Rollo Kim: The Desert Spoon

I'm on a sleeper train to Imercia. I've ended up traveling with a girl named Lucy, or Miss Farr as she prefers to be called. Miss Farr is something of a free spirit, a seeming vagrant, and a trouble maker. She delights in causing confusion at every opportunity. She flits between politeness and accusatory questioning in an instant.

And you know how it is. Your muscles ache with the warm, bruised fatigue of a journey that's gone on a few hours too long. And every hour feels like a day. And some scared part of you is trying to convince other more rested parts of you that you've been awake for maybe 200 hours in a row.

You find an empty carriage, a table that seems somehow tucked away from the rest. And then people begin pouring in around you and each one acts like they're in their own front room and there's no one else around.

When the gentleman with the trolley arrives she intentionally helps him to spill her drink across the table, then feigns surprise as the fizzing fluid cascades onto clothing, carpet, shoes. He's a tired guy. Young. Obviously bored. The expression on his face says he's been here a dozen times this week already.

"You did that deliberately!" I tell her.
"No he didn't!" She laughs out the words.

Miss Farr is a delicious tomboy with a youthful glow about her flesh. Negative energies glint her big green eyes. Mischief tugs at the corners of her big brooding mouth. I want to devour her. I'm worried that I am some kind of closet cannibal and I'll end up on some kind of seedy registered cannibal offenders list.

She empties the contents of her hip-flask into her little plastic glass.

Tabloids will make me famous and they'll only ever use pictures of me where I look twice my age, with what they've made look like a pervert's smirk on my face.

"So," she says, stirring her drink with a nail-bitten finger, "you're on a magickal quest..."
"No I'm not. Why are you saying that?"
"Cause mister, I'm psychic. So don't try to hide anything from me. I can destroy you with a word."
And now I'm thinking, wow, you're really quite an unpleasant person aren't you?
And she says "I'm the most honorable person you will ever meet."

Why can't life just be nice and good and warm and safe and all that holding hands in front of the tv stuff?

One of the loud, boozy young men in the seats behind her is peering down her top with the camera on his phone. He's not even trying to be discreet.

She lets out a sigh, reaches up and gets her hand around the back of the young man's neck. Holds him there for so long that his shouts start to disturb the other passengers. When the guards on the train arrive, he's still clutching the phone, in obvious pain, trying to pull himself away with his teeth bared and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

"Is there a problem?" Asks one of the guards.
"This guy is trying to take pictures of my tits." She says.
And all I can think is, is there any way I can sit here and appear just even slightly dignified?





Rollo Kim