There wasn’t a fountain.
There never has been.
I don’t know why I added it.
I want to describe my genuine circumstances on the occasion in question, but I can’t.
I don’t remember a bus stop, a bus, a journey of that kind. I usually drive. There would have been parking and, before that, the customary instances of discourtesy, bits of waiting — I’m sure there must have been — only I had no idea they might be of importance and paid them no heed.
But I was neither in an alien country, nor suffering unusual conditions.
That rubbish isn’t true.
I did get lost. True.
I was raw-eyed. True.
I had passed a shallow night holding on against a memory of altitude and claustrophobia. Doesn’t everyone? True.
I was tired. Contributing factor.
I might have thought briefly about the bread rolls served on aeroplanes and how they’re incredibly cold, as if they’ve been delivered straight from the screaming sub-zero outside. Wherever they’ve been kept is somewhere unnatural, unbearable.
I might have thought that.
I do wander. In my thinking.
I have the impression that — on the day I might prefer to recall more entirely — I’d loitered in several places once I’d reached the city centre. There was a café, a health-food store with bargains offered on useless supplements, as endorsed by celebrity photos, none of which were remotely trustworthy or familiar.
That’s probably the case. I can rely on myself about these points.
And then I went into somewhere that sold clothes that I would find despicable and therefore preoccupying as I pottered about, loathing bad seams and poor cuts and weird colours and cheering my mood with how horrible it might be if I were someone else with stridently different tastes, which would make anybody who saw me think I seemed dysfunctional and bizarre.
This was just a way to waste my time, not serious.
I was aware that, if I were someone else, I would have been pleased by the awful clothes and have bought something I’d feel was charming, or else have put it in mind as a possibility for later, a treat, and — either way — I’d have gone home satisfied. I did realise that at the time.
I don’t habitually hate or mock strangers and what they might like.
Unless I’m depressed.
Then I do it because it’s cheering, but not too much and I get it over quickly.
So the proper preamble to my story is a blur of avoided purchasing and raised spirits.
And after that I wound up in another shop and began to make a moderate mistake.
I’m not ashamed.
I’d say that now.
It was something I walked into and couldn’t control. Like the weather. It was like an unexpected stroll in snow.
If I’d been, I’ll suggest this again, some other person with other likes and dislikes and not myself, then what was, in this case, unique for me might have been an already long-established and fond habit and no sweat. In someone only a little removed from myself, that could have been the case.
It must have been cold in the street. I believe that my hands were hurting in my pockets. They scolded. That memory’s inflexible. So I can assume that I dodged indoors quite blindly to borrow a touch of warmth. I’ve been known to do such things before, particularly lately. I no longer concentrate as I once did.
The shop assistant was immediately — Can I help you? — right close at my elbow and her tone weird as she continued — You were looking for something particular? — which I wasn’t — and she was asking me as if she was somehow a caring professionaclass="underline" not a doctor, or a nurse exactly, but maybe a dental hygienist, or a top-price hairdresser. She was dragging along this atmosphere of support and expertise which she leaned against me like a rolled-up carpet — second-hand, dusty — and there was a top note she put across most of her words to imply she was a friend I should confide in, girls together and ice cream this evening with crying and new lip gloss.
Lip gloss makes me feel constricted. As did she.
And wearing mascara’s like peering through a fence. Make-up is what one does for others, isn’t it? One goes to trouble.
One says things, if only to one’s self, like I have gone to trouble for you.
As if it’s a trip to be made on somebody’s behalf.
I have gone to trouble for you, so you don’t have to. I brought you back this souvenir, it’s a small box of difficulties. You needn’t unwrap them at once.
The gist of this was there in my head at the time — ideas being held — and there were other matters present, too, forming contours underneath the thinking, like knees underneath a bedspread. The knees have implications, but you don’t have to deal with them, or not at once.
The assistant continued — insistent assistant — For a special occasion? — and I was, it must have seemed, drifting in an exploratory way along racks and shelves and display stands packed with choice. The lighting was unsubtle, so I found my surroundings rich in detail.
I was somewhere like a very big grocer’s — For yourself? — a supermarket — times change and why be furtive, I suppose — a supermarket full of sex. Not sex. Devices engineered — there was a lot of engineering — to mimic the effects of sex. Only devices — For yourself? — not costumes, or DVDs, or magazines, or books, or most of the things I’d expect to be in a sex shop, in as far as I’d never had expectations in that field and couldn’t be sure, but must have surmised at some point. I surmise a great deal and at random. I did not intend to be there and yet there I was, nonetheless — For yourself? — and I had no answer. I’d halted in front of a bank of what were probably — definitely, now that I looked — fake vaginas and I couldn’t answer — who would? — that, no, I intended to buy such a thing for someone else. Who? For whom? A female friend to whom I would suggest that their own was unhelpful? Or would I give one to a straight man as if he’d no chance of access to a real one? I’m sorry his girlfriend left him, never mind and here’s this, which boils her down to her essentials? I’d want to imply that he felt these were her essentials and no wonder she left? Or would I foist one on a gay man? As what, a novelty letter box? Or I should deliver one to a lesbian as a hint she was sexually hopeless and ought to make do. This is — For yourself? — an impossible enquiry. Yes, for myself and I will give it to my partner because I want a rest? Or am I lacking? Or am I supposed to be gay and irreversibly solitary? Or have I discovered that mine doesn’t work any more?
I attempted a smile that intended to seem well informed and relaxed. The assistant wore a name badge which called her Mandy, although I couldn’t accept that as likely.
I adjusted my smile, broadened its dimensions.
I didn’t want Mandy, or whoever she was, to imagine that I had no sense of fun.
Fun is important.
I constructed a small and intentionally visible idea of myself as someone with numerous options and a wide-ranging social circle. I folded my arms and moved on with purpose and as if I had no need of guidance — Oh, then these — Mandy wouldn’t let me be — These are wonderful — I rounded the end of the aisle with her in tow and announcing — They really are — as she reached for a favoured item, being factual, not salacious — Things have moved on — and she offers me what things have moved on to from among the gathered ranks of more and less sci-fi imitation penises.