Monologue: Au Laboureur
In the bar we chose the barmaid was drunk, high or possibly retarded. She was dancing or rather trotting grotesquely behind the bar. I was afraid of her. She might have been reasonably pretty once, or twice, but no longer. When I approached and found a niche at the far end of the bar I had to look at the woman so as to ask her for two Duvels but she was walking backwards and shaking her dyed blonde locks. I imagined it may have been a moonwalk once, or twice. It digusted me.
I fixed my face in a defensive smile and prepared for the moment when she’d look at me, when her eyes would shift, much like a cannon is turned upon a newly-discovered foe on a hill opposite the castle. I’d need that smile to say that I didn’t detest her, which I didn’t – though she was revolting. But I feared my mask might betray me and fall off the stilts on which it was standing, trying to perform for me the role of a happy-go-lucky punter who just wants a drink and a laugh and prefers drunk, overly-friendly barmaids.
The cannon turned and faced me and I half-expected a salvo of metal sphere. Instead, she made a strange face, as if an invisible troll had grabbed her ear and twisted it, turning her head to one side. It took a second or two before I knew it meant she wanted my order. I told her and she reached for the money and shook it like more notes might fall from it. It was just a prop in the performance.
I wondered who it was she was most interested in impressing: “Fun-loving, still-cool, older woman seeks younger, desperate, naive man for fun and more, IHL!”
Any sense of coolness dissipated soon after I sat down with my drinks when she started worrying a life-sized, plastic golliwog in the corner of the bar.
Is “golliwog” allowed any more? It’s such an ancient, barbaric word, full of colour and noise and tragedy and farce, like her antics.
His white, upturned gaze seemed to water as she slung a leg over his bent-at-the-elbow, perpendicular-to-the-floor forearm; between these was a burgundy-coloured cushion, another prop. I didn’t see her bring it from the bar but the thought that she might have brough it for this purpose made me sad; it proved intent: first degree cringe.
Most paid no attention. A man, who was accompanied by a woman who may well have been his wife, was close enough to have no choice but to notice. He tried to convince her to come down, for her own sake mostly I imagine. It only made her worse; her passion increased. I hoped the fire wouldn’t spread, stay down that end of the bar. Thankfully, she was content where she was.
I turned and looked out through the over-sized pane of glass. On the wall across the street was some graffiti I couldn’t read from where I sat. I decided I’d take a look as soon as I’d finished my drink.
R.H.