Author: Innocent Loverboy (Page 15 of 31)

I have mixed feelings abut Starbucks, which (for those of you who have been living in a cave for the last few decades) is a ubiquitous coffee shop chain (actually, it probably exists in said cave). It’s everywhere, but until I was about 16 or so, there wasn’t one in my local town. Opening one was A Big Deal, and although I never actually went there – I tried to organise a trip for my birthday but nothing came of it – I was fascinated.

Strange? Maybe. I didn’t really drink a lot of coffee until I went to university (I’ve always been more of a tea drinker), but even then, the idea of going to a coffee shop kind of eluded me. Even if some of my sexual fantasies included going into Starbucks, I never actually managed to enter the shop…

…until I was 18, and applying for a job.

I still don’t know why I applied for a job at a place I’d never actually been to. I’d decided at this point that I liked coffee, which helps. But I was in the middle of my A-Levels, very nearly finished, spent pretty much every weekend travelling to Birmingham, and was going on to university in a few months. It wasn’t a good time to apply. Why I got an actual interview I’ll never know.

To my credit, though, the interview went relatively well – I’d have to tie my long, wild rockstar hair back (but that was fine) and cover up any tattoos (but I don’t have any!), and although I didn’t actually get the job in the end, the friendly manager assured me that it was purely because they were only looking for somebody full-time, and I didn’t quite fit the bill there.

Is what she said.

A week earlier, I had been sitting in Starbucks for the first time ever answering questions. It hadn’t been going badly and, although I’d never really had many job interviews, I had a good enough feeling so far.

“Can you tell me about a time you’ve used your initiative recently?” she finished with.

I mentally flicked through things I’d done at school and home and came up completely blank. I could, of course, have said something – mention jazz band or being a library monitor (I was a prefect; I could have said that!) – but I wanted something a little more interesting. It hit me like a ton of bricks…

…but how could I say it without rationalising why?

“Yes,” I said confidently. “Recently I booked a hotel room to find, when I got there, that they had forgotten my booking. After negotiating with the hôtelier, I got my reservation fee back and booked into the hotel next door. I got the room I wanted, rather than acquiescing and taking the only room the first one had available.”
“That’s impressive,” said the friendly manager, “for someone your age. Why didn’t you take the room in the first hotel?”
“Oh,” I said, before deciding to finish truthfully. “I wanted a double room. I had someone with me, you see. The first hotel only had twin rooms.”
“I see. Who was with you, if you don’t mine me asking?”
“My girlfriend. We wanted to escape life for a while.”

The friendly manager gave me a knowing smile and scribbled something like

wanted to have sex with girlfriend so changed hotels

on her notes.

“I think you’re going to enjoy working here,” she said primly, gently but firmly chivvying me out of the door. “You’ll hear back in a week.”

I didn’t get the job because they were looking for somebody full-time. That’s the reason and I’m very much sticking to that explanation.

TEAM AQUA GRUNT sent out POOCHYENA!
POOCHYENA used BITE!
What will WINGULL do?

I sat on the steps, shielded from the sun’s rays, a couple of metres from the left lion. Nottingham had been good to me for the past few days and, although I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, I could sit partially separated from the hustle and bustle of the Old Market Square and play Pokémon Sapphire.

I could get used to this, I reasoned.

Thinking back on it, I needed something to get used to. I knew Nottingham well, and was used to its intricacies, but I was not used to the activities I’d been partaking in all week. It had been too much effort for too little reward – and, since I’d been staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, too much money as well. I had also recently been called “wanker!” by somebody old and wise enough to know better.

Wiping away a tear, I carefully set aside my GBA and considered heading back to the hotel to see if they had another room. It wouldn’t have been affordable, perhaps, but maybe the pretty girl was still there. Old Market Square was lovely, but (unlike the action-packed morning I’d had the day beforehand, when an old man collapsed and I waited for the ambulance for half an hour…).

Maybe I could go to another restaurant.

My body screamed as I wrenched myself off the marble and started ambling towards The Cornerhouse. I passed a record shop in which a band had once played an intimate gig. A band which a girl I had a crush on liked. I didn’t know the band at all, but I knew she liked them.

And my thoughts ran away with that tiny memory.

What was she doing now? Where was she? Would I see her again? Was she having sex? Had she ever had sex? Would she ever have sex with me? How many people here, on this little street in Nottingham City Centre, have had sex? And how many of them have done so in the last 24 hours?

The last 12?
The last 6?
The last 3?

How many people on this street are on their way home from, or on their way to, the home (or hotel room) of someone with whom they were having sex? Maybe that confident-looking man on the other side of the street was having sex less than ten minutes ago and is still coming down from the feeling.

Last five minutes.
Three.

I wish I’d been having sex two minutes ago and was still coming down from the feeling, although unlike the confident-looking man, I probably wouldn’t be walking down the street. I might be cuddling her instead.

In all honesty, I would really like a cuddle.

By the time I got to The Cornerhouse, I was absolutely convinced that everyone I’d passed had been having beautiful sex for the entire year and, furthermore, I was the only one who had missed out on this. I felt like such an interloper, me being this physically repulsive, scruffy wanker who spent his time playing Pokémon and thinking about pretty girls, all at sea in this shining beacon of sexual energy called Nottingham, where I certainly didn’t belong even though I was living there at the time, because I sure as Hell wasn’t good enough.

Burning with shame, I found a Bella Italia which did sherbet lemons instead of after dinner mints. I took a couple and, to assuage any guilt, took a table and ordered myself some food.

The waitress who served me had definitely had sex in the last twenty-four hours.

I felt better after dinner, and walked out into the dusky city, now looking for somewhere else to spend the night.

Earlier this week I had two dental appointments, on two different days, with two different dentists at two different practices. I even had to rush out of work in order to make them – either by cajoling my dad into giving me a lift or making creative use of the North London bus network – but make them I did.

As a result, I now have a repaired filling on the top row of teeth, and a still-open wound on the bottom row, which feels okay most of the time but occasionally starts bleeding.

Kiss me if you want; my mouth is fascinating.

The week before last, in preparation for the same, I went to the dentist for a five-minute “sure, come back in a week” conversation that could have really happened via text…

…and bumped into “Chanel”, someone who, I suddenly remembered with a start, everyone had wanted to fuck.

I didn’t really know her at school – apart from her name and what she looked like. Our predefined social circles never crossed over, and the only time I heard her mentioned it was by one of her friends (in a complimentary way) or one of the rowdy boys I never liked (in a horny way). Despite not knowing her, I remember feeling sorry for her; in every conversation, she had been added to the end, as if she were an afterthought.

It was noticeable. There was an illicit party going on around my birthday one year (it wasn’t anything to do with me, but I heard the whispers). Everyone who was anyone who was going, from what I could tell, but Chanel was also mentioned last. Every time one of the popular clique would list her friends, in whatever order, Chanel always came at the end.

And, as I said before, a lot of the boys found Chanel desirable. Not that I ever asked how she felt about this, but after reeling off a list of girls he wanted to have sex with (he used a slightly more taboo word, but I’ll abstain from repeating that here), one boy paused a second before adding, “…oh… and Chanel.”

She was also the last on the register, although she shouldn’t have been.

Which is to say, I noticed that. I don’t know if anyone else did. Mostly what I remember was her being popular, slightly aloof, quiet and reserved, and somebody who a lot of the rowdy boys wanted to fuck.

I didn’t know anything about her otherwise. But I knew the name. And what do you say, exactly, to somebody of whom your overall memory is someone at the end of every list who some rowdy boys were entirely unsavoury about?

She remembered me. But then everyone does.

And, as it turns out, we work for exactly the same company.

And have been doing so for years.

Small world, really.