Hospital and a dinner party.
May. 3rd, 2009 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningThis is the second part of a letter I wrote nearly twenty years ago...
The second story I have to tell is simpler; it begins where the first ended, in my office. I was leaning against a doorway, talking to a computer guy, talking spreadsheets maybe, and memory, and as he walked away, I pushed against the doorway. In a second, I was on the floor in agony, and a fire-extinguisher was on my ankle. Rolling on the carpet. I stood on my other leg, and hopped - and I thought I was all right I was fine, me I'm all smiles.
I was sitting at my desk a few minutes later when I realized my foot felt damp; my sock was red and blood filled my shoe. Oh my - the pictures swing and fall. I phone the first aid girl, a secretary who sits with a friend, and ask to come over. She does it by the book - I don't see - and calls me a cab to take me to the hospital. (The grapevine moves quickly; when I get in on the following Monday, suddenly everyone knows my face, and asks if I am ok.)
I still don't think I am hurt; I hop down four flights of stairs, because I get irritated waiting for the lift (on the eighth floor, of course); I hop into the taxi. I walk into the hospital, down on Dean Ryle Street; I know it well: my grandmother - a sickly woman - was there a lot. I talk to the nurse on the casualty desk, and she gives me a form or two to fill in (always a dilemma: I call myself Mr). I sit on an uncomfortable seat, my leg stretched out in front or tucked under as I feel easier.
I have been sensible: I took both my book - The Loop - and my copy of the Economist from the office. And I have my eyes; I look (do I learn?). I read the posters - several for AIDS - and I read those in depth: maybe I feel I need to know (but I do, too; that disease has done as much to steal my innocence as age has, I have a scientific education - knowledge - I have played with viruses, they are something I understand. A friend of mine, an old flatmate from Oxford works on AIDS; she used to work on measles, but AIDS gets more money in grants. Infection is like an population spread - the same cycles - and I understand that too. Maybe you can't be too careful. I was surprised when my mother told me recently - we were discussing morality - that my father stopped sleeping around in the late 70s/early 80s because he was aware of AIDS. A 50 year old man - and yet the kids who are really at risk ignore it. Truth shines cold).
There were several people in the Waiting Room - really part of the entrance hall, separated by screens only. There was a constant coming and going. I was dressed in a dark suit, with my tie, still wearing my black shoes (loosened).
There was a balding man, who looked old - he was grey - also in a suit - a director of a good few firms, I thought; he was here because a friend of his had a heart attack. We waited. There was a middle-aged Australian couple, and an American couple too - some holiday they must have been having.
After a while - 20 minutes, say - a nurse came over and said I would be next - but she said it wasn't too serious. Then amid some chaos, the sound of sirens filtered through the hard nylon curtaining. There had been a big car crash; I waited, like I was watching tv. And I was.
Two prematurely aged guys came in; they spoke poor English, and they walked on sticks. One was loud, the other, his friend, was quiet. The loud one was ill; he had been in the main ward a week or so before; the nurses knew - or quickly learnt - his voice, and his name. His first name: that was all that was used. He made a fuss - he only wanted some insulin - his medicine - and he would go. But he had to wait. He had a walking stick, which propped him up. He mumbled, he stumbled, he was irascible.
Me. I'm all smiles.
I met someone the other day - she said –
Why don't you play us a tune - I don't like music - somebody I never met...
These guys, they caused a fuss; they shouted at the nurses whilst they were waiting, they got up to leave three or four times. They gave the nurses a hard time. I only want my insulin, he said with his central European accent, why do I have to wait? What am awaiting for? - You have to see a doctor - she said - Why? I see a doctor last week, I was in here a week, I see lots of doctors, just give me my insulin so I can go...
You could see action behind the plastic flip doors (like they have in loading bays at supermarkets; and now that illness features so heavily on tv, it becomes another commodity); the ambulance men wheeling people in from their car crashes, porters with trolleys. Outside, we sat waiting, glad not to be rushed about on the slabs with needles feeding plasma into our arms...
All that anyone had in common was their presence; but we almost all reacted in the same way - sympathetic, bored, friendly (but not too friendly); a couple of Asians came in, only the young one able to speak English: he translated for the old man, who was ill (and looked it).
After more than an hour, sitting in the waiting room, I was lead through the plastic doors and placed on another chair. Inside the emergency unit (emergency? I felt a bit of a fake), there were little cubicles created by torn curtains. The chair in my cubicle was a typical institution black plastic one; the walls were two tone pink. Most of the cubicles had their curtains drawn, but mine were open: my foot didn't need hiding - it wasn't going to offend anyone, and it wouldn't embarrass me (though the story would - and how did you do that?). I was glad: I wanted to see what was going on - I even pulled the curtains back to broaden my view. (I thought actually leaning forward might be misconstrued as morbid voyeurism - but maybe that is all my excessive curiosity is: I want to see and learn.) I read, my leg supported on a stool - the kind they have in libraries so you can reach the top shelves, like the bottom half of a Dalek; I played with that for a while, too, spinning it round, dancing with it with my foot. (Shame I didn't have my walkman with me - now that would have been a party.) I watched.
There was an Australian relief nurse who was equally bored: it was her first day on the unit, and she hadn't a clue where anything was or who was who or what was going on - and she didn't seem to care: she was only there to make up numbers; so she walked around talking to people - bad language! - making the wait shorter. In the cubicle next to me - for a while, at least - was a girl who had some kind of septic wound on her leg - a bite, maybe, or a cut - and she was off to Greece for her holiday; she was worried that it wouldn't heal, or she had septicaemia or something. (I couldn't help wondering why she had waited until just a few days before she left, before worrying about it sufficiently to take herself to hospital. Why make life easy for yourself?) The Australian nurse and this patient talked about Greece, and then the nurse started talking to me about travelling in Europe - then we got on to the Far East. She didn't have much to say though - it really felt like she was filling in her time.
Further down the corridor, there was a tall black guy, maybe 22 or 24. When I had come in, he had been slouched forward in his chair, tense, his elbows on his knees and his hands behind his neck. His wrists were bandaged, both of them. There was a doctor and a nurse; the doctor - they all seemed to be women in the unit (maybe men couldn't take the stress; or the free flowing blood) - was asking what the problem was, whilst the man just sat there, saying nothing. The doctor carried on talking to him; she looked a bit like Tilda Swinton, long reddish hair, tied in a ponytail. She asked if he wanted to see another doctor - a psychiatrist - who could help him. Finally, he said, there's nothing wrong. So why, she said, why did you do this? I dunno, he says, his head still low to his knees, I just did. She left him and went to the phone; she had to try several times before she could find the psychiatrist - he was out at another hospital.
Intermittently, a doctor or a nurse came by to see that everything was all right; they left when they had checked that I wasn't bleeding to death or being sick on the floor. My legs got tired - the left (wounded) one stuck out on the stool - and I got up to stop the pins and needles; I hobbled about, hopping.
(Rain on me like no other: until I drown; leave our hearts for easy sex. And the lies we tell only serve to fool ourselves.)
The sister came over - hey! sister - and had a look at the cut. It was deep - about half an inch into my heel - somehow it had just stopped short of my Achilles tendon, and it was very clean - not too much of a problem, she said.
She asked me to change into a patient's smock, clean smelling white linen - and I advise you to forget her; there can be no contest: life is not complete - she has her own will - like a uniform, starched and wrinkled. A nurse came over and started to prepare for stitches: she cleaned the wound, put a dressing on, but before she could finish she was called away by the sister, and I sat with half a dressing on; and waited.
The insulin man had come, but he was still making a hell of a fuss: he wouldn't wait, he hassled the doctors - on of them happily told him to go when he said he wasn't waiting any longer - and he had a stand-up argument with one particular nurse. She too was tall, and attractive; she had short hair, a nice smile, a confident manner. She treated this guy like a small child; he waved his walking stick, and ranted the same litany - I only want my insulin! Why am I waiting? - and swearing. She firmly put him in his place. March along now - echoes running down the road.
Across from me now there was a guy with a mohican; he was brought in by two policemen. He had tattoos up his arms and on his scalp; he wore a torn leather jacket, torn jeans and worn Dr Martens. He had collapsed in the street, and someone had called the police. He couldn't breath, and he was put on an aspirator; the police thought he was on acid, but he denied it - he was an asthmatic. He was very unsteady - his skin was bleached as he struggled for oxygen.
The attractive nurse came and fetched me, and took me into an operating suite. She lay me on the bed on my stomach, so she could look at the ankle - it almost felt like a separate object now, something that I was barely connected to. I crossed my arms under me and leaned on my elbows, so I could watch. The walls of the suite were covered with cupboards and drawers, each with a label. There was slot of machinery - resuscitators, ECGs, large bottles of oxygen and Nox. There were signs of poisons and charts on the walls, and instructions on how to use the equipment. There were swing lamps standing on the floor - the nurse pushed one over and lowered it over my leg. She was still angry at the insulin man; we talked about it. She asked how I had hurt my leg - ha! - and what I did (she commented that she was glad to see that not all accountants were boring); she was quite business-like with it.
She injected my ankle with lignocaine and xylocaine - names familiar from my distant studies (both are based on wood - lignin and xylose - presumably as an inactive handle on which to hang the cocaine) - this fear of gods! - and I felt the feeling drain away from the wound. She pinched my skin a few times, and then started to sow. I could feel the pull of the thread - a thick nylon wire - but not the pain as it slipped through my skin. It could have been leather to watch her hands work.
It was dressed, and I sipped my trousers back on and tried to put my shoe on.
The dressing was thick - I had had six stitches - and my shoe was tight. It was hard to stand on my foot - it felt unreal still detached. I thanked the nurse (what I wanted to do was - but no, that is a different story) and walked out.
As I left, the psychiatrist was talking to the black kid and his parents, who come in amid a lot of tears and hugs, and a lack of communication: they were old, and they couldn't understand what he had done, just as they couldn't understand any of what he did.
I called G - I was expected round for dinner, and I was phoning to cancel (it was now 8 o'clock; I had been in the hospital for four hours) - but he talked me into going round. I got in a cab (as always, having to tell them the way around London), and I was the first there. He was worried - there were four men coming, and only one girl: G's girlfriend had called off with tiredness - wimping out - and A's wife was feeling unwell: she was pregnant.
My leg felt as if it has a weight attached to it - but there was no feeling in my ankle: I sat on the sofa, my left leg stuck out awkwardly. I felt energetic - almost exuberant - but highly disinclined to move; my leg didn't want to. So I was mobile within my seat - gesticulating. I was tired too - jiving on my adrenalin; it had been a busy hectic week - I had seen the A Sheppard Big Band on the Monday (a roaring, anarchic sound, forceful and subtle - and a madcap drummer); I had seen Ms Perfect (we went to see a depressing - but good - film, The Field; that kind of put a dampener on the proceedings); and I had been stood up by a very English Scottish girl. (She is now at Law School, and has not told any of her friends where she is living.) So it was busy - and then the shock of my leg. Busy. I must have been tired.
A turned up - another lawyer (the world is full of lawyers), like G and S. It was a lively meal – a lot of wine went down - and I'm doing fine, I 'm doing fine - and we continued drinking into the night.
We watched some video of G's - an old Bogart movie - To Have or To Have Not, I think. We drank a bottle of whisky, between us. We talked - it must have been pretty drunken talk, though. L and S left after the movie; the three of us remained, looking for something else to drink. (A - let out for the night - was smoking.) At some late hour, G rang a neighbour, Al; and we went up to his flat to continue the party. (It is a shame Ms Perfect wasn't there; she'd have enjoyed the chaos of the evening.)
Al is a Russian; he is a nuclear scientist - he says - and when he found himself stuck in a job-trap, he left. (I think he claimed he was discriminated against because the authorities thought he was Jewish; though he may have said something totally different.) He married some American, and they moved to London; they separated. Al now uses his scientific mind to deal in futures. And apparently he makes a killing - he has just been asked back to Leningrad to help set up a futures trading exchange.
He is - of course - rather larger than life. We sat in his flat, above G's, drinking some black Lithuanian spirit that tasted as if it has been distilled from tyres; well, they did: I stuck to whisky, and when that ran out, I politely cupped a glass of this hell-water in my hand (occasionally putting the glass to my lips), but I hardly drank from it. By now it was early, about four or five - a grey dawn was cracking over Ladbroke Grove. A phoned his wife, who wondered what the hell was going on; we each spoke to her - I had been chasing her at the joint party he and G threw years before where she and A finally got their act together (he has been a changed man since - he may be happier, but he is less fun!) - and we were all quite facetious - hell, we were all quite drunk.
We were waiting for morning, for the day to start; then we were waiting for the cafes on Golbourne Road to open (in the shadow of the Trellick Tower).
Al was playing wacky Russian folk jazz on his beaten up record player (the sound only came out of one speaker; and even that didn't sound good).
We were waiting to find somewhere for breakfast, but we waited, until I was waiting for the Tube to open rather than the cafes. G and A protested at my departure - it was quite sudden: if I hadn't gone, I'd have fallen asleep; I had been waiting for breakfast too long - and A said he felt let down. I left anyway.
It was a long time since I had sat up drinking through the night; and that last time had been with G and A too: it is a sort of annual ritual. (After that joint party, I spent the night talking to G in their kitchen; G was doing some kind of drugs, and jabbering inconsequentially. That morning - a damp, dark morning one January - I caught the bus from Newington Green where G shared with A back to west London.) Now, I caught the bus from west London, by stages, to north London. I must have been drunk, though: because I chose a most roundabout route, by default: a 15 came along, and of course I got on it. I got off in Oxford St, caught a 73 and got off that at Tottenham Court Road. And there I finally found the tube.
I got home at about 10 am - I later heard that they hadn't had breakfast, and had gone into a pub at opening time. P had not been impressed when A stumbled in at 4pm, more than 12 hours late, and then went to sleep.
The second story I have to tell is simpler; it begins where the first ended, in my office. I was leaning against a doorway, talking to a computer guy, talking spreadsheets maybe, and memory, and as he walked away, I pushed against the doorway. In a second, I was on the floor in agony, and a fire-extinguisher was on my ankle. Rolling on the carpet. I stood on my other leg, and hopped - and I thought I was all right I was fine, me I'm all smiles.
I was sitting at my desk a few minutes later when I realized my foot felt damp; my sock was red and blood filled my shoe. Oh my - the pictures swing and fall. I phone the first aid girl, a secretary who sits with a friend, and ask to come over. She does it by the book - I don't see - and calls me a cab to take me to the hospital. (The grapevine moves quickly; when I get in on the following Monday, suddenly everyone knows my face, and asks if I am ok.)
I still don't think I am hurt; I hop down four flights of stairs, because I get irritated waiting for the lift (on the eighth floor, of course); I hop into the taxi. I walk into the hospital, down on Dean Ryle Street; I know it well: my grandmother - a sickly woman - was there a lot. I talk to the nurse on the casualty desk, and she gives me a form or two to fill in (always a dilemma: I call myself Mr). I sit on an uncomfortable seat, my leg stretched out in front or tucked under as I feel easier.
I have been sensible: I took both my book - The Loop - and my copy of the Economist from the office. And I have my eyes; I look (do I learn?). I read the posters - several for AIDS - and I read those in depth: maybe I feel I need to know (but I do, too; that disease has done as much to steal my innocence as age has, I have a scientific education - knowledge - I have played with viruses, they are something I understand. A friend of mine, an old flatmate from Oxford works on AIDS; she used to work on measles, but AIDS gets more money in grants. Infection is like an population spread - the same cycles - and I understand that too. Maybe you can't be too careful. I was surprised when my mother told me recently - we were discussing morality - that my father stopped sleeping around in the late 70s/early 80s because he was aware of AIDS. A 50 year old man - and yet the kids who are really at risk ignore it. Truth shines cold).
There were several people in the Waiting Room - really part of the entrance hall, separated by screens only. There was a constant coming and going. I was dressed in a dark suit, with my tie, still wearing my black shoes (loosened).
There was a balding man, who looked old - he was grey - also in a suit - a director of a good few firms, I thought; he was here because a friend of his had a heart attack. We waited. There was a middle-aged Australian couple, and an American couple too - some holiday they must have been having.
After a while - 20 minutes, say - a nurse came over and said I would be next - but she said it wasn't too serious. Then amid some chaos, the sound of sirens filtered through the hard nylon curtaining. There had been a big car crash; I waited, like I was watching tv. And I was.
Two prematurely aged guys came in; they spoke poor English, and they walked on sticks. One was loud, the other, his friend, was quiet. The loud one was ill; he had been in the main ward a week or so before; the nurses knew - or quickly learnt - his voice, and his name. His first name: that was all that was used. He made a fuss - he only wanted some insulin - his medicine - and he would go. But he had to wait. He had a walking stick, which propped him up. He mumbled, he stumbled, he was irascible.
Me. I'm all smiles.
I met someone the other day - she said –
Why don't you play us a tune - I don't like music - somebody I never met...
These guys, they caused a fuss; they shouted at the nurses whilst they were waiting, they got up to leave three or four times. They gave the nurses a hard time. I only want my insulin, he said with his central European accent, why do I have to wait? What am awaiting for? - You have to see a doctor - she said - Why? I see a doctor last week, I was in here a week, I see lots of doctors, just give me my insulin so I can go...
You could see action behind the plastic flip doors (like they have in loading bays at supermarkets; and now that illness features so heavily on tv, it becomes another commodity); the ambulance men wheeling people in from their car crashes, porters with trolleys. Outside, we sat waiting, glad not to be rushed about on the slabs with needles feeding plasma into our arms...
All that anyone had in common was their presence; but we almost all reacted in the same way - sympathetic, bored, friendly (but not too friendly); a couple of Asians came in, only the young one able to speak English: he translated for the old man, who was ill (and looked it).
After more than an hour, sitting in the waiting room, I was lead through the plastic doors and placed on another chair. Inside the emergency unit (emergency? I felt a bit of a fake), there were little cubicles created by torn curtains. The chair in my cubicle was a typical institution black plastic one; the walls were two tone pink. Most of the cubicles had their curtains drawn, but mine were open: my foot didn't need hiding - it wasn't going to offend anyone, and it wouldn't embarrass me (though the story would - and how did you do that?). I was glad: I wanted to see what was going on - I even pulled the curtains back to broaden my view. (I thought actually leaning forward might be misconstrued as morbid voyeurism - but maybe that is all my excessive curiosity is: I want to see and learn.) I read, my leg supported on a stool - the kind they have in libraries so you can reach the top shelves, like the bottom half of a Dalek; I played with that for a while, too, spinning it round, dancing with it with my foot. (Shame I didn't have my walkman with me - now that would have been a party.) I watched.
There was an Australian relief nurse who was equally bored: it was her first day on the unit, and she hadn't a clue where anything was or who was who or what was going on - and she didn't seem to care: she was only there to make up numbers; so she walked around talking to people - bad language! - making the wait shorter. In the cubicle next to me - for a while, at least - was a girl who had some kind of septic wound on her leg - a bite, maybe, or a cut - and she was off to Greece for her holiday; she was worried that it wouldn't heal, or she had septicaemia or something. (I couldn't help wondering why she had waited until just a few days before she left, before worrying about it sufficiently to take herself to hospital. Why make life easy for yourself?) The Australian nurse and this patient talked about Greece, and then the nurse started talking to me about travelling in Europe - then we got on to the Far East. She didn't have much to say though - it really felt like she was filling in her time.
Further down the corridor, there was a tall black guy, maybe 22 or 24. When I had come in, he had been slouched forward in his chair, tense, his elbows on his knees and his hands behind his neck. His wrists were bandaged, both of them. There was a doctor and a nurse; the doctor - they all seemed to be women in the unit (maybe men couldn't take the stress; or the free flowing blood) - was asking what the problem was, whilst the man just sat there, saying nothing. The doctor carried on talking to him; she looked a bit like Tilda Swinton, long reddish hair, tied in a ponytail. She asked if he wanted to see another doctor - a psychiatrist - who could help him. Finally, he said, there's nothing wrong. So why, she said, why did you do this? I dunno, he says, his head still low to his knees, I just did. She left him and went to the phone; she had to try several times before she could find the psychiatrist - he was out at another hospital.
Intermittently, a doctor or a nurse came by to see that everything was all right; they left when they had checked that I wasn't bleeding to death or being sick on the floor. My legs got tired - the left (wounded) one stuck out on the stool - and I got up to stop the pins and needles; I hobbled about, hopping.
(Rain on me like no other: until I drown; leave our hearts for easy sex. And the lies we tell only serve to fool ourselves.)
The sister came over - hey! sister - and had a look at the cut. It was deep - about half an inch into my heel - somehow it had just stopped short of my Achilles tendon, and it was very clean - not too much of a problem, she said.
She asked me to change into a patient's smock, clean smelling white linen - and I advise you to forget her; there can be no contest: life is not complete - she has her own will - like a uniform, starched and wrinkled. A nurse came over and started to prepare for stitches: she cleaned the wound, put a dressing on, but before she could finish she was called away by the sister, and I sat with half a dressing on; and waited.
The insulin man had come, but he was still making a hell of a fuss: he wouldn't wait, he hassled the doctors - on of them happily told him to go when he said he wasn't waiting any longer - and he had a stand-up argument with one particular nurse. She too was tall, and attractive; she had short hair, a nice smile, a confident manner. She treated this guy like a small child; he waved his walking stick, and ranted the same litany - I only want my insulin! Why am I waiting? - and swearing. She firmly put him in his place. March along now - echoes running down the road.
Across from me now there was a guy with a mohican; he was brought in by two policemen. He had tattoos up his arms and on his scalp; he wore a torn leather jacket, torn jeans and worn Dr Martens. He had collapsed in the street, and someone had called the police. He couldn't breath, and he was put on an aspirator; the police thought he was on acid, but he denied it - he was an asthmatic. He was very unsteady - his skin was bleached as he struggled for oxygen.
The attractive nurse came and fetched me, and took me into an operating suite. She lay me on the bed on my stomach, so she could look at the ankle - it almost felt like a separate object now, something that I was barely connected to. I crossed my arms under me and leaned on my elbows, so I could watch. The walls of the suite were covered with cupboards and drawers, each with a label. There was slot of machinery - resuscitators, ECGs, large bottles of oxygen and Nox. There were signs of poisons and charts on the walls, and instructions on how to use the equipment. There were swing lamps standing on the floor - the nurse pushed one over and lowered it over my leg. She was still angry at the insulin man; we talked about it. She asked how I had hurt my leg - ha! - and what I did (she commented that she was glad to see that not all accountants were boring); she was quite business-like with it.
She injected my ankle with lignocaine and xylocaine - names familiar from my distant studies (both are based on wood - lignin and xylose - presumably as an inactive handle on which to hang the cocaine) - this fear of gods! - and I felt the feeling drain away from the wound. She pinched my skin a few times, and then started to sow. I could feel the pull of the thread - a thick nylon wire - but not the pain as it slipped through my skin. It could have been leather to watch her hands work.
It was dressed, and I sipped my trousers back on and tried to put my shoe on.
The dressing was thick - I had had six stitches - and my shoe was tight. It was hard to stand on my foot - it felt unreal still detached. I thanked the nurse (what I wanted to do was - but no, that is a different story) and walked out.
As I left, the psychiatrist was talking to the black kid and his parents, who come in amid a lot of tears and hugs, and a lack of communication: they were old, and they couldn't understand what he had done, just as they couldn't understand any of what he did.
I called G - I was expected round for dinner, and I was phoning to cancel (it was now 8 o'clock; I had been in the hospital for four hours) - but he talked me into going round. I got in a cab (as always, having to tell them the way around London), and I was the first there. He was worried - there were four men coming, and only one girl: G's girlfriend had called off with tiredness - wimping out - and A's wife was feeling unwell: she was pregnant.
My leg felt as if it has a weight attached to it - but there was no feeling in my ankle: I sat on the sofa, my left leg stuck out awkwardly. I felt energetic - almost exuberant - but highly disinclined to move; my leg didn't want to. So I was mobile within my seat - gesticulating. I was tired too - jiving on my adrenalin; it had been a busy hectic week - I had seen the A Sheppard Big Band on the Monday (a roaring, anarchic sound, forceful and subtle - and a madcap drummer); I had seen Ms Perfect (we went to see a depressing - but good - film, The Field; that kind of put a dampener on the proceedings); and I had been stood up by a very English Scottish girl. (She is now at Law School, and has not told any of her friends where she is living.) So it was busy - and then the shock of my leg. Busy. I must have been tired.
A turned up - another lawyer (the world is full of lawyers), like G and S. It was a lively meal – a lot of wine went down - and I'm doing fine, I 'm doing fine - and we continued drinking into the night.
We watched some video of G's - an old Bogart movie - To Have or To Have Not, I think. We drank a bottle of whisky, between us. We talked - it must have been pretty drunken talk, though. L and S left after the movie; the three of us remained, looking for something else to drink. (A - let out for the night - was smoking.) At some late hour, G rang a neighbour, Al; and we went up to his flat to continue the party. (It is a shame Ms Perfect wasn't there; she'd have enjoyed the chaos of the evening.)
Al is a Russian; he is a nuclear scientist - he says - and when he found himself stuck in a job-trap, he left. (I think he claimed he was discriminated against because the authorities thought he was Jewish; though he may have said something totally different.) He married some American, and they moved to London; they separated. Al now uses his scientific mind to deal in futures. And apparently he makes a killing - he has just been asked back to Leningrad to help set up a futures trading exchange.
He is - of course - rather larger than life. We sat in his flat, above G's, drinking some black Lithuanian spirit that tasted as if it has been distilled from tyres; well, they did: I stuck to whisky, and when that ran out, I politely cupped a glass of this hell-water in my hand (occasionally putting the glass to my lips), but I hardly drank from it. By now it was early, about four or five - a grey dawn was cracking over Ladbroke Grove. A phoned his wife, who wondered what the hell was going on; we each spoke to her - I had been chasing her at the joint party he and G threw years before where she and A finally got their act together (he has been a changed man since - he may be happier, but he is less fun!) - and we were all quite facetious - hell, we were all quite drunk.
We were waiting for morning, for the day to start; then we were waiting for the cafes on Golbourne Road to open (in the shadow of the Trellick Tower).
Al was playing wacky Russian folk jazz on his beaten up record player (the sound only came out of one speaker; and even that didn't sound good).
We were waiting to find somewhere for breakfast, but we waited, until I was waiting for the Tube to open rather than the cafes. G and A protested at my departure - it was quite sudden: if I hadn't gone, I'd have fallen asleep; I had been waiting for breakfast too long - and A said he felt let down. I left anyway.
It was a long time since I had sat up drinking through the night; and that last time had been with G and A too: it is a sort of annual ritual. (After that joint party, I spent the night talking to G in their kitchen; G was doing some kind of drugs, and jabbering inconsequentially. That morning - a damp, dark morning one January - I caught the bus from Newington Green where G shared with A back to west London.) Now, I caught the bus from west London, by stages, to north London. I must have been drunk, though: because I chose a most roundabout route, by default: a 15 came along, and of course I got on it. I got off in Oxford St, caught a 73 and got off that at Tottenham Court Road. And there I finally found the tube.
I got home at about 10 am - I later heard that they hadn't had breakfast, and had gone into a pub at opening time. P had not been impressed when A stumbled in at 4pm, more than 12 hours late, and then went to sleep.