Threadbare

A writer's mind unravels in real time to a Filipino tailor's eclectic Spotify playlists.

Photo Credit: Drew Douglas.

Jejo is singing. He laughs from time to time, snorting just a little. Listening to Spotify, gleefully wading through the river of digital effluent that passes for entertainment on his iPhone. The tweets and the posts, the Instagram likes on photos he made me take of him around Camden Market and at the British Museum, his head cocked like a bird of paradise, seemingly entranced by the sight of something just outside the frame.

There was nothing outside the frame. I know. I was there. I held that ancient iPhone while he primped and preened before it, high on the hollow validation he anticipated once my efforts were uploaded to his tiny online following.

He's stopped singing now. Is skipping through songs. Rejecting anything that isn’t instantly attention grabbing.

I am writing this underneath him, separated from him by the base of a bunk bed, close but disconnected, disengaged, ghoulishly gaunt and dead on the inside, my skin sloughing off, my hair falling out. I can feel myself fraying, disintegrating, soul-bone seams picked apart by his disdain.