap is usually a uniting factor, but there is no guaranteeing that either, like asking for a glass of tap water at a restaurant. Hostels can be bars or restaurants, speed-dating hubs or creative cocoons. Their rooms can be a place to rest or a place where rest is out of the question. They can be the sight of new friendships and the end of old ones. They can also be the planting spots for new chapters, ready to be watered into life. That’s what happened to me one night.
It was a Friday or a Saturday. Time bleeds into one when you’re on the road. All that’s important is that it was a lively night at the hostel. Music played in the background, the sort that no one wants to claim as their own. A pool table sat unused like an immaculate rectangle lawn at the far end, next to the wall. Congregated along the stretching dining table were faces from around the world, eating takeaways or something they’d prepared for themselves. There were faces perched on stools I recognised, some I liked, even in a short time. There were others I knew only as the face, eyes and ears that slept in the same room. Then there were the faces of those who I’d missed, featureless.
The evening rolled on, with more wine poured into my glass and bottles of beer opened. It was a scene you had to marvel at; everyone at the table came from somewhere different. We all had stories and dreams, and we all had vices and devices in our pockets. It was a scene cast by a director. Perfectly imitating reality. I noticed a man chewing meat and smoking cigarettes at the end of the table, just within my peripheral. He seemed to go from one to the other as if smoking had replaced libation. His eyes were dark and anchored in place by the bags below them. I looked over to see him clearer, and our eyes caught each other. He smiled and held up a cigarette to offer to me. No thanks, I shook my head. My brother and I sat at that table for hours. Talking to the handful of faces who had gravitated towards us. Two Brits, a German, a Moroccan and a Singaporean. It sounds like the start of a bar joke, but the punchline is beyond me; I’m no comedian. Our assembly of nations was unceremonially closed by a man who took his role as a caretaker a little too seriously.
I was creeping into our shared dorm as quietly as possible; when I noticed the man who ate meat and smoked cigarettes sleeping above my bed. But even then, the seed of my next chapter still needed watering. I slid into bed beneath him, and then it hit me. As well as being a man who ate meat and smoked cigarettes interchangeably, he was a man who wore the scents of his labour to bed. His perfume wafted down on me with each breath he took, like a late-night waterfall of kebab and ash. Suddenly, I saw the seed in front of me: it was disappearing into the ground. It was time; time for me to leave sleeping in hostel dorms in the past, no matter how cheap they might be. I’m locking the door and throwing away the key. Perhaps I might not suffer under the scent of meat and cigarettes again.
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