Stupid fuking humanity, mine. (from 15/06/2009)

Last night I was at the Standard with the Biz trying to trick my hangover into believing that it did not exist and, failing that, soothe the savage beast with a parmigiana, which is the music of the tastebud.  Beautiful women were everywhere, everywhere, herds of them roaming freely through the beer garden, teasing me with their out-of-reach fresh beauty and ripeness and I'm just sat there in a disjointed, I'm-not-here kinda way.  Best of all was the statuesque table service goddess whose graceful passings through the crowd were filling my head with the most outrageous impure and lustful thoughts.  The turn of her neck into her sharp jaw line.  Her studied look of detachment.  Casually restrained strawberry hair.  The appropriated 1950's housewife chic ensemble that made her like a funked-up mannequin from one of those black & white H-Bomb desert test movies where They built towns and populated them with faux nuclear families so that They could blow them up with nuclear explosions.  She was hot like fission.  I was, however, completely out of it - as vacant as a Detroit high-rise - capable of producing only clunky sentences that more often than not constituted two or more disparate themes clumsily bolted together with neither corollary nor segue to save them. One thought at the start, lost somewhere in the middle, and abandoned for a second idea for the sentence's conclusion.  My very own incoherent valueless, Naked-Lunch-gay-Beat-poet, self-indulgent effluvia.  The height of my powers feels like a concept of a long-gone past.  I remember when a hangover lifted me to a state of ecstasy where streams of conscience burst forth in Amazonian torrents to inundate those around me and drown them in my unfettered, luminous brilliance.  Now – though I do so hope it is only then, that time yesterday rather than a resigned from-this-moment-forth – I am as if the Murray Darling basin.  Choked and dying, my good ideas and talent siphoned off by greedy conversation farmers to irrigate the barren plains of their own infertile minds.  But where was I?  She was incredible.  I had cycled through most of my arsenal of non-verbal here-I-am-isms.  Starting with the I-See-You blatant staring for the first few times she floated past the table and moving on to the trickery of the Now-I’m-Deliberately-Not-Looking-At-You-Though-I-Know-You’re-Passing-My-Table.  I even ramped up the later (NIDNLAYTIKYPMT) by inserting the too-hard-laugh that says, “Look how much fun we’re having! If you were with me this is how much fun you’d be having too!! We are great!!!”  Tres cool Kiddie, your machinations are tres cool. 

The food finally arrived as an artery clogging mass that bit its thumb at Life. Be In It! and its gay healthy food eating pyramid (Gay!).  It was brought by the other waitress (boo!) much to my consternation, that is to say it left me in a state of utter confusion and dismay, or made the utter confusion that I was already experiencing more utter.  The Gods had conspired though to offer me an opening, to take some little contact and nurture it in the shallow, foetid waters of my carnal fantasies, as the mountain of chips had no sauce to offset their salty dryness.  Spurred on by a complete lack of self-awareness I timed my lean across the table and out into the walkway to perfection – maybe the only thing that I had done with any level of proficiency for the whole day – to interrupt her passage.  She looked down at me and I paused for far, far too long and I’d love to say it was as my heart skipped a beat but the fact is that I was scant more than a sack of pressed sausage meat incapable of responding appropriately to the world around him and the pause was a product of my emptiness.  “Is there any sauce?”  That was it.  The sum total of me, the best that I had to offer.  No excuse me, no witty dialogue relating my state of disrepair to the healing properties of tomatoes, no charming quip about how the night air reminded me so much of Paris at this time of year, just some dead air and my dumbness write large for all (read: her) to see.  “What?”  That was her reply, what.  Probably more “what the fuk is wrong with you” than “what did you say”.  I stammered the start of a couple of sentences before she gently took the reigns out of my fumbling hands and soothed me like she would a too-excited child or a lovable imbecile, “You mean tomato?” Arched eyebrow. “I’ll get it for you.”  Such a sweet voice she had.  And I spent the next ten minutes listening to Biz squealing with delight at my impotence and inanity.  Of course I didn’t spend the next ten minutes eating chips with sauce as she erased the whole banal exchange from her memory lest it soil her perfection and continued on her way without bringing any sauce and when Biz headed to the bar to refill our cups to overflowing with something to take the pain away I was left alone in a state of increasing dizziness as all the blood abandoned my brain for my stomach. 

She skipped past a few times and I did a passable Deep Introspection that is aimed at making me look as if I’m taking the opportunity of sitting alone to engage with profundities of import and concocted Plan B.  Yes Kiddie, you are brilliant!  Casually twist to catch her eye when she approaches the next time, she will get a glint of recognition and horrified at forgetting the sauce she will apologise profusely, I shall be gracious and we will laugh heartily about the fickle nature of our human foibles and she will be endeared to you forever for the simple fact that you know her.  You old fox!  Ok.  And, twisting now….. good…. catch the eye…. excellent…. and the recognition….. and the recognition…. and…. she is walking straight past you.  Did I let her passage go unhindered and maintain my sclerotic dignity?  Nup.  Casual though I tried to be it was obviously a harried, desperate and too-loud explosion that was thrown at her back as she moved away, “No sauce then.”  Another winning line!  Who can stop me?  Will someone please stop me. She turned with a patience that just made her all the more angelic and which contrasted against my bestial, primordial filth. “Fuck”, she said (so HOT!!), “I’ll get it now.”  Such a sweet voice she had.  And I fell over myself in a conniption of over-stylised, arm waving, lurching forward, apologetic insanity that must have unsettled her with its stench as it rushed toward her like the breath of the diable herself.  “No it’s ok, I’m finished, no really don’t worry about it, the chips were great without sauce, in fact I didn’t even really want it, it was for my friend.” But even that couldn’t sully her, she didn’t even flinch and unruffled she turned with the lightness of the absolutely beautiful and disappeared into the crowd leaving me alone on the plateau flicking through the sharp edges of my thoughts.

An interaction of pure desperation.

Fuk yeah, I'm cool! Aren’t I?