But the more you lose, the more you cling to what you have. I had a donkey. He was called Bongo, and I clung to him like mad. I remember my father telling me:
“Young man, you need a stable and a calming influence. And there’s not much that’s more stable and calming than a mule.”
Dad was right. That smelly, floppy-eared bastard was a part of me. He was stubborn and lazy and all the things I would become. But whilst the bond between man and donkey is pretty much the strongest of all interspecies platonic love – I’m just one man and no match for a van full of council heavies. And now, as I look down into my clenched fist, I see a requisition form and a receipt. Not much to show for a twenty year friendship and the last link to my childhood. So to Hell with the council and to Hell with Elton. I’ve had enough. I signal Freddy.
“Absinthes,” I say, “three of the sods.” And then I think better of it. “In fact, you better double that…and add another two!”
So I shimmy back to the table with a kaleidoscopic display of shot glasses. Elton’s face is a picture – something nasty and German Expressionist, by the looks of it.
“For you,” I say. “Because you’ve suffered so very much.” And I smile, like a lizard. “Down in one. Every one.”
“But… fack,” he says, “there’s millions of ’em!”
“Because you’ve suffered so very, very much,” I continue in my pungent croon.
He doesn’t pause to think, just grabs the first glass and throws it down his tubby neck. The next two disappear in quick succession. There’s three gone before he realises I haven’t sugared them and his eyes take on a frogspawn cast. But he still bangs back two more. His last shot has an ominous air to it but, misery leading to consumption, he throws that in after.
With eyes like jellyfish flesh, he staggers and sways. I picture his internals in my mind’s eye: all that wormwood coursing through his bloodstream; six shots of unsweetened rotgut dancing the Macarena in an already queasy stomach. I stand back because I’ve seen this before and it’s not pretty.
“Just going to the toiloooo…” he starts. But the absinthe’s ready for a repeat performance, erupting into a mouth which, despite its Cockney origins, hasn’t the capacity to contain it. There he is, retching into a pint glass, then there he isn’t – nowhere to be seen. But a blind man could tell his location from the Wagnerian roar of projectile vomiting. I write ‘Result’ on my sheet of paper with an arrow pointing to a smiling skull. You see, I’m not big on sympathy either.
Now I’ve got two absinthes left, I’m no great drinker and Freddy doesn’t do refunds – so I neck one, dip my finger in the other and start cleaning my watch with it. It stops ticking. That’s karma.
Well, there’s a wailing wall in Jerusalem and I like to think there’s one in every pub. It’s called a urinal, and I know that as long as Elton’s wailing at it, I’ve got some peace and quiet. So I take advantage of the dim lighting and the isolation and sink back into the memories of my recently departed friend (the donkey, that is). I picture his heavy head lolling over the back of the horse truck and the heartrending look of betrayal in his eyes. And I feel afraid for him because, of the two domestic animal species left in this starving nation, he’s one of them.
But God doesn’t like his playthings having time to themselves. In fact, he can’t like me at all because in comes Elton, wobbling all over the place and spouting sentences already – all inappropriate honesty and embarrassing personal detail.
“You make me hate Jesus,” I tell him, but it doesn’t register.
“’Er lips,” he says unbelievably, “So soft! So warm!” He pauses. “So… sensuwall!
What trough of crap has he dredged this from? What the Hell’s he been reading? Considering Estuary English isn’t one of your great romantic accents, when he says ‘sensual’ as ‘sensuwall’, well, it’s just downright creepy. But the best (or worst) is yet to come. He scratches his shaven head and blurts:
“An’ she said I was like ’er knight in shinin’ armour. An’ she was me pwincess.”
My head’s in my hands now. I can make a fool of myself easy enough. I don’t need this idiot to help me. But he’s gone and done it anyway.
“Pwincess!” comes a raucous catcall – and I mean raucous, emanating from a six-foot-four man in a platinum blonde wig and platform high heels. “I’ll be your ‘pwincess’!”
Now you’ve got to understand something about Dubious Freddy’s. The only kinds of people prepared to drink in a bar owned by an alcoholic Islamist-militant hypocrite dwarf with a face like a rotten apple and a metal claw I’m sure I’ve seen crusted with toilet paper, well, they’re going to be earthy. I say earthy, perhaps I mean rough. Well, now I’m really thinking about it, perhaps I mean dregs. No, let’s settle on scum.
I like to think I’m a better class of scum. So it annoys me when the entire bar, including some half-dead octogenarian wearing a shit-brown, piss-stained suit is laughing at our expense.
“Well?” the big creature screeches, cupping his fake mammaries, “what do you say, Honey?”
I lean toward Elton. I’ve no choice but to brave his disgusting breath.
“Don’t say a word,” I whisper. “Keep your mouth shut.” But Elton thinks he’s some form of wit.
“Come back when you’ve… when you’ve had your balls cut off!” he shouts – or tries to, as the words come out in a drunken jumble.
Oh God, I think to myself, as our inbetweeny friend stalks up to the table, hairy toes poking out the end of his platforms. He inclines his gristly torso toward Elton, his face lacquered in bad makeup, his teeth tombstone grey and hisses:
“Come back when you’ve grown some, Honey!”
It’s not a particularly funny joke. Must be the delivery. Or fear of the deliverer. The bar erupts. Our new acquaintance is leaning back, grabbing his various bulges, asking Elton if there’s anything he like to see close-up, and I’m thinking, get me the Hell out of here. I’ve drunk with some pretty base company before, believe me, but I’m not going to spend the rest of my evening listening to the cacklings of something that looks like a disturbed child’s drawing of a woman.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: two sad little homophobes scared of a man in a dress. Well, that’s your own prejudices showing. The fact is that it’s Big Tranny Dave’s Quiz Night and we’ve both paid a pound for the privilege of taking part. You can win your own weight in beer.
But Elton’s talked through all the questions and the booze is long since won. Now all that’s left is Dave’s theatre of cruelty. It’s time for a strategic withdrawal. I have one last scrap of dignity and I’d like to retain it.
“Well,” I say, patting Elton on the back, “looks like you’ve found a friend.” I bid Dave a “Good evening, Madam.”
So that scrap of dignity I mentioned… forget about it. I go to make my move and the table and its tottering towers of empties move with me. I’ve got my bootlaces tangled like tendrils around the wrought iron table legs. One false move and I’ll be on the floor with an avalanche of glass on top of me.
I’m bending down to extricate myself when I detect the presence of bosoms in my peripheral vision. There was nothing even vaguely female in the bar when we came in so, ten to one, it’s Dave about to subject me to some ‘humorous’ interference.