Girl With One Track Mind (Sexhunters)
I Fell in Love on the Northern Line
Saturday Night at the J H Tavern
Saturday Night at the J H Tavern
Smoke-rich chatter and music magnet in my brother and I,
(near whence a pig once roasted and grinned),
to hear cover versions and see tackettes soon to be trolleyed,
prick-teasing the band with faux lesbian capers
on a makeshift dance floor for four. We tire
of our worries; besozzled dancing takes hold,
the dancing girls are - and are not - pleased to see us;
girlie thing versus middling men,
the band takes its break; a South African crone pins me
to the bar with ceaseless yarns
of his life as a medical pal of Christian Barnard
of first heart transplant fame,
'I was a shrink,' says he, looking shrunken
in over-sized mauve suit, garish yellow shirt
and sagging waistcoat,
with his fine wine seeming a little out of place
amongst the steel kegs, hopful pints and bonfiery talk of Lewes folk. 'Here I've made no friends,' he confesses. I don't
want to offend and pretend I can catch his every word.
I cannot. My brother re-appears after my eternity in Cape Town,
the crone hollers at him: 'You've missed an episode -
an entire bloody episode of my life story!
Band to the rescue! More boozy bopping fuelled by
Harvey's Best. A pixie girl is scoobied,
petting her chesty, besty mate in black-and-white dress
looking like a chess board with massive bishops,
We all link arms to sway to Hey Jude;
'Not him,' says Chest-chess-girl, 'He's a man!' I am.
Pixiegirl turns and slurs: 'Don't glass me!'
Sobered by shock, I ask: 'Why would you possibly think
I might glass you?'
'No, don't grass me; don't grass me
up to Denis!' Ah! her boyfriend. I know him: ladies' man about Lewes
but humour bypass-strict with his Number One, Pixiegirl.
The night is over as unexpectedly as it began,
the tackettes descend on the band like a plague of low-cuts,
The hastily scribbled phone number of the blond lead singer finds a home
on a beer-stained business card poking up from the lust-plumped cleavage of Chessgirl,
its pristine sharpness eye-catching 'twixt white-and-red blotchy torpedoes -
my enduring memory of Saturday night at the J H Tavern.