Pink Smiles

Albert Park; a picture of paralysed paradise; a drunken man's lodgings; my lunch time retreat.

Overlooking the pond, which doubled as the park's bin - where shopping trolleys bathed and plastic bottles floated like dead fish in a coagulated miss mash - leant a number of weary, fed-up looking trees. If it wasn't an alcoholic sponge pissing on them it was a gang of arcade kids ripping off their blooming arms, and once those little itches had been called in for tea, shell-suited warriors from planet Kevin put in a shift. Landing in their Formula 1 Novas they used their wrists for something other than wanking by graffiting glum looking tree-trunks with equations of pubescent love that never added up: 'Shazza 4 Dunc 4 ever 2 gether'.

Luckily, and thankfully it didn't discourage the sun, as it coated the park with its seductive, beguiling glow.

Lying on a wood pile, which just about qualified as a bench, I shut down one of my senses - my eyes - to boost the sensitivity of another - me ears. Ghosting above the trees and in between dispirited blades of grass my twin, tone-deaf ear-sockets eavesdropped on the sun, as it gently blew, trying to reinvigorate this green depression that, despite it donning the face of a junky on a 10 day drug and alcohol binge, was a fine place to visit. Especially from a job that should be given multiple-life sentences for first degree mental murder. Fucking Call Centres; tied to a chair, deranged harassment in one ear, boredom roaming aimlessly in the other. Another orifice chomping on the same standard responses and greetings, and surrounded by people who get a hard on when Call Centre records are broken by three o'clock Saturday afternoon. Now I know what it's like to be hen on a battery farm; locked in a space and expected to produce results from my ass. Working there was groundhog day.

Nevertheless, with the days seemingly running away like they had been injected with Nandrolone, the summer-sun was beginning to pack up and leave for another year, although it had been enjoying itself for the past few days. Bouncing around the 30 degree mark the summer-sun, unleashing its army of double edged Golden rays, cut deep into the skin of willing victims, who, bored with their everyday white, happily trooped off home, topless and toasted.

However, take note!

Gazing into the sky's soft spot can cause complications. Some say it's dangerous because it will harm your eyes, but that's a lie. It's because you'll become spellbound. It will sweeten your mind and lead you a slippery, merry dance. It has no time for misery, only smiles, fun and love. Where all worries become no worries, all nooses slacken and dreams shake off their cobwebs and awaken, leaving you skittled and smiling when there is nothing to smile about, but a lot to cry about. All leading to so much incongruity that you could start manufacturing the stuff.

A Smile = everything is alright. Doesn't it? Another equation that doesn't add up.

Wielding up one of my eyelids I took a break from my medication and looked over to see a couple in the sunlight teasing and tickling one another. Both were colleagues from work. She was so thin I could only just make her out, as the light seemingly passed through her. Girls at the Call Centre would look at her and say "Oh she's not a proper woman. I mean where are her curves? 'A proper women', what the fuck does that mean? I did wonder who put them in a position to deny her, her femininity, but it obviously just allowed them to enjoy their packet of crisps and calorie uncontrolled chocolate bar during lunch time. And anyway their argument pretty much collapsed when her upstanding chest size was taken into account. I assure you that in this department she more than made up for any womanliness that she was allegedly lacking. And well, if she wasn't what a women should be, then running on those same derailed-lines of a theory, her boyfriend was certainly not a man. Whilst she was pretty much just a pair of breasts, he was pretty much just full of shortness and fatness. The latter collecting itself around his waist where it threatened to landslide over his belt and onto his knees. So here we had a woman who wasn't a woman with a man who wasn't a man. A perfect match in around about way, and an equation that does add up!

Offering his right hand to her, she took a small honey coloured flower that actually looked like a jaundiced weed, but it made them both smile. Her head tilted back ever so slightly, and drawing her pale curtains over her eye's, she smiled. I initially got sucked into the tear jerking moment of it all, but then I became distracted by some additional information that came barging into my mind. What was behind that smile? I mean, she had a similar expression on her face when I accidentally caught an Irish lad practicing his oral skills on her in the downstairs cleaning room, and also rumour had it she had a couple of porn movies to her name. It got me thinking. Was the flower's mild summer whiff reminding her of past sensual wonderment? Was it with him, or another man? Maybe she even thinks about her ex-boyfriends, or even her porn movies, when she has sex with him, or did she receive it as a symbol of their new future? Was this man to be her best friend and lover? To cherish her as her beauty - well breasts if we are going to be honest - demanded? Whereas for him, as he sat on the grass, posing with his hand-on-hip-check-me-out-smile, he probably couldn't wait to get her into bed, or perhaps this Nome-like figure actually knew about her indiscretion's, and seeking revenge, his external laugh only masked his internal, sinister one, where he planed to drop her at the alter. (It's a sick and dirty world we live in, but don't we love it just same time!)

However, this may just be the pessimistic inquisitor inside me working overtime. After all it is only guesswork, because most of the time do we know what moves a person's smile? I know that we sometimes smile when we have got away with something we shouldn't have done, and other times they are laced with a cheeky level of diplomacy, as they cradle information about others and their doings, or miss-doings shall we say, that no one else knows about, and the person it concerns is the one who is sat just centimetres away from you. Other times they are simple, a bit like how we wish life to be sometimes, as they simply pop onto our face when someone tells a good joke, or even when someone accidentally falls over in the street.

Once, I uncovered a letter full of pink smiles. It was written by the hand of my girlfriend; but not addressed to me.

I had just finished my debt blessed days of University and unlike the previous ten months where I sat in front of a computer tapping forgettable essays into shape, I was now sat, skin - milky milky clean - on a patch of fried grass returning to sender, packages of sunlight that kept getting posted to a body that looked silly in the sun¦ but easy on the eye of a mozzie. Running daily sorties on my feet, legs and arms, a squadron from the 9th airbourne-blood-sucking-division, munched away on me as if I was free range cattle. However, there was an incentive for being in this pseudo-desert, called Cyprus, and that was my girlfriend, Melody, whom I'd been trading lovelies with for about two years. Her father had a holiday home on the coastline and I think I had passed an acceptable time zone in the relationship, which qualified me for such invitations, and on the day of my arrival George, her father, had decided that it was an appropriate time for a feast amongst friends.

In order to see ourselves into the early hours of the morning everyone participated in some frenzied carnivorous activity at George's barbecue stand, and soon after we all sat down like dogs and immersed ourselves in a variety of liquid delights: cocktails, shooters, and lounge chair beers. Whilst enjoying the alcohol, which seemed to have filtered into the air that I was breathing, I had become engaged in a discussion about my potential future with a man whom I had never met before, but only knew as my girlfriend's diving instructor. The irony I found about my drunken sate was that although my senses were numb, my mental instincts were still very much active and they sensed potential trouble. For some reason this man, Jack, was intent on putting me on the spot and making me feel awkward, as he touched upon serious-ish topics that had nothing to do with him. From general questions like, "When are you going to move in with your girlfriend? to smart-arse comments like, "Will it end in bells, or tears? he was starting to become quite a grind.

Realizing that Melody was in earshot of any answer I gave, I adopted a classical political tactic by just skirting around the issue. I replied; "We will talk about it when we get home. We just want to enjoy this trip and then talk about it after¦ but even though he made me feel uncomfortable it didn't gall me as much as his smile. Especially when there wasn't anything to smile about. He would throw his banana-like grin in my direction, and generally it lingered for far too long, exuding a smugness which said, 'I know something about you / your girlfriend and it humours me so much that I am just going to sit here and laugh at you through my smile.' Moreover, when I looked over at my girlfriend, giggling in hand with Jack's wife, Claire, she seemed to be enjoying this tension, and it made me wonder why? At the time I just put it down to the male ego. Along with my girlfriend, Melody, there was her mother and Claire, who were both eye catching and comical, especially the latter who sat there with a face that was flush with laughter, and perhaps a little too much of the C2H5OH. Therefore, in a scrap for a place on the female podium, it was inevitable that the smiles, which bounced between the other male guests and myself, weren't exactly going to be sent with one's best wishes, and wasn't that meant to be expected? I mean nobody wants to be left out on the cold sidelines of a party, where in desperation they have to blow the bedtime whistle in order to re-awaken everyone's attention to their existence. Nevertheless, whether they were contrived or not, the smiles continued and so did the party, which ended in joyous laughter, rather than apologies and prayers for absolution.

Three weeks later the sun rose on August 12th, signaling the end of our holiday and the journey home, but more painfully, the process of packing. Arriving in Melody's room - full of groans and expletives - she briefed me on her patient: the suitcase. It was about to have a seizure, due to the pressure it was under from her various night wear and evening dresses, and after a consultation we agreed that I would relieve some of the pressure by moving some of her more trivial stuff - as if a girl ever has any such stuff - into my suitcase. Therefore without prejudice I just picked up a huge pill from inside her wardrobe and draws, and gently folded her numerous items into my bag.

That was how I ended up finding those pink smiles. I didn't know whether she had just been careless¦ maybe she wanted me to find them¦ or perhaps she just thought they would have got lost, or left behind in Cyprus, and that was where she wanted to leave the affair. Anyway, I've not seen her since I uncovered those smiles, although the moment still remains. My room, with the Cypriot sun seemingly sitting on my shoulder, was running a very high temperature, and travelling through the inky words that had been carved out with seductive fluency and style, I wondered if they would vanish if I closed then opened my eyes a minute latter. Opening them, they remained, standing stronger than before.

Detailing their experiences; on land and sea, their climaxes, their addictions, and the danger, yet excitement, of potential discovery. My tears returned from their summer holiday, but I still didn't know who else was smiling, because the other half of the equation was missing, but after turning the page the equation was complete and the sum of all love was solved:

Claire.