Journey to the Bottom of a Pint Glass (4)

The light of the day faded. Pete had been in the pub a while now, supping pints.

All he wanted was a pack of salt and vinegar crisps but the fascists behind the bar kept giving him cheese and onion. That told him everything he needed to know. The message was loud and clear. The staff messing with his head. Mind games. Woo-woo. He knew what’s what. No worries about that.

And the pub was rammed with tossers wanting to watch the match. Loads of lads, but girls too. Proper footie fans and those jumping on the bandwagon of mass marketed sporting trendiness. The giant flatscreen was so noisy he could barely hear himself think. Fucking pundits chatting about tactics and players and what might be the turning point in the game. Hypothetical gibberish. Trying to drum up excitement. Filler for more of those mind-exterminating adverts. It was obvious who was going to win. Football wasn’t difficult, was it? Put your fucking laces through it, son. Bam. There you go. In the onion sack. One-Nil.

Sitting in a pub on a Saturday by himself like a lone ranger. The youngsters on the tables on either side of him gave him funny glances, thinking he was a saddo. Youngsters! Fuck sake. He was only thirty-two and three quarters but it was strange, this growing older lark, as he was starting to see how the nineteen and twenty-year olds, who took themselves so seriously, appeared to him like rosy-cheeked bambinos. And he was probably like a grandad to them. It was no joke.

He supped his pint.

Mandy and him had talked and she said she didn’t want a kid. Couldn’t bear the thought of childbirth, the physical act of it and what it inflicted on a woman’s body. It freaked his mum out when he told her. Mum had these ideas in her head. Bouncing a baby girl on her knee. Sharing her wisdom about feeding and nappy changing and buying cute clothes. Now this was being denied her and he felt the accusation, the blaming, as if he had deliberately chosen Mandy as a girlfriend to deny his mum the happiness of becoming a grandparent.

His mission in life, so it seemed, was to inflict misery on her.

Pete didn’t know what he wanted. Mandy wasn’t maternal. Was he paternal? What was he on about? Maternal. Paternal. Fuck off. The idea of a kid was hyped the same as movies. Like it was something you couldn’t miss out on. Blokes at work who were proud papas encouraged him to climb aboard the parent train. Choo-Choo. Saying it was the best decision he’d ever make, that he'd never regret it, but when he saw how tired and stressed they always were, the weight they put on, he wondered. More like a decent excuse to knock-off work early. School-run cunts. And what else could they say about parenthood other than be positive? It’s not as if they could hand the fucking thing back, was it? Stuff it in a bag, mark it up and go to the Post Office to do a return.

Everything was hyped. Marketed. Like, most of the movies he went to see were fucking American rubbish.

He sort of understood that he would have to get the drinking and smoking and mad binges done and dusted with if a child was ever going to be on the cards. He didn’t want to be a rotten father. He forced himself to think about this, fixing on the emotions inside of him, and he realised it was true. The idea of having a child and still staying out all hours, coming home smashed, arguing and shouting, making promises that were never kept, no, it couldn’t happen. Visions of an alcohol infused homestead—Little Tarquin, don’t play in the garden until daddy’s picked up his faeces-stained trousers and boxer-shorts. Fuck sake. He would have to sort himself out first. Not that it mattered as Mandy had stated no embryo was to flower in her womb. Absolutely not. Plus, he was probably infertile. Had always suspected it. That’d be the irony. Inability to fertilise. A Jaffa as they used to say. And then the penny dropped that she had booted him out for his alcoholic aberrations, the all-nighters, the extra-curriculars – oh aye, what a lad – getting so drunk he soiled himself. What a disgrace. Jesus. Choo-Choo. Poo-Poo more like. So, they were not together anymore and whether she did or did not want to have children was yesterday’s news. Did that mean it was a possibility with someone else? One door closes. Another… Samantha, maybe. The vegan and yoga practicing aficionado from marketing who said she loved him. Shut the fuck up about the yoga and plant-based food. Let it go. But she was with an electrician, or was it a tree surgeon? One or the other. Got the two confused. She was moving in with the electrician / tree doctor / witch doctor / shaman. 

Sup the pint.

Watch the match.

Be entertained by the silky skills of 22 men in shorts and t-shirts kicking a ball and running on 114.8 yards x 74.4 yards of grass. 

A kid though, one day, who knew? The hypothetical. Behave like a grown up and he might like having a sprog. Didn’t need to be the equivalent of an overrated Hollywood movie. Expectation followed by tedium and overwhelming disappointment and anger at the money wasted on the cinematic experience. He would have a French New Wave child. Italian Neo-Realist. New Hollywood. His son, daughter, whoever, would be different. Too right. Love. That’s what a child needs. To love and feel loved. Same as anyone for that matter. Fucking obvious as putting your laces through it. Boom. Two-Nil.

Heart swelling at the sight of his kid. Take them swimming. Blow up the orange armbands. The sight of the inflatables on those pudgy arms will be enough to make him blub. It was too much. The amount of love surging through him. Easing his child into the water and the boy-the-girl-the-girl-the-boy-doesn’t-matter-does-it? fucking loves splashing about in the pool, they’re not afraid, not one little bit, they’re giggling except when the chlorine gets in their eyes and then their doughy face flushes red and they’re grizzling and there-there, don’t be daft, come here, resting them on the shoulder, out of the water, until they’re ready to go back in for more splashing and messing like the tears never happened. Happy as Larry. Nirvana baby. Coming home and Samantha has made a pukka supper and the house is toasty. She’s been to a yoga class in the afternoon and.. and… and… they’ve somehow managed to afford to buy a house and it’s all a heap of fucking unbelievable-sickening-sentimental-garbage. Do me a favour. What are you on about, you twat? Fuck sake. Stuck in a pub with nowhere to go. Girlfriend kicked him out of their rented gaff because of what he did when drunk. He’s got sod all in the way of savings. He’s been informed by the Chief Financial Officer that he will be made redundant at work. Cost restructuring. Efficiencies. Streamlining. Lean methodology. Investment in technology. Corporate zoology.

No one’s replying to the texts. WhatsApps.

The calls.

Not even his own mother and he can see from the blue ticks she’s read his SOS message. Blanked by his own flesh and blood. None of them want to be involved. And do you know why, Pete? Are you ready for it? They don’t want to know because you’re the original waste of space. A full on cunty chops. The chickens, they’ve come home to roost, mate. The chickens. That’s the long and short of it. Chick-chick-chickens. Coming for you. Cluckety-cluck.

So, how do you like it now?

The match was about to start.

He had a couple of hours grace to watch the game. He then needed to figure out where he was going to stay for the night. The ultimate full-time whistle. It might be a park bench the way he was going. A hotel was an option. Not that he really had the moolah for a Travelodge. Premier Inn. They cost a bomb. He could go back to Mandy’s. Wonder if she might give him one last night in the spare room. No chance. She’s the one who released the chickens. Set them loose on him. Cluck. Cluck. Cluck. There was no kid, no family, extended or nuclear. The job was being axed and the payout was only going to keep him alive for a few months. No roof over his head either. Speaking in plain English, this was a fucking disaster of epic proportions. An unmitigated clusterfuck. What had he been thinking with Samantha? Needed his head examined. Mandy, she was the best thing since sliced bread. They got along so well. She might like rubbish films but she made him laugh and that could be hard to find amidst the alienation and anomie of the atomised 21^st Century living experience. He saw his future unfolding before him and it wasn’t pretty. The chickens surrounded him. The noise of their clucking. And the match was about to kick off. Lads in the pub shouting like lads are prone to do. The whistle blown. Nobody else seemed to hear the flock of aggro chickens clucking about how he was going to be alone and poor. Stuck in a bedsit by himself if he was lucky. Empty bottles and tinnies. Curtains hanging broken off the rail. Filthy bedsheets. Unwashed pots, pans and plates in the kitchen unit area and empty cans of Heinz tomato soup, the lids poking up with jagged edges, and Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodles. The ubiquitous unread copy of London by Peter Ackroyd on a shelf. Coffee stains enamelled on the countertop. That sliced bread, it goes mouldy so fast these days. And the phone, it never rang, unless it was some official chasing for a bill to be paid. The wheels of bureaucracy unseen but forever turning. He envisaged himself as one of those mummified corpses that were discovered not because they’d been missed by family, friends and loved ones, but due to outstanding balances and payments still pending.

Debt. Failure.

Pete—you’re headed for a pauper’s grave.

Not so clever now, are you?

Flashbacks to last night. Walking up and down an alleyway with his willy out, telling Samantha what a whopper he’s got.

Utter madness.

Alright, alright. Fuck sake. Stop shouting.

Sup the pint. Up to now, the booze had made him feel better. Not so anymore. It was making him worse. He wasn’t sure how many more pints he could drink. There was only so much lager a body could ingest. 

The match had begun and it was effectively a countdown to when he would be forced to leave the pub and begin the next phase of his post-Mandy life. He considered his options. He could try to walk back to her place – 24-hours ago it was theirs – and beg her to let him back in, or catch a bus and then a train to his mum’s place on the other side of the city, or he could go to the offie, get more booze – switch to chilled white wine perhaps – and sit in a hotel room getting smashed by himself.

Worry about reality after sunrise tomorrow.

There was a collective groan of disappointment and swearing as a player missed a tap in from a cross.

The drunkenness made it hard for him to think straight. To hold onto a thought. He was flooded with alcohol and was sure he was briefly dozing off and snapping himself back awake. Although he couldn’t be sure. Nothing was real. His skin was hot and his lungs constricted. He gazed at the screen and the men chasing a ball and he wondered why—what were they doing that for? And what was Mandy doing at home? Why wasn’t she here with him, eating pub grub?  

Hold on.

A couple of things confirmed a kind of woozy truth. These facts could not be denied. He was pissed. Arseholed to the point that he wondered if a hotel would accept him. He would have to draw on all of his C-Grade drama GCSE acting skills to convince them he was a worthy guest.

Getting rejected from a Travelodge would be the final straw—or maybe not the final final straw... as that was most likely the second undeniable fact: his relationship was Mandy was caput. 

There would be no more burger and chips. Gastro or otherwise.

(Part V here https://www.abctales.com/story/mark-burrow/semi-semi-semi-5)