You'll Look Back on This and Laugh

Photo by Lachlan Gowen

The woman behind the bar used to smile. These days her face was shielded in a frown distinct despite the eternal woolen cap. Matt was scrupulously polite and friendly, respectful of whatever had prompted closure in a demeanor formerly open and welcoming. She lined up drinks on a thick, darkly varnished bar top streaked by beer-tap lights. The heavy stools were richly upholstered in leather. Over her shoulder, a wooden eagle on a podium addressed the high-ceilinged room with a sneer of cold command. Following the eagle's gaze, Matt observed that the after-office crowd had thinned; the place was at its best, midevening, oddly quiet at this hour for a central London pub, a good proportion of the sparse drinkers already deep in their cups. The atmosphere was intimate, like a lock-in.

Taking the drinks back to his colleagues, Matt found the conversation had grown raucous after only one round.

"Matt grew up in Essex," said Jake with a grin. Essex was a byword for bad behavior. Jake was Matt's one real friend among this small office crowd, though he liked everyone there well enough. "Matt, you told me a proper Essex story a while back. Didn't you lose your virginity to a nun?"

"Rock 'n' roll, Matt!"

"Spill the beans!"

Matt shook his head. The most junior among them was Audrey, a recent graduate and a new hire, who had switched to cranberry juice after half a Guinness. He glanced her way. Audrey's expression was wry and inquiring, as if to say, Oh, here we go! Let's see what the senior men are like when they've had a few. She was very smart and clearly determined to defend her corner of the workplace.

"Not quite, mate," said Matt, contriving to look coy and a touch embarrassed. "I'm not as exciting as all that."

The subject slid away, but before long Matt was being nudged again. When Jake raised the matter a second time, Matt acquiesced. He had actually, without real intention, been silently rehearsing the story while the others talked. It was easy enough to recall. He'd been dining out on this anecdote for a while and was proud of its ability to entertain; it captured a series of events he'd been too young at the time to recognize as extraordinary. In fact, it was strange that for many years, until his thirties, he'd simply forgotten what had happened. He was well into his second pint, and the beer helped him decide that perhaps the anecdote wouldn't offend anyone, not even Audrey. And, after all, it did put him in a buccaneering light.

________

It went like this. At sixteen, Matt and his friends frequented a place called the Square, a Harlow punk and indie venue. Like every building grown in the impoverished soil of Harlow Town, it had a sad municipal appearance. On the evening in question, at the Square, Matt was falling-down drunk, fizzing with snakebite and black, befuddled by the vile drink's blend of sugar and alcohol as he staggered over the dance floor. A woman approached him. She was in her twenties, which put her on a dizzying pinnacle of maturity from Matt's perspective. His memories of what followed were little more than snapshots, with an additional sensory detail thrown in here and there, like those smartphone photos that move a little when you open them.

With the next snap, he was on the back of her motorbike speeding along winding country lanes. She leaned into the corners with the torque, reaching back when she did so and pinching his arse hard, making him flinch and cling tighter. Next in the sequence was her home, a pokey two-room flat. There were treetops visible through the window. He had no memory of entering the building or climbing the stairs. They had sex. More snapshots, these ones passed over in silence among his colleagues, the activity a...