Golden Rule: If you're sitting in a bar and someone starts trying to to talk to you, taking an unhealthy interest in your personal life, your secrets and your truths, and they are neither your Idol nor your sexual fantasy, make up something and get the fuck out of there before your evening is ruined.
I was sitting in a pub the other night with a friend of mine - to drop a few clues as to who it was; he's been recently kicked out of Uni, he's terrible with women and he's called Joe Boyle. The pub's one of the last good ones in Guildford, the barman's the kind of bloke that the world needs more of; an old Manchurian who doesn't care how old you are as long as you sit in the corner and don't draw attention to yourself. The barmaids are gorgeous, the beer's delicious, the jukebox peerless and the graveyard it backs out onto captures your imagination, twists it round the gnarled tree that grows out of the middle, and leaves it hanging there to create it's own fate amongst the high, grand, gothic tombstones as you walk through it on your way home, belly swilling with beer and mind buzzing with hallucinogenics.
We'd been sitting in the place for a couple of hours when my friend decided he wanted a cigarette. He had none and he had no money for buying them, so like any self-respecting man without an ounce of pride he went outside and tried to scrounge one off the first smoker he saw. Like a fool I followed him.
The only people outside were two late-middle aged women, one in a thick fur coat who smoked menthol cigarettes, drawled "darling" at you every couple of tokes, worked with disabled children, had been mugged twice in the past 12 months and had had extensive counseling to try and overcome the traumas of her life. The other had a purple bandana tied around her head that held back her tightly curled hair, wore a leather jacket, smoked silk cut and "meditated to send out abuse from her life". The only thing they had in common was that they both thought they knew the answers to all of life's problems - which is probably why they were such good friends.
My friend went up to them and awkwardly asked them if he could "borrow" a cigarette: "Of course, darling". They were sitting at a bench facing it other on either side, as did we. I was next to the purple bandana and my friend was next to the psych-case.
"Do you want one?" the psych case asked me.
"No thanks, I don't smoke,"
"Is that water and lemon you're drinking? It's very good you, darling"
After countless evenings destroyed by getting tied to boring, drunk and self-obsessed time sinks, I judge people very quickly and on that predication decide whether or not to spend anymore time with them. Everything from the bourgeois laziness with which the psych-case drew on her menthol cigarettes to the little purple sequined zip-up pouch that the purple bandana had full of pennies for the bar, laid out neatly next to her pack of Silk Cut and her lighter told me that I should attempt to say little as possible. My friend was not so enlightened.
"He's drinking that because he has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and can't drink booze"
"oooo, like M.E." the psych-case cooed. Oh Christ, I thought. They know about it.
"Yeah, just like M.E.," I said
"I heard there's a cure for that" the purple bandana interjected.
"Oh really,"
"Yes, it's all about sunlight, sunlight and crystals,"
"Sunlight and crystals?" Self-absorbtion renders peoples deaf to skepticism.
"Yes, all you need is sunlight, it regenerates dead cells and encourages new life - just lie in the sun and you'll be cured, crystals are important too, they help balance you with the forces of he earth. Have you ever tried crystals?"
"I've tried Crystal Meth," The purple bandana ignored me and continued.
"Listen, I work with crystals..."
"Oh DO you?"
"I'll give you my number, call me and I'll fix you," The subtlety of her efforts to try and reel me in as a customer were not lost on me. I made no effort to get her number.
"You're young," the psych-case spoke lazily, "You'll get over it, darling," I held my tongue. The purple bandana kept pressing me,
"What brings you to peace?"
"What?"
"Where is your solitude?"
"Music. He plays guitar,". I won't blame my friend for trying to help, it's the way he was raised. That didn't stop me from wanting to staple his tongue to the table and pour acid on it.
"Music? Do you listen to music as well"
"Yes"
"What kind of music?"
"Heavy Duty Rock n' Roll" Neither of them were paying any attention to anything we were saying, they were just waiting for an opening so that the could say something and let us know that they knew exactly what they were talking about, and that they had been through worse.
"It all goes back to childhood," the psych-ward stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. "You see, I saw a therapist a few years ago and she took me all the way back to when I was twelve - and some of the things that happened back then had a profound effect of me. They stick with you, those things. They don't go away, darling" She looked at me with a hateful blend of sincerity and feigned wisdom.
"You saw a shrink?" My friend asked.
"Yes. But not for very long, darling. She fell asleep during one of my sessions and said I was boring," The corners of my lips curled upwards, "And I said too her, darling. I said - I'm not paying you to fall asleep and tell me I'm boring - I'm here for you to analyse me. And then I left. But, darling, some things never go away. They stay there," The purple bandana opened her mouth again.
"Yes. Well, Cassandra" gesturing at the psych-case "is a wonderful woman, she's had a hard life, she works with disabled children, she's kind and caring - and she's been mugged twice in the past year"
"Oh yes," Cassandra took the stage, eyes wide with the thrill of the long story she had carved out the next fifteen minutes with. My friend stubbed out his cigarette and I saw my exit out of here "Have another one, darling" Cassandra waved the box of cigarettes infront of my friend.
"Really? Are you sure? Thank you," as he light up the cigarette and toked through the tobacco, I watched my evening go the same way.
The next fifteen minutes of my life were wasted as we listened to how Cassandra was mugged at knife point, that they stole her purse, phone, money and car keys. Two months later a bloke pointed a gun at her while she was sitting in her car and told her to get the fuck out of it and let him have the keys. The car had her mail in it and she then spent terrified, sleepless nights waiting for the thief to track down her address and ransack the place - it was at this point in her life that she chose to seek the aid of a psychiatrist.
I have always maintained that there is nothing finer in life than a master storyteller, someone who can hold your attention in whatever their medium of expression. Book, Film, Song, Spoken World - Hemingway, Scorsese, Dylan, some bloke you met in the pub last night who had the whole joint hanging on his every word. Good stories outlast everything, they get handed down thorough generations, people and time. Thousands of years ago, an old blind bloke sat in a room and told a story about how a hot chick got stolen and how her husband and his army sailed to take her back, built a big wooden horse and killed everyone they found. The ancient civilisation the blind man belonged to is long dead, but his story still draws breath. While there is nothing better than a good storyteller, there is nothing worse than a bad one who thinks they stand equal with the Kings of Yarn when they are nothing more than jesters at the court. As Cassandra attempted to portray with feigned gravitas the horrors of her everyday existence. I saw before me a joker, dressed like a harlequin in colours of brown and grey, strumming a broken lute and prancing out of time. Her story ended and she took a long slow draw on her fag and proclaimed with lackadaisical apathy that, "It's just life, darling"
The purple bandanna still had me lined up as a potential client and thought that her chances would increase if she told me something about myself that would impress me.
"See, now I can see you're having a physical reaction to something, you're clearly a very sensitive, shy and delicate person," When sitting outside at ten o'clock at night in the middle of March wearing nothing more than a T-shirt, shivering is a very common physical reaction to blistering cold. The wind was whipping up, eddying around the bench and my breath was condensing so thick as I exhaled you'd need to check my hands to know I wasn't smoking. Telling me that is was a Sensitive and Delicate person was one of the most ridiculous judges of character ever thrown my way. "But there's a way out of it, have you every tried meditation?"
"No,"
"I meditate, I meditate at least once a day and I send out all the abuse out of my life, just send it out and it's gone. I just say "I'm not... I'm not going to let abuse enter my life," and I'm free of abuse," I wanted to say that someone can meditate as much as they like, but if dinner isn't on the table when their drunk and violent husband gets home, no amount of positive visualisation is going to stop him from taking off his belt. I just couldn't be bothered with the discussion that would follow, a line had been reached and I'd had enough.
"I'm going inside,"
Golden Rule: If you're sitting in a bar and someone starts trying to to talk to you, taking an unhealthy interest in your personal life, your secrets and your truths and they are neither your Idol nor your sexual fantasy, make up something and get the fuck out of there before your evening is ruined.