supperware.net » writings » second-hand morals

I have no idea what this issue of Barefacts is going to contain, but after the events of the last six weeks, I predict that what there is will be generously smattered with war-related opinions. Everybody has one, and everybody is embarrassed about how much their own opinion has had to change since George Bush went on television in March to explain that he didn’t care what the United Nations thought, and consequently that nobody ever would again.

Well, sod him. Whatever your views, I’ll wager that the last thing you want to read about is more war. Call it intuition, but I think you’d like to read about something fluffy and parochial to take your mind off war and politics and George Galloway and everything. So, this week, I shall distract you from the self-absorbing, all-too-human monotony of evil versus counter-evil, and I won’t even mention the war again.

This may just be a personal observation, but it’s the season for weddings. I’ve reached an age, two or three years after graduation, when some of the more eligible women that I once knew have now declared themselves permanently, and in the sight of God, to be way out of my league. Last year I went to two weddings, and so far this year, I’ve been to another two. In the latest of these my role was rather different. I implore you to keep reading this, lest you ever end up a victim or a perpetrator.

Now, the best man’s speech is a celebrated tradition, and an intractible part of the wedding ceremony. It is as necessary as the elderly parishioner who complains about the mess all the confetti is going to make of the churchyard. In other words, a wedding wouldn’t be a wedding without it.

The speech is usually delivered thus: ‘The bride looks beautiful. Where’s my snog, then?’ Pause for laughter, get none, look around, slightly embarrassed. ‘Thanks to X, Y, Z and Alpha for organising this gig. Terrific. Best wedding I’ve ever been to. Let’s hope your next one is just as good, mate.’ Nudge the groom, pause for laughter, get none. ‘Seriously, folks. It’s not my show though, is it? It’s his!’ Nudge the groom again. ‘Hey, but you’ve been around a bit, though, haven’t you?’ Smack the groom playfully on the head. Rictus grin. ‘Ho ho ho. Well, charge your glasses and be upstanding, everybody. Who writes this bollocks? Ha ha. Really, another drink wouldn’t go amiss. To the bride and groom. Cheers. Thanks. Blimey.’ Sit down, get congratulated, get very drunk, dance very badly.

It was my duty to make the best possible account of my friend Michael in this way. For years, Michael has overshadowed me with his superior confidence, his superior salaries, and the overwhelming quantity of women he’s managed to get entangled with who have messed him up and, in the process, have been messed up themselves.

Michael is a great friend. He’s pretended not to notice my envious glances in his direction. For at least eight years, I’ve had to be content with second-hand knowledge of all the valuable post-adolescent sexual morals that Michael has been able to learn directly. Nonetheless, I like and trust him, and he likes and trusts me. That is the definition of friends. So, last January I said to him, ‘Best man? Of course I will. It’ll be a great honour.’ As soon as the words had escaped my lips, I felt like a huge twit.

That said, I did feel honoured. It was also the hardest thing I’ve had to do for a very long time. I delivered my appetite-ruining speech to a room full of after-dinner speakers, most of whom were from the bride’s side of the family. I feared they would judge every ad-lib, every witticism, every vowel, every inflection, every split infinitive. My fears were groundless. It wasn’t Keats; it wasn’t even Cleese; nevertheless, they laughed and clapped in the right places. It went well.

Anyway, that’s beside the point. A couple of weekends before all of this, we threw Michael’s stag party in London. If you’re planning to spend a Saturday night out in London, there’s just one thing you need to know: you must choose between sobriety and poverty. That was easy in my case. At a stag night, sobriety is out of the question.

I don’t remember swallowing mouthfuls of precious jewels, or smashing Faberge eggs to pieces with a claw hammer. I don’t remember buying a professional football team. I don’t even remember having my wallet and my PIN number elicited from me by a huge man with a motorcycle chain. However, if all of these events had happened that evening, it might explain how I could have nothing but a two-course meal and four drinks, but wake up the following morning with the debt of a Third World country on my hands. So, I suppose, could a certain Performance Theatre into which we were all inexorably steered.

We must have been drunk. Yes, it opened my eyes, but I shut them really tight again. The stage was at eye level. The performers were naked. They squatted low. What did I learn? That one fuzzy crotch being waved in your face looks very much like any other. That even a professional stripper may only bother to dye half of herself blonde. That pole dancers move with all the conviction and sensuality of animatronic waxworks. That women are about as erotic as a case of threadworm if you can’t interact with them unless it’s to insert ten pounds into a lacy garter belt.

I spent most of our expensive hour there dodging blinking lights in the tiny auditorium to read a novel which I had brought for the train journey. This happened to arouse the curiosity of a wide, long-haired, grinning man sitting next to me. He immediately assumed that I was reading only because I was petrified and offended by the entertainment around me. He quoted famous people. He exuded platitudes. I realised I had stumbled upon the strip bar philosopher. I asked, ‘What’s a philosopher like you doing in a Soho strip bar at 12.30am?’ ‘Well, I suppose this is a kind of philosophy …’ and so continued our conversation. After a couple of minutes of this razor-sharp rhetoric, he stopped talking and left me to my paperback.

The next two shows were identical in everything but woman and soundtrack, and the one after them didn’t look like it would be any different, so we retired to the bar. The lone fortysomething in half a suit was there. The happy young heterosexual couple were there, too. So were three closely-cropped men in pastel-coloured designer shirts clustered around a small table, talking loudly in estuary English about nothing interesting. The only character missing was the bloke in the anorak who really likes trains. That could have been me.

A stripper caught my eye through the glazed door. It would have been impolite to stare, and impolite to look away. Uncertain about strip club etiquette, I nodded and mouthed ‘Good evening’ to her. She looked away. I helped to prop up the groom-to-be who was standing next to me. He was open-mouthed: half leering, half because he was uncertain about what to do with most of his face. We finished our drinks and returned to the theatre, sitting down with him to watch the last twenty minutes of the show.

I sat in the second row. Michael reclined in a seat in front of me, far drunker than I’d ever seen him before, and obliged the dancing lady in front of him with a blue-green portrait of the Queen. In return, she allowed him to execute a superficial gynaecological examination. To his right sat Danny, to whom I had been chatting civilly not three hours before. Danny, it transpires, is one of those people who is not worth talking to after he’s had a few drinks. I’ve noticed a similar effect take hold of certain other people. At some stage in the evening, a switch clicked in his head from ‘friend’ to ‘arsehole’.

This explains why, forty minutes previously, Danny had grabbed me by the shoulder and propelled me into this theatre, when I was about ready to catch a night bus and leave them all to it. He was drinking and drinking, and getting more and more objectionable. As if to prove the point, he turned on another of Michael’s friends, a medical student who was sitting next to me. ‘Oi! How can you be gay in a place like this?’ The student’s immediate reply alluded to the pleasures of anal violation. Danny, he then informed us, was only being so mouthy because he was ignorant of the physical rapture that he was denying himself by remaining so boringly heterosexual. Danny smiled lippily, and looked away. The medical student turned to me. There was a short pause.

(I have noticed that pauses of a similar duration are often employed by arthouse film directors to suggest homoeroticism. Next time a film reviewer raves about the ‘erotic tension’ of a work, you’ll know that what he actually means is that the film is full of awkward five-second pauses in which the viewer’s attention shifts to the heavy curls of cigarette smoke turning in the torpid air.)

‘You don’t look very happy’ he told me. ‘But I am’, I protested, meaning it at the time. ‘I don’t think I actually get happier than this.’ ‘Ben, if you ever want to talk about it, I’ve got time. Seriously.’

The show’s finale had begun. Three of the ladies who had entertained us that evening reappeared, gyrating like dolls attached to a crankshaft. The fourth emerged from backstage as soon as she had put her clothes back on, only to peel them off again. I looked around at the audience. In doing so, I was alone. Each of the four dancers addressed a particular section of the clientele. All around were pouts, breasts, slow-motion legwork, and glassy-eyed men ranked in two rows of seats, concentrating inhumanly hard. Alcohol, sex, and symmetry consumed every square inch of the theatre, and for five minutes we found ourselves in a hall of mirrors. When we emerged onto the street, the mess, noise, and cold air of Soho was an intense relief.

So why am I telling you this? At last, I have some first-hand experience which is worth sharing. This week, I will leave you with four pillars of truth. One. Those who are confused in any way would do well to fear those, like Danny, who think they’re not. Two. If you want to sort out your head, don’t go and spend a Saturday night in London. Three. The desolation of the stares I witnessed that night forces me to conclude that people don’t go to strip clubs for sex. Rather, they are attracted by the reciprocating movements of the dancers. It’s so obvious now: that’s why so many men are also captivated by steam engines. Four. Just stay at home. Read the agony aunt column of some crappy magazine. It really is easier, and far cheaper, to learn those post-adolescent sexual morals second-hand.

Published in barefacts 1056 • 1 May 2003