Trainwreck

This post is, umm, “not suitable for work”. Here’s a nice one, about Istanbul’s Animal and Flower Market, while this one from our Lebanon roadtrip features an absolutely classic lady driver moment and this has some lovely pictures of poor old Kathmandu.

There isn’t a bar at the Gurkhas’ hotel.

Well, there is a bar, but like every other bar in Kathmandu – poor Kathmandu! It’s not the city’s fault it kept turning into Bangkok in my head! – it’s shut.

The White Knight asks them, in English, weirdly, if they can open it. But they’re having none of it.

Which is, obviously, a source of great distress to me. Because after drinking until 2am and offending pretty much every English speaker in the last bar open in Kathmandu – and, given the clientele is 85% Gurkhas and 10% British Army, that means pretty much everyone – what I really need now is more booze.

To be specific, gin.

And tonic, please.

Now, now, now, please.

I have a blood-alcohol level to maintain, you know.

And, yes, I will be having ice with that.

“Oh, you’re alright,” I say perkily, having canned every single screenplay in my head involving Mr Darcy some while back, so not even pausing to obsessively parse what “can’t” refers to. “Don’t worry about it.”

Oh. We’re in the the White Knight’s room.

Well, I think, in a ladylike fashion. That makes a change from Mr Darcy’s. Next door.

Which is, it appears, is where Mr Darcy is headed, his vaguely Mediterranean colouring tainting rapidly to green.

I attempt to say something but my brain seems strangely disconnected from my mouth.

No worries! More gin will sort that out.

“I’m sorry, T,” Mr Darcy says, staggering – almost swaggering, in fact, because in alcohol people’s body language reverts to their primal shape, which in his case is all about the shoulders and movement from the waist – in the direction of the door. Then, with the melodrama that only the extremely young and/or extremely drunk can muster, “I CAN’T!”

“Oh, you’re alright,” I say perkily, having canned every single screenplay in my head involving Mr Darcy some while back, so not even pausing to obsessively parse what “can’t” refers to. “Don’t worry about it.”

This is my last night out in Kathmandu and I’m buggered if it’s ending at 2am. Ooh! The White Knight is calling room service! Excellent! Bombay and tonic! That’ll do nicely!

Which means the White Knight and I are alone in the room. His room.

And, given I really like the guy as a person, but don’t fancy him, and therefore am TOTALLY not going to sleep with him because, ya know, there’d only be a point in that if there was a relationship on the horizon, which, with this backstory, there clearly bloody isn’t, this is probably my cue to get my coat.

And, ya know, make a ladylike exit, or summat.

Yep, I think. Definitely, definitely time to leave.

Although… I do like talking to him. And I’m not ready to go home yet. This is my last night out in Kathmandu and I’m buggered if it’s ending at 2am.

Ooh! The White Knight is calling room service! Excellent!

Bombay and tonic! That’ll do nicely!

I try to decide whether I can précis the rom com I wrote in my head, and then decide not, because that would require the White Knight being in my head, and the head of any lady writer in the hormonal maelstrom of the 40-zone is a strange and scary place, especially if it’s mine.

The night progresses. I swill gin & tonic. The White Knight affects to consume a Jack & coke.

“Well,” he says, à propos of Mr Darcy. “It’s just like all those guys of 23…”

I collapse into mild hysterics, something I have a tendency to do around the White Knight.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, bewildered. “T’s got a toyboy?”

“No,” I say, loathing and despising the word “toyboy” – because how could that ever apply to someone as evidently and eternally youthful as moi?!

I try to decide whether I can précis the screenplays I wrote in my head, and then decide not, because that would require the White Knight being in my head, and the head of any lady writer in the hormonal maelstrom that is the 40-zone is a strange and scary place, especially if it’s mine.

“23!” I say, giggling. “Jesus! That’s younger than my godson.”

The White Knight, obviously, being a serving soldier who has yet to retire, is younger than me too, but only, ya know, four years younger than me. In fact, given that I spent age 17 to, ooh, 24, pissing around university and West End nightclubs, bit-part acting, door-whoring and consuming epic quantities of illegal substances, while he spent those years progressing up a demanding career path, he’s considerably more grown-up than me, but isn’t everyone, these days?

And, an hour or so in, I start wondering whether, perhaps, I could spend the night platonically, perhaps with an aspirin between my knees or something.

You know. Because I totally do that. And I’m sure he does, what with being a soldier and all, and therefore having shit-tonnes of platonic female friends.

“You know,” he lies barefacedly. “This is fine! I could just sit here all night and talk to you! That’s fine! I don’t need to have sex…”

Later, I am endeavouring to interrogate the White Knight about his childhood, which would not, even by Nepal’s rarefied standards, count as a bed of roses, when I use the magic words that every man really, really wants to hear: “How did that FEEL?”

An expression of irritation with this child of privilege who doesn’t have a fucking clue about life in general flashes acrosss the White Knight’s face, and he’s instantly more Nepali than British.

He stands, with the air less of someone about to explore his innermost feelings and more of a man about to say, “Put out or get out,” then spins on a sixpence and changes his mind, his expression and his tack.

“You know,” he lies barefacedly. “This is fine! I could just sit here all night and talk to you! That’s fine. I don’t need to have sex…”

That works. It shouldn’t. But it does.

I change the topic to something less irritating, given he’d clearly rather ask questions than answer him, and, I too, am finding his questions a little close to the bone, so we talk about this prospective assault on Everest, as I welly through another G&T.

Shortly thereafter, he kneels down, removes the Magical Age-Reducing and Height-Increasing Kneeboots of Fun, and, while my jaw’s still on the floor with this audacity, remarks that I won’t be needing those.

SOLD!

It makes a refreshing change from the quest for drapery, be that fringe, bed sheets or towels, that attends one at haggard o’clock when faced with 20-somethings fresh with the dewy gleam of youth, their smooth faces absolutely unmarked by the ravages of two hours’ sleep.

Gentle reader. One advantage of sexual partners of approximately one’s sort of age that aren’t ludicrously hawt – let alone ones that are actually older – is that the mornings are a hell of a lot easier.

Ya know. Despite the fact that the White Knight is solid muscle with close-to-zero body fat, what with being a Gurkha and all, I’m quite comfortable about wobbly bits, scars, lines, bags and all, lolling around naked and stepping out of the shower.

It makes a refreshing change from the quest for drapery, be that fringe, bed sheets or towels that attends one at haggard o’clock when faced with 20-somethings fresh with the dewy gleam of youth, their smooth faces absolutely unmarked by the ravages of two hours’ sleep and liver-shrivelling quantities of alcohol.

At breakfast, attended by now actively sniggering Nepali waiters, Mr Darcy is conspicuous by his absence, presenting only in a series of Nepalese language phonecalls, and the White Knight seems, umm, no longer especially interested in my sparkling personality, and rather keen to get on with his day, which is his last chance to see the various people who brought him up.

Boo!

Mind you, we’re both leaving the country the day after tomorrow, and the White Knight has put up with enough crap to last him a lifetime, god bless him.

And so, with an especially unconvincing promise that he’ll call if they’re out that night, I return to my poor neglected child.

My spawn looks at me over metaphorical reading glasses with an air of amused contempt remarkable in one who’s only twelve. “So…” he says. “It was a trainwreck, then?” “Yes, son,” I say. “Trainwreck would cover it.”

“So, MUM,” Zac says, looking up from whatever internet devilry he’s engaged in. “How was your ‘date’ with Mr Darcy?”

“It wasn’t a DATE,” I say, defensively.

“Right,” says Zac. “So how was your ‘sleepover’?”

“Umm,” I say, “Well, I didn’t actually sleep over with Mr Darcy.”

“Where were you, then?” he says.

“I kind of stayed over with the White Knight,” I bowdlerise.

My spawn looks at me over metaphorical reading glasses with an air of amused contempt remarkable in one who’s only twelve. “So…” he says. “It was a trainwreck, then?”

“Yes, son,” I say. “Trainwreck would cover it.”

And, as we wander aimlessly around Durbar Square in a cloud of hangover (me), internet withdrawal (Zac) and so-over-Kathmanduness (both), while ejaculating in perfect harmony the magic phrase, “No, thank you! We don’t want a guide!”, I see a minivan crashed in front of a seventeenth-century building.

It seems strangely symbolic.

But still, I think. Since there’s no way I’m going out tonight, not with the tonne of pre-China errands I have to complete, finally, now, it really can’t get any worse.

This is the nadir. There is absolutely no way on god’s sweet earth this could POSSIBLY get any worse.