Low life | 2 April 2011

‘OK, Jeremy, you sit there. Next to Sophie.’ We’re sitting down to lunch, eight of us, to celebrate our host’s birthday. The seating plan is male then female in alternate places. The host is a performance poet and about half of the other guests have been introduced to me as poets, but I’ve forgotten which.

I’m rubbish at dinner parties. Mingling the friendly bowl with the feast of reason and the flow of soul I’m crap at. I just don’t seem to have the necessary social ease or articulateness or even basic sanity to play my part and it saddens me. I’m a good listener, though. If I’m seated next to a talker, I’ll listen unflaggingly from sheer gratitude.

I’m seated on the end, so there’s only the one person to contend with — this Sophie. Obliquely, anxiously, I watch how she wields her knife and fork. She doesn’t muck about. Straight in. Decisive. Able. Presently, I’m going to have to hold a conversation with this person if I don’t want to appear rude. I give myself a stern pep talk. Keep it light, I say. Look interested. If she asks you a question tell the truth. Why not?

Presently, this Sophie turns a face that is alive with good will and intelligence towards mine and says, ‘Not eating?’ I shake my head. ‘Hangover?’ she says. Opting for truth, I tell her I’m not sure. I’d bought a gram of MDMA to give to the host as a birthday present, I explain, but was so drunk the night before that I’d blacked out and I don’t know whether I lost the wrap or ate it. All I know for certain, I tell her, is that when I woke up it was missing from my pockets along with my car keys.