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Go shoppingI’ve been sporting my bins a while now. A matter of months and they’ve not steamed up once. This concerns me. I thought that I lived a Carry On life, one with a fair dash of sauce, but not once has a peek of cleavage or a peep of arse caused any condensation at all. I feel cheated; by opticians, by circumstance, by life.
In my boyhood it seemed that Charles Hawtrey’s fogged like the inside of a Turkish Bath every time a winsome young thing bent over. I remark upon this to a bespectacled friend. One who has worn them for years rather than my paltry months. He says that walking into a warm pub from cold weather has done it for him. For several weeks of a ‘tatoes Spring I walk into a variety of pubs, East End, West End, even across the river. Lunchtime, evening, night… nothing happens. I hunch face down over my usual lager top. I try brandy, whiskey and work my way across the top shelf. Nish.
My girlfriend notes my frustration, as she is wont to do. She holds my hand and tells me reassuringly that it’ll happen for me. It doesn’t. Perhaps I’ve been looking in the wrong places?
I phone her from work and tell her I’m going to the Olde Axe. That’s the best strip pub that East London has to offer, best in my parlance being the one where your shoes stick to the carpet, the girls have stretch marks, bruises and it’s tears before bedtime.
A couple of hours later; nothing… lager top, arses, salt and vinegar crisps, tits, bad jokes, pussies, a pickled egg and a girl who makes her arsehole wink just inches from my face, which, to be honest, I could have done without. Nothing.
When I get home she clocks my boat and can tell I’m not best pleased. All the same she asks hopefully how it went. I dejectedly shake my head. She tells me that she’s sure the former Soviet Bloc girls tried their very best for me.
She takes both my hands, leans into my face and haaaaahs a gentle breath into my face. There! The glasses mist a fine dew of her whisper. She lifts her index finger and writes her initials onto the lenses. Her first upon the left, the next onto the right in what, to her, must be mirror writing.
“What can you see?” she asks.
Oh yes, I love you and you love me.
Tim Wells is the editor of poetry fanzine Rising, lives in North-East London and is doing very well. His Boys’ Night Out in the Afternoon was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He joins Phill Jupitus and others for an evening of words, music and words about music on 9th March at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.
