There is a song in the film Top Hat (1935), written by Irving Berlin, called ‘Cheek to Cheek’ whose first few lines are, “Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak, and I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we’re out together dancing, cheek to cheek….,” which reminds me of a visit to a London club of the same name. ‘Heaven’, that is.
Friends who shall remain nameless had decreed that it would broaden my horizons to frequent a ‘little pub around the corner’ following a trip to the theatre, where a chap who seemed like a nice boy, offered to buy me a drink. Moving on from the pub, after I had swallowed that down rapidly, we entered the darkened interior of Heaven and cruised through the various sweaty dance floors which were far too noisy and densely packed to do more than grind hips, or cheeks, with persons anonymous, until the more peaceful Chill Out Room was found. There I tried to avoid all contact with the girls who were taller and obviously better built than me. Unless I had suddenly arrived in the capital of the land of Amazonian ladies, I felt that an advance from any one of these beauties would undoubtedly end in unmitigated disaster.
Heaven definitely is a place on earth – London to be precise – where my tight cheeks will remain covered so that no one can press themselves against them, least of all in dance!
Every now and then, a passing stranger would offer me some of his/her ‘wares’ which I graciously refused for fear of taking something that would land me on one of the club dance floors, naked to the waist and blowing on a whistle, like the chap in ‘White Chicks’!
This event was probably the root of my well documented dislike for public convenience communications.
At first glance the toilet was full of the wrong gender, checking the pictogram on the door, I knew the female rest room must surely have been crowded to have made all these ladies enter the male domain and if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, the ladies all apparently had very sore throats and spoke like navvies from the building site down the road.
Why is there an incessant need to chatter inanely to others whilst ‘going’? Don’t be talking to me. I have no interest in what you have to say until the door has slammed behind us on the way out. You have other business to attend to which should be far more pressing than anything you feel can’t wait two minutes to impart to me. There is a time and place for conversation and standing side by side while handling the hose is not one of them. And stop looking at me too! Pay attention to your own wiggly worm before the seagulls take a fancy to it! More chip than chipolata me thinks!
Now you’ve started talking to me, there is no chance of me going is there! Like Moses who holding out his ‘staff’, dried a path through the Red Sea, my urinal is as arid as an Australian dust bowl, as my ‘staff’ has ceased production at your first bleat in my ear. The longer I stand trying to go with nothing happening, the more my alarm rises. What purpose have I standing there if I’m not productive? The whole reason for pointing Percy at the porcelain surely is for the emptying of a full bladder. If the natural flow has dried, I must surely leave. But I haven’t even started yet because you’re looking at me and talking to me, so now I can’t leave as that would be an admission of attending the toilet for conversational relief rather than for urinary depletion.
If that wasn’t reason enough to use the sit-down toilets rather than the urinals, some of these strapping lasses were using the urinals already! I have passed previous comment on the fact Chez Moi, that if you are endowed with an uncontrollable fireman’s hose, you should sit down to go…., fair play then to these feminine warriors who can stand to go!
At seventeen, an unexpected stay for a few nights in the local hospital occurred when a simple self-diagnosis of indigestion, turned into the need for an emergency 11pm appendectomy before perforation caused peritonitis.
Post-op, the nurses would while away the midnight hour in preparative filing of their fingernails in readiness for the morning drug rounds, of which I was a recipient of the suppository variety. Until now, my lower bodily sphincter was very strictly a one-way valve. Come morning, the nurses would take turns in advancing on my prone form, uttering those immortal words, “Curl into the foetal position and relax……,” then violate my inner sanctum sanctorum, which resulted in me heading for many washings and purifications to cleanse, not only my personal parts, but also my mind from the thought of what I had just been subjected to!
RELAX? Who in their right mind, when hearing those words, could relax? In fact, anal retentiveness suddenly ramped up a notch higher than when I took that surprise visit to Heaven!
Carry on regardless!
DJ
Carry On Regardless 