My first weekend in London, my brother and his boyfriend invite me down to their neighbourhood to experience my first English pub, outside the touristy Earls Court area. The Prince of Wales pub, just outside the tube station at Brixton (now closed down, I think) was smoky, loud and packed. My brother forced me to buy a round of drinks from my fast dwindling finances, just so I could experience bar service in London.
I had 1000 questions, like “Is the beer really warm?” (yes) and “Do I tip?” (is the barman sexy?) and “Am I going to have to buy all the rounds, every time?” (no, maybe, yes, how drunk are we?), but instead my brother just thrusted me towards the bar and let me experience it as it was.
Which was really why I was in England, really. I was a 21 year old green kid fresh from Ontario, living in England on advice from an OCAD recruiter, who thought if I was serious about being an artists, I needed to get away from my middle class life (I wasn’t accepted into their school, BTW).
Over the din of the bar, I shout the orders at the barman. He shouts back. I falter. I have no clue what he just said. The noise and his Scottish accent throws me. My first real Scotsman! He has a red goatee! I tipped him.
I went back a few times to get rounds for our table. 11pm came way too fast and I wound up spending most of the evening chatting up the barman, which lead to us making plans to go back to his place after they closed up the bar. My brother was upset that I had been in London for a week and managed to “tap off” so quickly.
We get back to the barman’s place via a cab that travelled deeper into the south of London (more south than I’ve ever been). Lovely house. Could barmen afford houses in south London? Did I care? We run upstairs, enter his bedroom, shucking clothes like they were on fire. Did I notice that the bedroom was full of cardboard boxes? Did that matter?
We’re about to get into the real meat and potatoes of shagging when the frond door the floor swings open.
“Stay here,” he says and grabs his shorts, leaving the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Naively, I lay back and wait for his return, not even wondering why he would stop our coupling to go talk to his “flat mate”.
Muffled noises come from beyond the bedroom door. Louder muffled voices. Louder muffled voices punctuated with breaking furniture. Glass breaks. Shouts.
At this point, my pants are on and I’m heading for the top of the stairs. The barman is on his way up, with his chest covered in blood. I don’t see any cuts on him so I don’t ask where it came from, but he offers up an explanation of sorts: his boyfriend (“You have a boyfriend?” “Donnae everyone?” “Were you going to tell me?”) came home unexpectedly and after discussing their current living arrangements, had somehow managed to shove himself through the French doors that lead out from the dining room. As I descend the stairs, I can see that most of the furniture is at 90 degrees to whatever angle it should be at. No sign of the boyfriend, thankfully.
As the front door closes behind me, I manage to ask: “Where is the nearest minicab from here?”
I did manage to find a cab. And relating the story back to my brother nearly got me shipped back to Toronto.