Chatting, in Cafe Nero, on a bright morning with Fritz – it was so damn stuffy we had to pries open the window, use a coffee cup to hold it from shutting, just to breath clean air – we were chatting about the simplicity of horse racing; each omitting the fact we’d lost near a years wages between us, because it was – all said and done – just down to luck. It was when we were in the middle of a gripe about Jack Quick – a heavy against, which had proven itself a loser time and again – that we noticed Erin. (I’ll not pretend at this stage that we knew her, it was simply a name that we later held on our tongues and savored.)
Cupid lifted our chins at the moment she swaggered in – the cruel bastard drew our eyes from sandals to hair clips, before he sent us – inert – towards the figure of her boyfriend. It was Charlie – a three time runner up, in each of the three fights we’d had – a thin branch of an arm lay at her hip and the other pressed a cellphone into the side of his face.
Clean shaven, clean spoken and whiter than white teeth, that was Charlie entirely summed up. A cocky little inbred, with Daddy’s notes in his wallet and Mommy’s ‘love ner-ending’ and her looks to-the-letter. The two of them took a seat, hidden in plain view, and the waiter breezed over to take their order – taking special care to drop his gaze down her top – then scuttled away. Erin was a sweep of shoulder length black hair – slender neck, with a dark mole elegantly placed on the cusp of her shoulder-blade – and eyes, god she had eyes, eyes I can’t describe.
So we watched them, Fritz and me, in-between more mindless chatter, until something lifted her chin to look at us. With a greeting of smiles, we knew that she knew our game. We were fans – were connoisseurs of her curves – aficionados of her attractiveness – enthusiasts of her elegance – et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam… in summery, your honors’, we meant no harm – it was flattery.
Still unsure of what devil lifted Charlie’s chin – made him wise to the happenings – I’d like to say he took it on what he lifted and turned cheek. That he knew our jest and we had no real gripe against a man we could easily do in. Sadly, no, he took offense and put up fisticuffs, for a fourth attempt at victory. It was Erin that made him re-think the equation – two against one – so he simmered down after a spattering of reassuring kisses. Charlie invited us over, not to get a better look, but to catch up.
His plan became an example of clarity – he wanted us next to him, because comparison was a given – he imagined, it would undoubtedly lead to Erin taking heel with him… the lesser of assembled evils. His plan fell at the hurdle of book titles.
Erin is a well-read broad – a fanatic when it comes to the well-known Subterraneans – we aching-jawed it, until closing time and dragged Charlie to a bar to continue until last orders were swallowed. (This is where the main focus of these scribblings hones to an ant-burning precision.)
We tell her about our new love for the self-titled ‘stylized interview’ form. How we gleaned it partly from the form taken by the few articles you can unearth between the tundra of advertisements in men’s mags. Took a pinch of the noir in detective fiction and mixed it with our over-wrought idolization of musicians and movie stars. We aimed to write ourselves and our friends into the next cult characters of a changing era.
“Then you should put up a site for yourselves!” She protested.
The idea stuck, we’ve started up on our quest. Fritz and me have already bought the domain and started on the first few articles. (This is an invitation to join, a sort of reward for reading this far.) Charlie wont be involved, but we have recruited Evan, Nicholas, Gene, Ginny and Laura from the ‘Literary Barbershop of Bath’, otherwise known as our friends.
Let it be made clear… This is a call to arms for ALL – no matter what country you live in – those who are underprivileged, rejected, denounced and demagnified when it comes to literary endeavor, all who are looking for a leg-up to notoriety. We’ll write so skillfully and with such magic that our friend’s bands will be signed a day or two later, our writer friends will be published and our photographer friends will have something to do.
We’re starting slowly – slowly and lowly – but we aim to rage against our dying lights. Here’s to creating a new destiny. Here’s to the PolarTropicals.
Here’s to getting Erin’s digits and an open-ended invitation to her flat.
www.polartropic.co.uk
Filed under: hopes, job, news, other people's lives, prose, published, writing , advertisements, closing time, cult characters, digits, Erin, Fritz, horse, interviews, Jack, men, omitting, polartropic, prose, quest, racing, she, stylized
