Just another teeny-bopper's shared wet dream
another hairy appendage in a hairless seam.

Long nights fearing mother's knock
another uncle
the bed-spring punch-clock

"Where's Daddy"?
"When will he be home"?
Another Christmas so alone.

Just another brides-maid's tale, virgin-white love
'til the death, golden bands, signed and sealed it up

Hot days sweating the money Jones
another day of fingers working to the bone

"Where's daddy"?
"When will he be home"?
Another Christmas so alone

Just another tough guy lament, beer-soaked thoughts
another loner looking for paradise, out of reach, uncaught
every night sleeping arms spread wide and clutching
early morning when Hell's been watching.

"Where's daddy"?
"When will he be home"?
Another Christmas so alone.







I was waiting for the punches to start, it seemed like one of those weddings.
Grandma mingled with ink-blotted drunks, cherry-topped breasts heaved and wriggled with the escapists mind as the white-lace drew heartily on yet another nicotine teat. Criss-crossed purple strands bluntly dissuaded imploring eyes and let limp hands slide away unfulfilled.
The clink of glass through both celebration and intoxicated clumsiness chills the air with the expectation of that sound that either stills or hurries, the dropped tray that brings cheers from the invited and groans of waste from the free-loaders a set of hasty steps from me and an a almost silent curse from the slippery fingered.
All those flash-bulbs tonight and tomorrow the complaints of "You weren't looking" or "You moved" or "What's his hand doing on your arse"? flying like the elephants in pink tights on unicycles carrying tiny umbrellas that flash in heads that moved too suddenly and stirred the sludge the night left.
I keep lifting and stacking the abandoned glasses in my left hand and cogitate about the time when those carrying leftovers would have vanished without a murmur. The days I would have been the drunken palms touching thighs or grabbing at free-swinging breasts, the slurrer gently side-stepped for the bean-eyed and restless.
"Have you heard about the midnight rambler", and here's me 9.15 Saturday night at club central dressed like a piece of some Grand Prix finishing flag, with a material throat-choker as an inverted noose, two hands full of the cheapest glass money can buy wondering when I might be able to add a jacket to my attire and partake of nuptial-night bliss.
I escape this orthodox madness for the serious insanity of the casino room where the once one-armed have now become push-button-money-suckers, with their operators perched shag-like hoping for a five-in-a-row on a bet five with five free spins to follow.
Voyeuristically I stand watching numbers fall by tens and fives occasionally rattling up by forties and fifties.
She just got lucky and popped a 500, the skull and cross-bones in a line, with Long John Silver and his hook a reminder of the good old days when you could pull away in public and still be called normal. The poker machine graveyard full of still sweating knobs atop slender silver searching for a warm palm to keep them company, these machines like come-on whores, shining, promising, offering opportunity if you're willing to spend. How could you choose? One much like the other, all reliant on luck and the odds much improved on the one some-one else is playing or the one they've left without satisfaction.
The new Mrs What's-her-name stands braced by a brides-maids words at one of the symbols of fortune and casts coins into it's slot much as she had just cast her garter into the wall of hands thrown blindly roofward. The heavy-lidded eyes of it's human brickwork still fixed on a slowly disappearing thigh clad in patterned white silk held up by matching elastic. A brattish melee had ensued and from the scrum emerged the victor, tie wildly askew, smile even more so, and the gleam in the single open optic as he slid the elastic up a tweed covered arm augured well for his solitary version of consummation.
How did I end up at the front-desk answering telephones and paging the long departed?
"Checking in"?
Sign here, take your change, and I'll check your mind so you can retrieve it on your way out when you're dollars lighter
I'm the registrar of names intent on enjoyment and I feel like I should just call them all "Smith" and give them a key, some towels, and a pamphlet on the "Joys of Sex". Instead I wish them luck and ask them not to attack the door quite so violently, it'll still be there on their way out.
"Down at the end of lonely street" comes from the auditorium as the bistro manager flips "Closed" to the empty hallway and any empty stomachs to whom a plate of chips might seem a suitable filler. "Heartbreak hotel".
I knew it. I am in a cheap hotel with couples as unmarried as they are unsuitable doing the unimaginable and I'm the the one taking names for history's sake and leaving faces and other physical traits for burglars and stand-up merchants.
Too soon it's over and I'm back creating glass statues and adding schooner to middy and seven ounce to empty bottle and wondering "Where do they get the money"?
Unfed dogs follow buggy toting horses round and round on the huge screen as the yelps and woes of winners and losers become bookends wedging those present between the betting-window and the pool-table.
I disassemble my statue and arrange it's pieces on the racks for a steam-bath and hose-down content on my position as spectator. No longer fit enough for the rough and tumble of intoxication, too many long-term injuries, too many notes with wings and minds of their own flying from opened wallet to cash register and some-one else's profit, with no hope of finding a way back. Too many times checking for chewing gum and how many screws are missing from the underside of too many tables.
Out passed those shimmering nightmares and the fray of wedding bliss I venture oblivious to the possibilities that unhinged minds can create.
At least they're all seated which takes away the possibility of some-one toppling over and creating the gravitational precedent of a body falling Earthwards while still at rest.
They're all becoming apprentices to my artisan and erecting mini glass monuments of their own. The joy of being imitated like the step up to a dais bathed in uninterrupted light, and I shuffle and dance at the realisation that I'm noticed and thought about.
A bride's smile, and in white so virginal, greets me as I round a blind-corner and steady a blind customer, who offers blind judgement on whether the band is playing in four-four or in some other kind of alcoholic off-beat.
What was that ancient tradition of best-man and bride?
If I'm the best man for the job then so be it
Too late she's gone and I notice she's complaining to a sympathetic, over-used, sponge about a burn from a mishandled cigarette.
Those misallied couples I'd booked in for the evening are shuffling away to a tune I think was once a Kenny Rogers number, though now, after this band has finished wringing it's neck I doubt he'd recognise let alone own up to ever having been a party to it.
"You've go to know" screams the resident table-tapper as his company politely smile and enquire about closing times and take-aways. I couldn't pick them for stayers, they looked more the at-the-club-hiding-in-the-shadows-cowering-against-the-wall-with-every-heavy-handed-thud type to me, but then I only work here.
"Midnight close and I'm sorry it's too late for take-aways" I respond, and with a little work I might be able to fit that into the bridge between the third chorus and the fourth verse. I'll keep it in mind for my next encounter with Mr Rogers and his song-writing team.