You Don’t Know John
If you were to describe John, you’d say that there was a man who broke into peoples’ houses (preferably old people, preferably women), got up into their attics (dusty, hot, packed with the past) and put on their old dresses. If someone asked you, ‘That John, what’s he like?’ you’d say that there was a man who snapped open old ladies’ cases, rummaged around until he found a yellowed photograph of a girl at a wedding in 1957, then searched in trunks for the exact clothes she was wearing, and put them on. If you were pressed to give a single image of John, you might point out that there was a man that took pictures of himself wearing these old fashioned dresses with a polaroid camera, then propped the photo of himself on the stranger’s mantelpiece before climbing out of the window.
But you don’t know those facts about John. You don’t know that he breaks into pensioners’ attics and wears their clothes. Only I know that, so please don’t describe him that way.
