newest older email

2003-10-08 - 11:49 a.m.

If there�s one thing that scares me more than unsupervised children or the onset of some malignant, disfiguring facial deformity, it�s waiting for people on my own in public bars. Imagine my delight, then, as I entered a hotel bar that I had never been to in the na�ve hope that my friends would already be there, and proceeded to stand on my own for just over an hour. Given my phobia about this, I had purposely arrived fifteen minutes late, and thinking that this would be plenty of leeway, I hadn�t bought the standard back up of a newspaper or book OR the phone numbers of my friends. Schoolboy error, I know, but I was confident that they would be there. As it was, I had to suffer two pint's worth of everyone else in the bar meeting every friend they�d ever made and having the most fabulous and loud time whilst I contented myself with jabbing at my mobile phone pretending to send text messages to actual, and then imaginary mates.

The lounge bar was vaguely posh I suppose, with lots of pinstriped businessmen, and in a weird flashback to 1987, I saw two guys in red braces high five each other over glasses of J&B on the rocks. I was sporting t-shirt, jeans and a freshly shaved head, not a look to be shiftily hanging round hotel lobbies on your own with, and the more I tried not to act like a rent boy looking for tricks, the more I felt like one. I was catching people�s eyes, bumping into them, trying to avoid bodily contact as I reluctantly give them lights.

After about and thirty minutes I�d finished my first pint and was on the verge of leaving when the head barman stepped in to serve me. �Can I�(ahem)�get you something, SIR?� There was such a wealth of information relayed in that little, well-placed cough. It came across as �Can I�(assume you�re a filthy male whore prostituting your wares to all and sundry in my pristine hotel lobby bar)�get you something, SIR?�

Well, that�s how I took it, anyway. Walking away would have looked even worse, so I resigned myself to another pint, ordered in my most non-prostitute voice. I gulped it down and cursed myself for apparently getting the wrong night, only for my phone to go off, my friends calling to ask where I was. �YES! I�M IN THE BAR, DEAR FRIENDS OF MINE WHO I WAS WAITING FOR ALL THIS TIME!� I said so that everyone who ever doubted me could feel the shame and self-hatred that I had felt for the last hour.

They�d been in the restaurant part of the bar, the whole scenario rendered completely needless, if only I�d listened to the instructions about where to meet. Still, I can claim the moral victory, I feel.

Tomorrow I'm mostly going to...New Orleans! For a week! I am excited! I'm meeting people who I secretly suspect know they're too cool for me! My liver is scared! More, as it happens. Here's Tom with the weather.

Back
hosted by DiaryLand.com