The awful tale...part 3.

I am back in Britain. It is cold and raining. Is it possible to find one’s inner sex goddess in a country where as soon as you step out of the door your hair turns into a giant fuzzy cloud?

I hope so.

Back to my story. After the previous night’s debacle I’d decide to affect a Greta Garbo air of unattainability and NEVER go to the club again. I imagined The Irishman pushing his long dark curls out of his eyes and scanning the room night after night in mounting anxiety while I sat in a cocktail bar in a black sheath dress that I don’t actually own, drinking a dirty martini and looking out at the sea with an inscrutable expression.
But alas, it was not to be. When I checked Facebook that afternoon I found that he’d left me a message:

Dramatic....call up to the club when the fiddler is finished, its open till 6...

Hmm.
I also had a bossy message from my older, seductress, advice-giving friend telling me off for my utter gormlessness in leaving on the first night and ORDERING me to go there again that evening. So I had no choice.

My mother and her boyfriend refused to go with me, saying that they had no desire to sit in a cloud of 80s dry ice watching fat, greasy, semi-naked men slip around in each other’s sick to the same five turgid indie tracks in rotation (but whyever not??) so I had to go alone. This is how it went.

The Irishman was looking particularly fucking Heathcliff that night – he was swaggering around the bar with those big shoulders and that dark, brooding look, and was wearing a grey checked shirt open to reveal black chest hair (ahhh! I know that makes him sound like Tom Jones or Mr. Porno, but when you’ve been going out with someone blonde for eleven years a glimpse of black chest hair is like the Second Coming). I sat near the exit by the second bar, far away from Psycho Barmaid. He walked straight off-stage and disappeared outside for a spliff. For about half an hour.

Meanwhile the droopy-moustached Spanish barman had taken a shine to me. As I stared into the distance with a look of smouldering sophistication he threaded straws into my hair and then whistled a busy tune when I turned around. I tried to sneak one back while he was pouring someone a drink, but he was too quick. This went on for some time. Eventually I was pelting him with handfuls of straws across the bar when The Irishman turned up.

‘Ah, hullo there,’he said, with a flash of a smile, while I straightened my skirt. ‘What did you do today?’
‘I went for a walk...’ I started, and then stopped. What else could I tell him about? ‘Ooh well, I stalked you for a bit on Facebook and then I hung around in bed for too long fantasising that you were an artist who was painting me naked and you kept touching me until I was on the point of screaming then walking back to finish off another bit of your painting.’
Perhaps not.
‘You went for a walk...’ he repeated slowly, like I was five. Then he scanned the bar around him.
‘I’ve got to play now. Catch you later.’

I sat feeling like Baby in Dirty Dancing when she says to Patrick Swayze: ‘I carried a watermelon!’ And that was that. He went back to the DJ’s box. I ordered another drink and realised that Droopy Moustache Barman now hated me. He glowered at me and shoved a handful of straws into another woman’s hair. For the remainder of the night I sat listening to the music and getting hit on by a succession of random men (some in their very early twenties – ooh!), all of whom went on about how oh so sophisticated and world-weary I am. Ha! From this I learned two things:

1) I’m good at cultivating an ‘air of mystique’. In Spanish holiday resorts, at least.
2) As soon as I open my mouth and speak my air of mystique is fucked.

It’s very sad. Is it because I’m too nice? Is it because I’m pathologically avoidant about rejecting anyone? (When I was a student a creepy old Pakistani taxi-driver once asked me to kiss him goodbye and I did because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He tried to slip me the tongue and then said, like he was doing me a massive favour: ‘If you want, you know...we could have intercourse’ To which I answered ‘No thank you!’ in a nice polite voice, like he’d just offered me a cucumber sandwich. I was brought up all wrong). I think men are a little disappointed when they find out that I’m actually an affable pisshead. Perhaps with men you like you are meant to act like a sulky monosyllabic Polish barmaid. But who wants to act with a monosyllabic Polish barmaid with a man that you really like and get along with?

Anyway, despite my rejection avoidance I managed to beat off my hordes of admirers, but had no luck with The Irishman. The DJ played The Specials so I got up to dance. I got back to my seat and discovered that Droopy Moustache Barman had thrown away my drink. The Irishman was talking to a girl with massive tits. Then a big fat man fell on me. It was time to go.

To be continued...