The Nearly-Nearly

A propos of nothing:

Ever had a nearly-nearly? So nearly-nearly a sexual encounter that it hurts. Curling your toes inside your shoes to try and hang on so you don't teeter over the brink and plummet into something all wrong.

Years ago, I had one here: The After Dark Club . People kept making me go to the 80s nights there. God, 80s nights are piss-poor. Not as bad as 60s or 70s nights of course. I'm trying to think which decades would be good for me. 40s maybe, could wear a lovely floral dress, a jaunty hat and smoke fags without fear of cancer. Or 20s could be good, being spunky and gay without fear of persecution, and doing the Charleston at lightning speed till dawn, then leaving in a jalopy driven by a slightly tiddly chap called Bungy (I suppose it was only like that for posh people. But a 20s night based on the Depression would be a bit gruelling)

Anyway - 80s nights. What happens is, "Rio" by Duran Duran comes on, and everyone brightens visibly and says "I LOVE THIS" and swarms onto the dance floor. Then you are stuck there for the full 4 minutes, remembering that actually, though you could sort of see why other people loved it, you always found it a whinging drag and it was impossible to dance to even with big hair and in the years between then and now, things have got worse.

Just checking Dante's Inferno again, to see which circle of hell the After Dark most resembled but it is a mish-mash of several of the circles. The "panderers and seducers, running forever in opposite directions, whipped by demons" usually made an appearance. (8th circle, 1st ditch). The floor there was famously wet, black and sticky and I think I recall "the wrathful, fighting each other in the swamp-like water".(5th circle).

Enough Dante, already, I become obsessed.

So there I was, with Gorgeous Dale and a group of women whose identities I have mislaid (I don't mean you, Nix, I don't think you were there and if you were, I would no way lump you in with these losers x). Gorgeous Dale was the husband of a good friend of mine. All I can recall about the Forgotten Women is that they were the sort who really threw themselves good-naturedly into any given leisure scenario and were determined to have fun against all the odds. "Come on!!" they'd yell, "Dance!!!!!" "Hahaha", I'd go, "In a minute", while every fibre of my being cried "Piss off, piss off, piss off".

I never ever touched GD, but Jesus Christ, our eyes met a lot. Nice big fella, smart, funny, boyish good looks, lovely and blokey, careful readers will recognise him as the one who had to put his arm round me to direct my attention to obscure astral constellations.

I wonder is there was some genetic imperative behind our attraction, like our genes fused together had the potential to make a superbaby. I met his younger brother at a party once, a seriously attractive dude with that special little brother charm, and he went all courtly with me, playing me songs on his guitar, laughing like a drain, standing unneccesarily close, all that. Which was slightly uncool, because his wife was so pregnant she could easily have sprogged that very night, but I swear I wasn't even trying to wow him. He got wowed all by himself.

So GD and I in the After Dark, exchanging superior looks, because, let's face it, we are just too classy for this sort of retro nonsense. Then what happens. They only put on "Only You" by Yazoo, possibly the most perfect song ever. (Pause while I download it). So we sing it together like Sonny and Cher. For a refreshing twist on foreplay, gaze into someone's eyes and both go "Doo-doop, Duh-Doo-Doop, Duh-Doo-doo-doo-doop, Duh-Doo-doo-doo-doop, Duh-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doop". The song ends, the spell breaks, but our eyes can't let go. GD says "Oh God" in a low voice, bit like a growl, rarrrrr. "I know", I growl back.

Still remember how it felt. Rarrrrr. Nearly-nearly.