The Great British Bagpuss

He could feel an uncomfortable but not noticeable level of perspiration in his armpits. That was why he always wore shirts on top of t-shirts, to parties. It was easy to fit in if your shirt was a bit checkered even if the tee you were wearing underneath was like “efterklang” or “electric ocean people” or “Kerouac”. He secretly hoped that someone would notice his t-shirt but they never did. So now he was stood sipping Wild Turkey on the rocks frustrated that two people had already taken drinking neat spirits as some kind of statement. Shifting his weight from his left foot to his right, he scanned the kitchen as if expecting to find familiar faces. There were none. He was here with a friend, who got invited by a friend and that was the person whose party it was. They were pretty much all either in the AmDram society at South U or they were in medschool over the bay in Royal Heart U. It was fairly easy to tell which was which, since in general the South students were a couple years older than the medics, and so the girls were dressed like shit in flipflops and all and the guys hadn’t combed their hair. The Royal Heart girls wore a uniform of heels and LBD or else some other dress which had cost a bomb and had no business being worn in a frat party. There were basically no medic guys. The ones that were, were the most conspicuous of them all what with the chiselled jaws and soft eyes. Every single damn one of them seemed to have wavy hair and premature crow’s feet; presumably from all the damned smiling. Someone caught his attention.

“Hey could you, like, pass me the bottle opener.” She was pretty tall. Blonde, with a long but round nose that made her look friendly. From the hot pants, ripped vest, and beer in her hand, he could tell that she was one of the South lot. “Gimme your beer.” he responded and she obliged. Someone had taken the bottle opener from what the passive aggressive note upon the cupboard indicated was its designated place. He was kind of lonely though and wanted to chat, so he popped the lid off with a couple deft hand movements. “Hey thanks!” she exclaimed, seemingly surprised and responded to his proffered glass by clinking it with the base of his bottle. “How do you do that?” she asked, taking a sip. “When you pinch it you can make a kind of lip, and then- oh well you just kind of pull it off.” he had realized midway through his sentence that technical explanations were not great party-talk. She laughed, maybe more at his awkwardness than anything else and asked his name.

“Siôn. But like spelt like S-I-O-N. Except also with like an accent thing on the O. It’s a pain in the ass, what about you?” He asked, waving his hand, as if dismissing his own name. He talked too much, he knew. That wasn’t cool. But he just wanted to chat to someone. So being uncool was okay. It was only not okay if you wanted to get with someone, and it would be weird to try and get with a girl at some party you felt like you had no right being at anyway.  She looked at him, slightly puzzled at the whole accent thing. Siôn could kind of tell that she wanted to ask more but he’d robbed her of the opportunity. Her eyes were a little sleepy looking. He couldn’t tell what colour they were, it made her look kind of cute when she was thinking. She was on the verge of answering when a voice called through from another room and a freckly face topped with a mop of curly ginger hair and glasses appeared in the doorway. “Liv you coming?” he asked, answering for her, and she looked slightly panicked.

“Oh yeah sure!” she looked back at Siôn, as if debating inviting him back to whatever thing she was being summoned to. Through whatever reasoning she decided not to. “Well it was nice to meet you Siôn.” she said, giving him a wave before she followed the guy who threw a glance back at Siôn. Siôn in response raised his glass and eyebrows, mimicking the famous photo of that Belfort guy raising his wine glass.

Either way as the last flick of blonde hair turned through the doorway, Siôn was faced with the same dilemma as before. She had solved his problem and then recreated it. He drained his glass, which an observer might have misinterpreted as a reaction to having made an unsuccessful pass at ‘Liv’, but he really was just looking for an excuse to talk to more people. The whiskey he had brought with him was on the other side of a group of Royal Heart students, one of whom was Alicia Everton who lived in the house and so was a host. Talking to the medics was hard because the guys were all just so charming and boring and wanted to talk about their gap years and summer homes. The girls just seemed less interested in you than ordinary girls were. But Alicia seemingly had a reason she had to be inclusive maybe, being a host and all, and so was his Wild Turkey was on the counter behind her. He calculated his entry precisely. The best time to arrive in a conversation was the moment after the laughter from a joke had died most of the way down but not quite. That was when. Because only one guy would ever be pissed off at you. And you just took note of the guy, whoever it was, and made sure you never cut across him or her when they made a comment, and everything was okay. And to boot, Siôn figured it was important to never ask what on Earth the joke was. With all that in mind, he swilled the ice around at the bottom of his glass and waited until the moment and stuck his head between the heads of two others and said in his best English: “Why excuse me would someone mind awfully passing me that bottle of Wild Turkey over there?” and there was a general cacophony of response as people did the left-right glance reserved for people looking for an object upon being asked to at a party. It was found by one of the medics, notably not Alicia, who passed it across the loose circle. The two beside Siôn parted so that he might reach it and she stepped into the gap, successfully injecting himself into the group. “Would anyone like some?” he asked, waving the bottle around as was polite to do.

“Yeah sure.” one guy said.

“Has anyone got any coke?” another asked, holding his glass to his friend who was pouring. There was a moment of general chatter as drinks were poured and some of the others also used the opportunity to get their drinks as well. The guys all wore sport jackets and shirts, or else they wore bow ties if they weren’t in jackets. Every single one of them was in brogues. Siôn wondered how much their parents made. Too much. Leaving the Wild Turkey on the countertop next to him he turned back to the circle of people gathered. He felt more than a little out of place. There were two LBDs, three Maxi dresses, and one girl in a bright red and very tight dress. The boys all looked essentially identical apart from the one in a tweed jacket who had a beard. The girl in the red dress motioned her glass of wine indicating that she wanted to speak to Siôn. Of course she was drinking wine. “So are you wearing that Sleater-Kinney t-shirt ironically or what?” she asked dryly. She had a kind of square jaw, and a strong nose. It wasn’t exactly unattractive but she definitely looked more handsome than pretty. Her voice was airy and had a kind of a pinched quality, as if she was forcing it to be higher than natural or something. Her hair was long and black and was draped over one shoulder and she had freckles on her shoulders and the bridge of her nose. In response to her question the circle grew a little quiet and tense. Like she’d used a certain tone of voice Siôn didn’t recognise. He assumed a kind of cheeky grin and shrugged, the amber liquid in his glass sloshing as the ice within clinked somewhat.

“What can I say? I just love bands with girls who can’t play their instruments.” He said before sipping his whiskey. The circle was still deathly silent. He’d really messed things up now. The girl’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared underneath her fringe. There was a moment of pure ice before Alicia, who had been adjusting the straps on her midnight dress to avoid the awkwardness, turned to Siôn with a puzzled expression. “Wait is that from 10 things I hate about you?” she asked, and there was a sudden moment of recognition from the audience. “Patrick Verona aye, man after my own heart.” Siôn told her and at that moment red-dress’s eyes went wide and she smiled. “Oh gosh, I love that film!” she said and the atmosphere immediately relaxed. A wave of agreement went around the circle and tweed jacket asked the girl next to him a question which in turn fractured the group into smaller groups which happened to exclude Siôn and red-dress. He cursed internally. Such a result couldn’t be counted as the aftermath of a good conversationalist entering a group. She looked around and seemed to notice the same thing and crossed the distance that had been between them, a self-assured smile on her face. Siôn wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be interfacing with this girl, but smiled at her wondering when his friend would come to check on him as was standard for friends who had brought plus ones to parties. “So who do you know, sorry?” she asked him.

“Oh I’m here with Tom Pomeray.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Aah.” This was a train wreck so far. He searched for a topic to discuss but she interjected with her own trail of conversation. “So do you like The Third Sex and Skinned Teen and Wild Flag and stuff?” “Eh,” a sip of Wild Turkey, “I’m not really such a big fan of Riot Grrrl stuff.” he admitted, wondering if red-dress would take offense to that, she kind of seemed the type. “Just Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill. I really like Shounen Knife too who I guess probably aren’t the same but they can’t sing either.” He was telling the truth but maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Not really because he thought red-dress would be offended this time, as much as he realized that talking to people about random associations that aren’t relevant to anyone else isn’t great party speak. “I see.” she sounded a little disappointed. She opened her mouth as if to speak but Siôn piped up at the same time.

“I take it you’re- sorry please do go on.”

“Thank you. I was just going to ask why you like them if you think they can’t sing, does that not seem a little strange to you?” It was a good question, he had to admit. And he liked the tone it set for the conversation. He pulled an errant hair away from his face. “Well sometimes you just like the way something sounds even if it isn’t good. But more than that sometimes you like it because it’s bad. It lends it an extra quality. It’s like all that lo-fi stuff that’s popular in hipster circles right now, like how the method of production becomes as much a songwriting technique as the songwriting itself.” She bounced her head from tilting one way to tilting the other, her face a thoughtful frown. It was the face of someone who cared less about music than he did. That was okay. She didn’t respond and instead sipped from her wine glass. He wondered if she had spilled any on her dress. It was a candy red so probably the crimson wine would show up if she had. It felt to Siôn like it should tell him a lot about her but he didn’t exactly know what, so he turned to a compliment. Everyone liked to be complimented. “I like your dress.” he said, before deciding to get a little bold and go a step further. “It looks good on you.” anyone could wear a dress but it meant something to tell them it suited them. She blushed and tittered slightly, and was midway through a rather blathery response when he heard some sort of ruckus behind him. It was Pomeray. He was forcing himself through a crowd of people who had been dancing in the corridor. He had a spliff tucked behind his ear, his thick glasses were slightly askew and there was a whiff of perspiration on his person and of and sweet drinks on his breath. Siôn was both glad and not that he had appeared now.

                It’d been a long day at the office. Bureaucracy and workplace politics are of no interest to anyone, except perhaps bureaucrats and gossips. Who cares if Jodie showed up to work on Wednesday in the same ridiculously priced business suit that’d been surely strewn across Nicholas’s floor the previous night after the office social that had gotten a little out of hand. I mean of all the bars, why did Jayne have to book it at Karmelion? Or even if Appleby (first name John) had been caught by his line manager with a hip flask of gin, even if he had been giving it to clients, to seal the deal as it were? Does it really matter that Iwan was caught fudging his reports because Anna wanted them in so much that she’d told him that it had to be done, any means necessary, and so now even though Bradley warned him, and proceeded to snitch on him to Anna- despite not knowing that in hierarchical terms, Anna was over Iwan who was over Pratia- not knowing that Anna and Pratia are an ‘item’ now, and so Anna knew full well that he wasn’t exactly doing his job to the best of his ability but neither was Pratia, hired probably for diversity reasons, quite frankly, and so Iwan had every right to fire her- Iwan had no worries about getting fired himself as the worst Anna could ever pull on him was a disciplinary, she couldn’t even get him a demotion- so he’d said to Pratia quite drunkenly at the office social and I quote; “I reeeeeeallly hope things work out for you and Anna.” But Pratia’s the kind of uber-neurotic that takes something like that as a threat. No-one can really see what Anna sees in her, to be brutally honest. Anna’s one of those managers who’s not-so-secretly incredibly insecure so having an girlfriend who is not only her hierarchical but also intellectual subordinate probably empowered her enough that she had, at least for now, stopped trying to foist her idiocy and poor decision making upon the rest of us. And if Anna is notorious for those traits, I can imagine your involuntarily shudder at the kind of neanderthallic specimen Pratia must be.                 Of course, there most likely is no shudder, because you rightfully don’t care. Why should you? To hell with it, I don’t care myself and I have to work with these people. When I put my skin on in the morning and fix a smile to it, and then put a suit on over it, there’s always a strange feeling of coldness at the sinking realization that the following eight hours will be spent not only doing my job which is perhaps a six-out-of-ten on the general difficulty scale of jobs but having to interact with other people who seem to be slowly peeling back that skin that I’m wearing while somehow leaving the suit above it intact.

                I don’t care about any of the so-called ‘crazy antics’ that the employees that are say three-quarters of the way up the ladder at Mass Process Analysis & Co. get up to; only that they don’t interfere with me successfully getting through the day and getting into bed at night and getting sleep- all in the most mechanical fashion, because mechanisms can’t feel. The human skin I wear over my inhuman inside is, ironically, the most machine-like part of me.

                Of course, as I caressed the brutal looking glock sat in its plush velvet case I contemplated whether or not I was machine enough to unfeelingly end my own processes. Whether or not I’d been coded that way. I had been putting on a human skin and venturing to the office for enough years without the large black square beyond the corner of my vision going away that when I worked out the decision matrix created when I posed the question; “Should I shoot myself in the head with the nice-looking gun I have illicitly acquired and that is in my bedroom underneath the second floorboard from the right relative to the north-eastern corner, in order to end that horrific and unidentifiable feeling that the black, perfectly geometrical square that is just beyond the "corner of my vision" as it were is causing me, or not?”.  I wondered if when I had been programmed, a suicide clause had been added so that I illogically decided that it was not the best action.                 It didn’t take long for me to pose this question before working out that that was not so. “It’s a fucking farce.” As Jayne would say before dribbling coffee over his shitty patterned tie and performing poorly at the job he was supposed to be doing. The answer, I realized, was that a clause had been added to forbid the action of suicide regardless of the validity of the logic behind the decision to commit to it. I wear my human skin, and plaster a smile on every Monday to Friday. Luckily, however, I am able to override this petty command, and promptly insert the gun into my mouth and pull the trigger, as stiffly and mechanically as my body will allow.

          So as NaNoWriMo is approaching, I figured I'd get my writing head back on in case I wanted to do it this year as well.