Locked in

Hi I’m Craig I’m 14 and I’m locked inside the toilet again. It’s my co-ordination or the handle, something is stopping me from getting a grip on the thing and when I do I twist and the thing just doesn’t….move. The tap in here is just laughing at me in harsh little drips and shut the fuck up I just want to strangle it and leave my slippery thumbprints all over its shineless dead silver. You did this to me, tap, I will curse the name of Armitage-Shanks in my sleep. And all of the time I grapple with this bitch Dave is moving on my Sally, the one I worked so hard on, the one I asked here, it was my idea. I rest my forehead on the door which has cracks in its back like it’s been lashed, the whole room smells faintly of an old person’s home or some flowery sick hospice because of the air freshener’s disguise….

And all this time Sally is probably swooning over Dave, I see her eyes screwed into laughing whorls and her lips pulled right up over her teeth to her gums as he cracks another joke that he probably just paraphrased off TV, and here I am stuck in another toilet. Yes. Another. This happened once before, didn’t it Craig? It happens all the time. You remember in that Chinese restaurant in Soho you ordered some noodles, when they arrived you needed to piss and off you went? Got stuck there didn’t you? I remember I thought I was stuck forever, that the police would have to come and hack me out with a saw, or beat the door into a swaying splinter to get me out. I beat and beat on the door, I was crying, let me out let me out I choked. I slumped to my knees, right then I knew I was stuck there forever; I couldn’t make the handle work, I was ready then to die there and accept my fate, my ignoble tombstone, my embarrassing obituary. Imagine what they would have said when they found you there, starved. But then, my mum’s voice murmured through the doors like a cheap old audio book and I could just about make out turn it the other way. And I did and wouldn’t you know it the door swung open to reveal to whole restaurant. I took one step out and everyone watched me. I got a smack of silence and then everyone sat at their tables applauded. Just applauded. I didn’t touch my noodles; just as well they were probably cold by then…..

And here we are again years and years on and you havn’t really gotten any better have you? Maybe I should just not wash my hands next time. Is that my strategy, wait for them to dry fully? And all the while Dave is out there and I can see him with his hand on Sally’s leg, moving it up and down. Maybe he’s kissing her. He would do that in a restaurant, he doesn’t even care. There’s some crooner slurring about some American city over a tinny speaker in a corner that I notice for the first time. They all just have one voice. There’s a cobweb next to it with its threads made thick by crumbled plaster, it reminds me of the parmesan on the pasta I just ate. This was my idea. I asked her first, it took me days of contemplation, re-wording, the text had to be immaculate. If you look too keen or put too many Xs then that’s suicide, you’re asking for pain, you’re a masochist or whatever. So I keep it cool, I want it to be intimate not a date but definitely between us, then she gets here with Dave and says she thought it could be a ‘group thing’. A ‘group thing’ - not much of a group when a third of it is stuck in the fucking toilet…

My hands slip off the lock again, I grab another paper towel and wrench from side to side. It moves about 5 degrees each way. Am I doomed to be trapped in toilets all my life? Will I ever, ever, be suave? Just wait, Craig, this is your life. You just have to wait until one magical attempt and the lock gives way. It’s up to the lock, Craig; you’re beaten by a fitting in a door. Why would Sally take that? Soho. My mind takes me back there and I feel my best shirt stick to the wall and the cold damp plaster touch my bare lower back as I slide to the ground. A tear I didn’t notice rolls over cheek...

Soho. I hear my mother’s voice like a foreign radio station in static, it says turn it the other way. I get to my feet, and grab the stainless steel in my hand. I turn it the other way.