Decadence and Decay

In my last post I said that I had left the world of service behind me; the Christmas department store fiasco was rich enough for me. But a few weeks ago I was asked by a friend to help tend bar at a garden party deep in the Cheshire countryside. I agreed, hoping for some easy money and some very generous tips. The theme of the party was "Bollywood Bling", which was a thinly veiled excuse for a repugnant display of excess mingled not-so-delicately with that certain brand of racism which white, successful people think is "just a bit of fun". The people arrived to a champagne reception – one glass per person, unless you shouted at the waiters (i.e. me and the rest of the bar staff) enough, and declared your position as obscenely important and rich. You see the more notes in the diamante money clip, the greater the entitlement to freebees.
The bar I was working on had the glamorous name "The Kumars at Number 42 Bar", and from my vantage point I could see the guests arrive. Most of the women had an odd colour of skin; it was hard to tell if they were in "black-face" and trying to look Indian (they were all wearing Sahris after all), or if it was merely the "natural" colour of an epidermis exposed to UV and fake tan on a daily basis. Both theories had 50% believability. The "gentlemen" wore flowing linen and sandals, a few sporting cheap-looking shiny black wigs and laughing like overfed horses. It was all withered breasts on show, and alpha-male strutting. And I was caught in the fray.
I have never tended bar before in my life, and it was quite a shock. It's hard to gauge the first in line and, at this shin-dig in particular, they were all barking like exhibitions at Seaworld. I threw fish in the direction of their braying mouths all night and the total of the tips was horrifyingly low - especially in light of the indignities we had to swallow whole: letchy old guys making smutty (and as the night drew on, very sexually offensive) comments to the girls behind the bar, vicious brutes asserting their aggression in my direction, and being sworn at routinely.
These sophisticates stole wine off each others' tables, vomited recklessly and collapsed in heaps by the end of the night. Cash, it seems, does not help you hit the target when urinating either; the toilets stunk of the piss that swum around the floors, the shit that had missed the bowl and the vomit that had decorated the walls. Christ, I thought. Such decadence reveals the human race in all its brutal glory.
Towards the end of the night, I began clearing tables of bottles and glasses. It was 3am, and I had been on the go for twelve hours, and my weariness could not protect me from the decay. The withered breasts had been joined by descending bra straps, while the alpha-males were still strutting (albeit with the tell-tale trip-step of a man possessed by booze). There was dancing of course; the cliché of the covers band pumping out Mustang Sally, and a saxophone solo in every tune (whether it needed one or not). At various tables there were women asleep, cradling half-empty bottles of champagne. I carried on regardless, trying to ignore the hip-thrusting of the saxophonist (where do these bands come from, and why do people hire them?).
The night wound down, and I began my journey home, thinking about a possible moral for all of this. Days later I discovered it, like the gold of a sunken Spanish galleon. The moral is this: the higher a monkey climbs, the more of its backside is visible...

Recovery from the Worst Kind of Illness

I have returned to this record after months of silence. My problem since my last post has been a crushing kind of illness, a specifically modern malady; that of the somnabulistic city drone. I have been spending my time commuting to the city centre, sitting inside offices, my face irradiated by the VDU. There is nothing like this to dull the keen eye of the observer, to pickle the brain of the creative soul. Nevertheless, I have recovered enough to, once again, approach the keyboard. My new life, outside of the airport or a retail situation, yet still inside of an invisible set of bars, is concerning me greatly. During my time at the airport, I began to feel that the majority of humanity were bastards, utterly selfish consumers intent on devouring everything and everybody in their path. This feeling has mutated into something different. During my commutes into town, and within the office, I am nestled deep within humanity, not serving them or fulfilling their every whim. I am an equal. It's an odd feeling for me and one that I'm not altogether comfortable with. Back when is was "us and them" my role fulfilled that terribly (and inexplicably) teenage-like lust for rebellion. It hasn't gone away in me, even now. Now I'm just another commuter, trying not to think too hard on the train, as that may lead to some kind of psychic crisis, or a dark realisation of mortality. Now it's eyes down, headphones in like the rest of them. It's a worrying situation, because if everybody is like this, then that means that the average human being thinks about nothing all day. It's worse than that. The average human being wants to think about nothing all day. Christ, say it isn't so...

In light of my new existence, I have changed the name of this blog. I felt like a fraud writing under the Airport Diaries banner, since I left the airport over a year ago now (nb: I still hear reports from my good friend Stockton about the state of things out there. It's not good, and I gather a fitting soundtrack to the drive to work is Maggie's Farm by Bob Dylan...)

The new title is from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media. He says we live to allow our technology to propagate, the same way bees live to be the sex organs of plants. Apt in so many ways.

I shall continue to post about everything that I deem fit. You can watch The Genitals of Technology engorge here...