Lee Rourke: Vulgar Things

‘Really.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Never really liked his stuff …’

‘Really?’

‘He holds back. Tries to fuck the lens. In fucking love with the lens. Spends too much time finding the right shot and then when he’s found it he spends too much time wanking all over it. He should just fucking shoot … He’s not an artist, say, like Dom is; now Dom’s a true artist, he finds the right shot without thinking, bam, bam, bam …’

‘Bish bash bosh …’

‘Ha, yeah, right … but seriously, he doesn’t fuck about. His art just happens; do you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And then there’s all the fucking gak …’

‘Yeah, that.’

‘He puts too much up his nose, thinks it’s the fucking eighties … He can’t see for gak sometimes … I saw him last week. He was with some office temp from his production company, giving it the large with her; she’s all wide-eyed around him like he’s some fucking god. He’s got his fat married hands all over her skinny arse. Fucking sad to witness … He bought me drinks, though, so what can you say? I don’t care if it was just to impress the slag, I’ll fucking drink them. I spent the afternoon in the French with him, before he fucked off to the Groucho with her. He told me about the shoot, he told everyone about it … Everyone in Soho knows how much his fucking budget is …’

‘Really.’

‘Just go and fucking shoot, that’s what I say, stop fucking talking about it and go and fucking shoot the fucker.’

‘Yeah.’

The two men continue in this manner for the rest of their meal, fiddling with their phones all the while. I listen to every word and finish my food. It’s a cyclical, looped conversation: a spiral of ‘shoots’, ‘budgets’, ‘gak’ and ‘locations’. It’s pointless and completely fascinating. Just as they are leaving, I look up at the taller of the two, intent on gaining eye contact.

‘What’s the name of the film?’

He looks at me quizzically when I ask him this, and then looks at his colleague as if to say: ‘ Why don’t these people just leave us the fuck alone? ’

‘Pardon?’

‘The film you were just talking about … What’s it called?’

‘It’s an ad, not a film … for Nike.’

I don’t know why I ask him this. I feel compelled to ask. I’m not remotely interested in what it is they do for a living. I just feel they need to know I’ve been listening. I’d tuned into their frequency by accident. I can re-tune, should I wish, to something far more interesting. They walk out of the door, heading up through the alleyway that leads to Old Compton Street, both still embroiled in the same conversation. I watch them until they vanish out of view. I even lean forward on my stool to see if I can catch a final glimpse, but it’s no good, they’ve gone. I finish the rest of my wine, settle the bill, and walk out onto the street.

I head in the same direction: out through the alleyway, past the clip joints and porn shops, and out onto Old Compton Street. I am buzzing, distinctly aware of each and every person sweeping around me, each sight and sound on the busy Soho streets. I’m not really sure where I’m going, or why. It doesn’t matter. I bathe in the dislocation from my usual routine, allowing the nowness of my predicament to cover me. I trust it completely. So I follow it without thought or question.

petty dramas

Rather predictably I find myself in another bar, the Montagu Pike, a horrible, cavernous wreck of a place stuffed with chrome furniture and blatherskites. I sit upstairs on the balcony, looking down at the swathes of daytime drinkers. It feels good up here, drinking beer after beer, looking down on them. It feels like I belong on some separate level, something higher: a plateau designed only for people like me — whatever I am. Sometimes I catch people looking up at me between sips and conversation, flashes of face and eye, vacant features pointing upwards, like you see in old religious paintings. I feel like the icon, the subject of their gaze. It’s a good feeling, no matter how fleeting and inconsequential. So I stay here all afternoon, until the streets of Soho darken — drinking, watching, being watched.

As I am about to leave I strike up a conversation with a member of the bar staff as she wipes down the tables around me. She is young and looks bored. I feel a bit sorry for her, stuck in such an awful pub at this hour.

‘Not long to go, eh?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Not long until closing …’

‘Oh, yeah, closing …’

‘You must hate it here?’

‘It’s okay …’

‘People like me bothering you all the time; it must bore you to tears?’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘I like being around people … What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Why are you here? I’ve been watching you all day sitting up here, looking down on everyone, drinking cheap beer; surely it’s you that’s bored?’

‘I was sacked from my job today …’

‘Really? What do … did you do?’

‘I was a production editor, at a small academic publisher. They sacked me because I wasn’t … productive enough.’

‘Silly billy.’

‘Yeah. I guess I am.’

‘Maybe this is the start of something new? … a new adventure for you.’

‘Another petty drama? … I doubt it.’

She continues to wipe down the tables, long after our conversation has run its rudimentary course. I like her. She seems to bounce from table to table, the same bored look on her face. I want to be just like her, I want to look and feel just like her. But I know this isn’t the case — should a mirror be at hand, I’d see a look of abject terror on my face. A deep fixed terror. I stumble up from my chair and walk somewhat clumsily back down the stairs towards the front door. I feel the cold night air as I step onto Charing Cross Road. I have two options: a) go home to my poky flat, or b) carry on drinking. It doesn’t take much thought to go with the latter.

some sort of theatre

I stumble into the Griffin on Clerkenwell Road. What I can only describe as some kind of miasma, a fug of sorts, has blurred my vision, in fact my perception. I feel behind-time, having no idea at this moment what time it is or what I am really doing. I stand at the end of the bar, near the stage, sipping a whiskey, watching a girl dance around a pole. She is no more than twenty years of age, bored, filled with contempt for the assorted men salivating over her in the room. She is wonderful. I didn’t expect to think like this about her, having never ventured into a strip club before. I expected to hate everything and everyone in here, but something else has happened: some form of rapture.

I am soon interrupted by a small lady, maybe in her thirties, dressed in nothing but a red thong, heels and a latex tube around her chest. It looks crude. I suppose that’s the point. She thrusts a pint pot towards me.

‘Quids in … I’m on next, darling.’

She doesn’t really look at me when she says this. I don’t mind, it all feels right somehow. I rummage through my pockets and drop a pound coin into her pot.

‘Come and see me for a private dance later.’

She walks away, swinging her hips, towards a group of men dressed in expensive-looking suits. Married men out for a drink after work. Probably lawyers and solicitors with too much spare change in their pockets, their wives and children tucked up in bed at home. But who am I to judge? They huddle around her, cracking jokes — crude gags — with a familiarity that suggests to me they’re regulars. I decide that I might as well see her later on for a private dance, even though I don’t really like the look of her.