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fishSexandthecity

It’s a wet Thursday night and I’m being touched up again round the back of the finance blocks. “Next time wear shoes yeah”, the voice follows me down the stairs into the blur of expensive aftershave and Gaga. 

And the ground-lit dance floor is on, carpeted purple wall panels reflecting it all back; the suits, the sweat, the over-stepped remarks, “Shots”, gropes and client misdirection. I try to say goodbye and I choke, I try to walk away and I stumble. Her curved hips dripping suggestively; sweet, crisp, the room spins “Quad-Vod and Coke” I say, and I’m a 100 pounds lighter.

With everyday I spend on busy streets, the undergrowth of sexual tension seems pricklier and more suspect. Growing as Beckham’s protruding pouch sails atop a stream of commuters on a rainy high street. Rearing in bank-line glances as the blonde bends for the cash.

In the disparate goings of everyday life in the city, the intimate projections of love, sex and happiness/sex, burn for a blowhole. An insisting need to puncture the walls of daily grinds with none of the dynamic egotism of a Patrick Bateman- this is something more decaying, more lifeless, and much harder to contain.

As I stand, damp side to damp side in a supermarket line in the city, I take a second look at the singular refrigerated sandwich in my basket; recalling the stirring words of the call out plumber. “Yea, I’ve done the lot of ‘em, none different. Old buildings ya’see, the rats were there long before they were” 
The noise of the lights and screen above (minutes till service), takes place of the silent shirts around me. An odd soul snakes forward, late to his brother’s funeral, the mass, focusing upon small screens reflecting back sales figures or the tiny digital happiness of their own face.

Booted in the matching gear and wielding the same phone/wallet/ bankcard as the next, no longer do these capitalist win-outs stand cocksure atop the playground. Concentration lies elsewhere. Future plans, a morning’s upload, the rolling lives of abstracted pals. We wait for the shout from the sales assistant to announce the freedom of the next self-service.

In our growing disfavor for the physical now, it is no wonder the more visceral of our needs become an ever itchier weight. A back log of human intimacy, focusing on that fall line ahead. 
And when the big day finally arrives, the frustration and anticipation washes once again our tired innards through successive damns of conscious, tearing open the promised packages in a giant destructive spasm, releasing our heads upon familiar, bloated and uncertain shores.

And you better just hope you have something to grasp, a passing boat of possible promotion, breakfast arrangements with old friends. Lose track of your controlling desires and you might just find yourself heading for the outreach with a handbag full of crazy.

Another Thursday night, this time alone and stretched out on the sofa with laptop. The noise at first passing for movement in the halls, then my boiler doing something odd, and finally and with a pronounced moan- No, it's human, and yes, it’s coming from the window.

Looking down into the alley, an occasional hide out for the homeless or heavily addicted, I find this time a very different beast. The shiny orange handbag catching my eyes first, followed by the bending figure matched in colour.

Yerrrr I stayed to view the grunting, reminiscent more of the farmyard than adverts of frivolous romance. The girl spearheading from her one handed perch upon the wheelie in sight of another head around the bottleneck.
After this new stranger finished his relief, the two lovers stumbled out into the relative light of the pass way, their faces smudged,

“No more Daniel”,
was something like what was uttered. The man continuing, leading me to throw something down and him to propel it back whilst she drunkenly stumbled away. (moral superiority)

I wonder if the office party ‘gone bad’ in such a fashion can ever really be dispelled from ones refrigerated guilt. This modern example of the ‘fine line of sexual harassment’, originating from nothing more morally interesting than an over-consumption of both alcohol and pent up expression.

I imagine the two employees hours earlier as they strode or tottered down the road with their respected groups, grasping limed coronas and chattering like school kids below billboards where skinnier replicas glared back.

They swig at the bottles furiously, dispelling with every sip that lurking stack of numbers, the mole on their left buttock that according to Google, they should definitely get checked out. Surfing the rivers of uneasy anticipation to the falls of imperative abandon.

This current cycle of sinning, guilt, rebirth and delayed happiness does however, smell familiar. The creation of the unattainable ideal: processing the shortfalls of the individual into the malleable yearning of the open-throated chorus line.

And now as I write from the distant peak, I remain as all, a slip from damnation. But at the plinth of instant access, I will not cease to aspire. And with the 24hr pharmacy at my fingertips, and my hi-speed plug-in dongle for witness, I swear I'll reach that final boozy barbecue in the sky.



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