Neil

I met a man at the gallery opening last night. His name is Neil. I was standing in the stairwell, searching for my name on the list of volunteers. Neil was looking for his, too. When he found it, he pointed it out to me. That's how I found that he was also a volunteer, and that his name is Neil.

Neil has a loud voice which cracks and wavers off-key. A Geordie-ish accent being played back by an underwater tape-recorder.
Neil has a handshake which is neither firm nor limp.
Neil has dandruff. I'd even go as far as to say he has severe scalp-localised psoriasis. The flakes fleck his shoulders like stars in the night sky.
Neil has grey-ish teeth. The bottom edges of his top-middle incisors slope upwards and inwards. They don't look like teeth should look but they don't look like the photos on cigarette packets, either.
Neil's eyes are slightly green. He looks at you when you're talking to him. He looks at you when you're not talking to him. But he doesn't meet your gaze. Not quite.

Neil likes fashion. "Do you go on lookbook.com? I do."
Sometimes I do, yes. "Who do you think is the best dressed girl in here? I think it's the one with the dreadlocks. She looks fabulous." I agree with him. "You look nice, too." I thank him. So does he. "I like your coat." Thank you.
Neil is wearing brown slip on shoes, the kind mostly worn by men who want to be comfortable but still smart, or those who don't know how to dress.
Neil is also wearing black trousers, a light pink shirt and a black anorak (with star-spangled shoulders).
I think, for someone who likes fashion so much, he doesn't seem to be very fashionable.
"Girls have such nice clothes," says Neil. "I sometimes wish I was a girl so I could wear pretty dresses."
He says it without undertone, neither shame nor irony. His grey teeth smiling, his eyes looking at me but also elsewhere.

What do you do, apart from volunteering? I ask.
Neil's slightly green eyes look less at me and more at the back wall.

"I eat," he says. "I sleep. I drink. I dance. I piss. I shit. I ....... I wash the dishes!"
Me too, I say. I do those things too! And we laugh.

Later I go in to the vault to watch the film installation. In the dark the colours and sounds make me feel like I'm drowning. My heartbeat slows. Then Neil comes in, walking in front of the projector so that a human-shaped silhouette slices through kaleidoscopic lights on the wall. People around me bristle. He sits down and looks at me. It's dark and I'm looking at the film but I can still tell that he's looking at me.

"HELLO!" he exclaims. It's dark and I'm looking at the film but I can still tell that everyone in the room is looking at us.
Shhhh, I say, and smile.
"You're nice," he says. People look once more. "I'm glad I met you because you're nice."
And suddenly I'm not in that dark room, I'm inside Neil's head and in there it's very light, and simple, and filled with pretty girls in pretty dresses, and his whole life is separated out into nice boxes, sleep and eat, drink and dance, piss and shit, and when he looks at me he sees a nice girl in a nice coat, nothing more. He can't see inside my head. Perhaps for him I don't even have an inside-of-my-head and neither does he.

I looked away from the film and looked at him in the dark and suddenly I could have cried with the burden of it all, the weight of the past and the pain of being and the sadness of everything, everything, everything. I just looked at him and wanted to be like him. To be him.

 I've never wanted to be a person with dandruff and grey teeth more than I did just then, in that moment.

You're nice too, Neil, I whisper. You're really, really nice.