Pleasure seeker
Jeremy Clarke
As the waiter removes her plate, he says, ‘Hoop-la!’ Sharon, who always looks these days as if she’s on the verge of tears, has got the shakes worse than usual, I notice, as she lights a cigarette. We’ve had the cold soup and now we’re waiting for the mussels and chips.
Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of hearing about the antics of the procession of plasterers, shop fitters, builders, lorry drivers, scrap merchants, and painter and decorators parading through her life. She talks about them without ceasing, as if it’s a manifestation of some kind of obsessivecompulsive disorder. The loop is always the same. I get a biography and description of the latest ones, including piercings and tattoos. Then we have reminiscences of previous notables. Then she dismisses them all as not being good enough for her. Then she says how lonely she is. Then she bursts into tears.
We’ve reached the tearful stage quicker than usual today. I tell her that there is a school of thought that says there is more to life than cocaine rushes, orgasms and Australian wine. That in evolutionary terms this reflexive preoccupation with lighting up the pleasure centre of her brain puts her on a par with the nematode worm. But one thing you can say is that Sharon is no snob about her exalted place on the evolutionary scale, and she tearfully offers to touch glasses with nematode worms wherever they may be.
Then the mussels arrive (‘Hoop-la!’) and the cycle begins all over again. She’s telling me about a plasterer who has pledged his troth by having a metal stud inserted in his tongue. She’s seen him three times since. The first time his tongue was too swollen even to attempt to kiss her. The second time it was so badly infected he couldn’t speak. The third time she saw him his tongue was better but he swallowed the stud in a moment of passion. After this she gave him his P45. But he wasn’t having it. ‘Did he beg?’ I said, not really very interested, though always keeping an ear out for tales of imploding machismo. These sausage-fingered builders, plasterers, shop fitters and scrap dealers are a surprisingly lovelorn crowd, you find, if you can get hold of the full report. Your average Cosmo-trained social worker can run rings round them, it seems. ‘Beg?’ says Sharon. ‘Beg? He fell on his knees, snot flying everywhere.’ After this she falls silent and we concentrate on reducing our piles of mussels. Then I look up for a moment and catch her giving some guy sitting behind me the eye. She’s making these unbelievably theatrical come-to-bed eyes at him over my right shoulder. ‘All right, is he?’ I say, without turning round. ‘Lovely eyes,’ she says, returning his smile by looking down as if she is blushing — but without the blush.
I look round. He’s an affluent-looking older guy sitting with three other male friends. He pretends not to notice me. He has got nice eyes. We’re all sitting out on a windy terrace. Behind him are dusty mountains. I turn back to remonstrate with her about how shameful it is in these Latin countries for a man to be thought of as a cuckold. But the second I’ve turned back their eyes are locked into each other’s again. It’s ridiculous. It’s as if they are playing peep-bo! with me in the middle.
‘If you want him that much,’ I say, ‘why don’t you go over and sit on his lap?’ She goes sullenly back to her mussels. But the next time I look up she’s giving him this unbelievably coy daddy’s-littlegirl-been-told-off look. ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Go over and stick your tongue down his throat.’ She pushes her napkin aside and stands up. Then she proceeds to the door of the restaurant (she’s going to the toilet first) and before going in gives the bloke this backward, lingering, don’t-go-awaygorgeous look.
But then disaster strikes. Being as strung out as she is today, she somehow mistakes a hat stand positioned just inside the door for the door handle. Still smouldering at her beau, she gives the central pole of this hat stand a tremendous shove and from inside the cool darkened interior of the restaurant comes the sound of breaking glass and voices raised in alarm. ‘Hoop-la!’ I say to a waiter hastening to the scene.
Five minutes later, Sharon re-emerges on to the terrace. She’d stayed to help clear up the mess, she explains as she sits down. ‘I thought you were going to sit with Ole Blue Eyes,’ I say. ‘I am,’ she says brightly. ‘After I’ve had this cigarette.’
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