The Pink Purse

Just near Liverpool Street station I saw a little Chinese-looking pink purse on the kerb and I picked it up. Inside it were two halves of a white pill; I took them out and without thinking, swallowed them. I wondered around the city, urinated, watched two policemen hold down a drunk man whilst his girlfriend screeched and cried beside him ‘He’s my boyfriend!’, decided the pill was having no effect, and boarded the midnight tube to go back home.

In the carriage were eight teenage black girls all wearing long black coats and short red dresses, except one big girl who was wearing a short white dress and she spread her large legs out wide. Her legs were hairy and she exclaimed, as if only just realising, ‘Darn! My legs is hairy!’

At the next stop, eight large middle-aged Australian rugby fans, all wearing identical rugby tops, board the carriage. They started talking with the black girls. At Victoria they all got off together, the rugby fans and the girls.

A few minutes later I think to myself that maybe the pill did have some effect after all.

(London, 1999)