[986 words]
Start with cocktails and tasteful views of the Agora, tables wobbling on cobbled streets, lazy service, shooing away beggars and sinking into the cool of the night. It pulls your hand – hurry up.
Sipping on eighteen euro drinks that take twenty minutes to make, they’re asking which vodka they should use and we pretend to know the difference. Spend every hour working to afford the haute liquor you don’t have time to develop the taste or knowledge for. But those shareholders need you.
Eventually we head to Gazi. It’s a sort of open plan party area with lots of trashy restaurants, bars and clubs staring each other down over a concrete courtyard as if they’re squaring-off to fight.
Every strip club appears to be a brothel too. It’s 5 euros for a public dance on a bench in front of everyone, 50 euros for a private dance and 100 euros for sex. This pricing ladder seems incomprehensible to me and I’m convinced they’ve invented it just now to scam us somehow.
The place we end up in is a refurbished cave. The owners have big balls to charge for entry and then serve us warm bottles of beer. I ask the bouncer for the venue’s ESG policy. He doesn’t laugh. Tough crowd. Is that a sped-up David Guetta remix? Is that supposed to be sexy?
You can’t tell me the seating that lines the walls hasn’t been ripped out of an old bus, it’s as comfortable as that sounds. All the customers face the centre of the room, it’s to allow you to see us in one glance, not the other way around.
My friend is asking a dancer who has joined our table what her favourite Kanye West song is. When she can’t answer he genuinely loses interest. It reminds me I’m a third of the way through his interview with David Letterman on Netflix. Now I want to go back to the trendy, studio rental we’ve got and watch it with a colder beer and a kebab. But we’ve endured so much already tonight, I have to get a dance at least.
I spur a resurgence in my morale by telling dancers who didn’t even ask that I’m not interested. They don’t laugh. Tough crowd.
“He likes Kazakh women,” my friend says, palm on my shoulder, a lot of your skin and lace slides around the table. You’re 30 something if I’m generous but you have the imperfectly vibrant face of youth, spotty and greasy, and a milfy hard body.
I start running my mouth with backhanded compliments but you don’t understand enough English for it to work. You think I’m not interested and talk to the next table.
My friend is laughing and it makes me angry, as if anything happening in here actually means anything – well it means something but nothing good. I catch your eye again, I want a private dance, straight to the point works better.
The dance happens, you’re sexy and attainable, but everything else is tugging on my attention and you spend the whole time trying to upsell me. I almost say yes just for something else to do, because it might distract me from the Avicii remix and the moans of middle aged incels around us.
I’m not one of them, yeah yeah I’m a salaryman, but I can get women, I’m here because I’m blackpilled, I’m just playing the corporate game, I’m edgy really, watch me tag this location on LinkedIn if you don’t believe me. You’ve heard so many versions of this.
“How much to come to my apartment and stay overnight?” I ask. Say it louder, with less words, with hand movements, on the fifth attempt you get it.
You slip a card into my hand with nothing but a phone number on it. “Text address after leave.”
“OK.”
I tell my friend I’m leaving, he says it’s fine and means it. At the apartment I text my location to the number, mentally prepared to destroy this sim card the next day.
You text back, “1 hour.” Who knows what it means? You’ll be here in an hour? You finish in an hour? I’m dead in an hour? But it seems unmasculine to text back and ask.
You arrive and see sparkling wine on ice. I’ve opened it and taken a glass so you don’t think that I’ve done this for you, I’m not simping, I just live like this. Have you ever met anyone as bothered about what you think as me?
You lay on the bed, boots and coat still on, a lot less confident here, I’m happy with that, I’m different to the others. You smell shower fresh, your face now matte and naturally made up, maybe I can forget what this is.
“Kanye West?” you ask, nodding at the TV.
“Yeah, do you like Kanye West?”
You shrug. I shrug and say, “I really like Kanye West.” You nod.
When the interview finishes I really want to replay it, but that will look insane so I find some other interviews on YouTube and start watching them. You don’t complain but I’m not acting normal.
You’re drinking now and have taken off your jacket and boots revealing an elegant, demure, dark-green dress but it’s meant for standing in, it folds strangely on your body on the bed, we’re the same here now.
At some point your head is on my chest, you’re tucked into my armpit, relaxing. I’m stroking the patch of skin on your back that the dress exposes. You’re twisting my chest hairs with acrylic nails. Sometimes we sip the wine, laying there while I tunnel into this YouTube rabbit hole. This is all I can offer. Kanye is explaining how Yeezus was produced.
I don’t remember falling asleep but when I wake you’ve only taken half the money we agreed. I’m thinking about the agenda for Monday now.
END
Corporate Clarke's Fiction 