The Wilderness Years - Gatwick

 I woke up in the back of the cab as we pulled in to the long driveway that lead to arriving flights that you find in every airport except those in the little Caribbean islands i love so much. It was a grey and dreary morning in merry ole En-guh-lan or maybe that's just stock and trade when describing a scene set in London. The cabbie asked if i had a good kip and i smiled and said just what i needed mate, looking forward to seeing your lady i bet, he said, i smiled again and said, as long as she made it on the plane or i'm gonna be right pissed for getting up this early, we laughed and he dropped me at the gate of the proper airline, i tipped him twenty pounds and he gave me a card and told me if i needed any cabs back in Streatham to let him know, we were practically mates now. I took his card and said will do and headed into the airport. 

There can be a fuzz of hangover and years that sometimes clouds things but other times it comes back so crystalline, so clear, that it's one of those things that seems forever etched in the clouds of memory. The fact was this twenty year girl boarded a trans-Atlantic flight flat broke with the hopes that a fucking maniac prone to historic bouts of drinking and drugging would be there to pick her up... talk about a fucking gamble. I was wandering around the crowded concourse for arrivals, i needed to find some water, i needed to take a piss, of course right about then the passengers started slowly dribbling out the exit but i figured the last thing i needed to do was piss myself and be standing there with a large urine map of the Great Lakes on my jeans. I hit the bogs and scored two bottles of water and waited, i scanned the room just to make sure she hadn't arrived and took a place out of the way towards the back. It could have been a few minutes or a half and hour i don't really know but it felt like forever as the exit spit out humans like a Pez dispenser. People everywhere, welcome homes, hugging, laughing, stories being told. I waited and watched. 

And then she was there... and she was fucking gorgeous... doe-eyed and nervous as she scanned the room, of course me being one for a bit of fun i stood in the back and said nothing as i watched the worry slowly creep across her face... then i stepped forward and began walking towards the middle of the room, it's difficult to miss a guy who is 6'4 sporting long shaggy hair, big sideburns and goat, i was watching her the whole time and as she looked around suddenly her eyes came to rest on me, a huge smile spread across her face and she came running towards me and into my arms kissing me there in the middle of the crowded room, holding onto me and saying she couldn't believe it, kissing me again. I asked about her bags and she said all she had was her carry-on and purse. Excellent i said and handed her a bottle of water, thought you might need this after the flight. She smiled, took a drink and we headed towards the trains. 

We wandered about hand in hand trying to figure out which train to take, we were in a state of intoxication brought on by each other and of course we couldn't sort which train to catch and when i finally thought i had figured it out it turned out to be the wrong one and we were on the wrong side. We needed to get across a restricted area but had no clue how to go about it properly when an old gentleman who worked there walked up and asked if he could help, i told him where we were going and that we were a bit baffled but he said not to worry, opened the gate and motioned us in, told us how we looked a delightful young couple in love and how he had been married for forty some odd years, we smiled and listened and Veronica chatted with him charming him even more. He got us to the train and wished us well and we were off. 

The train ride was a blur as we watched out the window, we talked, we kissed, we hopped off at the spot the old man had told us and caught another train to Streatham, we walked the last blocks to Gulfboot's flat where he and another of our mates were just rousing themselves from sleep, we walked in and
made some introductions before Veronica and i adjourned to the bedroom and fell into bed... it was the culmination of a frenetic week and it wasn't long before we were doing what we had waited for since that hot and humid night in August. We lay wrapped around each other and drifted off to sleep exhausted from sex and travel and in my case the boozing the night before. It was a blissful hour or so before there was a knock on the bedroom door...