PUB

A man walks in to a pub. No, this isn’t a joke but yes, he does order a pint of beer and have a brief exchange with the barman. They know each other well so the man has no need to specify a particular type of beer, though this pub has an excellent selection of both imported and home brewed ales. Of course, I don’t mean Homebrew. That suggests plastic buckets of fermenting grog stifling away in an airing cupboard in suburbia, released from it’s lonely mulch to be savored in pretense by friends, relatives and acquaintances, accompanied perhaps by a selection of old school hors d’oeuvres, which of course is too grand a title for those things we might refer to as nibbles but which in actual fact you and I would just call crisps and nuts.

There are no nibbles sitting on the bar in our pub. People would just gorge on them and besides, salted nuts, pistachios, almonds or even Turkish hazelnuts, placed in small bowls at strategic points, would seem very much out of place, clumsy and vulnerable to breakage. One misplaced elbow sending both contents and container to the tiled floor. Broken ceramic pieces. Nuts to be heel ground. For plastic would be quite out of the question and glass is too dangerous. Maybe wood would do? This pub serves fine Merlot, floral Gewürztraminer, Barolo, Riesling, Viognier; it serves discussion, advice, recommendation and knowledge so nothing can cheapen the well-rounded demeanour. The people that drink here do not drink merely to slake their thirst or seek oblivion, though there are those that achieve that. No, the people that drink here do not require salty encouragement, even of snacks that would fit the bill. Lemon zested Moroccan olives, organic fire pepper hummus, paprika dusted macadamia nuts, maybe even crisps, but crisps hand crafted with love in small batches, stirred in the first pressed oil by the granddaughter of the founder, all purple and green rejected, then doused gently and passionately with an artisan Anglesey sea salt and a rare Sicilian powdered vinegar. Besides, one pound seventy-four pence for a packet of crisps is a lot of cash when they’ll be gone in a few minutes and for goodness sake, they are only crisps. But nobody is nipping next door to the wee shop and sneaking in a packet of Golden Wonder, KP or Monster Munch. This is a pub where money may be an object, but it’s not a bargain the punters are seeking, it’s a lifestyle.

So our clientele do not require the accompaniment or carrot of salty encouragement to partake of the fine wines, excellent beers, cocktails and spirits on show and on sale. Seven year rums, twelve year old whiskies, micro brewed pale ales from America and New Zealand, local award winning brews that puff out their chests amongst their global brethren and whisper ’choose me, for I am pure and good and thou shalt hold up to your lips the taste of righteousness, community bolstered, your credentials on show for all to see. Not for you the fickle fast food fellating of the bottle of mass produced mediocrity. No sir, you stand tall in your knowledge of global and local pronunciation: Zwiece, Tsing Tao, Okocim, Deuchars, Kriek, Westmalle Dubbel, they all spring easily to tongue. How delightful the feeling? All your flesh and flaps and soft tissues and lungs and lips combine so effortlessly to make the sounds that order the drinks that taste so bitter and sweet and fresh and lovely, just so lovely.

Okay dear reader, now that I am two drinks in I must confess that I was probably in danger of losing you in my first paragraph but please, my nerves got the better of me for a moment, all that blank page staring at me, mocking me. Twice my pen dried up; twice I had to lick the nib. But I didn’t drop the ball and now you have landed firmly in the world of my pub where I am sitting writing to you now. Can you feel the need to come here, rest your elbow on the bar and ponder my fresh words? Can you tell which one is me? Look around, whom do you see? There are four women at one of the solid, dark wooden tables. One is holding court, two are listening by not listening and the fourth is glancing regularly to her left where a handsome dark haired man with a beard is reading a magazine. ‘Mac User’. He must be one of these cool people with their shiny little white or silver laptops. They always look cool and she knows this but she works in Accountancy and she is thinking how much she would like to feel that dark beard on her face, feel the bristles above his lip as he kissed her and as the other woman talks on and on about her vacation with Louis in the Mendips and how Jane came by to visit, our girl is reminded of an old boyfriend who loved real ale and taught her to drink Black Sheep and Speckled Hen and Jennings and taught her the songs of Leonard Cohen where Jane came by with a lock of your hair. So she looks at the thin gypsy thief with his ‘Mac User’ and his dark beard and she wants him to fuck her, now in front of all the other people. Bent over the broad wooden table, her skirt up around her waist, her knickers pulled roughly aside, his veined hands grappling for her breasts as he slams into her and her beautifully manicured nails scrape splinters in to the wood. Somewhere in the distance she hears “Mendips, Louis, Jane, sanded wooden floors, quintessence, rotary, asparagus, Samovar’.

Is that I dear reader? Sitting with my pint of Guinness and my magazine? Transmitting my thoughts to this page. Is that I with my rough dark beard, fantasising about the woman in the business suit nursing her glass of Prosecco, running her finger and thumb up and down the outside of the glass and I wish it was my cock so that she could prepare me for the hard fucking she will get when I bend her over that table, push up her skirt and slide it all the way up her?

So what do you think of this pub so far? Plenty of seats, good drinks, nice atmosphere, food available, what more do you want? Did you notice that the ceiling fans rotate so delightfully slowly and also that they rotate in the wrong direction? Anti-clockwise. Well, they do if you view them from here. Look in the mirror. They rotate clockwise. That’s normal isn’t it? Are you sure? I’m not. Let me give you a clue, I am drinking a Belgian beer. Ha, that narrows it down doesn’t it? Could be a Geuze or a Rodenbach Alexander, a Kwak with it’s funny looking wooden medieval holder. a blonde, brune or radieuse Leffe. Each of them so enticing and rich in colour and flirtatious of foam. But this pub has nooks and indeed crannies and maybe I can see you but you cannot see me seeing you. There are two middle aged men behind you, each with silver hair cut short in the modern style. They could be your father, your brother, your uncle, your lover but as a matter of fact they themselves are brothers. Oh come on, you can tell, fat or thin that’s the same face and the same hair. Perhaps one of them is me? Okay, can help you out here, neither of them is me. God forbid that I should end up like that, sharing a bottle of Tempranillo and discussing the declining health of their elderly father that sits facing the wall in a nursing home unable to do much for himself, surrounded by the antiseptically covered smell of death. He is attended to by kind ladies from Poland, uniformed in the modern regimental style of minimum waged labour, the ubiquitous polo shirt. These brothers with their Spanish grape and their Thomas Pink shirts were both late to marry and their children are but eleven, ten and nine and they attend lovely schools of red brick and lawn where the polo shirts that they wear each day have somehow forged a link to the poorly paid nurses who clean the shit from, wipe the nose of and feed the everyday general needs of their poor senile grandfather. He loved a beer in his day. Mild, Brown ale, Bitter, Stout. Brown drinks, brown times, hard days work drinks, men’s drinks, cradled in rough hands. A man’s man like yer Nan’s man, he worked in steel, forty long years. Forty years of beer and meat and potatoes. He married Eleanor from the corner shop, she slipped him single Woodbines and he lit them with Bryant and May. All that beer and fags, lard and love, it never quite got the better of him though his poor Eleanor, three kids live, two lost babies, she wore out some years back and passed on. He became useless at last, wise enough to realise that he was only the man he was because of her, because of her love, her daily grind, her smiles, her sheer bloody effort.

Some days still the lucid moments kick in like a punch to the gut and he is scared and he cries in his room which is comfortable but belongs to nobody. A few photographs stand on the dressing table, his grandchildren, and Eleanor in black and white that still somehow does not disguise her ruby lips and her dark chocolate button eyes, those marvellous swinging hips. He loved to watch her backside when she walked up the stairs in the days of tight skirts and even tighter sweaters. He could see the outline of her suspenders and she would turn and look at him knowing what he was thinking. Some days when reality bites he stares at her picture and he thinks about her body. Somewhere inside him is a stirring, deep down, like when Karoliina, the girl from Gdansk leans over to adjust his cushions and he stares at the top of her milky powder breasts. Where did all his life go? The friends he never sees, the Sunday visits from Jack and David, the occasional presence of the boys, his precious grandchildren. How often are they here when he isn’t?

He wants to die, peacefully. He wants to go to sleep. He doesn’t even know if there is Heaven, but there might be and if there is then Eleanor will be waiting there for him, young and beautiful and he will be strong and broad-chested as he once was and he will lie down beside her once more and smell her and touch her and hold her tight forevermore. Only one thing stops him fading out. Though he does not rage against the dying of the light, good grief, he barely pisses in the wind, there is one spark that draws him back in to this life, keeps him hanging on, always desperate for one last glimpse, one last touch of the hand. His youngest grandson, Matthew, this beautiful boy with his soft golden hair and his long, skinny limbs. Matthew still hugs him and says ‘I love you Granddad’. It is the final joy, the last real thing left amongst the cloudy oblivion and the fading memories. Maybe he can come down from Heaven, like in Carousel and give Matthew a star. He smiles at this and drifts off to sleep.

So you see, my lovely reader, we are surrounded by life and death here in this pub and you want to stay here now , you want to find me, you want to be my friend and share your tales of longing and belonging. You want to stay here now and berate the uncaring brothers, share a pint with our bearded man, clink glasses with our lovely lunching ladies, dig deep into all these lives. Drink heartily and then savour the blessed exaltation of a long, strong piss. Come on, I’ll reveal myself to you and you can buy me a pint of Best. We can place our glasses firmly down on the best table, the one that forms a committee table in a booth, a curving private room for friends to gather and settle in and stay for the night. It can seat eight but we can grab it and if you sit in the right place you have the view, the privacy, the table, the lot. So quick, you get the booth before the pub gets busy and I’ll get the drinks. Here is your cider, pear cider from Sweden. Big bottle. Best be careful, a few of these and you will be well oiled. I’m sticking to beer, a smooth pint of Director’s Bitter now, too many of those Belgian bastards and I’ll be no use to anyone, least of all you and I have so much to tell you. Tales of long afternoons hiding away from the rain drinking chocolate stouts, Cains Mild from Liverpool, London Pride, Spitfire from Kent, Welsh Brains, glorious rich and viscous Theakstons from Yorkshire, tales of long nights and stay behinds, secret lock ins where the whiskey flowed like wine and the conversation bounced from banter to bullshit to melancholy you-are-my-world deepest sincerity. Opinions, previously concealed, like dark secrets revealed, poetic, pathetic, ideas, fears, leers, beers.

Cheers!

Do you know that later I will love you though right now I hardly know you but we will find common ground and we will point out fools, ex-lovers, fashion faux-pas, visible pantie lines, cheap suits, bad tattoos, good tattoos, toupees, tan lines, fur coat no knickers, no knickers....

We will listen in to and be listened in to as the hubbub rises and the hurly burly at the bar gets cramped and competitive and breasts brush elbows and asses bump asses and the whole dance of lust flashes and passes until the thinning of the people eventually leads in to the quiet of the night and then it’s just you and I nursing Spanish Brandy alone in this booth. Alone with out thoughts, too fucking drunk and too drunk to fuck and all the tales you have told of your dear departed mother. your lovers and your travels, school days, salad days, your erotic highlights and and your amateur footlights, highways and byways and your old Volvo and that dog that went out for a walk and never ever came back. I must try to write it all down or I will forget it all and then you are back to being nothing but a face in the crowd, a vague memory in the bottom of a glass, dried froth, a circular mark on the table that will be erased by one sweep of the barmaid’s cloth. The chairs will be stacked, the glasses rinsed, the floor swept of the detritus of the evening and then the lights extinguished. We will wander home alone, perhaps the exchange of a drunken kiss to send us on our way or a brief hug or shake of the hand? Or maybe we will go home together to your place or mine and we will clumsily attempt drunken sex before falling asleep on the couch, smelling of beer and brandy, snorting and snoring in creased sweaty clothes. We wake in the cruel light of realisation, desperate to piss, yet one of us knows not the whereabouts of the bathroom. You can come back to mine, you can wake before me, examine my face, the face of a stranger. Are you revolted or secretly delighted? Look at him with his thin lips, unshaven face, crooked nose. That’s a beer belly. And his breath, rasping from open mouth stinks like a dogs of uncleaned tongue, bits between the teeth, garlic, cheese, whisky, cigarettes and desperation. Yet, if you loved me, and you said you did last night, then you would not care about these things. You love my dimpled chin, my good taste in expensive shirts, the wine stain on my tie. You love that little belly, you love to tease me and stroke those fine hairs around my navel that thicken as they approach my sleeping soft cock which you love to place in your mouth even when it does not taste as clean as when you suck me off directly from the shower. How we so readily accept, even come to like, the detritus of the oozing shedding machine when we love the ghost in it’s shell.

But you do not love me. You barely even know me. You only loved me last night because of Koppenburg and Brandy and now you are here in strange surroundings next to a snoring not-even-lover who couldn’t get it up anyway. Not that that mattered, you probably fell asleep. Or did you? Do you feel the presence of last night in your belly or in your arse, for my dear beloved reader, we still don’t know if you are boy or girl. Maybe you are boy, man and one of us got hard and perhaps it was you and you fucked me roughly or gently, sliding your ninety percent erection right up my dirty hole? But take a close look, my belt is still intact though my zip is down, my shirt peeking from it, though not my cock! So seems like we did not get that far then, so you search quietly for the bathroom and toilet, pausing to observe aspects of my life. Stacks of CD’s, DVD’s books, magazines, a photograph of two small children with ice creams, wearing beanie hats. He’s got kids damn it!

I am sorry to disappoint you, or maybe at least some of you, but at this stage I need you to be a woman for I am a straight man. I am happy for you to share a beer with me in the pub if you are a man, straight or gay. If you are gay then I am happy to flirt with you. But I do not want your cock. It’s not that cocks cannot be beautiful and I hate it when I watch porn and the guys cocks are ugly. I want to see nice cocks as much as you do. Going in to the mouths and pussies and assholes of the, well whoever. If the cocks are ugly then I am turned off for I cannot imagine the women really want such ugly cocks in their bodies but then what the hell do I know? I’m just a straight guy with a nice smooth symmetrical cock. How the hell do I know whether it makes the slightest bit of difference. Yet surely women appreciate the aesthetic and porn is hardly a decent point of reference when it is just a way to earn money. Anyway, my gay readers I hope you have attractive cocks and I am happy to hear about them and you can flirt with me and flatter me to your hearts content and please feel very welcome in my world of bar and beer, I want everyone here.

Ok so we have established that you are my morning after lady and you find the toilet and take a piss and you look at yourself in the mirror, last night’s make-up and bloodshot eyes. You rinse your face in cool water and smooth back your hair, check your watch, fuck…0615 says the digital. How much sleep did you manage to get? Maybe four hours maximum? Thank God it is Saturday, thank God you are divorced and not answering to anyone. Or maybe you are single and it matters not a jot. You are your own woman, free to sleep where the Hell you choose, fuck or not fuck who the Hell you please.

Take a deep breath, compose yourself. What is in the bathroom cabinet? Click. A little loud. Is he still asleep? All is quiet, a few birds chirp, a gentle distant background rumble, faint but still audible. You scan the contents of the cabinet. Razors, Gillette, blue, four of in an opened packet. Toothpicks, After Shave, Aramis – that’s old school, Calvin Klein something, that’s new school…mmmm…L’Oreal Face Scrub, modern man then. Aspirin, Hay Fever tablets, maybe that’s why I snore? Lip salve, cotton buds for clean ears, plasters, some unknown drug. What’s that for you wonder and then you cannot help thinking of sexually transmitted diseases but it’s cool, you never even fucked me anyway. Nail clippers, tweezers, grooming is on my agenda by the looks of it. This isn’t bad, nothing weird, nothing remotely suspicious. Well, just the unknown drugs but they could be for Athlete’s Foot, upset tummy, migraine or any number of normal, non-worrying things. For goodness sake, consider your own bathroom cabinet with it’s endless moisturisers, eye cream, Thrush cream, tampons, face-masks, gels, potions, lotions, unguents, ointments, lubricants, humectants, E45, the industrial doyen of the dry skinned; and that’s before you start on the make-up!

My bathroom is clean, the toilet is clean, with a recent Toilet Duck and nothing but a single stray pubic hair to prevent it getting a ten out of ten score. Shampoo, loofah, conditioner, shower gel around the edge of the bath; no tide mark. I’m clean honey. You couldn’t eat your dinner here and I am sure that you would not want to but so far you have a slight urge developing to go to the kitchen and rustle up some scrambled eggs on toast, fresh coffee, pink grapefruit juice. Maybe you could even get showered and achieve fragrant beauty. Is there a spare toothbrush I wonder?

You creep slowly back in to the lounge where I sleep on oblivious. You find the kitchen and again all seems reasonable. That’s a nice toaster, your brother has one like that. There are three fridge magnets. Lurpack, IheartNY, and a mock vintage tea advertisement. So you enter the world of my fridge. What happened here? One minute it is a pear cider and then before you know it you are checking out my Electrolux. Let’s get back to the pub, back to our booth. Let’s watch for new arrivals, let’s order another drink and be damned. It’s only four o’clock in the afternoon. Here comes a nice couple, linen, cargo pants, children, two of. You see at this time you can bring in all the family and there are high chairs, a kids menu. They know where their bread is buttered. So come on, you are in the game now. What about her? What do you reckon?. About 37?, maybe more, trendy short hair, not much make-up. Arse a bit flabby, she’ll need to watch that, her man’s got an eye for the ladies, he’s already clocked our four business chums and he’s playing cool dad with a bit too much affectation; bet he loves it when he’s out with the kids without her in tow, getting the attention of the girls with no kids who are wanting so much to find a father for the babies they haven’t had yet. Then there are the ones with kids that do have a father but he’s not in her house anymore because he went to work in Dublin and couldn’t resist fucking Molly Malone. I love all the tension and desperation and all that lovely modern malaise. I bet this couple are making a go of it after a difficult period, she slept with the guy in her writing group and he shagged Lesley the actress in revenge. Bless them, they are trying to make it for the kids and he fancies our Prosecco girl but she fancies beardy man and he’s got his eyes on short-hair because he thinks hubby looks like a boring cunt and now she’s noticed and I’m so x-ray of vision I can see the sparks. Prosecco girl is jealous, she tries to tell herself that her seventy grand a year and her Audi A6 and her Elle McPherson underwear are just the tickety-boo ticket but she’s got no chance with top-dad and the way things are going she’s got no chance with anyone and the babies she wants so much will be sired by second-rate rugby boors and taken home to dream-home heartache and the last great modern malaise, the exchange of dreams for comfort.

Our four lunching ladies start to pick holes in our trendy couple, not because they are jealous of their family unit, any fool can see the cracks in that. Not because they want him, he’s all floppy and effete. Nah, they are jealous of her, because she has no make-up, she’s slim after babies, she has cropped hair and perky little bra-less tits, flat shoes and some band of piety round her thin freckled wrist. They cannot see her pain, the lines between the eyes, the long painful silences, the husband with communication issues and frustrated anger management sessions. They haven’t sat through counselling sessions to act out the same old shit in front of an audience. They haven’t emitted the silent scream of frustration at the allergies and tantrums and learning difficulties. They haven’t started all those books of enlightenment only to feel the darkness appear, leaving yet another potential glib solution discarded under the bed. The sleepless nights, the sleepless days, the sheer weight of demand of being modern. But she looks like Jean Seberg and they know that the beardy man would crawl over all four of their pussies just to hold her hand.

So dad gets a pint of bitter bitter and mum gets a glass of rose Rose and the kids get Ribena from out of mum’s bag and they glance enviously at our booth, so perfect for crowd control. They look long enough to see if we will offer to move, seeing their predicament. I smile at their predicament the go back to my beer and they must suffer the need to be constantly alert on an ordinary table. They sit in silence watching the kids drinking their drinks, watching the kids drinking their drinks. One day she will throw herself into the arms of another and be roughly fucked up back-alleys and in car-parks, fingered on buses and trains, gasping for more air, more damned fresh air.

Convivial, that’s the word that springs to mind, it’s even pleasant to speak. Like Namibia, ubiquitous, venerable, secretariat, mousse, well they are some of my favourites, what about you? Are you still stuck in the future rummaging in my fridge? Get your arse back into gear and get back in the booth with me.

You are my reader, if I lose you the story stops, there is no pub, there is no family with kids, no silver-haired brothers, no lunching ladies, no beardy man and we need to find out what is going to happen to them, I don’t want to wake-up tomorrow morning in last nights clothes to hear some noises from the kitchen and think ‘Who the fuck is that?’ followed by ‘Oh shit, what does she look like?’ and then recall that no, I was alone in the pub last night, long after the family had headed home to argue, long after the ladies had gone home to their chick-lit and their boxed sets and their almost Cloudy Bay. Beardy was still there but he had been joined by TV girl, art-girl and more beards. I was alone in the end, nursing Spanish Brandy, thinkin’ ‘bout my baby, thinkin’ ’bout my babies. God damn, I must have failed to tempt you back without noticing my weakness. It must have been around my fourth pint, you just were not there anymore, the future must have been more attractive. Was it the domesticity of me? Do you prefer the shower gel and sea-salt and the copy of some Faber and Faber beside the toilet? Be careful sweet-pea, I am asleep remember and I was too drunk to manage much more than some stubbly tongue action and a perfunctory attempt at your Elle McPherson bra-strap. Surely that’s not the man for you, Gaggia or no Gaggia. I will wake soon, I will think you have broken in, I will have no recollection. You will be unsure as well, unsure of your reality. We will stand there like puzzled strangers that wake up in one of those enigmatic films, like Canadian baffler ‘Cube’ or Spanish conundrum, “Fermats Room”. How did you get here? How did I get here? ‘It’s my fucking house, so who are you and what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?’ You are close to tears because you have the benefit of being my earlier reader so you know I took you home last night or at least you think you do. I have a big gap, one minute we were introducing ourselves, me with my notebook and pen, you with your.......well we’ll get to that later, but we agreed to have a drink. Pear cider you wanted, so I asked you to go and nab a booth but when I arrived at the booth you had gone and I assumed you had gone for a piss but you never showed up and now hear you are in my kitchen, disheveled, anxious, puzzled, my dear darling reader, come back to me now, back to your cider, don’t let me lose the pleasure of your company for it erases my words and the night is lost to me.

Right, thank fuck for that. Tell me about yourself, all your details first. Where were you born? Are you married? Were you married? Do you have children? Would you like to have children? That’s a nice blouse, you look like a flying squirrel, are you pre-empting bingo-wings with your silky top? How about getting rid of these Converse, KO’ing the K-Swiss and getting some furry boots and a tartan shopping trolley. Tights with a varicose-vein pattern, and yes I sure do know how to please a girl don’t I? but c’mon, you’re laughing, your eyes are shining, is that really only cider? Why are you alone tonight? You don’t really want to talk about it? Ok, sorry, fair-do’s. I shouldn’t be so nosy, we only just met.

Yes, I am a writer but I’m shit, no honestly I’m shit, I just like this pub and I can’t stare at a blank page without putting something on it. Doodles, to-do lists, shit poems, sometimes I make up crosswords but I never really finish them anyway because someone inevitably starts to look and I get embarrassed and stop. So my unfinished crosswords never see the light of day. And besides, what would I do with a finished one? If I said to you, would you like to do a crossword, you’d be forgiven for thinking I was deranged. I could of course soften it a bit with a gentle introduction to the subject. Do you like those Sudoku things? ‘Mmm’ you say, a little noncommittally, but enough to keep me on track, then you eventually admit to liking those word games where you have to get as many words of four letters or more, always using the central letter.

‘What about crosswords?’ I ask, sure of being on the case now.

‘Yeah’, you say, ‘I do like crosswords, as long as they are not too difficult’.

‘Would you like to do one?’

A little taken aback, but smiling you say ‘What now?’

I nod and reach into my pocket and pull out a folded sheet of paper. I place it on the table, unfold it and smooth it flat with my hand. There is a hand-drawn homemade crossword, grid, clues, the lot.

‘I made this for you’ I say almost romantically.

Wouldn’t work would it. All my unfinished crosswords, eventually thrown in the bin along with half-poems, crap doodles, the first three lines of a song, All my inability. But still I cannot resist the lure of the blank page. And what about you? What can you not resist the lure of?