“What do you do?” she asks. “I mean, your job?”
You consider this question for a moment. The party is still young, barely an hour old. You are sober, or at least you are in a condition you would call sober. Two or three single whiskies. She is not unattractive, in a not necessarily natural blonde kind of way, with a slight lisp and a certain eerie enthusiasm for small talk with a stranger. Little black dress kind of girl who laughs too often to have a genuine sense of humour. You think her name is Kathleen or maybe Catherine, something like that; your attention is usually elsewhere when people introduce themselves. It is possible that you are simply a way station en route to a better prospect.
“I make shorts,” you say.
“Shorts?” she blinks. “Clothes?”
“No,” you patiently explain because this is a mistake people commonly make when you are too cryptic, “not those kind of shorts. I make short films. Trailers, to be exact.”
“Yes?”
“You know, those short pre-release teasers one sees at the movies before the main feature starts? In-between the advertisements? Those trailers. I make movies that are as short as trailers and look like trailers for movies soon to be released except that my movies are the trailers, the trailers are the movies.”
“Come again?”
“My movies are about two minutes long and look like trailers for forthcoming attractions but there are no forthcoming attractions. The short is it.”
You have her perplexed attention but not her comprehension. She dangles her drink in one hand while she ponders the information she has received. It seems to you that she is not as fascinated with your profession as you might have hoped she would be. Maybe you should have discussed biochemistry with her, she might think you are the next Bill Gates.
“How fascinating,” she says. She does not sound convinced. “Excuse me for a moment, will you? I’ve just seen somebody I haven’t seen for ages. Let me say hello to her, get her phone number, and I’ll be back to chat with you and then you can tell me all about this fascinating career of yours.”
“Oh, all right, then,” you say.
To be perfectly honest, you are not a filmmaker at all. It’s a line to toss out to people who can think of no better conversational gambit than to ask what you do for a living. You would almost rather discuss the weather. One day you’ll meet someone who will either be genuinely interested in your short films or will recognise the bullshit for what it is and then you and that person will live happily ever after. That’s the theory.
You are not a party person. You hardly get invited to any, you seldom accept the meagre invitations you do receive and when you go you invariably do not enjoy yourself. At best, you drink grimly and go home early; at worst, you drink grimly and are among the last to leave. Either way you drink grimly, without enjoyment, without the release of loosened inhibitions and prowling libido promised by the literature on the subject. You have sadly learned that parties are rather boring affairs and you suspect that people who boast of attending orgiastic revels are part of a conspiracy to defraud you. Unless you have the uncanny foresight to turn down every party that in fact turns into a booze and drugs driven Bacchanal simply because you have failed to turn up. Either way, you blame a cruel cosmic conspiracy for your failure to have a good time at parties.
Part of the problem is that you find it difficult having intelligent, interesting conversations at parties because you find it difficult to have sensible conversations with people you have not met before. This difficulty is made worse when the music is so loud that you can barely hear what the other person is saying unless they shout into your ear. You never know what to say to open a conversation and you are determined to avoid the topics of career, weather or a recent sports event. So you stick to the corner of the room, grimly drinking, and waiting for
some misguided soul to ask you about your career so you can give them the story about the short movies. The conversation tends to last about as long as one of these mythical movies.
You are at the birthday party of a person you count among your friends and you are present mostly because you feel it might be considered rude to refuse the invitation even if you know beforehand the likelihood is that you will know few of the other guests. Your friend and his wife have an extensive circle of friends and acquaintances but hardly any of them are mutual friends or acquaintances of yours. This is why you are resigned to slogging it out to a reasonable hour when it will not be impolite to say good-bye and leave as silently and alone as you came in.
It is a spacious house but for now the partygoers are clustered in the front rooms. The kitchen is right at the back and is an old-fashioned farm-house-size job with a large, battered kitchen table slap bang in the centre of the room. Your own bottle of Scotch is on a sideboard, amidst the other bottles of booze ranging from the mundane to the exotic. Some people do not bring really expensive, good tipple to a party of this type in case some unprincipled swine steals their liquor by the stealthy glassful. If they do bring expensive booze they hide the bottle. You only drink cheap whiskey anyway so you do not particularly care whether anyone might share yours without telling you.
It is still too early in the life of this party for people to congregate in the kitchen and you appreciate having its relative quiet to yourself. You splash a wee dram into your glass, add tap water and lean against the sink while you take a sip. You check your watch to see whether it is perhaps a good time to go home; finish this drink and bugger off into the distance.
“Always in the kitchen at parties, eh? Having your own private party. Are you enjoying yourself?”
This question is asked by a short woman with an impressive head of recently washed dark hair frizzily spread out around her face as if she is facing straight into a wind tunnel. She wears no make up and is dressed in Shetland sweater and jeans. She holds a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and tilts her head slightly as she studies you, twinkling eyes and a half smile softening both the lines of her face and the intensity of the scrutiny. It is not a stupid question, just a discomfiting one.
“No,” you admit. “Are you?”
“I’m pretty happy,” she says. “As long as I have a beer and enough cigarettes to last the night and nobody starts hitting on me. I’m Bronwen.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Why aren’t you enjoying yourself? Why hide out here in the kitchen, or are you in charge of guarding the booze? Are you a friend of Roger’s or of Anthea’s? I’ll confess I was dragged here by a mutual friend. I’ve never met them before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve met them yet. Which one’s birthday is it?”
“Roger. I’m in the kitchen because people inevitably end up in the kitchen at parties and so pretty soon I won’t be alone in here. Then I’ll move on back into the lounge, which will be empty by then, where I’ll wait until the party moves back there. A sort of advance guard of room changing.”
“And then you come back here to the kitchen, right?” she chuckles.
“Something like that.”
“Do you get paid for this service?”
“Not yet, my marketing is a bit shoddy. Nobody realises I’m doing it, they think it happens all by itself. The movement, the flow, of a body of guests around the space of a party is supposed to be natural. You are one of the few people I’ve come across who recognises that the natural sequence of events have to be tweaked. In fact, apart from myself you are the only other person to have noticed. Welcome aboard the team.”
“Does that mean I get to follow you around from room to room?” she asks seriously.
“Even better,” you reply, just as seriously, “you can decide when it’s time to move on to the next room. It’s my concept but you can be my associate party ambience relocation executive, if you want. See how it feels.”
“Do you always talk this much shit to people you barely know? I may be a smidgen pissed but I’m not that pissed, okay? To know shit when I hear it.”
By the end of this exchange Bronwen has finished her beer. She takes another beer from the fridge, twists off the cap and immediately takes a long pull at the contents. She lights a cigarette and gives you a highly amused look.
“You must be the designated party loony,” she remarks, not unkindly. “It’s my belief that every party is allocated one certifiably loony person, not dangerously crazy, okay? just eccentric, a very odd bird, whose function is to amuse others with their batty theories. At least, they’re amusing until they get boring because they don’t know when to stop. You’re not going to get tedious about your theories, are you?”
“You must be the designated party sociologist,” you say. “It’s my belief that every party is allocated one certifiably know-it-all social analyst whose function it is to explain the peculiar behaviour of the other guests and to provide the appropriate psycho-analytical context. They are uproariously funny the first time around but their act soon becomes transparent and tedious when one realises they do not in fact know what they are talking about and have to resort to snide pseudo witticisms, put-downs parading as humorous remarks. You’re not going to get witty on me, are you?”
“In other words,” Bronwen remarks thoughtfully, “ ‘fuck you.’ “
“Mere semantics.”
“Oh well, see you soon,” Bronwen says as she leaves the kitchen, pausing just long enough to take another beer from the fridge.
You have the feeling that the concept ‘Pyrrhic victory’ now has real meaning in your life.
Since there is no more excitement to be had in the kitchen you go out into the back garden for a pointless wander. Your hosts are keen gardeners and although it is too dark for a proper study of your surroundings you are aware of the great deal of conceptualising and labour that must have gone into creating the neat flower beds and manicured lawn. To show your appreciation for the upwardly mobile middle class effort you sense around you, you have a little piss in a flower bed. You believe urine to be good for the soil and that it is good for the soul to empty the bladder at regular intervals.
That done, and in need of a fresh drink, you stroll back to the kitchen. Some other partygoers have taken up position here, so you take your drink with you in an aimless walk through the house on the premise that if you keep moving it might look to others that your life has purpose and meaning and they will not attempt to make banal conversation with you.
Roger is in his study with a few male guests. He is hosting a seminar on the latest in high tech computer air combat simulations. How to stay home and still be a shit-hot top gun type jet fighter pilot. Back in the days of military conscription Roger was a highly politicised conscientious objector who went into foreign exile rather than report for national service. You feel it advisable not to remark on the irony of Roger’s obsessive love for computer war games.
Althea is in the lounge, surrounded by her cronies, holding forth on the stock market and its latest aberrant behaviour. Althea is an analyst for a big player in the JSE, one of the few, if not only, high powered analysts to be based in Cape Town. According to her it goes to show how wonderful cyber technology is and how it has really made an impact on South African careers. Not so long ago she would have had to be based in Johannesburg, with a husband who would have refused to leave Cape Town, but in the age of the world wide web all a savvy, go-getting girl (her description) needs to get by are a cell-phone, the latest in laptop computers and a powerful modem.
You return to the kitchen to refill your glass. You note that your cheap whiskey is down to half a bottle. Either someone else likes your brand or you are drinking more than you realise or would care to admit. What the hell, one more drink and then it is time for the ungracious exit.
This time the kitchen is empty but for your old acquaintance, Bronwen, who is taking a beer from the fridge. You ignore her while you make your drink, your back to her. When you turn around she is still there, thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette. She fixes you with an inquisitive stare.
“Still having fun?“ she asks.
“Well, I believe I’m getting drunker,” you reply.
“You’re a funny person,” Bronwen says. “There’s no need to be so abrasive, okay? I bet you’ll find that people and life in general will treat you much better if you relax a little and get rid of your hostility. For god’s sake, man, this is a party, people are allowed to have fun at parties, have perfectly innocuous conversations with strangers, without getting all goddamn sarcastic and defensive.”
“There’s one thing you need to know about me,” you say. “Do you remember in school when the kids were choosing sides for some team game? I was always the last to be selected and then only if they could not get away with not choosing me at all.”
“And now you’ve got a big chip on your shoulder. For god’s sake, man, how old are you? I’m not going to evade choosing you for my team. I’m not choosing a team, I just want to talk to you, okay? Stop being so fucking defensive for no reason whatsoever.”
“I’m in touch with my inner child,” you explain, “and my inner child is a very sad little penguin. Panado syrup is not going to make him feel better. I bet now you’ll tell me to get a life and to stop whining like an over-sensitive, pathetic excuse for a man.”
“God, you are on a big downer. If this is what drink does to you, stick to mineral water. On the other hand, if this is your best shot at charming a woman into bed, I have no hope for your sex life either. I don’t do mercy fucks.”
“What?”
“You’re not going to seduce me by making me feel sorry for you.”
“I am not trying to seduce you. We are simply passing the time with banal conversation, on your suggestion if you recall, and I’m talking about myself to save you from having to talk about yourself.”
“How gracious of you. I don’t know which prospect is worse.”
“I’ve shown you my inner child. I guess it’s your turn to show me yours.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, go on, I’d like to know what a happy childhood was like.”
“What makes you think I had a happy childhood? I just don’t go on about my childhood, that’s all, like you do about yours. Not that I’m admitting that I had an unhappy childhood, I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss my childhood with a virtual stranger, okay?”
“Well, then we can talk about your job. What do you for a living?”
“There’s no reason why we should talk about me at all. Your life seems so much more interesting, all that pain in your childhood and so forth. Fascinating stuff.”
Bronwen takes another beer from the fridge and you pour another drink for yourself. She smokes continuously in-between sips of beer. The two of you sit down at the kitchen table and regard each other candidly, if a little bleary. You feel a heavy bonding session coming on.
“I want to apologise for my rudeness earlier,“ you say. “I can be a dickhead sometimes when I meet new people. You are absolutely right that I’m too defensive for no reason at all. At this stage of my life it’s a knee-jerk kind of reaction.”
“That’s all right,” Bronwen soothes you, “perhaps I was too facetious with you before I got to know you better. I can be a little smart arse if I don’t watch it.”
“Okay, so now that we’ve exchanged abject apologies, we can move on and get down to serious subject matter,” you declare. “What is it that you do for a living?”
“It’s so boring talking about jobs. Let’s talk about sex, religion or politics.”
“I have no sex life, I don’t believe in God and I don’t give a shit about politics. Now, let’s talk about your job.”
Bronwen takes the last cigarette from the packet, crumples up the packet and deposits it in the ashtray on the table. You would not be surprised if she had gone through half a pack while she was talking to you.
“I’m out of cigarettes,” Bronwen announces as if you did not see her dispose of the empty packet. “This will not do. I must immediately go out and find cigarettes. Where is the nearest shop?”
“There’s a 7 Eleven in the area,” you say. “I remember passing it on my way here.”
“Well, then you’d better come along and show me where it is,” Bronwen commands.
Bronwen drives her Uno Fire with great gusto, even just the two blocks down to the 7 Eleven, perched on the edge of her seat and hunched over the steering wheel as if she wants to push the car into greater speed, shouting at other divers when she thinks they are impeding her progress down the short stretch of road, making excuses for the untidy interior of the car. Your feet have to fight it out for space on the floor with what seems to be the spilled contents of a waste bin: empty chips bags, empty soft drink cans, empty cigarette packets, an old newspaper, unopened Reader’s Digest lottery envelopes, a Styrofoam Spur take-out container that could well still be holding its original contents, and other unidentified detritus. There is more mess on the back-seat.
“These things just accumulate,” Bronwen explains, “honestly, sometimes I think there are mysterious forces in the universe that conspire to dump stuff in my car and make me look like a slob to people who don’t know me. One day I’ll clean up the car, when I have the time, I promise, just don't hold me to my promise, okay?”
At the 7 Eleven, Bronwen asks whether you want anything from the shop. You do not require anything from the 7 Eleven’s well-stocked shelves. She is in and out of the shop in two minutes flat.
“Now I feel a whole lot more secure,” she says. “I hate it when I run out of cigarettes after the shops’ve closed. I have to start bumming smokes off total strangers.”
“Seems to me,” you say, “that you could consider temporarily not smoking if you run out of cigarettes.”
Bronwen gives you a look that can only be interpreted as stunned and amazed.
“Are you crazy? I can’t temporarily not smoke, okay? If I want a cigarette, especially when I don’t have any, I get all crotchety, difficult to handle. You wouldn’t like me at all. I’d start snarling at you and not find your sarcastic defensiveness amusing.”
“God forbid. I hope you’ve bought enough to last the night.”
“That I did. I’m pretty sure I won’t run out cigarettes tonight.”
Back at the party you find that your places at the kitchen table have been usurped by strangers. Bronwen takes a beer from the fridge, you pour yourself a stiff whiskey and the two of you tale your drinks into the back garden and settle in the plastic garden chairs in the braai area.
“You do realise,” you remark, “that in the not too distant future some guy in there is going to decide he wants to have a braai, as certain types of men are wont to do at parties when they achieve the optimum level of intoxication, and then he and his buddies will come out here to
disturb us. They’ll braai energetically and loudly, arguing about the best way to build the fire, the best way to marinade the meat, the best way to do the ritual scorching of the meat. They’ll probably talk about sports, tell unfunny dirty jokes. Our peace and quiet will be a dim, distant memory.”
“I thought it was your mission in life,“ Bronwen points out, “to identify unoccupied locales in the party where people are supposed to congregate but haven’t yet, then go there and open up the gateway or whatever you call it and wait for the hordes to arrive.”
“Yes, I did say that,” you admit, “but I;m off-duty now and I really do not want to be disturbed here. It’ll ruin the conversation.”
“If we do find ourselves in the midst of a braai and we don’t like it, we’ll move on,” Bronwen reassures you.
She commences to tell you a very amusing story about some cocktail party she once attended and you laugh at appropriate intervals and regularly nod your head to encourage her to go on, although your attention is nor really on the narrative. Your real mental efforts are focused on a study of Bronwen’s face and her mannerisms, trying to get a fix on the person behind the chatter.
Bronwen smokes with quick, powerful pulls at her cigarettes and lights a fresh one about as soon as she stubs out the last one. Ordinarily you would sum her up as a very nervous person but somehow her actions, the rapid, economical hand motions when she lights up, the apparent intensity with which she smokes, indicate great, intense inner energy rather than anxiety. You would say that she must be addicted to tobacco but that she seems not to be subjugated by her habit. She does not smoke with desperation. Bronwen also likes a drink, that much is obvious too. You have not ever seen a woman put away such impressive quantities of beer. Her speech gives away nothing of her state of intoxication, her diction remains precise and unslurred. It’s only through the progressive increase in Bronwen’s volubility, the more and more apparent amused tone in her voice, the sudden, burbling giggles, and that she keeps patting your arm to make a point, that you guess that she is probably at least as unsober as you are.
You get up at frequent intervals to replenish drinks. Bronwen empties a bottle of beer much quicker than earlier in the evening and you pour ever stiffer whiskies.
Bronwen looks to be in her mid-thirties although you are rotten at guessing people’s ages. You think that the lack of make-up actually flatters her to the extent that on relatively young women make-up tends to add years; the heavier the make-up, the older a woman usually appears to you. Bronwen’s face has enough lines on it to show that she is no longer a teenager, that she laughs a lot, frowns too, but somehow the undisguised features seem livelier and youthful for their lack of artifice. Her eyes light up with a definite glow of naughty fun, a good sense of humour, the kind of woman described as smart, sexy and willing to laugh at your jokes. Even so, with the glowing eyes animating Bronwen’s features, the emotional warmth of her presence, you would not call her beautiful. Attractive, yes, damn attractive in all senses of the word, even If you would call her rather plain in clear daylight. Bronwen is the kind of person who would never need fear losing her looks as long as she maintains her sense of humour and emotional warmth because those are the ingredients, together with her obvious intelligence and wit, that make her attractive. The long hair softens her features and adds a certain youthfulness too. Given her small stature, with all that unreconstructed hair and no make-up and that patent naughtiness, with a little poetic license one could easily conceive of her as an eternal teenager, with the advantage of an adult’s experience in dealing with the world.
“Are we having a conversation or are you going catatonic on me. Hellooo!”
You know how drunk you are when you understand that for some time now you have not been taking in what Bronwen is saying. You are lost in a reverie and you suspect that you are developing an infatuation, an alcohol fuelled one but an infatuation, nonetheless. This may be a mistake.
“I’m sorry,” you mumble. ”I got lost in the poetic rhythms of your voice. I think I’m pretty drunk, I may pass out soon.”
“We should have some coffee,” Bronwen suggests. “I could use some sobering up myself. Shall we go somewhere for coffee?”
A snappy comeback suggests itself to you and you guess that you may not be debilitatingly drunk.
“Is that a broad hint for me to go, ‘my place or yours’?” you reply with as much of a leer as you can muster.
“No, it is not,” Bronwen says firmly but with an obvious appreciation for your quick-witted response. “We’ll go to a public place for coffee. I know a place with a cheesecake to kill for. How’s that sound?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll meet you at the car, okay? I must go tell my friend that I’m going off for coffee. We’re here in separate cars, anyway, fortunately, but I should do the right thing, be polite and not just disappear off into the night.”
“Shall we go in my car?” you ask.
“Don’t be daft! You’re too drunk to drive, I’m not going to risk my life with you behind the wheel. Just wait for me at my car, okay?”
Drunkenly you totter and sway your way through the house and out to Bronwen’s Uno where you feel it advisable to lean back against the car while you wait. Your head spins, mildly as yet, and there is a queasy feeling in your stomach, the signs that you should have had supper before you started drinking. You had not intended to drink all that much, after all your original intention was to leave the party early. Alone. Your intentions are always good, you simply have trouble carrying them out.
Bronwen trots up to you, swinging a black leather tote bag. She unlocks the car for you and you get in and reach over to unlock the driver’s door. Bronwen takes off with a tad more speed than you care for. It seems to be the way she drives, to get to the other end of the journey before some imaginary bell. She knows where she wants to go and does not mess about in getting there. You sit back and enjoy the ride. Bronwen chatters away about something or other and you feel acutely embarrassed by your inability to respond sensibly never mind wittily. Demon drink is to blame. A double espresso with extra caffeine should do the trick to bring your conversational skills back up to speed. A few double espressos.
The destination is a converted former residential property in a street where all the properties once were actually occupied by householders but which nowadays is a commercial hub of restaurants, estate agents’ offices, designer boutiques, health shops and antique dealers, all housed in renovated and converted houses. You suppose it could have been worse; developers could have knocked down all the houses and built ugly town house environments.
The restaurant is called For Heaven’s Sake. There are two young women on the stoep outside the front door, having intense conversations on cell phones. You attempt to amuse Bronwen by suggesting that they are in fact talking to each other. The eatery seems to be full of what can only be described as smartly dressed, beautiful, boisterous, young people who all look as if they would never ever regard ‘conspicuous consumption’ as a pejorative term but rather as a proud credo.
Bronwen must be a regular here, the hostess greets her as if she knows her well, not just the ordinary professional bonhomie, and guides the two of you to a table for two in a rear corner. Bronwen declines to accept the proffered menus and orders two slices of strawberry cheese cake and two cappuccinos. You do not much care for cheese cake but you’ll go along with her choice although you ask for a simple filter coffee instead of the cappuccino. With cold milk. While Bronwen lights up yet another cigarette you excuse yourself for a visit the restaurant’s
‘facilities.’
Bronwen must have a 200 litre capacity bladder but you are just a normal guy.
In the ‘Gents’ you rest your still spinning head against the pleasantly cold, white tiles above the urinal while you pee. After washing your hands, you splash cold water on your face and make a brave attempt to get a grip on your status in reality. You are horribly drunk, no sense in avoiding this brutal truth, and you have a feeling that you are in that mode where your inhibitions slip, not to the extent that you are going to dance on tables, no, even more painfully embarrassing, you are going to have an honesty attack. At some opportune gap in the conversation in the near future you will confess to Bronwen that you have fallen in love with her. Her response will be one of amused graciousness and she’ll tell you that she is flattered but that she is sure you will have forgotten all about it in the morning and that, although you are a nice guy, she cannot reciprocate, not now anyway and probably never because you are not her type or she is involved with someone else, or any of a hundred other reasons designed to let her off the hook without offending you or hurting your feelings. She’ll be nice about it, understanding, sympathetic, but the outcome will still be that she’ll say that your infatuation is a result of your drunkenness, a state where people often think they are bonding with others when there is no objective evidence to prove this, and that it will not last longer than the time it takes you to sober up and that she is not going to pay too much serious attention to your declaration of undying love. For your own good.
The bottom line is that she has no intention of picking you for her team.
By the time you return to the table Bronwen has already eaten a substantial portion of her cheese cake. She gives you a relieved look.
“I was beginning to think you had carried out your threat to pass out,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” you say. “Nothing a few cups of coffee won’t cure.”
“Have some cheese cake. Putting something solid in your tummy may help sober you up.”
For a minute or so there is no more talk. The cheese cake is not bad, not that you could really tell a good cheese cake from a bad one. The coffee is excellent, better than you have learnt to expect from restaurants. Bronwen eats quickly although she seems to savour each mouthful with the rightful attention due to a good cheese cake. You exchange brief glances with her but neither of you are eager to lock into prolonged eye contact.
“Will I see you again?” you ask at last, just to get it over with, not having a real hope that Bronwen would want to see you again. You have not put up a good performance tonight.
“Phone me some time,” she replies seriously. “Drinks after work is always a possibility. If you work in town maybe we can do lunch sometime.”
You suspect Bronwen is being cagey. She is perhaps too polite to be brutally frank about your chances of ever seeing her again. She is sparing your feelings and saving your face by not coming right out and saying that she has no intention whatsoever of ever spending time with you again. The past few hours might have been pleasant while the two of you were pleasantly intoxicated but this is the end of the line. You do not make such a hugely favourable impression on her that she is going to invite you to her place tonight nor will she sit by the phone for the rest of the week hoping and praying that you will phone.
“Never mind,” you say. “I very seldom do drinks after work. I jog after work. That’s how I get rid of my daily allocation of stress.”
“Let’s exchange phone numbers anyway,” Bronwen says. “We’ll phone each other, maybe there’ll be a day when our respective schedules will coincide on an open time slot and we can meet. It would be nice to talk to you again when both of us are sober.”
“We’ll probably find out we have nothing to say to each other,” you say. “When we’re sober and all.”
“Oh I don’t know. You seem like an intelligent chap. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can actually be an interesting conversationalist but I\m afraid I must be honest with you and say that tonight you are too defensive and probably too drunk. For a while there I thought you’d passed out with your eyes open, there was no response to what I was telling you. I’d like to have a chat with you when you’re happy and sober.”
“I suppose I will be sober again,” you concede, “but I don’t think you’ll ever find me in a happy mood. And thanks for the vote of confidence, it really boosts my self-esteem.”
“You’re being sarcastic again. Don’t. I don’t like sarcastic people, okay? I kind of like you but I don’t want to be the audience for all your negativity; my tolerance only goes so far.”
The waitress comes past to enquire whether everything is still all right. Both of you give this issue some thought and after a brief exchange of ideas decide that a liqueur would be a good thing. Bronwen asks for a Amaretto and you order a Sambuca.
You are fully aware of the fact that most women do not like men with a negative approach. They want men with an upbeat, can-do, Master of the Universe kind of approach. The man must not suffer from low self-esteem unless he is a bastard too. You have read enough issues of Cosmo or Elle or other examples of the glossy magazines aimed at the young aspirational woman to have taken note of the cliché that women love bastards. This is a bitter pill for you to swallow because it makes you believe that you have now failed as a man in yet another area. You are not a bastard. You are the typecast nice guy who finishes last, the guy who actually is God’s gift to women because he is never any trouble to them; smile at him once and he is yours forever, keep on asking for favours and he’ll keep on doing them and be too full of stupid pride ever to ask for, much less insist on, a quid pro quo. Use him, put him aside, whatever, he’ll always come back for more, just in case you smile at him again.
You finally become aware of Bronwen’s attempt to get your attention.
“I keep losing you,” she complains. “Are you awake? This distant expression settles over your eyes as if the consciousness has left the body. I feel like I’m talking to a person who’s no longer in this room. Maybe it’s time for me to take you back to the party. I think you should ask your friends if you can sleep over.”
“Do you want me to make a pass at you?” you softly ask, leaning over the table towards Bronwen.
“What?”
“I said: do you want me to make a pass at you? Am I supposed to see all this as an opportunity to flatter you by acknowledging your sexuality and letting you know that I find you sexually alluring and almost irresistible. So you can shrug me off by telling me that it is only the liquor talking, that I am making the pass only out of drunken male bravado, you know, the idea that a drunk man’s libido rages out of optimism and short term desire more than out of a basic affection and a firmly committed interest in the woman. That is, if a man is drunk he wants to slip the sausage to whomsoever is available irrespective of real emotional bonding. He doesn’t give a shit whether she’ll respect him in the morning, he doesn’t respect her now.”
Bronwen seems to be puzzled more than aghast. She sits back in her chair and regards you with an expression that is even worse than the look she might have given an arsehole who lives up to the expectation that he will act like an arsehole. It is the exasperated, pitying look saved for the special occasion when anger is unnecessary.
“What are you raving on about? Are you so drunk you‘re now reduced to incoherent babbling?” she asks without even the slightest trace of irritation. It’s a sympathetic tone of voice, the soothing kind of voice people use when ministering to the terminally ill in their last days.
“Let’s go,” you beg. “Let’s just forget about this charade and go back. The sooner I get out of here and the sooner we can go our respective separate ways, the sooner I’ll start forgetting about this embarrassing moment.”
There is a brief fight over the bill, resolved only when it is shared equally, and there is no further conversation until you get back to Roger and Anthea’s place. Without any good-byes you jump out of the Uno as soon as Bronwen parks and stride drunkenly up the street to where your car is parked. You fumble in your pockets for the key. This brief delay enables Bronwen to reach you and when you try unlocking the car door she grabs the key out of your hand.
“This is really not a good idea, okay?” she says.
“I agree,” you say. “Kindly give me the key.”
“You are too drunk to drive. I don’t want your horrible death in a car crash on my conscience, okay? You might run into the cops and there’s no way you’ll pass a breathalyser test. Trust me, ask your friends to sleep over.”
“Fuck you. You’re too young to be my mother and I don’t think you’re my social worker. Give me the key so I can be on my way. It is totally undignified to squabble in the street. What do you care about my death.”
“You can’t stand up straight, you’re swaying like a reed. You can’t possibly drive.”
“I’ll concentrate hard and drive very slowly and very carefully.”
“Where do you live? How far is it?”
“When I’m sober it’s a ten minute drive. Tonight, I’ll be sure and make it at least twenty minutes.”
“I give up. I’ll follow you, okay? Drive very slowly and don’t try any heroic stunts. I’ll follow you and make sure you get home safely. As soon as you feel you can’t drive anymore, pull over to the side. We’ll leave your car there and I’ll take you the rest of the way home, okay?”
Bronwen hands you the key and runs back to her car. Sure enough, when you pull off, very slowly, knowing full well that you really shouldn’t be behind the steering wheel of a moving vehicle, but on occasion you can be an obstinate fool, Bronwen’s Uno is right behind your car and stays there all the way, a slow convoy of two. At the speed you drive you are fortunate there is no presence of traffic police on your route. Any cop worth his salt would immediately be suspicious of two vehicles crawling along the city streets in the early part of the morning as if the drivers have to feel their way ahead.
You do not relax until you pull up in front of your block of flats, then you are suddenly conscious of the tension in your shoulders and of the sweat on your back. Your head spins and you have difficulty opening the door to get out. You kind of fall out of the car and have to lean against it to stay upright. Bronwen parks behind your car, gets out and comes over to you. She reaches into your car, the door is still open, and switches off the lights.
“I would never have thought my prayers could actually have effect,” she says with a grin halfway between merriment and pure relief. “And if we’d driven any slower we might as well have been pushing our cars. Talk about stalling speed, second gear all the way. Are you okay? Can you walk?”
“I’m too scared to step away from the car,” you admit, speaking very slowly and taking pains to enunciate clearly. “I might have to crawl and collapse on the ground just outside the front entrance.”
“Lean on me,” Bronwen offers. “Let’s get you home.”
You weigh up her offer with due consideration for the shortness of her stature. It would be like leaning on a child. Plus you do not know how sober she is in reality. Her offer might have its origins in drunken optimism and a serious misjudgement of her present capabilities to carry out any motor function. On the other hand, she did manage to drive all the way here.
“Can’t you just carry me?” you grumble as she takes you by the arm and steers you towards the entrance to the block. Fortunately, you find that you can move pretty well without actually having to lean on Bronwen.
At the security gate you spend a few anxious moments going through your pockets for your flat keys. Just before the panic sets in you lay your hands on the keys and hand them to Bronwen because you reckon she’ll be better at inserting keys into locks and turning them than you would be at that point of your life. Due to the fact that you omit to identify the various keys and their respective functions Bronwen has to go through a select and test procedure before she finds the key to unlock the security gate.
Going up the two flights of stairs to your floor is easier than you would have thought. You can hold on to the railings, almost drape yourself over them, and virtually pull yourself up step by step. At your front door Bronwen again takes a few moments to find the correct key.
Somehow you are beyond speech. Contrary to your prediction you avoid collapsing on the floor, can stay on your feet long enough to reach the lounge and collapse on your couch instead.
Bronwen drops into an easy chair, lights a cigarette and gives the lounge a casual once over. Lone wolf bachelor dingy. Too many hard-boiled detective thrillers and Blues CDs. No live plants, some peculiar works of art.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” you manage to ask after a few moments of silent gathering of your wits that have packed up for the night some time ago and are somewhat indignant at being called up for duty again. Enough is enough, they say, you are already tired, maybe you should get into bed and attempt sleep before you get emotional too.
“I’ll make it myself, okay?” Bronwen says as she jumps up. “Do you want some?”
“Naah.”
Bronwen finds the kitchen quickly enough and is back in the lounge equally as quickly.
“I can’t find any coffee or sugar or milk,” she says. “Your kitchen is in a mess. It’s a good idea to wash the dishes once in a while, you know, do some sweeping, spray for cockroaches on a regular basis. Where do you keep the coffee, milk and sugar, if you have any?”
“I was kidding about the coffee. I only keep the proverbial coffee.”
“The what?”
“The proverbial coffee. For when I invite women up to my flat for the proverbial coffee. In lieu of showing them my etchings.”
“I see. Are you trying to prove to me that your sense of mischievous fun is intact even though you’re so drunk you can barely stand up?”
“I have no sense of mischievous fun, whatever the hell that is. All I am, is cruel to people who do not deserve it. It comes from a huge and overpowering lack of self-esteem, you know. Are you going to stay the night?”
“Well, are you up to it? I’ll bet you’re going to fall asleep as soon as you get into bed. Alcohol provokes the desire, you know, but makes the performance rather ineffectual. Anyway, I think I’ll take a long rain check on your generous offer. I only came up here to see that you got home safely, okay? I told you I don’t want your death in a drunken car crash on my conscience. See you soon.”
Bronwen turns to go. You leap up out of your seat and lunge towards her. You know this moment is akin to the moment just before the bull-fighter kills the bull, in your case the bullshit. The time is here for you to demonstrate what an absolutely pathetic arsehole you are. Bronwen evades your attempt to grab her and gives you the icy stare that warns that you are not far away from being slapped into sense. But first she’ll administer a few verbal slaps.
“Don’t do this,” she warns you. “For your own sake, retain some dignity, okay? You’re very drunk and you probably won’t act like a dickhead when you’re sober, so just cool it, okay? Let’s part as friends. I like you so far and I don’t want you to spoil it.”
“Please stay the night,” you beg, only dimly recognising the sense of shutting up and letting her make her exit before she sees you cry.
“I’m also drunker than I should be. it’s very late and I’m tired too,” Bronwen says in a reasonable, placating tone. “Go to bed, okay? I’ll give you my phone numbers. Phone me some time, okay? Let’s just say good-bye without drama, please.”
Bronwen takes a pen and a previously used envelope from her tote bag, writes down home and work phone numbers and hands you the envelope.
“Goodnight and sweet dreams,” she says, turns, opens the front door and is gone.
You stand there for a long time, just holding the envelope and stupidly staring at the closed front door. When you are re-animated by the need to urinate, you go the bathroom where you drop the envelope into the toilet bowl before you unzip your fly. You aim the stream of piss straight at the envelope. Before the envelope gets soggy and sinks under the water, the sound of the urine hitting the paper is surprisingly loud.
FINIS
EVERYTHING YOU DO IS WRONG
“What do you do?” she asks. “I mean, your job?”
You consider this question for a moment. The party is still young, barely an hour old. You are sober, or at least you are in a condition you would call sober. Two or three single whiskies. She is not unattractive, in a not necessarily natural blonde kind of way, with a slight lisp and a certain eerie enthusiasm for small talk with a stranger. Little black dress kind of girl who laughs too often to have a genuine sense of humour. You think her name is Kathleen or maybe Catherine, something like that; your attention is usually elsewhere when people introduce themselves. It is possible that you are simply a way station en route to a better prospect.
“I make shorts,” you say.
“Shorts?” she blinks. “Clothes?”
“No,” you patiently explain because this is a mistake people commonly make when you are too cryptic, “not those kind of shorts. I make short films. Trailers, to be exact.”
“Yes?”
“You know, those short pre-release teasers one sees at the movies before the main feature starts? In-between the advertisements? Those trailers. I make movies that are as short as trailers and look like trailers for movies soon to be released except that my movies are the trailers, the trailers are the movies.”
“Come again?”
“My movies are about two minutes long and look like trailers for forthcoming attractions but there are no forthcoming attractions. The short is it.”
You have her perplexed attention but not her comprehension. She dangles her drink in one hand while she ponders the information she has received. It seems to you that she is not as fascinated with your profession as you might have hoped she would be. Maybe you should have discussed biochemistry with her, she might think you are the next Bill Gates.
“How fascinating,” she says. She does not sound convinced. “Excuse me for a moment, will you? I’ve just seen somebody I haven’t seen for ages. Let me say hello to her, get her phone number, and I’ll be back to chat with you and then you can tell me all about this fascinating career of yours.”
“Oh, all right, then,” you say.
To be perfectly honest, you are not a filmmaker at all. It’s a line to toss out to people who can think of no better conversational gambit than to ask what you do for a living. You would almost rather discuss the weather. One day you’ll meet someone who will either be genuinely interested in your short films or will recognise the bullshit for what it is and then you and that person will live happily ever after. That’s the theory.
You are not a party person. You hardly get invited to any, you seldom accept the meagre invitations you do receive and when you go you invariably do not enjoy yourself. At best, you drink grimly and go home early; at worst, you drink grimly and are among the last to leave. Either way you drink grimly, without enjoyment, without the release of loosened inhibitions and prowling libido promised by the literature on the subject. You have sadly learned that parties are rather boring affairs and you suspect that people who boast of attending orgiastic revels are part of a conspiracy to defraud you. Unless you have the uncanny foresight to turn down every party that in fact turns into a booze and drugs driven Bacchanal simply because you have failed to turn up. Either way, you blame a cruel cosmic conspiracy for your failure to have a good time at parties.
Part of the problem is that you find it difficult having intelligent, interesting conversations at parties because you find it difficult to have sensible conversations with people you have not met before. This difficulty is made worse when the music is so loud that you can barely hear what the other person is saying unless they shout into your ear. You never know what to say to open a conversation and you are determined to avoid the topics of career, weather or a recent sports event. So you stick to the corner of the room, grimly drinking, and waiting for
some misguided soul to ask you about your career so you can give them the story about the short movies. The conversation tends to last about as long as one of these mythical movies.
You are at the birthday party of a person you count among your friends and you are present mostly because you feel it might be considered rude to refuse the invitation even if you know beforehand the likelihood is that you will know few of the other guests. Your friend and his wife have an extensive circle of friends and acquaintances but hardly any of them are mutual friends or acquaintances of yours. This is why you are resigned to slogging it out to a reasonable hour when it will not be impolite to say good-bye and leave as silently and alone as you came in.
It is a spacious house but for now the partygoers are clustered in the front rooms. The kitchen is right at the back and is an old-fashioned farm-house-size job with a large, battered kitchen table slap bang in the centre of the room. Your own bottle of Scotch is on a sideboard, amidst the other bottles of booze ranging from the mundane to the exotic. Some people do not bring really expensive, good tipple to a party of this type in case some unprincipled swine steals their liquor by the stealthy glassful. If they do bring expensive booze they hide the bottle. You only drink cheap whiskey anyway so you do not particularly care whether anyone might share yours without telling you.
It is still too early in the life of this party for people to congregate in the kitchen and you appreciate having its relative quiet to yourself. You splash a wee dram into your glass, add tap water and lean against the sink while you take a sip. You check your watch to see whether it is perhaps a good time to go home; finish this drink and bugger off into the distance.
“Always in the kitchen at parties, eh? Having your own private party. Are you enjoying yourself?”
This question is asked by a short woman with an impressive head of recently washed dark hair frizzily spread out around her face as if she is facing straight into a wind tunnel. She wears no make up and is dressed in Shetland sweater and jeans. She holds a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and tilts her head slightly as she studies you, twinkling eyes and a half smile softening both the lines of her face and the intensity of the scrutiny. It is not a stupid question, just a discomfiting one.
“No,” you admit. “Are you?”
“I’m pretty happy,” she says. “As long as I have a beer and enough cigarettes to last the night and nobody starts hitting on me. I’m Bronwen.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Why aren’t you enjoying yourself? Why hide out here in the kitchen, or are you in charge of guarding the booze? Are you a friend of Roger’s or of Anthea’s? I’ll confess I was dragged here by a mutual friend. I’ve never met them before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve met them yet. Which one’s birthday is it?”
“Roger. I’m in the kitchen because people inevitably end up in the kitchen at parties and so pretty soon I won’t be alone in here. Then I’ll move on back into the lounge, which will be empty by then, where I’ll wait until the party moves back there. A sort of advance guard of room changing.”
“And then you come back here to the kitchen, right?” she chuckles.
“Something like that.”
“Do you get paid for this service?”
“Not yet, my marketing is a bit shoddy. Nobody realises I’m doing it, they think it happens all by itself. The movement, the flow, of a body of guests around the space of a party is supposed to be natural. You are one of the few people I’ve come across who recognises that the natural sequence of events have to be tweaked. In fact, apart from myself you are the only other person to have noticed. Welcome aboard the team.”
“Does that mean I get to follow you around from room to room?” she asks seriously.
“Even better,” you reply, just as seriously, “you can decide when it’s time to move on to the next room. It’s my concept but you can be my associate party ambience relocation executive, if you want. See how it feels.”
“Do you always talk this much shit to people you barely know? I may be a smidgen pissed but I’m not that pissed, okay? To know shit when I hear it.”
By the end of this exchange Bronwen has finished her beer. She takes another beer from the fridge, twists off the cap and immediately takes a long pull at the contents. She lights a cigarette and gives you a highly amused look.
“You must be the designated party loony,” she remarks, not unkindly. “It’s my belief that every party is allocated one certifiably loony person, not dangerously crazy, okay? just eccentric, a very odd bird, whose function is to amuse others with their batty theories. At least, they’re amusing until they get boring because they don’t know when to stop. You’re not going to get tedious about your theories, are you?”
“You must be the designated party sociologist,” you say. “It’s my belief that every party is allocated one certifiably know-it-all social analyst whose function it is to explain the peculiar behaviour of the other guests and to provide the appropriate psycho-analytical context. They are uproariously funny the first time around but their act soon becomes transparent and tedious when one realises they do not in fact know what they are talking about and have to resort to snide pseudo witticisms, put-downs parading as humorous remarks. You’re not going to get witty on me, are you?”
“In other words,” Bronwen remarks thoughtfully, “ ‘fuck you.’ “
“Mere semantics.”
“Oh well, see you soon,” Bronwen says as she leaves the kitchen, pausing just long enough to take another beer from the fridge.
You have the feeling that the concept ‘Pyrrhic victory’ now has real meaning in your life.
Since there is no more excitement to be had in the kitchen you go out into the back garden for a pointless wander. Your hosts are keen gardeners and although it is too dark for a proper study of your surroundings you are aware of the great deal of conceptualising and labour that must have gone into creating the neat flower beds and manicured lawn. To show your appreciation for the upwardly mobile middle class effort you sense around you, you have a little piss in a flower bed. You believe urine to be good for the soil and that it is good for the soul to empty the bladder at regular intervals.
That done, and in need of a fresh drink, you stroll back to the kitchen. Some other partygoers have taken up position here, so you take your drink with you in an aimless walk through the house on the premise that if you keep moving it might look to others that your life has purpose and meaning and they will not attempt to make banal conversation with you.
Roger is in his study with a few male guests. He is hosting a seminar on the latest in high tech computer air combat simulations. How to stay home and still be a shit-hot top gun type jet fighter pilot. Back in the days of military conscription Roger was a highly politicised conscientious objector who went into foreign exile rather than report for national service. You feel it advisable not to remark on the irony of Roger’s obsessive love for computer war games.
Althea is in the lounge, surrounded by her cronies, holding forth on the stock market and its latest aberrant behaviour. Althea is an analyst for a big player in the JSE, one of the few, if not only, high powered analysts to be based in Cape Town. According to her it goes to show how wonderful cyber technology is and how it has really made an impact on South African careers. Not so long ago she would have had to be based in Johannesburg, with a husband who would have refused to leave Cape Town, but in the age of the world wide web all a savvy, go-getting girl (her description) needs to get by are a cell-phone, the latest in laptop computers and a powerful modem.
You return to the kitchen to refill your glass. You note that your cheap whiskey is down to half a bottle. Either someone else likes your brand or you are drinking more than you realise or would care to admit. What the hell, one more drink and then it is time for the ungracious exit.
This time the kitchen is empty but for your old acquaintance, Bronwen, who is taking a beer from the fridge. You ignore her while you make your drink, your back to her. When you turn around she is still there, thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette. She fixes you with an inquisitive stare.
“Still having fun?“ she asks.
“Well, I believe I’m getting drunker,” you reply.
“You’re a funny person,” Bronwen says. “There’s no need to be so abrasive, okay? I bet you’ll find that people and life in general will treat you much better if you relax a little and get rid of your hostility. For god’s sake, man, this is a party, people are allowed to have fun at parties, have perfectly innocuous conversations with strangers, without getting all goddamn sarcastic and defensive.”
“There’s one thing you need to know about me,” you say. “Do you remember in school when the kids were choosing sides for some team game? I was always the last to be selected and then only if they could not get away with not choosing me at all.”
“And now you’ve got a big chip on your shoulder. For god’s sake, man, how old are you? I’m not going to evade choosing you for my team. I’m not choosing a team, I just want to talk to you, okay? Stop being so fucking defensive for no reason whatsoever.”
“I’m in touch with my inner child,” you explain, “and my inner child is a very sad little penguin. Panado syrup is not going to make him feel better. I bet now you’ll tell me to get a life and to stop whining like an over-sensitive, pathetic excuse for a man.”
“God, you are on a big downer. If this is what drink does to you, stick to mineral water. On the other hand, if this is your best shot at charming a woman into bed, I have no hope for your sex life either. I don’t do mercy fucks.”
“What?”
“You’re not going to seduce me by making me feel sorry for you.”
“I am not trying to seduce you. We are simply passing the time with banal conversation, on your suggestion if you recall, and I’m talking about myself to save you from having to talk about yourself.”
“How gracious of you. I don’t know which prospect is worse.”
“I’ve shown you my inner child. I guess it’s your turn to show me yours.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, go on, I’d like to know what a happy childhood was like.”
“What makes you think I had a happy childhood? I just don’t go on about my childhood, that’s all, like you do about yours. Not that I’m admitting that I had an unhappy childhood, I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss my childhood with a virtual stranger, okay?”
“Well, then we can talk about your job. What do you for a living?”
“There’s no reason why we should talk about me at all. Your life seems so much more interesting, all that pain in your childhood and so forth. Fascinating stuff.”
Bronwen takes another beer from the fridge and you pour another drink for yourself. She smokes continuously in-between sips of beer. The two of you sit down at the kitchen table and regard each other candidly, if a little bleary. You feel a heavy bonding session coming on.
“I want to apologise for my rudeness earlier,“ you say. “I can be a dickhead sometimes when I meet new people. You are absolutely right that I’m too defensive for no reason at all. At this stage of my life it’s a knee-jerk kind of reaction.”
“That’s all right,” Bronwen soothes you, “perhaps I was too facetious with you before I got to know you better. I can be a little smart arse if I don’t watch it.”
“Okay, so now that we’ve exchanged abject apologies, we can move on and get down to serious subject matter,” you declare. “What is it that you do for a living?”
“It’s so boring talking about jobs. Let’s talk about sex, religion or politics.”
“I have no sex life, I don’t believe in God and I don’t give a shit about politics. Now, let’s talk about your job.”
Bronwen takes the last cigarette from the packet, crumples up the packet and deposits it in the ashtray on the table. You would not be surprised if she had gone through half a pack while she was talking to you.
“I’m out of cigarettes,” Bronwen announces as if you did not see her dispose of the empty packet. “This will not do. I must immediately go out and find cigarettes. Where is the nearest shop?”
“There’s a 7 Eleven in the area,” you say. “I remember passing it on my way here.”
“Well, then you’d better come along and show me where it is,” Bronwen commands.
Bronwen drives her Uno Fire with great gusto, even just the two blocks down to the 7 Eleven, perched on the edge of her seat and hunched over the steering wheel as if she wants to push the car into greater speed, shouting at other divers when she thinks they are impeding her progress down the short stretch of road, making excuses for the untidy interior of the car. Your feet have to fight it out for space on the floor with what seems to be the spilled contents of a waste bin: empty chips bags, empty soft drink cans, empty cigarette packets, an old newspaper, unopened Reader’s Digest lottery envelopes, a Styrofoam Spur take-out container that could well still be holding its original contents, and other unidentified detritus. There is more mess on the back-seat.
“These things just accumulate,” Bronwen explains, “honestly, sometimes I think there are mysterious forces in the universe that conspire to dump stuff in my car and make me look like a slob to people who don’t know me. One day I’ll clean up the car, when I have the time, I promise, just don't hold me to my promise, okay?”
At the 7 Eleven, Bronwen asks whether you want anything from the shop. You do not require anything from the 7 Eleven’s well-stocked shelves. She is in and out of the shop in two minutes flat.
“Now I feel a whole lot more secure,” she says. “I hate it when I run out of cigarettes after the shops’ve closed. I have to start bumming smokes off total strangers.”
“Seems to me,” you say, “that you could consider temporarily not smoking if you run out of cigarettes.”
Bronwen gives you a look that can only be interpreted as stunned and amazed.
“Are you crazy? I can’t temporarily not smoke, okay? If I want a cigarette, especially when I don’t have any, I get all crotchety, difficult to handle. You wouldn’t like me at all. I’d start snarling at you and not find your sarcastic defensiveness amusing.”
“God forbid. I hope you’ve bought enough to last the night.”
“That I did. I’m pretty sure I won’t run out cigarettes tonight.”
Back at the party you find that your places at the kitchen table have been usurped by strangers. Bronwen takes a beer from the fridge, you pour yourself a stiff whiskey and the two of you tale your drinks into the back garden and settle in the plastic garden chairs in the braai area.
“You do realise,” you remark, “that in the not too distant future some guy in there is going to decide he wants to have a braai, as certain types of men are wont to do at parties when they achieve the optimum level of intoxication, and then he and his buddies will come out here to
disturb us. They’ll braai energetically and loudly, arguing about the best way to build the fire, the best way to marinade the meat, the best way to do the ritual scorching of the meat. They’ll probably talk about sports, tell unfunny dirty jokes. Our peace and quiet will be a dim, distant memory.”
“I thought it was your mission in life,“ Bronwen points out, “to identify unoccupied locales in the party where people are supposed to congregate but haven’t yet, then go there and open up the gateway or whatever you call it and wait for the hordes to arrive.”
“Yes, I did say that,” you admit, “but I;m off-duty now and I really do not want to be disturbed here. It’ll ruin the conversation.”
“If we do find ourselves in the midst of a braai and we don’t like it, we’ll move on,” Bronwen reassures you.
She commences to tell you a very amusing story about some cocktail party she once attended and you laugh at appropriate intervals and regularly nod your head to encourage her to go on, although your attention is nor really on the narrative. Your real mental efforts are focused on a study of Bronwen’s face and her mannerisms, trying to get a fix on the person behind the chatter.
Bronwen smokes with quick, powerful pulls at her cigarettes and lights a fresh one about as soon as she stubs out the last one. Ordinarily you would sum her up as a very nervous person but somehow her actions, the rapid, economical hand motions when she lights up, the apparent intensity with which she smokes, indicate great, intense inner energy rather than anxiety. You would say that she must be addicted to tobacco but that she seems not to be subjugated by her habit. She does not smoke with desperation. Bronwen also likes a drink, that much is obvious too. You have not ever seen a woman put away such impressive quantities of beer. Her speech gives away nothing of her state of intoxication, her diction remains precise and unslurred. It’s only through the progressive increase in Bronwen’s volubility, the more and more apparent amused tone in her voice, the sudden, burbling giggles, and that she keeps patting your arm to make a point, that you guess that she is probably at least as unsober as you are.
You get up at frequent intervals to replenish drinks. Bronwen empties a bottle of beer much quicker than earlier in the evening and you pour ever stiffer whiskies.
Bronwen looks to be in her mid-thirties although you are rotten at guessing people’s ages. You think that the lack of make-up actually flatters her to the extent that on relatively young women make-up tends to add years; the heavier the make-up, the older a woman usually appears to you. Bronwen’s face has enough lines on it to show that she is no longer a teenager, that she laughs a lot, frowns too, but somehow the undisguised features seem livelier and youthful for their lack of artifice. Her eyes light up with a definite glow of naughty fun, a good sense of humour, the kind of woman described as smart, sexy and willing to laugh at your jokes. Even so, with the glowing eyes animating Bronwen’s features, the emotional warmth of her presence, you would not call her beautiful. Attractive, yes, damn attractive in all senses of the word, even If you would call her rather plain in clear daylight. Bronwen is the kind of person who would never need fear losing her looks as long as she maintains her sense of humour and emotional warmth because those are the ingredients, together with her obvious intelligence and wit, that make her attractive. The long hair softens her features and adds a certain youthfulness too. Given her small stature, with all that unreconstructed hair and no make-up and that patent naughtiness, with a little poetic license one could easily conceive of her as an eternal teenager, with the advantage of an adult’s experience in dealing with the world.
“Are we having a conversation or are you going catatonic on me. Hellooo!”
You know how drunk you are when you understand that for some time now you have not been taking in what Bronwen is saying. You are lost in a reverie and you suspect that you are developing an infatuation, an alcohol fuelled one but an infatuation, nonetheless. This may be a mistake.
“I’m sorry,” you mumble. ”I got lost in the poetic rhythms of your voice. I think I’m pretty drunk, I may pass out soon.”
“We should have some coffee,” Bronwen suggests. “I could use some sobering up myself. Shall we go somewhere for coffee?”
A snappy comeback suggests itself to you and you guess that you may not be debilitatingly drunk.
“Is that a broad hint for me to go, ‘my place or yours’?” you reply with as much of a leer as you can muster.
“No, it is not,” Bronwen says firmly but with an obvious appreciation for your quick-witted response. “We’ll go to a public place for coffee. I know a place with a cheesecake to kill for. How’s that sound?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll meet you at the car, okay? I must go tell my friend that I’m going off for coffee. We’re here in separate cars, anyway, fortunately, but I should do the right thing, be polite and not just disappear off into the night.”
“Shall we go in my car?” you ask.
“Don’t be daft! You’re too drunk to drive, I’m not going to risk my life with you behind the wheel. Just wait for me at my car, okay?”
Drunkenly you totter and sway your way through the house and out to Bronwen’s Uno where you feel it advisable to lean back against the car while you wait. Your head spins, mildly as yet, and there is a queasy feeling in your stomach, the signs that you should have had supper before you started drinking. You had not intended to drink all that much, after all your original intention was to leave the party early. Alone. Your intentions are always good, you simply have trouble carrying them out.
Bronwen trots up to you, swinging a black leather tote bag. She unlocks the car for you and you get in and reach over to unlock the driver’s door. Bronwen takes off with a tad more speed than you care for. It seems to be the way she drives, to get to the other end of the journey before some imaginary bell. She knows where she wants to go and does not mess about in getting there. You sit back and enjoy the ride. Bronwen chatters away about something or other and you feel acutely embarrassed by your inability to respond sensibly never mind wittily. Demon drink is to blame. A double espresso with extra caffeine should do the trick to bring your conversational skills back up to speed. A few double espressos.
The destination is a converted former residential property in a street where all the properties once were actually occupied by householders but which nowadays is a commercial hub of restaurants, estate agents’ offices, designer boutiques, health shops and antique dealers, all housed in renovated and converted houses. You suppose it could have been worse; developers could have knocked down all the houses and built ugly town house environments.
The restaurant is called For Heaven’s Sake. There are two young women on the stoep outside the front door, having intense conversations on cell phones. You attempt to amuse Bronwen by suggesting that they are in fact talking to each other. The eatery seems to be full of what can only be described as smartly dressed, beautiful, boisterous, young people who all look as if they would never ever regard ‘conspicuous consumption’ as a pejorative term but rather as a proud credo.
Bronwen must be a regular here, the hostess greets her as if she knows her well, not just the ordinary professional bonhomie, and guides the two of you to a table for two in a rear corner. Bronwen declines to accept the proffered menus and orders two slices of strawberry cheese cake and two cappuccinos. You do not much care for cheese cake but you’ll go along with her choice although you ask for a simple filter coffee instead of the cappuccino. With cold milk. While Bronwen lights up yet another cigarette you excuse yourself for a visit the restaurant’s
‘facilities.’
Bronwen must have a 200 litre capacity bladder but you are just a normal guy.
In the ‘Gents’ you rest your still spinning head against the pleasantly cold, white tiles above the urinal while you pee. After washing your hands, you splash cold water on your face and make a brave attempt to get a grip on your status in reality. You are horribly drunk, no sense in avoiding this brutal truth, and you have a feeling that you are in that mode where your inhibitions slip, not to the extent that you are going to dance on tables, no, even more painfully embarrassing, you are going to have an honesty attack. At some opportune gap in the conversation in the near future you will confess to Bronwen that you have fallen in love with her. Her response will be one of amused graciousness and she’ll tell you that she is flattered but that she is sure you will have forgotten all about it in the morning and that, although you are a nice guy, she cannot reciprocate, not now anyway and probably never because you are not her type or she is involved with someone else, or any of a hundred other reasons designed to let her off the hook without offending you or hurting your feelings. She’ll be nice about it, understanding, sympathetic, but the outcome will still be that she’ll say that your infatuation is a result of your drunkenness, a state where people often think they are bonding with others when there is no objective evidence to prove this, and that it will not last longer than the time it takes you to sober up and that she is not going to pay too much serious attention to your declaration of undying love. For your own good.
The bottom line is that she has no intention of picking you for her team.
By the time you return to the table Bronwen has already eaten a substantial portion of her cheese cake. She gives you a relieved look.
“I was beginning to think you had carried out your threat to pass out,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” you say. “Nothing a few cups of coffee won’t cure.”
“Have some cheese cake. Putting something solid in your tummy may help sober you up.”
For a minute or so there is no more talk. The cheese cake is not bad, not that you could really tell a good cheese cake from a bad one. The coffee is excellent, better than you have learnt to expect from restaurants. Bronwen eats quickly although she seems to savour each mouthful with the rightful attention due to a good cheese cake. You exchange brief glances with her but neither of you are eager to lock into prolonged eye contact.
“Will I see you again?” you ask at last, just to get it over with, not having a real hope that Bronwen would want to see you again. You have not put up a good performance tonight.
“Phone me some time,” she replies seriously. “Drinks after work is always a possibility. If you work in town maybe we can do lunch sometime.”
You suspect Bronwen is being cagey. She is perhaps too polite to be brutally frank about your chances of ever seeing her again. She is sparing your feelings and saving your face by not coming right out and saying that she has no intention whatsoever of ever spending time with you again. The past few hours might have been pleasant while the two of you were pleasantly intoxicated but this is the end of the line. You do not make such a hugely favourable impression on her that she is going to invite you to her place tonight nor will she sit by the phone for the rest of the week hoping and praying that you will phone.
“Never mind,” you say. “I very seldom do drinks after work. I jog after work. That’s how I get rid of my daily allocation of stress.”
“Let’s exchange phone numbers anyway,” Bronwen says. “We’ll phone each other, maybe there’ll be a day when our respective schedules will coincide on an open time slot and we can meet. It would be nice to talk to you again when both of us are sober.”
“We’ll probably find out we have nothing to say to each other,” you say. “When we’re sober and all.”
“Oh I don’t know. You seem like an intelligent chap. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can actually be an interesting conversationalist but I\m afraid I must be honest with you and say that tonight you are too defensive and probably too drunk. For a while there I thought you’d passed out with your eyes open, there was no response to what I was telling you. I’d like to have a chat with you when you’re happy and sober.”
“I suppose I will be sober again,” you concede, “but I don’t think you’ll ever find me in a happy mood. And thanks for the vote of confidence, it really boosts my self-esteem.”
“You’re being sarcastic again. Don’t. I don’t like sarcastic people, okay? I kind of like you but I don’t want to be the audience for all your negativity; my tolerance only goes so far.”
The waitress comes past to enquire whether everything is still all right. Both of you give this issue some thought and after a brief exchange of ideas decide that a liqueur would be a good thing. Bronwen asks for a Amaretto and you order a Sambuca.
You are fully aware of the fact that most women do not like men with a negative approach. They want men with an upbeat, can-do, Master of the Universe kind of approach. The man must not suffer from low self-esteem unless he is a bastard too. You have read enough issues of Cosmo or Elle or other examples of the glossy magazines aimed at the young aspirational woman to have taken note of the cliché that women love bastards. This is a bitter pill for you to swallow because it makes you believe that you have now failed as a man in yet another area. You are not a bastard. You are the typecast nice guy who finishes last, the guy who actually is God’s gift to women because he is never any trouble to them; smile at him once and he is yours forever, keep on asking for favours and he’ll keep on doing them and be too full of stupid pride ever to ask for, much less insist on, a quid pro quo. Use him, put him aside, whatever, he’ll always come back for more, just in case you smile at him again.
You finally become aware of Bronwen’s attempt to get your attention.
“I keep losing you,” she complains. “Are you awake? This distant expression settles over your eyes as if the consciousness has left the body. I feel like I’m talking to a person who’s no longer in this room. Maybe it’s time for me to take you back to the party. I think you should ask your friends if you can sleep over.”
“Do you want me to make a pass at you?” you softly ask, leaning over the table towards Bronwen.
“What?”
“I said: do you want me to make a pass at you? Am I supposed to see all this as an opportunity to flatter you by acknowledging your sexuality and letting you know that I find you sexually alluring and almost irresistible. So you can shrug me off by telling me that it is only the liquor talking, that I am making the pass only out of drunken male bravado, you know, the idea that a drunk man’s libido rages out of optimism and short term desire more than out of a basic affection and a firmly committed interest in the woman. That is, if a man is drunk he wants to slip the sausage to whomsoever is available irrespective of real emotional bonding. He doesn’t give a shit whether she’ll respect him in the morning, he doesn’t respect her now.”
Bronwen seems to be puzzled more than aghast. She sits back in her chair and regards you with an expression that is even worse than the look she might have given an arsehole who lives up to the expectation that he will act like an arsehole. It is the exasperated, pitying look saved for the special occasion when anger is unnecessary.
“What are you raving on about? Are you so drunk you‘re now reduced to incoherent babbling?” she asks without even the slightest trace of irritation. It’s a sympathetic tone of voice, the soothing kind of voice people use when ministering to the terminally ill in their last days.
“Let’s go,” you beg. “Let’s just forget about this charade and go back. The sooner I get out of here and the sooner we can go our respective separate ways, the sooner I’ll start forgetting about this embarrassing moment.”
There is a brief fight over the bill, resolved only when it is shared equally, and there is no further conversation until you get back to Roger and Anthea’s place. Without any good-byes you jump out of the Uno as soon as Bronwen parks and stride drunkenly up the street to where your car is parked. You fumble in your pockets for the key. This brief delay enables Bronwen to reach you and when you try unlocking the car door she grabs the key out of your hand.
“This is really not a good idea, okay?” she says.
“I agree,” you say. “Kindly give me the key.”
“You are too drunk to drive. I don’t want your horrible death in a car crash on my conscience, okay? You might run into the cops and there’s no way you’ll pass a breathalyser test. Trust me, ask your friends to sleep over.”
“Fuck you. You’re too young to be my mother and I don’t think you’re my social worker. Give me the key so I can be on my way. It is totally undignified to squabble in the street. What do you care about my death.”
“You can’t stand up straight, you’re swaying like a reed. You can’t possibly drive.”
“I’ll concentrate hard and drive very slowly and very carefully.”
“Where do you live? How far is it?”
“When I’m sober it’s a ten minute drive. Tonight, I’ll be sure and make it at least twenty minutes.”
“I give up. I’ll follow you, okay? Drive very slowly and don’t try any heroic stunts. I’ll follow you and make sure you get home safely. As soon as you feel you can’t drive anymore, pull over to the side. We’ll leave your car there and I’ll take you the rest of the way home, okay?”
Bronwen hands you the key and runs back to her car. Sure enough, when you pull off, very slowly, knowing full well that you really shouldn’t be behind the steering wheel of a moving vehicle, but on occasion you can be an obstinate fool, Bronwen’s Uno is right behind your car and stays there all the way, a slow convoy of two. At the speed you drive you are fortunate there is no presence of traffic police on your route. Any cop worth his salt would immediately be suspicious of two vehicles crawling along the city streets in the early part of the morning as if the drivers have to feel their way ahead.
You do not relax until you pull up in front of your block of flats, then you are suddenly conscious of the tension in your shoulders and of the sweat on your back. Your head spins and you have difficulty opening the door to get out. You kind of fall out of the car and have to lean against it to stay upright. Bronwen parks behind your car, gets out and comes over to you. She reaches into your car, the door is still open, and switches off the lights.
“I would never have thought my prayers could actually have effect,” she says with a grin halfway between merriment and pure relief. “And if we’d driven any slower we might as well have been pushing our cars. Talk about stalling speed, second gear all the way. Are you okay? Can you walk?”
“I’m too scared to step away from the car,” you admit, speaking very slowly and taking pains to enunciate clearly. “I might have to crawl and collapse on the ground just outside the front entrance.”
“Lean on me,” Bronwen offers. “Let’s get you home.”
You weigh up her offer with due consideration for the shortness of her stature. It would be like leaning on a child. Plus you do not know how sober she is in reality. Her offer might have its origins in drunken optimism and a serious misjudgement of her present capabilities to carry out any motor function. On the other hand, she did manage to drive all the way here.
“Can’t you just carry me?” you grumble as she takes you by the arm and steers you towards the entrance to the block. Fortunately, you find that you can move pretty well without actually having to lean on Bronwen.
At the security gate you spend a few anxious moments going through your pockets for your flat keys. Just before the panic sets in you lay your hands on the keys and hand them to Bronwen because you reckon she’ll be better at inserting keys into locks and turning them than you would be at that point of your life. Due to the fact that you omit to identify the various keys and their respective functions Bronwen has to go through a select and test procedure before she finds the key to unlock the security gate.
Going up the two flights of stairs to your floor is easier than you would have thought. You can hold on to the railings, almost drape yourself over them, and virtually pull yourself up step by step. At your front door Bronwen again takes a few moments to find the correct key.
Somehow you are beyond speech. Contrary to your prediction you avoid collapsing on the floor, can stay on your feet long enough to reach the lounge and collapse on your couch instead.
Bronwen drops into an easy chair, lights a cigarette and gives the lounge a casual once over. Lone wolf bachelor dingy. Too many hard-boiled detective thrillers and Blues CDs. No live plants, some peculiar works of art.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” you manage to ask after a few moments of silent gathering of your wits that have packed up for the night some time ago and are somewhat indignant at being called up for duty again. Enough is enough, they say, you are already tired, maybe you should get into bed and attempt sleep before you get emotional too.
“I’ll make it myself, okay?” Bronwen says as she jumps up. “Do you want some?”
“Naah.”
Bronwen finds the kitchen quickly enough and is back in the lounge equally as quickly.
“I can’t find any coffee or sugar or milk,” she says. “Your kitchen is in a mess. It’s a good idea to wash the dishes once in a while, you know, do some sweeping, spray for cockroaches on a regular basis. Where do you keep the coffee, milk and sugar, if you have any?”
“I was kidding about the coffee. I only keep the proverbial coffee.”
“The what?”
“The proverbial coffee. For when I invite women up to my flat for the proverbial coffee. In lieu of showing them my etchings.”
“I see. Are you trying to prove to me that your sense of mischievous fun is intact even though you’re so drunk you can barely stand up?”
“I have no sense of mischievous fun, whatever the hell that is. All I am, is cruel to people who do not deserve it. It comes from a huge and overpowering lack of self-esteem, you know. Are you going to stay the night?”
“Well, are you up to it? I’ll bet you’re going to fall asleep as soon as you get into bed. Alcohol provokes the desire, you know, but makes the performance rather ineffectual. Anyway, I think I’ll take a long rain check on your generous offer. I only came up here to see that you got home safely, okay? I told you I don’t want your death in a drunken car crash on my conscience. See you soon.”
Bronwen turns to go. You leap up out of your seat and lunge towards her. You know this moment is akin to the moment just before the bull-fighter kills the bull, in your case the bullshit. The time is here for you to demonstrate what an absolutely pathetic arsehole you are. Bronwen evades your attempt to grab her and gives you the icy stare that warns that you are not far away from being slapped into sense. But first she’ll administer a few verbal slaps.
“Don’t do this,” she warns you. “For your own sake, retain some dignity, okay? You’re very drunk and you probably won’t act like a dickhead when you’re sober, so just cool it, okay? Let’s part as friends. I like you so far and I don’t want you to spoil it.”
“Please stay the night,” you beg, only dimly recognising the sense of shutting up and letting her make her exit before she sees you cry.
“I’m also drunker than I should be. it’s very late and I’m tired too,” Bronwen says in a reasonable, placating tone. “Go to bed, okay? I’ll give you my phone numbers. Phone me some time, okay? Let’s just say good-bye without drama, please.”
Bronwen takes a pen and a previously used envelope from her tote bag, writes down home and work phone numbers and hands you the envelope.
“Goodnight and sweet dreams,” she says, turns, opens the front door and is gone.
You stand there for a long time, just holding the envelope and stupidly staring at the closed front door. When you are re-animated by the need to urinate, you go the bathroom where you drop the envelope into the toilet bowl before you unzip your fly. You aim the stream of piss straight at the envelope. Before the envelope gets soggy and sinks under the water, the sound of the urine hitting the paper is surprisingly loud.
FINIS
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