Below is one of the later chapters of the book. It's one of the few that requires no real contextualisation. It stands on its own two feet, rather more steadily than me, I think.
AUG 2018 – THE BOUNCER
After
the meal, we decide to grab a drink at a new bar around the corner. I say new,
but refurbished and renamed would be a better description. I remember it as the
Buzz Bar nightclub and before that, in the eighties, it had the very eighties
name of Sloanes. Some of my formative experiences with the opposite sex took
place in those establishments. Teenage parties in Sloanes, praying a girl might
be interested in a pale, moody goth, and in my grungy twenties, hunting the three
floors of Buzz Bar for talent, like a horny Kurt Cobain. I’d slip away from my mates
for ten minutes while I raced up and down the stairs in a shallow examination
of the female clientele, scanning the room for a potential love match. In a
pre-Internet age, my rapid circumnavigations of Buzz were, I suppose, like an
early version of Tinder, just one that involved a lot more leg work.
Thirty
odd years later, here I am heading for the same place, only now I’m hoping
there won’t be any stairs and that I can make the short distance from the
restaurant to the bar. I clutch my wife’s hand tightly, as I’ve left my walking
stick at home. I still don’t like being seen with it on a night out and we had
no intention of walking anywhere tonight anyway. But the meal took less time
than we expected and we thought we would check out what they had done with the
old Buzz Bar/Sloanes, as it was nearby.
Nearby
for your average person is not my nearby, however. We’re only halfway there and
I’m struggling. Whenever my legs pack up on me and I’m walking hand in hand
with Kate, I’m put in mind of the chimps that you used to see on TV variety
shows in my childhood. Dressed in a tutu or similar, it would be walking
upright, holding the hand of someone, or on occasion another chimp, who would be
dressed in dungarees and also walking upright. Their bowlegs and awkward
swaying gait would have the audience howling with mirth, as if we had not
evolved one iota from the crass behaviours of the Coliseum crowds. But I fear
that’s what I look like in these moments. I will often make a couple of chimp
noises to try and deflate some of my frustration with humour, generally with
limited success.
At
least the chimp and his handler have now arrived. We approach the bouncer on
the door, ready to nod, ‘Evening,’ but events take an unexpected turn. As Kate
lets go of my hand and brushes past him with a smile, the guy places his arm
across my path. “Sorry, pal. Not tonight.”
“Eh?”
I squeak.
“Sorry,
pal. I think you’ve had enough for one night.”
I
laugh and roll my eyes, as it dawns on me what is going through his mind. I hope
my expression is disarming, but the way his eyebrows are knotting on the bridge
of his nose suggests otherwise.
“I
can explain...” I say, about to explain, but he cuts me off.
“No
need, not a problem. I just can’t let you in. I’m glad you’ve had a good time
tonight but it’s not carrying on in here.”
Part
of me is feeling like I no longer want to enter anyway. His manner is overly aggressive
and is not putting me in the mood for relaxing with a beer. Kate then turns
round, wondering what the cause of the delay is.
“What’s
going on?” she asks, as she sees the bouncer and his broad arm barring my way.
“He
thinks I’m drunk. I was just about to tell him...”
“He’s
got MS!” she blurts out, laughing, preventing me from explaining for a second
time. At least she didn’t say M & S. She used to work for them and I’d been
diagnosed five years before she broke the habit of calling it M & S. “He
has problems with his legs,” she adds, flashing a smile that is no doubt
considerably more disarming than anything I could ever manage.
I
expect he’ll feel pretty foolish now and I wait to hear him apologise profusely.
I will of course be magnanimous, as I tell him it’s no problem at all, no really,
don’t worry about it, it’s fine. I am therefore somewhat surprised when his face
emits further hostility.
“Well
how am I supposed to know that?” he spits.
I’m
so taken aback that I find myself still spouting the words I had prepared. “Don’t
worry about it, it’s fine, not a problem,” but my sentiment is not imbued with the
same level of magnanimity. He finally stands down and I step past him. Kate is
certainly seeing the funny side and, in a way, I am too. But mostly I am just
puzzled. It was an honest mistake that anyone could have made, but his reaction
to the truth of the matter was bizarre. Maybe he’s full to the eyeballs on
steroids and is incapable of reacting to any situation with anything other than
belligerence. Existing on the cusp of a verbal explosion due to chemicals in
the system is something to which I can relate.
“Can
you believe that guy?” says Kate. “Trying to bar chimps, in the twenty-first
century!”
I
bow my legs and curl my arm over my head like I’ve seen chimpanzees do on TV. “Oo,
oo, oo.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t
do that in here please.”
I stand up straight
and scour the bar for a free stool, chair or sofa. The place is packed and
sitting down appears unlikely. If I had come out with my walking stick, I would
have waltzed, OK limped past the bouncer without any issue and now someone may well
be offering me their seat. As it is, I’ll just have to lean all my weight on
the edge of a table.
Yes, maybe I’ll come
out with the stick from now on. Maybe it’s time for me to accept that I’m disabled.
