down in me

As I splashed water on the folds of flesh between my legs, the shower head spoke to me: “You’re reet lovely,” he said, with that rumbling waterfalls voice, in his thick Scottish accent. Gave me an instant hankering for a Scotch. I slipped into my jeans and slipped down the pub. You know the one: furnished with what used to be plush, red upholstered seats and lined with lonely, old drunkards, one per table, drowning their sorrows in a pint of cliché.

“Bar wench! Bar wench!” I hollered. “Scotch. On the rocks. Make it a double.”

“Don’t call me bar wench,” she said, but I wasn’t bothered, feeling certain that I had the drink terminology right beyond reproach.

“You have beautiful eyes,” I said to her, and she made eyes at me as she daintily placed the drink between us.

“Barmaid! Barmaid!” I yelled again a few minutes later like my loins were on fire, and she the only firefighter for miles. I should have been disgusted with my behaviour and especially my metaphor, but I was in an uncharacteristically self-satisfied mood that evening.

“Don’t call me barmaid,” she flirted, as she swayed towards me and leaned over the bar.

“You have lovely hair,” I whispered, leaning in to her, savouring a lung-full of her nicotine shampoo.

“Drunk already?” she smiled.

“Aye,” I said, and she rolled her lovely eyes at my horribly affected, not to mention brief - yet wholly heartfelt - impression of a local. But one word can communicate a whole being, and I know I’m wearing this particularly attractive being thin. Her last statement near tanned my skin with the sort of warmth that only emanates from an ample, loving bosom.

Later, my self-consciousness attempted a short-lived and half-hearted reappearance. “Bar babe, let me apologise. I don’t mean to sound like all the other men in here. It’s just those eyes… ”

“I’m used to it from the men, but we rarely get lesbians here,” she teased.

“Don’t call me lesbian,” I mimicked her way, making her chuckle then settle into a large, gap-toothed grin.

We exchanged glittering glances gleaming in the harsh yellow lighting, and I wondered if life gets any better than a willing playmate and a Pride shandy (she lovingly cut me off the Scotch earlier), but soon my roving wanderlust returned.

I’m not in Scotland yet, but I will be soon, so lock up your daughters. I’m aching for a strawberry brunette, all milky curves to make me hot toddies, and read me historical novels at bedtime with her rolling, raspy voice. She’ll keep me rushing home every night so we can scissor-fuck like starving piglets struggling to get a taste of just one of an unequal number of teats.

“You’re so deliciously uncouth, I’d have a mind to send you right back home if you didn’t sit so pretty,” said the damned uppity bar stool, startling me out of my stupor. Felt entitled to his opinion, no doubt due to our growing intimacy as the night progressed.

“Fuck off, ya damned uppity bar stool. And don’t cup my ass that way lest you’re hankering for serious moisture damage.”

Nobody respects dreamers or gives them leeway to dream and last call always comes too soon for those to whom Victorian restraint is but a strange, ancient art form that refuses to be understood. We’re each a mosaic of so many indistinguishable bits and bits and bits, and our borders are largely in our minds, but also plainly visible in our swagger.

“It’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it?” I remarked, twining flesh and bone legs round wooden ones, slyly grinding myself into the damned uppity bar stool’s welcoming seat. Never let it be said that I’m anything but generous.

“You hear that, bar wench? Generous to a fault, I am.”

“Damn skippy,” said the bar stool. That’s when I realised he wasn’t from round these parts, either.