Hobo (g)Loves

He was the kind of pompous you get not from being superior, but as a reaction to being bullied. He had the kind of facial hair that brought no one any kind of aesthetic pleasure, but that he had grown since 16 as an attempted stamp of manhood. She was the kind of beautiful that you didn't see as beautiful until you saw her as an actress in a romantic comedy of the indie variety. They were both brilliant deep down, you assumed, but on the surface he wore hobo gloves and she wore a preposterously large and orange scarf. And they thought they were in love.

At first it had just been him. He thought he was in love with her because she said hello at the start and feigned interest in the same renaissance artists and emo-esque bands that he made a marked effort to have an interest in. He spoke with the voice of an only child who had spent a lifetime with his parents' adult friends, trying to emulate their deeper tones to a point where he now held a hollow bellow that though obviously false was probably now past the point of repair. His facial hair bordered on a neck beard.

She in time had seen his love and rebuffed it with action as she grew into her body and started to get chatted up in clubs. Well no so much chatted up as bought drinks and stared at. There were a couple of years of her going out to parties with him and leaving with other guys. Better looking and sleazier than he could ever hope to be. The whole affair followed a clich path. He warned her against the guys who didn't love her like- 'Like who?', she'd ask. Like no one . . . Eventually she saw the guys for what they were and what they wanted, but at this time he had hooked a girl himself. A version of her running at 60%; a fact that she and the new girl saw and knew only too well while he remained oblivious. They got together in infidelity and so their course was locked and set. He realised too late it had be more thanks and infatuation than love, and she saw too late it had been a sort of jealous pity. And so they sat with friends, always with friends, until they were left alone and their bodies awkwardly failed to fall into each other like lovers' should. This isn't a story. There's no moral. Except maybe for this: Stop wearing fucking hobo gloves, you're not homeless and have no need for gloves that keep your hands warm while simultaneously allowing precise dexterity.