Onitsuka Tigers and Duck F**king Outside The Cafe Rouge

I have clown feet. Clowns laugh at my feet - they think I belong to the Uberfreak Circus with the Triple Testicle Juggler. Clowns can fuck off though because after years of searching I found a pair of Onitsuka Tigers Mexico 66 to fit my massive plates of meat. I'm finding it hard not to look at them under the table. They are golden and beautiful and if I wasn't half way through dessert at the Café Rouge in the company of a beautiful girl from the Lewisham office, a girl who finds my shit jokes funny and has faith in the claim that baldness will be cured within two years, a girl who may or may not want to shag me at some point in the future, I would pull off one of my Onitsuka Tigers in Gold/Black, cover my nose and mouth and suck the goodness from it for all I'm worth.

I love my new trainers.

Veronica is trying to pick my brains about the increase in sales at the Catford division. This has been a recurrent theme through the evening. In fact I think she may just fuck me to find out exactly how I do it. Her mouth is moving and she is talking. She is saying things like:

'Is it any wonder when the overheads are too high.' and 'she seems to know a thing or two about the
whole scheme' and 'that's the only way I can see this happening, there or at Milton Keynes.'

The sort of things I'm thinking while listening to her (when not thinking about my Onitsuka Tigers) involve calorific foodstuffs and her naked torso and breasts. I'm also thinking about Jessica Ennis in slow motion and wondering if the blister on my right heel will make me limp on the way home, and if the unusual movement of the limp and odd weight distribution will adversely misshape the trainers. The flat is in good shape tonight, I tidied and then hoovered up some Shake n Vac and my sister gave me one of those air fresheners that looks like a pebble. It sits next to the pebbles I have taken from various beaches around the UK when in the company of girls who have been my girlfriends, or who I hope might one day be my girlfriends.

I have four pebbles.

If Veronica comes back to my place I will play for her on my new stereo Veronica by the Sultans of Ping F.C just to be kooky. I won't tell her about the pebble thing.

Nine things I like about Veronica:

1. She has big breasts.
2. She smells nice of perfume.
3. She likes my jokes.
4. She doesn't seem to be cleverer than me at this point.
5. She said my Onitsuka Tigers were 'lush' and thought she had seen them in Kill Bill. (Correct!)
6. She looked genuinely interested when I told her the whole 'Game of Death'/Tarantino mistake thing.
7. Even though she is welsh she hates the Stereophonics and thinks Kelly Jones is a (little) turd.
8. Her favourite womble is Orinoco.
9. I like people thinking she is my girlfriend because she is really pretty.

We have coffee, she has stopped grilling me about work and although we are not talking it doesn't feel as though we should. Two mallards waddle towards our table like a troop of belligerent spastics and then a scene develops. At some point my understanding of the colours relating to the gender of mallards must have become confused, because for a split second I can't understand why the girl duck is trying to surf the boy duck. There is various biting and quacks and the occasional distressed flapping of wings. Somewhere deep beneath the downy grinding is the squelchy sucking sound of moist flesh and penetration. I'm transfixed by this. The waitresses have stopped clearing tables and have gathered around as well now, but instead of shooing them away they also stare transfixed and suddenly it feels as though I'm an adult and that I should do something to stop this duck dogging because Veronica looks appalled by this mallard rape next to our table. I try to make a disgruntled face but it doesn't work with concentration and awe and this goes on and on until suddenly there is a disentanglement and I think yes it's over – and one duck staggers blissfully away; but the other one stays and is circling around and around as though about to nest, but she doesn't nest, instead of nesting the fucked duck farts and spews its lover's juice over Veronica's shoes - not my shoes - Veronica's shoes and no matter how hard I try to fake it, my face won't make the sorry outraged shape it should and then I can feel the evening spiralling away.

A popular misconception is that Bruce Lee wears gold/black Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 in his last film Game of Death. Towards the end he fights Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and dons the now famous yellow and black tracksuit that has become a sort of Iconic recurring symbol in any popular culture homage to him - hence their appearance in the film Kill Bill when Uma Thurman dons the same tracksuit to fight the Crazy 88's before she takes care of Lucy Lui in that section's finale. I've studied footage of the film and the deleted scenes and they are definitely not Tigers; if anything they resemble an Adidas 1609er that has had a line drawn in to resemble the Tigers. Why they would want do this though is anyone's guess.

We are on the pavement bathed in the light of the kebab shop beneath my flat. Veronica is slightly taller than me. I notice because we are kissing. Her tongue is pushing further into my mouth and I wonder if it's too soon to press my erection against her. I know one of her feet is touching the instep of my pristine golden footwear, that duck jizz may spread and that I should be horrified, but I haven't had sex for seventeen months and that REM song about the end of the world keeps playing in my head.