A Melodrama Of Manners

"The only way to guarantee attention in this day and age," he said, "is to ensure that you will be wearing the biggest hat in the room."

Friday, June 29, 2007

Bringing class where class has never gone before

Second day in Madrid - the scene.
Imogen is sitting in the beautiful hostel lobby talking to her mother on the phone. She is in a very good mood. Her mother is notably not finding the following exchange amusing in the slightest.
Imogen: So yes, so we're engaged and I'm going to marry him and we'll have lots of little unemployable Polish plumber babies of our own.
The Mother: Imogen. Are you pregnant?
Imogen: Yeah, the abortion laws in Poland are a bit odd, so we figured we might as well factor multiple small children into our plan for future bliss, because he's been married about five times before, and says that nothing ruins a marriage more than the unexpected. Or a free thinking wife.
The Mother: You're coming home, right now.
Imogen: Yeah, he wants to meet you, too, but I told him to wait until after the wedding, because then we may have a small child all of our very own, and then, you know, you could do the whole babysitting thing.

Is it at this point Imogen becomes aware she is being stared at in an utterly brazen manner by a hot bloke wearing the same Led Zeppelin t-shirt as her and a pair of skinny black jeans. Not unlike hers. She terminates the conversation - I must leave off now mummy, she says, ignoring the screeches from the other end. She wanders over towards the lobby vending machine that spits out a can of San Miguel for one euro. Turning away, she is caught by the hot bloke.
Hot Bloke: Was that your mother?
Imogen: Yeah. I had a spare half hour and I like to keep her on her toes.
Hot Bloke: *pauses* You're really fit and I fucking love your sense of humour.
Imogen: Oh. Nice t-shirt.

Ten minutes later. Imogen ad the hot bloke are dancing. The hot guy is coming across as more and more stoned. They are talking about one anothers travel plans.
Hot Bloke: I'm just here for a few days to see Bad Religion play.
Imogen: *scrunches nose* Oh. Right.
Hot Bloke: *catches nose scrunch and enthusiasm* They're awesome! Hey, are you up to much tomorrow night?
Imogen: No plans. No plans for tomorrow, no plans for the next few months.
Hot Bloke: Nothing at all? Hmm. Need somewhere to crash?

Imogen agrees. They book her flight back to London there and then.

-------------

This was, like, three days ago or something, and now I'm back in London - Holloway, to be more precise - and living with the hot bloke, who from this point on shall be known as Johnny.

It's all very surreal; that first night we went wandering all over Madrid at four am in search of somewhere to have sex (note; on the concrete floor of a building site underneath the lowest tier of scaffolding, might be handy and well hidden, but if you end up on bottom due to limited head room, your back is going to be scratched to shreds and you will, wandering back home through the city at dawn in your white summer dress, look like a rape victim).
By contrast, my first night ack here I was persuaded to go wandering around Holloway with him at four am in search of lemons, toilet paper and cayenne pepper.

Weird things always happen when I try to quit smoking.

Labels:

8 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home