Cavil

Saturday night; the sybarite of the week. I brushed shoulders with the crowd, but I couldn't be further away from their uniform hunger for mindless enjoyment. My mind was immured. It couldn't expand in any direction, it caught no light, and it understood no distraction. Something is dislodged, somehow: the parley between the past and the passing of my life―old school days, my dead loves, a new career―was firing itself into a volley of captious questions, catching me blank.

To say I'm indifferent, to say I'm feeling the viral spread of ennui, to say that I'm bogged down, stressed out, hyped up―to say all that, to bring on the callow call of paltry definitions, is suddenly unimportant. Life is a wigged-out psychic sometimes, and change is a constant presage peeking out of its crystal ball. Why, then, am I so wayworn? Where the fuck is my frisson, my euphoria?

I find that I'm glad to be left alone. Only then do I permit a sense of lenity to my own thoughts; only then can I ditch all pretense, all masks with their rouged-on grins, and slip in place the dial of contemplative suffering. I'm not miserable, far from it―but when I'm alone, without the blackguard of social obligations, I'm free. To be forlorn, to be bored, to be quiet.

Saturday; a gamine, a minx, a coquette cocktail of hedonistic pursuits. I headed to the Sound Bar―fitting name, because even though my footsteps were sere with lethargy, the pulse of electronic beats were luring, alluring, waking the deadmind somewhat.

Sound Bar is the café society for the beau monde―it sees a constant parade of skin and style, of men and women guised in salient fads. High heels clicked, jewellery jangled, and lips smacked in frenzies of air-kisses. It was a configuration of chic―technical, mannered, and, at least to me, fake.

Oh my dear. You're always so critical. I hid a smile and walked into the crowded bar, trying to forget the blue eyes that had lit up when they saw me here the last time. The business men I were to meet―GS, CK, Tim G, Alois―were already there, boys with their whiskeys, boys drunk on beer, boys.

'Jeanny!' Tim G, all limps and impish smiles, that boyish dimple creasing his thin cheek, swept me up in a big bear hug as I approached. It's been two years since he was stationed at the Singapore office, but we've stayed friends. He's a high-living scapegrace, a thirtysomething with an adolescent streak of mad rebellion. I like him immensely, the quiet, half-serious sister to his brotherly mischief.

I shook hands with Alois―an older man, rather distinguished, the gleam in his eyes matching the glint of the slim wedding band roped around his finger.

GS embraced me with familiar affection. I felt his hand glide down my hips in sexual reflex―we had our history of flirtation, but the newness of his marriage should put a stop to his old dog-tricks. Seeing the sleepy lust in his eyes, though, I realise that the seasoned flirt in him―a rampant renegade―would be hard to kill.

I kissed CK and caught the gimcrack wink of a faded jock behind his shoulder.

'I need a double,' I muttered to GS, who already instinctively had his arm at the back of my chair, the protector, the godfather, a flirt, but nonetheless, a friend.

The drinks came―the third round for the boys, and my first. The palaver began in earnest. We quaffed our drinks, and the men―boys―raised their eyes at the bevy of flesh that came and went. The perfidy of our salad days, I think. Where the girls dress and the boys mess, where the women hold in their clevage the promise of power, and the men nourish their egos along with their lust. I'm no better, no worse―guilty as charged, yessir, to the pleasures of the idyll.

The group split after my second gin. GS, with a newfound propriety, was the first to announce his leave. 'Hey, you know, being married and all―you gotta take the bullet, right?'

CK was tired, withdrawn. His loveless state dries him, drives him. I could tell he was drunk.

Alois had kept up a slew of innuendos and a wandering hand the whole night on me; I was unfailingly polite, but unwavering in my disinterest. He left, too, after a conspiratory debate with the rest in German―but I understood enough. It was gauche, but I understood.

So then it was only Tim G and me. I was getting sleepy, an effete audience; my sight was blurring into the tiffany lights. But I didn't mind the chance to catch up with my captain Tim―an accidental nickname that stuck―and the knowledge that we'd probably not see each other for a long time after my current job runs its course was enough for me to fight the giddy waves of sleep.

'I hate it home,' he confided, carelessly fiddling with a beer-soaked coaster, his bony fingers emaciated, but nimble. 'I really miss Singapore―the weather, the people, everything.'

'What is it like, home?' I asked, wondering if the shrinking world has made wanderlust a drug du jour, and home is nothing more than a port of call, a space to unload. It certainly seems as though everyone is dying to leave, to run.

'It's getting boring. You know, I chose to commute 160 ks every fucking day because there's no way I could sit my ass in Ingolstadt. So I pay the premium of staying in Munich. But even then,' he said, a dapple of age suddenly framing his eyes, 'even then it's getting to me. I threw a party one day last month, and invited my best friends. I wanted everyone to get stupid and drunk, actually, after all the stress we have at work. And what do you know? I had about 15 friends but my apartment was filled suddenly with wives and partners and babies and dogs. At 10 pm everyone was like, oh my plant needs to be watered and we have work the next day. I was like, fuck y'all, what's wrong?'

I laughed. 'My dear Captain―not everyone is piloting their plane like you, you know.'

He shook his neat little head. 'I don't fucking want to grow up, I think. That's why Berlin is a much better scene for me. There, I meet people my age who still want to find an adventure, who still want to fly the flag of being young. Not just burying their lives in some stupid sheet of paper―whether it's a marriage certificate or a work contract. C'mon. Life is so fucking short. One minute you're employee of the month, and next second you're drinking beer with God. I mean, I hate the Americans, but I agree when they say, get a fucking life!'

It was a passionate spiel, and he ended it by draining his beer dry. I couldn't think, my wits had left me, and so I allowed Music the Idiot God take over the stage for us instead. At 2 a.m., we found ourselves packed in with the modish crowd at one of hotspots in town; I couldn't really lose myself to the inanition of electronic-funk, but I was glad to see Tim G did his thing, as he like to say.

It was odd, to watch him fall into the scrabble of rhythm with the mindless effort of a kid. I detached myself and observed the melee of hands, arms, legs and bodies cave in to the jumble of sounds and beats. Surely one day I can find my own votary too, when the manse of my disinclination finds a worthy exit.

Until then, I remain a restive reporter, my internal cavil a clarion to the questions, to the wanting, to the running, to the moiety of emotions I'm still enslaved to.