It felt like some place from the GDR, some place with garish wallpaper and large square rooms, a small stage and hellish white lights. Under them everything looked plastic and poor, everyone spoke rough and everyone, you thought, looked like a smoker. You thought of old cheap films and bad music, you thought of nothing happening but boredom and apathetic, fruitless complaining. A man walked past, and from behind he seemed something, like he might belong to the real world. You saw yourself sitting there flowering in some flowery dress, lips outlined and a glass of wine between your fingers. He was tall and slim and he walked, from behind, in a way which you found interesting. He didn’t drag himself across the room like everyone else, nor did he swagger; you couldn’t stand that masculine pushing forward. The ego that spilled out from some of those walks. Jesus. You thought maybe he would sit down at the next table and pick up his drink, he would catch your flowers from the very corners of his eyes and he would pause, maybe, for a second before he drank. You thought, watching that grey t-shirt moving through the crowd of small skirts and too much skin, that you would be quite happy for him never to have a face or a voice or interests or friends, or a small brick terraced in a small grey street, if only he would pause before he drank. But then he turned round and you saw his face, his very solid face, and a nose not at all generic and anonymously male, and you heard his brash nothern words, and thought, oh well, life is not a film and nobody really pauses before they drink like that.
Advertisement
