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bjbwriting-blog · 7 years

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Hot mess

It’s hot.

Real hot.

Sweaty top lip, slippery palms, wet back hot.

So why, after three days of this, would I still choose the same outfit?

Heavy, dark denim jeans, a light blue cotton shirt, socks - woollen marl, good walking socks.

Do you know the effect of such an outfit on a large, hirsute man?

Sweat, that’s the effect.

And do you know the effect of sweat on a light blue cotton shirt?

Patches, that’s the effect.

And do you know the effect of dark, wet sweat patches on a room full of well-to-do octegenarians?

Why would you? Let me tell you.

Fear, real fear, and disgust, rigid, mortified disgust.

So here I am again, three days straight, facing a room full of these old bags of ire and irritation. And they are disgusted, they are fearful.

No amount of charm, no slickness of service, no nicey-nicety can becalm these livid gargoyles.

The drinking water is too warm. It is replaced. Now too cold, stings the dentures.

The tea is horrible. Not like at home. Too weak or too strong, tepid and too hot.

Food? Inedible, too salty, no flavour. The cakes, dense and too sweet but also pappy and dry.

These cracked porcelain gnomes take no mercy.

As one can imagine, when the stress of a new restaurant opening is compounded by the restaurant in question being in a museum, which itself is compounded by the audience being old and angry, which in turn is compounded by the heat of the hot sun, again compounded by modern, hermetically sealed, thick glass walls, which finally compounds on the sheer physical mass of an already preternaturally hot man, and all of this, every single element, compounds the issue we started with, the sweat, so that by the time the last two of these rabid, frothing pensioners turn their liver-spotted noses up at a pot of perfectly brewed darjeeling tea, I was soaked, dark and sticky with warm, viscous sweat, the shirt clinging to every curve and contour of this hot mass of man, and my hands, also slick, wet with sweat and kitchen grease.

I tried my best to calmly place the heavy pot of hot tea on the table in front of this baying duo.

But the sweat.

It slipped and splashed, crashed and spilt. All over the table, the floor, the sweet little old lady, her male friend, his neatly pressed slacks.\

Fuck.

She is kindness personified. He is calm and decisive.

Before even a flicker of movement from my damp frame, he is on his knees, handkerchief out, mopping her lap, the table, the floor.

My anger has shrunk to a flickering pity, for myself, and jealousy, inadequacy, in front her companion, in front of her, for her charm, for his composure, knelt there cleaning up my mess.

As I wither, I am struck by his back.

A perfectly crisp, dry expanse of starched cotton shirting.

In these most sweltering of conditions.

I shrivel and leave.

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