A minute's peace

I was in the pub with my brother last week. I got my pint, he got his. There was only one other person in the pub except for the bar staff, this old man who was eating nuts, chain smoking and drinking from a back-washy looking glass, bits of nut floating. There was a laziness to him. Something that truly disgusted me. Something that said "I lived with my mother until she died when I was 52 and then moved out on my own, now look at me, I have no manners and can’t look after myself. I’m a fat old cunt but I don’t care how offensive I am". Like that cunt with the stool on the tube.

He was greasy, his nose hooked enough to almost touch the end of his cigarette, that he chewed mercilessly on between peanuts, soaking it like a tissue in water. I could hear him breathing through that gonzo proboscis and the laziness of his eating left his jaw swinging with each crunch, his tongue protruding and his lips smacking and hissing with each clearance of his gapped teeth. I flinched each time he reached for the crinkling bag. And soon my hands were hooked into claws on my legs and my head was itchy.

"There is no room for this man on my earth" I thought, "If this guy dies right here of a heart attack I think I would feel only relief. What’s another useless monkey?"

And me and my brother left the pub. Leaving our almost full pints and the old man, victorious in his four day old smalls in his smoky corner, lapping at the dust in his peanut bag and taking his stained glass for a refill, pulling up his pants as he walked. Swinging his hips.