Moments Like This

It’s moments like this, I thought, as I stood there in the toilet, that make you wonder just what life’s all about.

The graffiti on the wall before me displayed a remarkable lack of originality. I honestly despaired of the human race. Was this the measure of Man’s wit?

As I fastened my zip, I made a small bet with myself. Then I walked over to the contraceptive dispenser by the door. Sure enough, some helpful soul had left a warning message: ‘The chewing gum in this machine tastes like rubber’.

I twisted my lips into what I thought was a wry expression. However, as I preened myself before the mirror above the hand basins, I discovered that I looked more as if I was pouting rather childishly.

The illusions people have, I marvelled, it’s a miracle we can understand each other’s gestures at all.

As I passed a hand over my face to remove a sheen of perspiration, I noticed a pimple forming on the side of my nose. With commendable self control, I resisted the urge to squeeze it.

“Hello, John,” boomed a sudden, unexpected voice. “What’s the matter? Has your mascara run?”

Slightly embarrassed, I turned around to face the person who had crept up behind me so surreptitiously.

“Oh. Hello, Martyn. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah.” He grinned coarsely. “This is where the knobs hang out.”

I bared my teeth in a fierce approximation of a smile.

“That’s what I like to hear,” I muttered. “Dazzling repartee.”

I returned to the discotheque’s clammy gloom. I tried to picture what it would look like in the harsh light of day. The resultant image made me shudder.

Dispassionately, I observed the dancers jerking convulsively as if undergoing E.C.T. Strobe lights lacerated their pre-frontal lobes. They were lobotomised by sound.

I realised then, with all the intensity of a profound mystical experience, that I was quite drunk.

Wobbling like an apprentice tightrope walker, I started to head back towards the table I was sharing with a friend. However, I was soon intercepted. A girl loomed up before me, dressed in the traditional faded denims. Her hair was a pale pink cloud. It was Sheila.

Unceremoniously, she grabbed my arm and dragged me onto the dance floor. The music was so loud that I could not hear it. I tried to synchronise with the prevailing rhythm. Everyone was bobbing up and down like something out of The Flowerpot Men.

“Flubba-lubba,” I said, trying to be funny.

Sheila looked at me in a questioning way. Communication was only possible via a combination of lip reading, sign language and sheer telepathy.

“Do you come here often?” I shouted.

“No!” she yelled back. “It’s just where some guy spilled his drink down my leg.”

Obviously overcome by my romantic smooth talk, she draped herself from my shoulders and danced close against me. I put my arms around her waist; but only because that was what was expected from me. In reality, I felt curiously sexless.

She explored the side of my neck with her teeth, as if searching for my jugular vein.

I was at a complete loss for words and so, sensibly, I said nothing. The crowd held us captive: A huge, shapeless monster. I started to compose a long poem in my head, even though I was bound to forget it by morning.

“What are you thinking?”

Sheila broke my morbid reverie. She had somehow become softer; less predatory. Or perhaps my own attitude had changed. I now felt very tender towards her.

“I was thinking about you, of course,” I lied romantically. “You know, I could write a whole novel about how blue your eyes are.”

“Oh, now you’re teasing me,” she accused. “Stop being so sarcastic.”

She punched me playfully, then stepped back, looking at her watch.

“Mickey Mouse past Donald Duck,” she said. “Time I was leaving. Martyn promised me a lift home.”

I doffed an imaginary cap and gave her a courtly bow. “Well. Goodnight, Cinders.”

She laughed and curtsied in response. “Goodnight, sweet prince.”

I shook my head. “I rather think you’ve got the wrong pantomime.”

She touched her lips to mine in a very chaste, very gentle kiss. “I don’t think so. You must admit, you’re more Hamlet than Buttons.”

And with that, she was suddenly gone.

I continued my interrupted journey. This time, I was able to make my way over to my waiting friend without event. That is, until I trod on a discarded beer bottle and stumbled into the table. Our drinks danced a jig, but amazingly not a drop was spilt.

“My usual dramatic entrance,” I mumbled in an aside to nobody. “Talk about the Odyssey,” I quipped as I sat down.

“You were gone a long time,” commented Steve, my perceptive friend.

“That’s what I said!”

My smile was rather false, I realised. Steve’s expression did nothing to raise my spirits. His sober appearance belied the fact that he was probably even more drunk than me.

“Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped stringing her along?” he demanded. “She’s really crazy about you, as if you didn’t know.”

I made a wry face. “Some people have got no taste,” I said and immediately hated myself.

“It’s no good pouting and showing off like the spoiled brat you really are. You’ve got to face your responsibilities…” Steve began a venomous attack that I well deserved. He had unwittingly managed to isolate the major cause of my depression. I could not listen to him. I tried to change the subject:

“I keep expecting David Attenborough to turn up with a BBC film crew and to start making a documentary about the esoteric mating rituals of the primitive tribes of darkest Essex.”

Steve made a noise in the back of his throat. He was rightly disgusted with me.

“You’re so bloody condescending. It’s really sick the way you debase everybody.”

I laughed cynically. “They don’t need me to do that. I mean, look at them all. They spend the whole week in factories and offices, leading their non-lives and dreaming of these precious few hours of relative freedom. And what do they do? They all go to the same place, wear the same clothes, do the same dance to the same mass produced muzak…”

Steve rose unsteadily to his feet. His parting words were both angry and yet full of pity.

“Christ, John. Your ego. I’ve never known anyone else like you. When you’re in this mood, you drag everyone down with you. I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”

The crowd absorbed him into its substance. I was left alone; supposedly with my conscience for a bitter companion.

The worst of it was that, by the next weekend, Steve and I would once again be friends. These last few minutes would be dismissed as being ‘the drink talking’. And we would go through all the familiar treadmill motions for the umpteenth time…

After all, despite my awareness of the situation, I was no less trapped than anyone else.

How do you escape from a closed system? I asked myself. From the cage of your own skull?

I giggled at my awful, maudlin pomposity.

I shall now go home, I decided. And write about this. And reduce it to a contrived piece of fiction.