A few weeks ago, I was taking the bus into Chelsea. One of the things I love about riding the bus is that I can read and nobody will bother me. About a year ago, I embarked on a personal reading journey. In addition to current fiction, I'm reading the classics from A-Z, choosing one author from each letter of the alphabet. Austen to Zola. I'm currently up to the letter N which is what got me into this mess.Anyway, I was sitting in my favourite spot---top deck, front window seat. It was mid-afternoon so the bus was quiet with plenty of empty seats. So it was particularly annoying when, after a few stops a man got on and chose to sit next to me. I looked around the bus as if to say, hey, pick another seat, you're spoiled for choice. But the octogenarian in tweed and corduroy waited for me to remove my bag from the empty seat and, amidst a great deal of huffing and puffing, he settled his rotund self into the seat next to me. I got a whiff of musty wool and cherry pipe tobacco but kept my nose in my book. Mr. Tweedy fidgeted and uttered a tssk tssk. When the tssking refused to cease, I glanced over to make sure he wasn't having a gout attack or anything equally alarming. That’s where it all went wrong. He spoke to me but not, as you would hope, a friendly, ‘Good afternoon. Enjoy your reading.’ Oh no.
‘That book is nothing but filth,’ he said. He raised his white bushy eyebrows, a few stragglers comically long and heading in a gravity-defying northern direction.
‘Er, sorry?’
‘Nabokov. He wrote about that nymphet Lolita. It was banned in this country, you know.’
‘Yes, I did read that somewhere. But the ban was lifted.’
‘Shouldn’t have been.’
‘Hmm. Yes, well.’
‘Do you have any children?’
‘Um, yes. Two.’
‘Boys or girls?’
‘Two daughters.’
‘Daughters, eh? Well, how would you feel if you read that story in the newspaper? That an old man was lusting after a schoolgirl?’
‘Um, I’d feel upset?’
‘Bloody right you would. He was nothing but a paedophile. A very sick man.’
‘Do you mean Nabokov or Humbert Humbert?’
‘Ach. What’s the difference? The author and the character are one and the same.’
‘But it’s fiction. It’s a classic. I showed him the Penguin logo as proof.’
‘Harrumph. It’s porn.’ He whistled through his nose in protest.
‘But the language is lovely. And some parts are very funny.’ That was a mistake.
Mr. Tweedy used Nabokov as a springboard to leap onto a tangent. He said that society is so confused that we don’t even know what’s funny anymore. He talked about ASBOs and young girls getting pregnant so they can take money from the government. The rant kept going and going like the Duracell bunny. When he had to pause and wind himself up with the key again, he returned to Lolita.
‘Maybe you should choose your reading material more wisely, young lady. Stay away from this smut.’ He spat the last word and a bit of dribble slid from the corner of his mouth.
‘Yes, well, thank you. If you’ll excuse me, I’m getting off at the next stop.’ I got off the bus before my stop because Mr. Tweedy had the appearance of a man who was in it for the long haul.
So what did I take away from that? Freedom of speech is alive and well. Clearly. I am free to read whatever I choose. However, if I’m taking public transport I may be forced to deal with the, er, public. And maybe I should wrap the cover of my books in brown paper. Because I am a whimp and I hate confrontation, even if it's to defend my choice of reading material.
Perhaps Orwell will be less controversial.
