You walk through the doors of the flavour-of-the-week style bar,all aubergine walls and caramel faux suede occasional seating and candle-dim mood lighting to encourage you to stay and drink and chat and see and be seen and drink some more until the oh-so-cool bar staff decide they've had enough of acting like they give a shit about you or being there or anything at all so they un-dim the lights and flood the room with brilliant 100-watt clarity and the bloke that was dead fit in the near dark coccoon of late evening and vodka is exposed as the late middle aged accountant-type you've seen on your morning commute picking his nose at the railway station and wiping the results on the Metro that he leaves on the stained seat of the 08:37 TransPennine local to the 7th Circle of Hell that is the dirty little town that he works in and unfortunately so do you'cuz you gotta pay the bills and you always try to get off the train after him because you can sense his eyes boring holes in your backside if he follows you out of the station and it just makes your stomach turn and now he's giving you his mobile number which you absentmindedly key into your phone with a painted-on smile just to be polite and accidentally hit delete instead of save.

I hate it when that happens.

05/27/2006

Author's Note: I wrote this for a spoken word event that I'm participating in tonight.

Posted on 05/27/2006
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