Patient Blue

My first impression of Snatchas, a place I have previously avoided like the plague, confirms my worst fears. Shabby, garish décor, harsh lighting and populated on this Saturday night by local yokels and about a dozen employees of Real Money. Bad Romance, a song I’m starting to find irritating, pounds from the speakers. The yokels, mainly groups of single men seem hostile whilst the Real Money employees seem embarrassing and strange. Rochelle, who is sitting next to Norman resplendent in his powered wheelchair and wearing a tank top and bright yellow bow tie, stands up and waves. I am just passing a surly looking group of youths standing at the bar as she does this and I hear sniggers and the comment, ‘fucking retard,’ but am not sure whether it’s directed at me or the blissfully oblivious Rochelle. either way I feel I should probably say something or at least give them a stare, but I am not a hundred percent sure whether the look I give when trying to appear hard and scary may actually look just a bit camp and they may take it that I fancy them or something. That is a message I would definitely not be trying to convey.

The moment and opportunity has passed anyway and flushing I make my way to the table, hoping not to hear any other remarks that will make it obvious they are aimed at me. It is now five past eight and I am the last to arrive, and have just missed the end of happy hour. I realize with dismay that the round I have rashly promised to buy will now be hideously expensive. Bollocks, I should have used the body in the sea excuse and not come to this hell hole.

‘Mine’s a large red one,’ it’s Janine and as she speaks taps her empty wine glass. There are some sniggers and ribald comments from the group; ‘Yeah I’d heard that, it’s because you have too much sex.’ She already looks half pissed. Other drink’s orders are fired at me and Norman, practically suggests that these be written down so they won’t be forgotten by the time I reach the bar. ‘Pity you missed happy hour,’ slurs Janine; ‘still I’m already happy so who cares’.

At this point Rochelle stands up and starts singing. ‘Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo you look like...’

‘Thanks Rochelle but please stop that now.’ Rochelle looks crest fallen and I feel guilty, she must have been rehearsing the song for some time.

There is only one barman on duty to deal with the large drinks order and as I reel off the list of requirements, including several white wine spritzers, two with lemonade rather than soda, several pints of shandy and various flavours of soft drink. I become increasingly aware of the impatience of other customers waiting to be served, especially the group from earlier who are mumbling and muttering and casting poisonous looks in my direction. After handing over almost forty quid for the round I then have to make several journeys from the bar to the table with a small tray ferrying the drinks to the lazy bastards who don’t offer to help. Though to be fair Norman did offer, but the thought of him barging through the crowd in his wheelchair cheerfully calling out beep, beep, is just too much to take and I decline his offer. He also looks rather crestfallen, wow I’m really on a roll tonight with the differently abled. I opt for a pint of Stella and know it will be the first of many.

I sit back and wait with growing trepidation for the Karaoke to begin, vowing that never in a million years and despite any number of pleas and inducements and however pissed I get, I will never stand up in front of this freak show of an audience and sing a fucking song.

By ten o’clock, I’m spectacularly wasted. I realize this even though I am spectacularly wasted, normally a bad sign. Also a particularly bad, almost catastrophic sign, I am going to sing and not just on my own. It is to be a duet with the equally wasted Janine. “You’re the one that I want.” A crap song from a seriously crap film.

‘Not only am I gonna sing I’m gonna dance like Travolta’, I slur.

‘Yeth go baby,’ shrills Janine. ‘Hey we’re on next after Norman and Rochelle.’

Norman and Rochelle are also attempting a duet. Ebony and Ivory though Rochelle keeps singing Ivy rather than Ivory.

‘You know Janine, I’ve just noticed for the first time that you’re really, really attractive and I’m not just saying that cause I’m a bit pissed or anything, but you aint bad, really sexy.’

‘Thanks hun, you’re not tho bad yourself.’ The top three buttons on her blouse are open revealing her ample cleavage and the edge of a lacy pink bra. I move my gaze from the newly found fascination with her breasts to her eyes, realized that she really is coyote ugly, a ten pinter at least, but she is a woman, sort of after all and I am already on my eleventh pint plus chasers and my feelings towards her are definitely far less hostile than usual.

Ebony and Ivy comes to a faltering end and there is a polite embarrassed round of applause. The DJ says; ’wasn’t that great lads and Lasses, he is a Northerner, a refugee from some dark satanic mill, or some dodgy working men’s club in somewhere like Burnley or Accrington. ’Let’s give Norman and Rachel, ‘Rochelle’, shouts Rochelle, ‘Rochelle’ said the DJ,′ a great big Snatchas cheer’. The cheer that follows is muted but Norman and Rochelle seem happy enough.

The DJ says, ’now folks we have a real treat for you, one of our regulars, known by one and all and especially by all you boys, Janine and her partner a Karaoke virgin and judging by the state of him probably a virgin in every sense, Michael, who are going to entertain us with that ever popular though rarely attempted Karaoke classic, “You’re the one that I want.”

There is laughter and ironic cheers and as I get to my feet I wave which causes more laughter and several cat calls mostly rude or insulting but generally given in good heart. What now occurs and too be honest I can only remember blessedly brief sections of it is without doubt the worst Karaoke debacle ever witnessed at Snatchas in the five years it has been open, and there had been some pretty rank performances in that time. I don’t think It actually starts too badly and although I can’t focus on the auto cue I mainly hum along almost in tune whilst Janine belts out the words and I just throw in the occasional; ‘you’re the one that I want ooh ooh ooh’. I have no nerves I’m loving it, why have I never done this before? I dance like Travolta, but get confused between Grease, Saturday Night Fever and the dance sequence with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. I manage now to slip in a spilled puddle of beer, my own actually and crash to the floor bringing Janine down with me. We both lie in a heap on the floor and continue with the song, she sings ’you’re the one that I want and I chip in with; ooh ooh ooh. The DJ has now turned off the music and says without a hint of irony; ’let’s have a round of applause for Michael and Janine’s unique performance of that classic song, “You’re the one that I want.” We both leave the stage to cheers, jeers and laughter and I take a bow as I stagger back to the table.

‘You know Janine, it’s my birthday tomorrow, fucking thirty five, living in Bognor Regis and working at Real Money with that prick Drage. I need cheering up, how about you giving me a birthday kiss then?’

‘OK birthday boy, Mr Travolta.’

The kiss is full and French, our tongues thrashing and teeth clashing, her breath tastes of red wine, cigarettes and cheese and onion crisps, mine must reek of beer, but we are oblivious and don’t notice the stares and comments of our less inebriated colleagues. I now become aware that I am being led by the hand somewhere, through a door, it is the ladies lavatory. Janine is now guiding me into a cubicle and begins fumbling with my flies attempting to grab my prick which stubbornly remains soft and wedged in my underpants, maybe aware of the potential horror that is about to be visited upon it. I know somewhere in my booze addled brain that this is all very wrong, the wrongest thing ever, but Janine is nothing if not determined and manages eventually to liberate the shy and retiring little bastard from the safety of its boxer shorts cocoon. Now she is attempting to coax some life into the blighter. It’s in her mouth and definitely stirring and showing signs of a pulse. I lean back against the wall with my eyes closed and listen to her sucking and slurping. There’s a piercing scream and I open my eyes. It’s Rochelle, standing at the open cubicle door and staring at the scene in horror.

‘Janine is eating Michael’ she cries, ’Janine is eating Michael, she runs from the toilet and I can hear her screaming and shrieking out in the bar. ‘Help, help Janine is eating Michael in the toilet Janine is eating Michael, please somebody go in and stop her.’

Following the worst Karaoke performance, the worst blow job in the history of Snatchas comes to a sudden and ignominious end.

In the taxi on the way home I am aware that the evening may have gone spectacularly badly and might even become the stuff of legend at Real Money. As I am being helped to the taxi by several of my colleagues there are ribald jokes and comments at the expense of Janine who has already left and me. These are mostly along the lines of ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, she certainly did’ and ‘you’ve always got to watch out for the quiet ones’ and ‘this has got to be the best laugh ever, and poor old Rochelle she’s still in tears, thought she was witnessing some sort of cannibalism’. Now, while I’m pissed I can sort of see the funny side of all this. ‘I am a legend’ I hear myself mumble. But even though I have quaffed vast quantities of alcohol I know that a time of reckoning for my actions is fast approaching and in the cold light of morning those actions will seem a whole lot worse than they appear to be in the back of a taxi with my brain and inhibitions numbed by alcohol. The start of the headache that I know will only get far worse makes its presence felt but for now all I want to do is go to sleep and hope that by the morning all the bad things will have gone away.