my dream duet

Okay, so, err'body be trippin' about how I haven't updated this blog in a million years, and I get it, we all love to procrastinate. Except here is the thing: I don't need to procrastinate anymore! I'm officially all finished with school! I have a Master's degree now, which is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life, but here we are, it's happened, that's just a thing that is true about me now.

This is what I've been doing with my time guys.
I'm obviously really busy, too busy to blog (2B2B), definitely.

THAT BEING SAID, I really enjoyed the ol' blog and I think maybe my legions of adoring fan (singular, hey mom, how's it going) have a point. So, once a week I will try to do a blog on you guys. This week's topic is near and dear to my heart because I see him every day and his story is ever-changing and he is so mysterious. I'm getting ahead of myself.

This week is all about the man my flatmates and I refer to as The HOW CAN I MAKE YOU LOVE ME Guy:

This possibly-homeless gentleman spends every day from around noon until midnight in a pedestrian underpass beside the Tower of London. I pass him twice a day going to and from work, and the first time I saw him I was terrified. To be fair, I was walking through an underpass late at night and a gigantic African man in a ratty red track suit with a huge pile of unwashed dreads was standing in the middle of it totally motionless holding a sign that read "HOW CAN I MAKE YOU LOVE ME" in front of a suitcase that was open and full of hundreds of pieces of paper bearing the same message. I hurried past and tried to avoid eye contact.

The HOW CAN I MAKE YOU LOVE ME Guy (hereafter HCIMYLM Guy... such a convenient acronym. Much shorter.) became a regular part of my day pretty quickly, and I stopped being scared of him. Once when he wasn't there, I worried about what could have happened to him, but he was back the next day so maybe he just slept in. From what I could tell, he just stood there holding the sign every day, with the same suitcase, in the same full red track suit. He packed up every night and came back the next day. People sometimes threw money into the suitcase.

Then one day he was sitting down. He had bought a cheap three legged stool. Also, he had the exact same track suit on but it was green. I got used to the new track suit and the stool. He still had the sign and just held it while he sat. It should also be noted that he does not move. Not to stretch, scratch, or look around. He just sits and stares straight ahead.

A few weeks later, he was wearing a blue version of the same track suit, and instead of the suitcase full of signs, he had one of those little waving cat piggy bank things you can buy in Chinatown. A few days after that, when I came home from work I found him surrounded by a small army of little waving cat piggy banks. Just chilling on his stool in his full blue track suit, surrounded by waving ceramic cat figurines.

Hey guys.

Basically as soon as you get used to what you think is his "thing," he messes with your brain and gets an entirely new thing. The new thing is always fancier and more expensive than whatever his old thing was, which you will never see again. This guy is the most upwardly mobile maybe-homeless person I've ever seen. The biggest changes have come in the past few weeks. One day when I was coming home from a night out, I heard some eery music coming from the underpass. HCIMYLM Guy was sitting down there in his classic red suit, playing a ukulele on the stool. The cats were gone, and there was no sign of the suitcase. People were dropping money into a hat as they walked by.

Last week when I came back from my first shift at my new job (more on that another time), he was sitting there in a FULL SUIT AND TIE, serenading people on the uke. What is this guy's story?! I honestly think he might be the most intriguing person in London. Also, he sits nightly in the shadow of the Shard so he knows good real estate when he sees it. I fully expect him to buy the Shard penthouse when it opens. At the rate he/it is going, by the time it is completed he'll probably be able to.

Well, anyway, here we are, you're welcome, the blog is back on. Now back to learning to play 'Remix to Ignition' on the ukulele. Working towards a duet with HCIMYLM Guy. The duet of my dreams.