Smelly Food Eaten On The Train By A Human of No Specific Gender

I was standing on a very busy train minding somebody else’s business when a huge cheeseburger appeared before my face. This was one of those train journeys anyone living in London will have suffered, the kind where you become a little too familiar with the armpit of the person next to you. Where you perfect the art of ignoring all human life, even if their vacant faces are within millimetres of yours.

It turned out that the cheeseburger wasn’t actually that large, it was just too close. It was the closest I’d ever been to one that I wasn’t eating. It was so close that the soggy lettuce protruding through the sweaty bun was almost brushing past my eyelashes.

It didn’t take me long to figure that this foul smelling excuse for food was not there of it’s own accord. It was in fact being eaten by a mouth just 20 centimetres away from me. I could hear the mouth open, smell the breath, then hear the saliva glands preparing the unknowing stomach for this crime against nutrition.

As my nose and ears became a reluctant audience to this close up display of human feeding, I started to look beyond the mouth to discover who was so rudely eating in my face. And that was where the mystery began.

I could see a head, with all the usual features. Eyes, nose, a chin. There was hair, a neck, shoulders, arms and legs, but what I couldn’t determine was this being’s gender. They could as easily have been a man as a woman! I really had no idea.

This all reminded me of Danny, or was it Danni? A (wo)man with whom I worked many years ago. I worked with this person for 3 weeks and never got to the bottom of it. I got to know them quite well, but not well enough to answer the ultimate question. There were people around who knew him/her but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask. I even resorted to hanging around the toilets one day to see which door (s)he went through, but I never found out. I got some strange looks from the rest of my colleagues after that day and decided I just had to let it go.

I sometimes wish I had just asked. At least I would have known. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation like this... Haven’t we?





The identities of all the people mentioned in this post have not been protected at all in any way. So if you’re reading this by any chance Dan, please get in touch and let me know your gender.

Thanks.