Writer's Block

Here's something a little different - an OLD story of mine. I wrote this in 2001, and I'm posting it unchanged . The last paragraph is a bit odd.

I look over at the crowd. Some happy, some sad, they are united, it seems, in their desire to be part of that crowd. The attention seekers, the hangers-on, they all have their role. I see the pretty woman, slightly the worse for wear, surrounded by fawning morons on the prowl. In another corner I can see a trio of well-dressed men having a joke at a co-worker's expense. A little further away that same co-worker is visible, attempting vainly to chat up the girl he's liked for months and doing spectacularly badly. She is mostly silent, nodding occasionally, and looking around her in a silent plea for someone to rescue her.

Over by the bar a girl is making goggle-eyes at one of the barmen. She is ordering drink after drink from him to get attention, and it seems finally to be working. The barman is gay, but she doesn't know that and assumes his smiles are just flirting. For his part, he finds it all very amusing; this is not the first time this has happened. Next to her, a fat bespectacled gent is drinking himself into a stupor. His wife left him today, and he is starting to resent the happy people around him.

At the centre of the crowd I can see the obligatory loudmouth, proclaiming his skill at whatever takes his fancy to whoever catches his eye. His current victim is a small, attractive brunette, currently being subjected to a summary of his last skiing holiday. She'd always thought he was kind of cute, but now she's up close she just wishes she were anywhere else. For his part, his beer-addled brain is mistaking, not for the first or last time in his life, her glassy stare for that of being mesmerized by his charm. At some point in the evening, someone will stick a sign on his back with a rude word on.

In one corner, a young couple are giggling happily. Months of mutual attraction have finally been revealed, as their shyness is at last overcome by a mixture of alcohol and a private joke. A year from now they are married. A couple of her friends look on in triumph - they have been trying to get them together for the past four months.

The music changes - on comes Nirvana with Smells Like Teen Spirit. Right on cue, some of the younger men begin jumping around madly playing imaginary guitars and annoying the hell out of those around them. The fat gent attempts to glare at them angrily, but this is too much effort and he finally passes out on the bar.

The loudmouth has decided now to move on to his gym stories. The brunette stirs briefly, and utters a silent scream of despair at missing her chance to escape. Now she must listen to tales of bench-pressing and weight-lifting, as well as tolerate his increasingly powerful breath.

The co-worker finally makes his target laugh. It is a triumph, the high point of his evening. Then she walks off, and his heart sinks as he realises it was a laugh of disdain. Another dream falls to earth. Depressed, he heads for the bar. She joins the three well-dressed men, and he hears more laughing as he leaves.

The barman has had enough of teasing the girl at the bar, and now departs without a word to serve his other customers. She is dumbstruck for a moment, then her face sinks and she takes another sip of her Baileys, then gulps the rest down tearfully. Next to her the bespectacled gent starts to snore.

The inebriated, pretty woman has reached the point of being unable to stand up unassisted, something which her followers are more than willing to do for her. Their faces blur together in her eyes and she can't make a coherent noise. Any one of them would be a terrible mistake, but she is saved by two of her friends who drag her protesting form away. One of the morons follows, but is halted by a seemingly accidental kick in the crotch.

By the bar, the girl and co-worker have got talking. Both have tried and failed once this evening, and are reluctant to do so again. This leads to them spending the night together, as well as the next two years. They are not meant for each other, but they are happy for a while.

The brunette finally escapes the loudmouth, who looks lost for a minute without an audience. He heads for the bar and is soon boring the barman. The girl and co-worker have already left and are spared further torture.

The place finally closes for the night and the crowd goes its separate ways. The fat gent is taken home in a taxi by one of his colleagues and left collapsed on his settee. The loudmouth goes home alone again, but will come in on Monday raving about how great a night it was, and how he met these two women on the way home. Another evening has passed in a haze, but two more hearts are happy, and two more are content for a while.

And I? The crowd is meaningless unless there are those outside it. I am that which makes the rest real. Without me there is no purpose to the mob. The horde has no reason without me. When a scapegoat is sought, it will be me or one like me. Divided we stand, for others unite and we are not like the others. When the Inquisition hunted, we were its prey. We are not like the rest, we will not be like the rest.

I am the Outsider.