2020-03-12
23 分钟Gugu Mbatha-Raw ("The Morning Show," "Misbehaviour") reads an essay about a friendship between two people who meet in a pub in Notting Hill.
Modern.
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Produced by the Ilab at WBUR Boston from the New York Times and WBUR Boston.
This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption.
I'm your host, Magna Chakrabarti.
There are a lot of relationships that fit neatly into boxes.
They're friendships or they're romantic, but other times relationships defy easy definitions.
When I was an art student in London, I worked part time as a barmaid at a pub in Notting Hill.
It was the perfect job for me.
Being in a crowd of people every evening stopped me from feeling lonely, and the bar prevented anyone from getting too close.
I found relationships with people difficult.
I was gay but didn't know it yet.
Growing up among the british landed gentry, I didn't think gay was something I could be.
All I knew was my friendships with girls were complicated by the fact that I sometimes wanted to kiss them, and my relationships with boys were complicated by the fact that I often didn't.
Working in a pub was safe, where my contact with the patrons was confined to jokes and orders thrown across the bar above the high volume of rock music blasting from the jukebox in the corner.
A few months after I started working there, I arrived at my shift to find an unfamiliar guy leaning against the bar.
He was laughing with his friends, a pair of crutches propped against the bar stool.
He was the center of attention and clearly known by everyone, although I had never seen him before.
His head was entirely bald, which suited him with his dark skin, and when he hobbled off to the bathroom, I noticed that one of his legs was missing below the knee.
I had been brought up to believe it was bad manners to ask questions, so it took a bit of eavesdropping before I learned that his name was Mikey.