Life Less Literary

Thursday night, dee dee dee de de na na na, what a bloody mess.

I guess it all started around lunchtime. We had a presentation to the board and partners of So Safe, which went bloody well but Bill started handing out the cans of Holsten Export at around 2pm. I’d already had a couple, there was just one left in the fridge so… well, shame to let it go to waste.

Mark and I crossed London to meet up with the FAD crew in The Foundry. Another quick drink before we plunged into a heady world of private views and complimentary booze. Tipsy by the first one, one I’d reached the second I was wobbling apologetically into people, although still suffering delusions of being more-or-less in control. New recruit Steve was smoking smelly grass spliffs in the walk between galleries, I’m sure that didn’t help either.

We headed to Brick Lane, where a whole bunch of galleries around the Truman Brewery were showing degree-show art from all around the country. We spent a long time in the first one. One of the displays was a small car, a metro or something, with dark tinted windows and a movie projector erected above the bonnet. You could open the car doors, climb inside, and watch a movie projected onto the windscreen of… the view from the windscreen of a car as a group of people drove around at night (there was also sound, and for some reason a big, old-fashioned, non-functioning TV wedged into the back seat of the car). Steve took the driving seat and I was alongside him, a couple of the others climbed in behind us. It was a strangely exhilerating and illicit experience, It felt like we really were out driving drunk. I chastised Steve for drinking and driving, and for not wearing his seatbelt, we joked with each other, and I ended up laughing so much I split my beer all down the front of my trousers, making it look remarkably like I’d pissed my pants. I rolled down the window and japed as Phil filmed a video of my stupidity.

A couple more galleries, a handful more free drinks. The last one appeared at first glance to be part of the degree show, but was actually some kind of interior design show where you could buy matching sofas and abstract art for your living room. There was one little section filled with cinnamon bark and other exotic scents which set my drink-heightened-dampened sense of smell on edge, but for the most part it was just filled with large paintings of sub-sub-Kandinsky colours and squiggles, and brown leather furniture; I joked to the others that "this place is full of pouffes". I shouldn’t have been so flippant. I soon left the gallery, bored, and paced around outside. I noticed a guy who had followed me out, and now appeared to be watching me. I crossed the street and sat on the pavement opposite. He followed shortly afterwards, sat down beside me and started asking what I thought of the exhibition. Turns out he had bought something there (a pouffe, I think). I got the distinct impression that he was trying to chat me up (and that’s not an impression I get very often, even when people are making barn-door-sized attempts to win my affections). I made a little polite conversation and then got up to join my posse.

We stumbled into an overpriced bar wedged between the two galleries. The front was open to the street, with benches outside, but the recent flash-thunderstorm had left them too damp to sit on, so we went just inside the door. A couple of people bought drinks, the rest of us carried on sipping red wine from plastic cups obtained next door. One of the bar staff came over to ask us where we got them from, and tell us we couldn’t drink them in there. We made vague grunty noises and she left us alone. I said "they should be bloody grateful that there’s anyone in here at all, what with all this free booze around. At least we’ve bought some drinks."

Steve had been wondering whether to make another spliff. "Yeah, go on" I egged him. Jan turned up and needed no egging. He skinned up and, safety in numbers, Steve joined in. We sat there in the corner, puffing away nonchalantly as if it were the most natural thing in the world, until a barmaid came up to us, or more specifically to me (I had the joint in my hand at that time) and started demanding, very aggressively "what the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t smoke that in here. You know that’s illegal, don’t you!" I again giggled and grunted and, when I realised she wasn’t going to turn off that stern glare unless I took evasive action, I mumbled a rather pathetic "I’m sorry" and stubbed it out.

"I should think so, now give me that." She sashayed off with the ashtray. I felt about the size of a two pence piece. "Ah, she’s probably some fucking stuck-up rich Swedish bitch" offered Jan. He went up to the bar to test his theory by talking to her in his mother tongue. "Yep, she’s Swedish" he said on his return. I felt like the evening had peaked, it was going to be a downwards trajectory from here, I was really keen to get back to Jan’s where I was staying the night.

Jan sent me off to buy a bottle of wine, my rent for the night. I ploughed my way down Brick Lane to the offy and returned with a rather nice, and not cheap, bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Cowed again by the Swedish barmaid cleaning our table (her: "You’re bad. I only let you stay because you said you were sorry." Me [sub-breath mumbling]: "I’m really sorry. Really really.") I felt desperate to get out. So I was glad when everyone made to leave. But sad when Jan demanded that we visit one more bar.

That bar was the Vibe bar, where the scales were well and truly tipped. Just one more
JD & coke from the bar (I forgot to mention, by this time I’d progressed from beer via white wine and red wine to Jack Daniels & Coke), then I’d be home and, hopefully, dry. We came so close as well, but then a woman came up to our table, shot glasses strapped bullet-belt style around her gorgeous body. I fell instantly in love.

"Would you
like a tequila slammer?" My god, how could I possibly answer anything but yes to such a leading question from such a well-equipped beauty. So I kinda drooled "yes, please". She poured us each (me, Jan, and… I forget who the third person still hanging in with us was, perhaps Steve?) a glass. And not just a piddly small shot glass either, a big Lucas-sized glass almost full to the brim with golden cactus-spirit. We circled, we slammed, and we knocked them back (mine went first and fastest, I was determined to show this girl what I was made of. Perhaps, on hindsight, not such a good idea). "Would you like another?" Fuck, there’s no challenge I can’t meet, ain’t no mountain high enough, etc etc… once again, I said yes. Same ritual, same result, and then she said "right, that’ll be twenty-one pounds please." I was shattered, heartbroken, my angel was nothing more than a tequila whore, using her body to hook me in, no worse than a drug dealer outside a school playground. And I was a true fucking sucker.

We scrabbled through our pockets to pay her: unbelievable, but I was still trying to impress on some level, eagerly came up with my share of the cash and harangued the other two when they tried to complain she was ripping us off. Then she left our table and, although I cast longing glances around the bar as we left, I never saw her again, she seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Next Jan and I had to negotiate the entire length of Brick Lane. Beautiful curry smells wafted everywhere. And I, rather foolishly (again) on such a boozy night, hadn’t had any dinner. I started to crave onion bhajis. So before the end of the road, we slipped into Café Naz as somebody was leaving. They were closed, but after some drunken pleading from us they agreed to make us a takeaway. Now, the next part is subject to dispute: I was sure that Jan talked me into buying a full meal (because I know very well that all I wanted was a couple of onion bhajis and a bit of mango chutney. Although admittedly this scenario does not make much sense, as I know that Jan had already eaten an Indian meal about two hours earlier). Jan is adamant that the meal was my idea. I’ve a feeling that perhaps what happened was that the people running the restaurant would only sell us a takeaway if we ordered a full meal, rather than a couple of measly bhajis. Anyway, we somehow managed to order twenty-two quid’s worth of food off them (I picked up the tab), which I swung around in a cardboard box as we walked back to Jan’s flat.

At about this stage, my
memories become dreamlike and very patchy. We reached the flat and got the lift up. It was all I could manage to keep standing upright. Through the front door, I actually crawled into the living room and onto the sofa. And then crawled very quickly back towards the bathroom. I hunched my head over the toilet, and awaited the deluge. Meanwhile Jan, almost but not quite as drunk as me, pottered around: "Dan… are you… huh? Oh, you’re in there. I’m just getting this curry out. And some wine… you want some wine?"

In the end, I don’t think there was much of a deluge, just a few forced-out strands of reddish acid mulch. But it put paid to my evening. I crawled back to the sofa, answered Jan’s further enquiries concerning food and wine with little pathetic grunts in the negative, and blacked out. When I came to (I won’t say awoke, because it didn’t really feel like I ever went to sleep) it was light. I could hear snoring. I let my eyes adjust, looked around me, and there on the adjacent sofa was Jan, also curled up, fast asleep - he’d not managed to make it to his bedroom next door. I felt slightly better that I hadn’t been the only one too drunk to end my night in a reasonable human manner, but I also started to remember the incidents of the previous night, particularly my arrogantly illegal smoking and my love affair with the tequila girl, and I felt deeply, painfully ashamed. I checked my watch, it was only 7am, time to walk all the way to St Pancras and still have to sit nursing a coffee for 90 minutes before catching an off-peak train back to Sheffield. Which is exactly what I did.