Fuck The Pope But Use A Condom (Pt. 1)
Frustrated by the facade of virtuousness he has imprisoned himself in, Dixon Thompson—actor, playwright, sociopath, and moral voice of his generation—tears it apart in a posthumous memoir.A Note by the Author
Boy oh boy, you’re really not supposed to be here, are you? I suggest you close the drawer and leg it, because I swear to god, if I catch you now, I’ll rip out your trachea like a strand of weed and toss it to the winds!
I promise.
If I’m dead, on the other hand, please be so kind as to get this package to my agent. Details below. Thanks!
Dixon, 29/06/2010
Vixens and Third Wheels ... Hookers (?) ... My Dark Night of the Soul
Misunderstood. That’s what I feel. Not due to any negligence or incompetence on my part. No, no. Of that, I can’t be convicted. After all, I am a master of communication. I makes no mistakes. See what I did there? Funny as well.
I’ve been misunderstood because I intended to be misunderstood. I valiantly plumbed the depths of my self-interest, and took the necessary steps to keep the results a secret. Which sane sociopath wouldn’t?
But it comes at a cost, this double life, because a man—and I’m just a man, albeit an extraordinary one—wants to be understood, to be seen for who he truly is.
He doesn’t like seeing a smug simpleton like George Levi describe him in print as “mind-bogglingly thick” and “comically ignorant” (the irony!), or a hack from The Times refer to him as a “moral klutz” and “kind of accidental Moses”, or even just how the populace, in general, considers him as a mere normal, upstanding biped ... as necessary as cultivating this image might be.
He craves, at the very least, the solace of knowing that his secrets won’t go with him to the grave, that when he expels his final, Machiavellian breath, and a facade of respectability has lost its use, humanity will discover who they had really been dealing with.
And that, dear friends, is why I am expelling this ink: to set the record straight, to align the planets of truth, to tell you the true story of how my celebrated debut play came to be, so that hopefully on one fine Capetonian morning, as hadedas are passing overhead, screeching like the Devil’s choir, George Levi will choke on his toast.
It makes the notion of my demise slightly more palatable.
* * *
Our story truly begins on a Friday evening back in January, when Cape Town was still up to its eyebrows in summer. There I was, ensconced in the damp belly of The Elephant In The Room with two fellow hacks, James and Heinrich. As the full moon raised its tangerine head above the ominous outline of Devil’s Peak, their beer-soaked brains somehow got bogged down in a subject that would prove surprisingly relevant to the dramatic events of that evening: self-deception.
“I’m telling you,” insisted James, “Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao—all of these guys thought of themselves as heroes! Not as mad or cruel. If they had, we wouldn’t be talking about them right now! They would’ve been duds, like actors who can’t get it out of their heads that they’re acting. It’s precisely because they thought they were good that they could be so bad. It’s precisely because they could fool themselves that they could fool others.”
“And what about someone like Ted Bundy, eh?” said Heinrich. “Have you seen his interviews? He seemed to know exactly what he was up to, and it didn’t change a thing. He just kept killing, and seemed to love himself for it.”
“An exception to the rule. And can you imagine he had thought his behavior was for the greater good? That it was ordained by god?—Hey! Don’t pull your face like that!” James broke off a piece of bread and threw it at Heinrich, striking him smack on the forehead. “It happens! Some of the greatest atroc—”
I was only vaguely listening to these exchanges—I may even have got some of the details wrong—and I’ll tell you why. My mind was elsewhere, and not just at any old place, but with the face and form of a red-hot, velvety bird by the name of Yvonne.
We met two days earlier and hit it off—not quite like flint and steel—but nicely, quite nicely. She had just arrived from Amsterdam, here to study for a few months, and was sipping on an ice-cold caipirinha when I approached her and turned on the old roguish charm. We kissed, but it was brief and, to my consternation, preceded and followed by giggling, which has a way of unsettling a man and making him unsure of what’s what.
Consequently, when I texted her earlier this Friday, asking her what she was up to, and didn’t hear back from her for hours, I became quite the gloomy little boy. It seemed as if, after all, she wasn’t that into me.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m no moper. No, sir. When I don’t hear back from a bird, which rarely ever happens, I just phone up another one. I’m a man with options. But see, this Yvonne, she was a special one. A heart-stopper of note. Long, caramelized legs, blue eyes, flaxen hair, frisky butt. You get the idea.
Accordingly, by the time the conversation turned to Ted Bundy, I couldn’t give a fuck. The whole thing seemed positively meaningless to me. But it was also at this juncture that my fortunes changed, because, as this piece of stale bread came to a spinning standstill in front of me, my phone lit up. She had texted back.
“Hey! Sorry for the late reply,” it read. “I’m at Crazy Joe’s. Come say hello! :)”
The stimulating effect this text had on me was most remarkable. My spine whipped straight, zinging like a guitar string, and the corners of my mouth stretched into such remote regions of my enviable face that James paused mid-sentence to inquire into the state of my mental health. Such is the power of a beautiful woman, my friend. It’s scary. Really.
I told the two of my good fortune, then downed the rest of my beer and informed her that I would meet her there. Ten minutes later, after a jaunty, burpy jog up Long Street, dodging and weaving my way through its mishmash of hookers, pushers, hobos, and drunks, I located her at Crazy Joe’s main bar.
I was mesmerized. She wore a ruby-red sundress, cutting her thighs a few suggestive inches above the knee, and seemed to be enclosed in a kind of divine aureole, distinguishing her from her mediocre Irish pub surroundings.
Unfortunately, and to my immediate misgivings—for I had ample experience of the generally bitter, spiteful nature of third wheels—the same pudgy, sullen-looking appendage who had disfigured Cape Town’s club scene two days earlier was hugging her flank. Annette was the name.1 She saw me first and exhibited just the slightest facial contraction of loathing and displeasure before she turned to Yvonne to inform her of my arrival.
Conceive my joy, dear reader, when, merely minutes removed from feeling as if our time was up, this Dutch tulip, upon seeing me, launched herself into my arms and, casting her eyes upward in the most devilish fashion, squeezed my caboose. I mean, after receiving her text, I took it as confirmation that she craved for me in the animal way, but I didn’t expect this. Not so early at least. And it only got better ...
She continued fondling my David-like ass as I ordered drinks—in my merriment, I even ordered one for Annette—and when we received them, she grabbed my hand and, without so much as a glance at the sidekick, dragged me through the crowd to a corner booth in the adjoining room, where she let go of my hand and grabbed my cock. Looking at me with a sort of giddy, breathless expression, she held onto it for a moment longer, then relinquished it and started giving it the old genie-in-a-bottle.
Feeling that an eye for an eye was in order, I reached over and, sliding my hand up between her gleaming, honey-glazed thighs, grabbed her monkey. She gasped and gained an inch or two in height, then lunged at and latched onto my lips, sucking at me like a Death Eater for a few seconds before disengaging with a sudden, loud smack, her lips curling into a hungry, lecherous smile as she drew away.
I smiled back and, after lingering in the maelstrom of our hot, steamy breath for a few moments, we re-engaged. But then, just as our lips touched, there was a sudden and considerable upheaval in our seat—someone sizable had plopped themselves down beside me. What’s more, this person proceeded to tap me on the shoulder—and not in the appropriate hey-so-sorry-to-bother-you-at-this-most-inopportune-time way but, rather, in the haughty, overbearing manner of someone who wishes to disrupt.
Naturally, I had to unplug from Yvonne for the nonce to deal with the issue at hand. Some things a man can ignore, but being tapped on the shoulder by a large primate while sloppily making out with a prized female is not one of them. Such a cavalier attitude, while no doubt attractive and debonair, can land you an early funeral.
Accordingly, I turned to face the intruder—with a grim, this-better-be-good look—and, as I did so, expected to come up against the pock-marked features of a bouncer. I mean, it wouldn’t have been the first time that one of these uglies put the kibosh on one of my sexual acts. But I was wrong. And, believe me, I wish I wasn’t, for what slid into view, dear reader, made the notion of a six-foot gorilla in black polyester seem like child’s play.
* * *
About two months earlier, also on a Friday night, if memory serves me right, I became acquainted with a German girl by the name of Heidi. Sounds innocent enough, no? But don’t be fooled! Don’t make the easy error of picturing a barefoot, benevolent lass frolicking in the Alps. Names can be misleading like that. Instead, think Irma Grese. Think Nazism. Think of the worst that’s rolled off Germany’s schizophrenic assembly line. Picture, if you will, a big-boned blonde with mad, fanatical eyes and Jägermeister dripping from her chin, because it was precisely this manner of creature that descended on me and, with very little by way of preamble, ordered me to go home with her.
Obviously, I had my reservations—there was patently something wrong with the girl; but I also thought she’d be down for anal, which I happened to be curious about at the time. Accordingly, I shrugged the shoulders and told her to lead the way.
When we reached her place, she behaved not unlike how many women do in my presence: like helpless animals. To paint the picture more vividly, she struck at the seat of my pants like a desperate lioness at the ass of a gazelle and yanked and yanked to get it down.
I’d be lying if I said this didn’t turn me on—it did—so, in keeping with the tone of events, I drove her face-first onto the bed as though cuffing her, then, after hastily slipping on a condom, lifted her skirt and started giving it to her from behind with the vigor of a caveman—in the vagina, I should probably add. The anal, I imagined, was yet to come.
As it turned out, it wouldn’t, because, well, there’s no easy way of saying this, not even twenty seconds into this spectacle, I was on the verge of spurting. An incredible turn of events, really, because, well, not only had this never happened to me before—or since, I might add—but, as a rule, I tended to punch at the other end of the spectrum, meaning girls only ever complained about my endurance to the extent that it chafed them. I kid you not. Sometimes they beg me to stop, too hurt to continue. Casualties of a sexual war, bloodied by a relentless, indefatigable machine-gun fire of 10-inch rounds.
On this night, however, for whatever inexplicable reason, the tide came in early, and it sent me into a real tizzy. I mean, I might not have liked this girl very much, but I sure as hell didn’t want her to think of me as a quick-shot. Who knew who she might tell? So, I had to come up with a plan—and quickly.
Incredibly, in the nick of time, I did just that. It struck me that if I were to cum very silently—fill my balloon without a grunt or a peep—then perhaps, just perhaps, this mishap might escape her notice.
I proceeded accordingly, and it went down without a hitch. When I started spewing, I not only remained as quiet as a mouse but also took great care not to ease up on the throttle, as lesser men are apt to do.
From what I could tell, she was none the wiser.
Then, as the heavenly mists cleared from my eyes, an escape route appeared: I reduced my pumps to just under 180 per minute—to impart the idea that a measure of doubt had crept into my mind—and moments later, fell out of her with a loud moan and wailed, “Nooo! Nooo! I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“You can’t do what?” came the confused voice from behind me.
“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I have, I have ... a guurlfriend.”
She tried her best to convince me that it didn’t matter and that I should just get back to it; but it was to no avail. I just kept saying, “No, no, I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t, it’s not right. My conscience won’t allow it,” then pulled up my pants and, after making sure I had all of my belongings, left.
Now, two months later, having not seen her since, I found her huffing and puffing next to me like a wounded buffalo—a thing to be wary of, if you’re unfamiliar with the psychology of wounded buffaloes.
Thinking that I should open negotiations, to set the right kind of tone, you know, I said, “Hey, you! How are—”
She was having none of it.
“Is that her?” she cut in, glaring at Yvonne. “Is that the girlfriend?”
“Uh—oh—oh no,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to have a girlfriend (somehow I had forgotten this bit). “No, we,”—I turned my voice down and drew closer to her, hoping to keep Yvonne out of the loop—“we broke up last week.”
She snorted violently, blasting me backward by about a foot.
“Do you really think I believed that story? Do you really think I fell for it?”
“I—I don’t know. You don’t have to believe it. But that’s the truth.”
She shook her head.
“I knew something was off. I just knew it.”
“I don’t really know what to say.”
She jumped up.
“Well, I just came here to tell you that. I couldn’t help myself. I’m going now.” And then she stomped off.
“Jeepers,” I said, turning back to Yvonne. Much to my relief, she seemed to be taking the thing in her stride.
“Who was that?” she asked eagerly.
“Ah, just some girl,” I said, feathering my fingers down her jaw. “She’s struggling to get over me.” And before she could probe the matter further, I plugged her lips. She made a few half-hearted that’s-not-fair mumbling sounds but quieted down soon enough.
Peace and prosperity would not be ours for long, however, for not even a minute later, while bathing my face in her freshly washed hair, the angelic sound of a group of girls breaking into chant reached my ears, propelling me to extricate myself and make inquiries.
Much to my surprise and delight, the girls, lined up in front of the doorway leading up to the piano lounge, were—looking at me! chanting at me! smiling at me! I couldn’t quite make out the lyrics (the band in the distance was now midway through the chorus of Sweet Caroline), but just to show them that I was a fun guy and open to group sex, I cracked a dazzling smile and mouthed along.
I also mirrored their chosen gesticulation: a raised pinkie.
The whole thing rapidly turned into a kind of hellish nightmare, however, when, moments later, while admiring their features, I discovered that the member on the far left of the file was no one other than Heidi—knowledge which clarified the chant: “Small peeeenis! Small peeeenis! Small peeeenis!”
Dear readers, I was only about half a second away from getting up and extracting Caesar Augustus when it dawned on me that Yvonne, like myself moments earlier, might not yet have deciphered the content of this most libelous chant, in which case she’d still be looking favorably upon me—possibly even more favorably now, with so many girls seemingly having the hots for me.
So, I played it cool and stuck to the status quo: kept mouthing, kept smiling, kept pinkying. I kept it all up until the seven or so members of the ensemble had bundled through the door in a fit of giggles. Then I turned back to her, shaking my head and smiling ever so shyly, so as to suggest that I was rather uncomfortable with being the object of desire of so many women.
She didn’t fall for this. Grinning impishly, she slapped my arm and said, “Okay, tell me now! Who’s that girl? And what did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything to her!” I protested.
“She didn’t seem to think so.”
“As I told you, she’s struggling to get over me. We hooked up once, and now she’s acting all crazy.”
“Hmm …”
“What?”
“How often do you do this?”
“What?”
“Hook up with girls.”
I chuckled.
“Not often.”
“Oh, you do! You’re such a liar!”
“No, really, I don’t!”
“Yeah, yeah …”
“Kiss me,” I grunted, and leaned towards her. But she went the other way and, pushing my face away, giggled, “No! I barely know you!”
“Get to know me, then!” I said, backing off and opening my arms like Jesus. “I’m an open book!”
She sat up excitedly.
“Okay! Tell me about your talents!”
“My talents? Ah, well, let me see now,” I said, slumping forward in the spirit of Rodin’s The Thinker. I sat like this for a few moments, pondering her question, then heaved a deep sigh and said, straightening back up, “My only talent, I regret to say, is false modesty.”
She nearly spat out her drink.
“Hold it in, lady!” I said, rubbing her back.
She took a few seconds to contain herself, then said, “But didn’t you say you’re a writer? I recall you saying something like that.” And as she said it, a feverish, hungry light suddenly entered her eyes—of the kind you see in the globes of sugar-addicted kids when they spot a jar of Nutella in their mother’s groceries. The implication was clear: she had the hots for writers.
Feeling not a little chuffed, then, I said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Impressive,” she said.
Shrugging sluggishly, like a sunbathing dog after being asked who’s a good boy, I said, “Ah, you know, what can I say?”
“What do you write about?”
“Cricket, mainly.”
“Cricket?” She looked confused. Then the light of understanding went on and, to my stark horror, girlish amusement entered her features. “As in the sport?”
On “sport”, which she had pronounced like an overzealous squeaky toy, I flinched as I imagine the above-mentioned dog would’ve flinched had he, at the height of his bliss, been tapped on his protruding testicles by a giggling child. It wasn’t the first time I had witnessed my esteem as a writer plummet in the eyes of a girl when she learned of my beat, but it hadn’t happened for a while—and never quite so overtly—so it came as a rather nasty shock.
“Yes,” I muttered, eyeing her resentfully, “but I’m also working on other stuff—more serious stuff—on the side. The cricket is just to pay the bills, really.”
“So you want to be a serious writer?”
“What do you mean do I ‘want’ to be a serious writer?! I am a serious writer! Cricket is Big Business!”
“Okay,” she said, looking taken aback. “And what did you study? Journalism or ...?”
“Why do you just assume I studied something? Why did I have to study something?”
“So, you didn’t study something?”
“No, but believe you me, I’ve paid my dues! I’ve done my homework!”
“Okay.”
“I have!”
And then she burst out, “I believe you! Jeez.”
A little rattled by her response, I turned my vehemence down a notch and just said, “Hmm, okay.”
But it seemed as if I would now be up against it because she turned away to look at the band in the distance and seemed kind of depleted and detached all of a sudden. This only intensified my fear and, you know how it is when you’re chatting to a bird you want to have your way with but she’s not paying any attention to you—you tend to keep chatting. Not good.
“In any case,” I added hastily, “it was a choice. I didn’t want to be boxed in by the authorities. I mean, just look at how they’re terrorizing their professors. Can you imagine how they treat fellow students?” I waited for the laugh—I mean, I thought it was good stuff—but didn’t even get so much as a chuckle! So, I plowed on ...
“And, remember! Some of the best writers never went to university: George Orwell, Mark Twain, Shakespeare. They—”
As if the deplorable reputation of third wheels couldn’t get any worse, her friend chose that most unparalleled moment to materialize next to our booth like some kind of fucking leprechaun, cutting my admittedly ill-advised monologue short.
Yvonne got out to confer with her. The friend prattled a bit, Yvonne gave her the nod, then came back to me and said, “I have to go now.”
“What? Why?” I asked, sitting up like a meerkat.
“Annette’s not feeling well. She wants to go home.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry! I’ll see you around.”
And then she left. Just like that.
“Fuck!” I said, and slammed my fist down on the table. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I was furious, absolutely fucking furious. Passers-by eyed me with apprehension. I glared at them in turn. I stewed in this venomous hate for quite some time, cursing under and over my breath, taking messy sips of beer. But then, you know, there comes a time in life—many times, in fact—when you’re presented with a choice: be a victim, and take up a life of video games and misogyny, or be a victor. To do the latter, you can’t merely blame the woman and her accomplice, no matter how objectively rotten and despicable their behavior. No, you also need to take stock of your own behavior. You need to evaluate how your own actions—or lack thereof—contributed to the situation. And because I am a man of no ordinary caliber, it took me little time to identify the fact that most of the blame for this painful and surprising defeat rested squarely on my broad, muscular shoulders. In particular, it was my failure to have written something of note that struck me as the crux of the matter.
If I had been able to tell Yvonne that, instead of arcane articles about Jacques Kallis and Sachin Tendulkar, I authored novels and plays about the most pressing social issues of our time, one of which, perhaps, had won a Pulitzer Prize and was now being adapted into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, and a withering Al Pacino, she would’ve reacted less like Lolita in one of her funny moods, and more like a star-struck groupie. The ensuing minutes would’ve trickled by so swimmingly, as a consequence, that when her friend surfaced, moaning about wanting to go home, she would’ve told her to get a fucking cab.
Now, this wasn’t the first time I had lamented my failure to write something so-called “serious”. There had been many a night when, sitting in a dump like Crazy Joe’s, I thought to myself, boy, you’re wasting your time here. You should be at home, working on a play or a novel—or even a work of non-fiction, provided that it was about matters of life and death and not some Mickey Mouse topic.
On none of these occasions had I been so disgusted with myself that I felt like smashing a bottle of beer into my forehead, however. And it’s because up until now, my failure to act hadn’t really cost me. The worst I got when a girl learned of my occupation was a funny look. But these looks never lasted. It never became a thing, as it did tonight, and I always, always still managed to bring home the gravy.
The upshot of this rage was that it fired me up like never before. Suddenly, as I sat there, huffing and puffing like Heidi earlier, I was raring to go, ready to put in the work. And by the grace of a former half-hearted attempt at doing so, I already had a topic in mind: hookers.
Crazy Joe’s was packed with them—I had eyes on four just from my perch—and it once dawned on me that a sincere, compassionate tale about the grueling lives of these ladies of the night would be just the kind of thing to bestow me with the literary and liberal gravitas I was looking for.
I didn’t know enough about them to just push off to my desk and start scribbling away like a prophet, however. First, I would have to do some research: approach them and have a little chat, because all I knew about them really was that they hailed from Kalashnikov countries like the DRC and Cameroon, and that their usual clientele were white, middle-aged businessmen from abroad, out for a bit of fun before flying back home to the wifey.
Other than this, I knew zilch, didn’t know what varieties of shit went down after they left CJ’s, once these boys had gained the freedom of privacy; but I intended to find out.
Two of these ladies were dancing, grabbing the attention of a cluster of Aussies, while the other two were by the bar: one laughing at the solicitations of an elderly buzzard, the other scanning the dance floor.
I drew a bead on the latter.
I downed the last of my beer, then suavely walked over and slotted in next to her. Following a moment of tactful silence—of the essence on these occasions—I tilted my head towards her and said, “You’re a hooker, right?”
Silence ensued.
“Excuse me?” came her reply eventually.
“A hooker,” I enunciated, and turned towards her. Then I frowned, for I had expected to see some relief—sexual arousal, even. I mean, compared to the usual iguanas that approached her, I was Don Juan.2 And yet, for whatever reason, she was beholding me as if I had kicked her cat. All horror and shock.
“No. I’m. Not,” her voice quivered.
You can imagine my confusion. I mean, what? What the fuck was she on about? Why would she say that? But then it struck me—she must think I’m a cop! After all, I was nearly half the age of her usual prospect. Obviously, she would be suspicious. So, to put her mind at ease, I patted her arm and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not a cop. I’m a writer. I’m on your side.”
“But I’m not a hooker!”
She reached behind her and grabbed hold of her comrade, then, through some frantic tugging and squeezing, communicated to her that she needed her by her side. The comrade promptly appeared, engendering a substantial amount of froth at the mouth of the old-timer behind her.
“This guy thinks I’m a hooker!” said the hooker.
The comrade, who had been eyeing me suspiciously from the outset, blew up pronouncedly, giving her the aspect of an angry drill sergeant.
“What!” she snapped, and stepped forward, getting right up in my face. “Are you telling me that when you see a young, beautiful black woman in a tight dress,”—she motioned towards her friend—“you just automatically assume she’s a hooker?”
I gasped.
“Of course not! It’s just that, I’ve been coming here for years, and I see you guys—”
“Guys!”
“Sorry, my bad,” I said, raising my hand in apology, “I meant ladi—”
“You think I’m a hooker as well?”
This tipped me over the edge.
“Of course I do! Can’t you just be honest with me? I’m not here to do you in; I’m here to help you. I want to write a story about you, about what you go through, about what these men do to you. I want prostitution to be legalized. I want—”
But then, just as I was getting on a roll, the friend burst into tears and rushed off towards the exit. The comrade, after taking a moment to retrieve her jaw from the floor, set off in pursuit. The old man also joined in on the chase, but not before whipping his arms up like goalposts and shouting, “What did you do?”
I made a wild swiping gesture in his direction, then turned around and ordered a beer.
Looking around the place in disgust, I noticed that the other two whores—or non-whores; I wasn’t sure anymore—were now being pressed into a sandwich by the Aussies. Through the window behind them, a street boy was looking on, transfixed. A little to his right stood another young mistake, his glossy, glued-up eyes latched onto a pretty thing at the table next to the stage. Looking miserable as hell, he was mouthing “I love you” over and over again, steaming up the window in the process. She teased him with a smile but, at the same time, etched her nails ever deeper into her lover’s leg beneath the table.
Everybody else, except for a few loners having dark thoughts in dark corners, was on their feet, swaying, dancing, drinking, singing, sweating, flirting, smoking, groping, chatting, pushing, forgetting—I felt a tap on my forearm. It was the bartender. My pint was sputtering on the counter.
I paid and downed a third of it, then, when the opening stanza of Don’t Stop Believin’ made me want to fling my glass at the vocalist, made my way back to the adjoining room, where just minutes ago my romantic prospects had looked so rosy. How quickly things can change.
Seeking refuge, I decided to head up to the piano lounge. As I trudged up the staircase with heavy steps, like old sad Sisyphus ascending his hill for the umpteenth time, I vaguely hoped I wouldn’t run into Heidi and co., who had bundled up the same staircase after their chant. All I wanted now, even if only for a few minutes, was a bit of peace, some time to reflect, and based on my previous interaction with these savages, they were sure to prevent that.
Mercifully, Lady Fortuna spared me the ordeal. The lounge only contained a dozen or so patrons, all of whom seemed to be of the quiet, non-chanting sort. It didn’t surprise me, either, as the pianist was playing a very slow, very gloomy melody—appropriate for my mood, no doubt, but hardly the kind of tune to keep a girl like Heidi spellbound.
I collapsed onto a stool by the bar and, after sitting with my hands in my hair for a bit, swiveled around to get a proper look at the pianist.
Dear reader, I don’t think it was five seconds before I was grinning as if I had seen gold.