FUNNY

how it always happens as you’re just leaving. I was in the hallway, searching under a pile of heavy coats for my jacket. He swooped through from the crowded room next door and pressed a brim-full wine glass into my hand. Our fingers muddled awkwardly round the stem as I sought to disengage. “Thanks, but I’m on my way out” – in retrospect, a bad choice of words, but I tried to sound polite. “Women always tell me that…” “Oh, here we go…” I thought, smiling wanly and taking a sip to oblige – then spluttering back into the glass when he told me what he did.

It was all downhill from there. He was a very animated talker, very “touchy-feely”, he said – and indeed he was; disconcerting, given his job, I noted. As I busied myself with buttons and belt, trying to look unflustered, I hoped that, at the same time, it wasn’t obvious that I was keeping a close eye on those lavish hands and gestures, as if they were the too-close proximity of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Trying, too, not to think how clammy his fingers were around that glass just now, or of the length of his well-manicured nails – "for plucking his guitar". It was difficult to imagine that he had not immediately sized me up, assessed every vital statistic, estimated costs of planed pine, quilted satin, fluids, ointments and hours of silent, respectful labour: time taken to wash, clip, wax, brush, stitch and dress. And yes, I DID know that tamponner was the French for to stopper up, actually.

A taxi-horn sounded from the street below. “Well, uh, I hope I won’t be calling you anytime soon”, I tried to sound light-hearted, amused. He took a long drag on his bitter cigarette and slowly exhaled. “That’s OK, Princess”, he breathed through the door. “You just tell that cabby to drive careful… I can wait!”





PS. This is, of course, purely imaginative construct. No offence meant to those employed in the sombre, more mysterious areas of our lives where, in our highly "sanitised", clinically divorced societies, squeamishness about such things abound. I would be very interested if you were to post anecdotes of personal experience that de-mystify some of our unspoken taboos - perhaps even try to write from the perspectives of one who's daily living involves what, to the rest of us, might seem to be dealing very much with the arcane. I'm sure my own ignorance must be a block to my ability to deal with hang-ups about certain issues/emotions at a deep level. Anyway... just a thought! :)) BE WELL, PEOPLE!! xx