So I seen this bird coming at me in Ritzy’s, got hair on her like she cut it off a Girls World and her lipstick’s smudged like the teacher’s marked some thick kid’s homework. In one hand she’s got a loose grip on a pint of Fosters, and in the other a Marlboro Light, a burning beacon of slowly evolving infirmity; her fingers, couple of fat meat tweezers, delicately balancing the glowing embers of a centimetre and a half of Philip Morris’ finest. Nursing it like it ain’t ever going out.
Eternal Flame by the Bangles is leaking out the speakers like some eighties audio aphrodisiac…it’s eleven thirty. She looks hot as fuck. She’s spilling her pint all over the shop in the same way she spills those stories her mates tell her in confidence. I’ve sunk a few myself, and i’m a little unsteady on my feet, but thankfully there’s a stretch of carpet from here to the dance floor, and it’s sticky ‘cos it’s got the dried remnants of twenty years worth of the top quarter of carelessly carried drinks on it. The smooth soles of my slip-ons stick to it like the lips of the two Steven Tyler lookalikes to my left. I’m struggling to tell which gender’s which, but it’s nineteen eighty nine and I’m in a part of England which suggests that the odds are…it’s probably a boy and a girl.
So anyway I’m invested…all in. She’s got me completely captivated. Her top’s fallen down on one side, like a fabric catwalk stroke in cotton and polyester. A bra strap, now clearly visible, cutting deep into the fleshy deposits on her shoulder blade. It’s a look…of sorts…and I’m falling for it. She’s strutting over to me on black stilettos like a fucking stilt walker on ice; grabbing at stuff on the way to steady herself; stools, tables, bar rails, the lot. Whatever it takes to get to me.
She’s bouncing off revellers, my mind’s where the devil is, and I’m ready…arms outstretched in case she falls on arrival. I catch my reflection in the mirror, a sinewy, wirey haired zombie arsehole in an outfit that looks like I fell into a fucking seconds bin at Burton’s. Mentally I’m naive…visually, I’m retarded.
Anyway, she finally reaches me. Got this look on her face that I think resembles the look of love so I lean my head forward, shut my eyes, and purse my lips in glorious teenage anticipation. There’s a pause. Feels like forever. I’m waiting, hoping she doesn’t leave me hanging, a desperate blind statue to a misguided dream. I can sense her, my natural intuition bolstered by an alluring whiff of three quid perfume. I’m ready to feel that connection, and then…when I’m least expecting it, it hits me.
Her clenched fist connects with my left temporal lobe with brutal force. Her right foot pivots as she swings to achieve maximum power. She’s Mike Tyson. She’s got a better hook than an old Elton John record. My head jolts sideways colliding with my pint glass that’s now suspended in mid air having been dislodged from my hand. My eyes are suddenly wide open, ablaze with fear, and before I know it there’s this massive solid thing covered in sticky carpet coming at me from the other side. Man down.
I’m lying there in a sort of catatonic state, humiliated, a pathetic spectacle of defeat. My face adhered to the Axminster. I’m trying to work out how things went south, I mean, I thought she liked me…yes the distance between us, the challenging lighting, the deafening volume of the music, and the fact that I had consumed an inordinate amount of alcohol, could have distorted my perception somewhat. But I wanted her to like me and I thought that was the inference. Perhaps I misunderstood the brief.
Anyway, as I’m lying there evaluating what just happened I hit a realisation. Sometimes you see something you want. And sometimes, when you want something that you think is going to be amazing, it turns out not to be the thing you thought it was at all, in fact all it does is bring you pain. And most of the time, in the cold light of day it was never that good anyway.
