Page 36 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

WPlease Leave Quietly Wearing Someone Else’
Wednesday.
ith this company it was always something; smell of Ponys and Advocaat. He liked being inside it, mid-century-hi-fi-hackathon Friday or as if wrapping yourself in other people’s happiness wear-your-old-band-T-shirt-to-work- might be an inoculation against being sad.
He started a new spread sheet and typed Egg Flip into Gareth’s only band T-shirt was Genesis, and not even it, then the words began to spill out of their cells and
of the Peter Gabriel period. melt into each other.
But his line manager was clear. He had to start joining After the changes, Christmas Eve had fallen silent, like in. Begin with the Christmas do, Gareth, and take it all the other days.
from there.
At home he put on his Genesis T-shirt then went out to Jollities were to commence at a “dive joint” called the launderette on his own. He found the SMEG fridge
Brandy Fingers, an unmarked venue at the back of door, went inside, and told a woman he had come to a laundrette which you entered via a SMEG fridge see the mayor.
door and had to say the password, “I’ve come to see the mayor.” You would eat pulled-pork sliders and drink bourbon with peanut butter. Or was it the other way round? After that, off to a place called The Gas Showroom for “gyration and commotion.”
At the bar he had a pulled-pork slider and a peanut butter and bourbon drink and looked about the room. There was a higgledy-piggledy group of differently- aged people and a girl with giant white spectacles screwed up her eyes at him.
Gareth’s dancing had been compared to stamping on insects while milking a giant cow. And what would
he drink after the pulled-pork sliders ran out? He thought about his parents before the changes. Every Christmas Eve they’d have a gathering, the front room filled with smoke, the burble of voices, the sweet
Tabatha was from online learning, and later at The Gas Showroom she let him stand near her while she danced.
27
They shared an Uber back to hers and drank fake Bai- leys while listening to a Canadian band called Ought who sounded a bit like The Fall.
“I hate Christmas,” Tabatha declared, and described
s