Low life
I don't get it
Jeffrey Bernard
One morning last week I surveyed the rubbish in my wardrobe and a couple of cupboards and saw that my shoes were tak- ing up far too much room. I got Vera to put all the shoes that I shall never wear again into a black dustbin bag and throw it down the rubbish chute. I don't know how any of you clean-limbed readers will appre- ciate the poignancy of such a deed, but it fairly choked me. One pair must have had remains of the Rift Valley in its soles, another a speck or two of sand from the Nile Valley and others, although not quite so well travelled, must have ploughed shal- low furrows over the fitted carpets of a bedroom or two. Anyway, it was a rather silly but sad parting for me and I doubt whether the wheels of my wheelchair will ever cut similar furrows again.
With that in mind, and a little gloom beginning to set in, in the restless valley of this flat, I received the final nudge which pushed me over the edge into a rather depressing awareness of truth and reality. I received that morning a rather jolly looking card with a picture of a sun flower on the front — yellow is supposed to be the colour of happiness — from a young woman who had come with an old friend of mine to supper one night recently. She took my fancy very early that evening and we were only on our second glass of wine when I realised that I very much wanted to fuck her. I use the F-word here not to lend any sort of atmosphere to this column but not to shilly-shally with the politically correct sleep with, go to bed with, lay or screw. Anyway, the letter was written in a lan- guage that I only got to learn in the last 20 years and it is called Feminese. The letter goes:
Dear Jeffrey, it has taken me a whole week to write and thank you for inviting me to sup- per. It was delicious — but not half as deli- cious as the host. It was lovely to meet you I do hope we can be friends . . . Big X. Lots of love, Fiona.
This letter is a direct descendant of the well known wartime Dear John letter 'I do hope we can be friends,' and, translated into English, means 'I like you but I don't want you to fuck me and in fact I certainly don't want to be flicked by a disabled per- son in a wheelchair.' This is, of course politically very incorrect indeed. — as any Guardian-reading social worker will tell you. Disabled people in order to be seen to be treated correctly should be fucked out of their minds. As for saying that supper was delicious but not half as delicious as the host, what she means is that not only was the supper free but it was cooked by someone fairly harmless — a great mistake on her part to think so — whose delicacy is to be able to read and write without sup- porting Arsenal. Over the course of our supper she referred more than once to the fact that her boyfriend is deeply in love with powerful motorbikes. That says a lot for his psyche and in some ways I am grate- ful that my libido can be stimulated by a mere push across a pavement.
At one time I was a little proud of the fact that I have remained friends with very nearly all of my ex-girlfriends and particu- larly my ex-wives and I was also, until receiving that card, pleased to be able to say that I had more women friends than male friends. I suppose it must be some- thing of a sad day today when I can fairly honestly say that I wouldn't mind getting rid of half of my friends and in fact turn round to them and write them cards end- ing, 'I do hope we can be enemies . . . Big X. Lots of love, Jeff.'
And now I have sunk so low so that I have had to resort to asking the Middlesex Hospital's Sister Sally to do a bit of pimp- ing for me. She has an exquisite looking friend called Eleanor who is a professional fiddle player and I have asked her to put in a good word for me. What is a good word? Perhaps it is that all I do nowadays is to sit sometimes in an ex-wife's garden making daisy-chains, fall asleep after lunch, watch almost anything on the television in the evening half comatose and with an open mouth, or simply reminisce about what could have been, and drop the odd name. With any luck Eleanor and I could become enemies for life. Just my life. I wouldn't ask her for all of hers.
Previous page
