Some Fridays once in a while I go pub hopping alone.
I get in, have a couple of drinks and mingle with an unknown group of people. My technique is to sweep them off their feet with my unceremonious entrance, win a couple of supporters and then just pretend that they are my best friends. I’m never stupid enough to give out my real phone number.
Sometimes if the mood strikes me, I change my name. And with that I change my age, my childhood story, my parents’ occupations, my usual breakfast menu and my personal taboos.
“What do you do?” a girl screams into my ear, half-dancing in her seat. I rummage my head for an answer.
“I paint houses!” I shout back, “I paint them blue, white, green, and pink, and one time I fell off the ladder, it is actually a funny bit…”
Sometimes it’s good and I end up alone with someone, and although I rarely allow it to progress to bed, it’s nice to talk once the alcohol softens your brain. It’s not even about physical attraction – I remember one time spending the whole night with the guy who had a functioning girlfriend by his side, and while she was sleeping on his shoulder he told me that he was a writer and once wrote a story about a bloke escaping to the deserted island from his office, where he fried bananas over the campfire and did nothing but lay in the hammock and read novels. It was the closest time I came to giving somebody something real about myself, but in the morning we just shook hands and went our different ways.
Sometimes it’s bad and I get a nasty piece of mind or a fist in my face (the latter being very rare) – it happens usually when I take someone’s friendliness for granted and become a little bit more cuddly with wrong people. Usually I get my jacket and go to the other pub or just stroll home, making sure it’s a nice long walk that would tire me out so that I would go straight to bed without thinking too much.
When I first started doing this I met a girl the first night and she was the regular in the pub, so everybody knew her, and she seemed to like me a lot. She told me her mom was from the Philippines (that word was the longest that she could pronounce without breaking it in half with giggles), and we had a grand time together – so grand, in fact, that I allowed myself to relax and soon some guy’s arm was around me. We continued meeting like that for over two months and one time when she was mumbling something I said to her that my name was Thom, and she raised her drunken eyes to me and told me that “Randy” suited me better.
“You are so beaming that you’ve got to have a y in the end of your name,” she simply stated, downing her beer. I couldn’t really argue with that.
I met lots of girls like that later – and I always introduced myself as Jessy, or Billy, or Bobby, or Kenny, and one time even Andy – because the book I bought, “Baby boy names”, was running out of those which ended with “y”. Strangely, all those girls had buff boyfriends who were fine with them smothering me – perhaps because they didn’t see a threat, perhaps because at such state of intoxication they couldn’t care less. I couldn’t bother with thinking about that.
It is great, really, it’s almost like a gig for me – I arrange my hair and put myself in the mood, then go out and drift. Or rather, it’s a jump with a parachute: first it’s a free-fly which can end deadly if something goes wrong, but most of the times you just float downward steadily and while observing the surroundings.
It was May, I think, with chilly nights still, when I saw him. He was squeezed in the middle of noisy group and drinking very little, more smiling shyly and brushing hair out of his face. I thought that he was rather interesting, and surely not the type that would giggle dumbly at all of your questions, so I made my way to them and in an hour of smiles and clinks of glasses, when those with girlfriends went to dance, I snatched at the free spot by him.
“Hello,” I said, resting my head against the sofa and looking up at him. He must’ve been thinking I was an outrageous weirdo.
“Hi,” he said, playing with his fingers. Then – taking a sip from his glass, the second for the whole evening.
“Nice hair you’ve got there,” I said, flicking it with my finger, “Nice shirt too. Nice trousers and superb shoes. There, that’s four compliments. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Um,” he hummed, “I don’t drink alcohol that much.”
“There’s a 24 hour shop around the corner,” I said, getting up, “I can get you something else.”
I was running out before he could protest.
That’s a tricky thing to do, really. He might’ve been gone by the time I returned, but one does not drink champagne without risking. I bought the biggest jug of milk available and in three minutes I picked up his glass, shook the alcohol out of it, wiped it with a napkin and poured some milk in it. He was laughing splendidly and he even took a sip – out of politeness or thirst, I could never tell.
I learned then that the run was worth it.
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