feelings for each other.
Up until now I never gave this study much thought but as I gazed into Venus’s eyes while the photographer fiddled with his camera I swear something happened. It sounds stupid if I say I genuinely felt moved by looking into her eyes but …
I genuinely felt moved.
Her nose looks like it was broken once, which suits her tomboyish shock of short, whitish-blonde hair, not to mention the razor-straight scar barely visible above her mask.
Her eyes are as green, and almost as beautiful, as my cat’s, and the only flaw is she’s young, probably no older than twenty-two – but then in eighteenth century France that would be de rigueur.
Anyway, as we looked into each other’s eyes while the photographer struck a pose I commented this was a pleasant way to meet and she laughed, although I wasn’t funny. Then, when the photographer finished and I expected the sultry siren to politely say goodbye, she instead continued talking to me and ignored her friends, who were sitting nearby.
It’s at this moment we have to pause: she continued talking to me.
This is not normal – most people look at me like I’m something floating in their toilet bowl. I am, to put it mildly, an acquired taste and yet this gorgeous aberration of nature – her name is Amy, though “goddess” will do – was lovely, asking questions about what I do and genuinely seeming interested despite having the most exquisitely long and slender arms.
But back to reality – which in this case involves drinking through a mask and getting the hell away from the stroked-out photographer.
The room is obnoxiously packed, like an aquarium overfilled with pretty piranhas fed by bodice-clad waitresses.
“Where’s the loo?” I ask one waitress, trying not to look at her barely concealed breasts, and she points towards the far corner while tugging her corset up.
Just as I guiltily thank her, a suit bumps into me hard, almost a tackle, and I swivel to see him striding triumphantly past.
This is Sydney: if you’re not six feet tall in an expensive three-piece suit tailored to fit your gym-honed biceps, you’re invisible.
This is a city that’s completely caved in to top-end real estate agents, stockbrokers and douchebags. I’m not surprised Trump is president of the US: I’m just surprised he didn’t come from here.
Edging my way through the throng, past the bar and bookshelves filled with leather-bound tomes that will never get read, I join a small queue for two unisex cubicles just ahead of a group of young women who roll their eyes at my nerve for being faster than them.
“They shouldn’t allow men in these lines,” one of them, who’s wearing – I shit you not – leopard print, says.
“Well, it depends on the man,” her friend, wearing a PVC dress with a zip down the front, replies.
Then, as you do prior to evacuating waste, they start taking pre-toilet selfies. Lord only knows if they’re planning after shots as well.
Finally: a cubicle door slides open and a couple walk out, with the woman wiping her mouth and the guy doing up his fly. As I said, this club is classy.
The cubicle’s unlike any I’ve seen before, and is more of a small dressing room than anything else – with no toilet. There’s a mirror, an ornate Louis XIV chair and a bench but … no lavvie.
I start peering at the surfaces more closely. Is there a button I’m meant to be pushing? A revolving wall? Does it fold out from somewhere?
Then the hyenas outside start talking:
“What’s he doing in there?” one asks impatiently.
“Probably having a masty,” her friend replies.
I’m tempted to yell that I’m most certainly not having a masty when I realise the loo might be in the chair. I lift the cushion and, sure enough, the porcelain bowl is revealed.
I take a whiz, press the flush and … it doesn’t do anything.
I try the lever again – nothing. Frantically jerking it does nothing – not even a trickle.
“Must be a good wank,” one of the girls says.
“Why can’t they last this long during sex?” the other responds.
“I’m coming!” I scream, before realising that could be taken the wrong way.
I pump the flush, flop sweat breaking on my brow, and finally give up. I slide open the door to come face-to-face with my persecutors, and the better part of me still thinks I should warn them about my deposit …
“I couldn’t find the loo,” I begin to say, “and then I couldn’t …”
“Yeah, I know how to work it,” leopard print says with attitude.
I did my best.
Back in the fray, I grab a balloon-sized glass of red from a hostess’s silver tray, and as I suckle at it I spy Amy, who’s come in from her smoke and flashes me a smile that could melt an iceberg.
A camera’s slung over her shoulder, the high-end type professional photographers at the paper used to use before they were sacked and replaced by cheap uni graduates with high-powered mobile phones and the delusion this industry has a future.
These days, working in the media is like being in Logan’s Run.
“What’s with the camera?” I ask.
“I want to be a photojournalist,” she says. “It’s a job where you can … I don’t know. Where you can actually see the world.”
I’m tempted to say the only thing she’ll see is a social security cheque, but I bite my tongue.
A band’s playing French versions of pop songs and Amy asks whether I’ve heard of them. I tell her I’d interviewed the singer a few months back and, noticing this impresses, I’m about to elaborate when one of her friends interrupts. The friend says something into Amy’s ear, looking at me suspiciously all the while, and Amy informs me her friends are going dancing in the club one floor below and I’m welcome to join.
Not wanting to look like a love-struck puppy, I nonchalantly say I might pop down later. As Amy’s slender arms head downstairs I can’t help thinking I made a mistake.
Chrissie the PR finds me and insists I meet the club owner, who insists on us drinking single-malt scotch – and then a round of bright red shots – and I lose track of how much time passes before I escape downstairs.
With naked light bulbs dangling from the ceiling and torn rock-and-roll posters on the wall, the downstairs club is a whole different world. Amy’s dancing with her friends, her mask still on. Like the Phantom of the Opera I leave mine on too – she might not like me if she sees what I actually look like.
“Hi,” she says to me, “come dance!”
I taught myself to boogie by watching 80s music videos with my cat, and although he thinks I’m the
