OK, you know how every time I go to the Dolphin I’m in for all sorts of fun with the crazy/unwashed/generally unsavoury folk? Remember the unsolicited lap dance from the sweaty Armenian? The 50-something, 5’6″, leering, grizzled workingman who started spouting his deepest darkest sexual fantasies at me whilst I was waiting for my round at the bar? The toothless Irishman who kept asking, in a slavering sort of way, whether Tinki and I were lesbians? No? Well, ask me sometime. I’ll tell you the stories.
Remember how even in the middle of the West End, in a perfectly ordinary coffee shop, whilst in a meeting with two perfectly innocuous colleagues, the crazy mentally disabled man became convinced that I was a news reader and hovered around our table until someone asked him to leave, at which point he sidled off, blowing kisses?
I keep telling you, crazy people love me. But my friends, I think it’s hit the crisis point. I need an intervention. Or a bodyguard. Or a hockey stick. Something.
This morning at the bus stop, there was a crazy guy. You know how you can spot them at 20 paces, what with the blackish teeth and the lunatic glint in the eye? Then, when you get closer, you can smell them. Anyway, there he was, all crazy with his bad self. I walked past him, enjoying my iPod-sheltered little world. Half a minute later, someone was tugging on my sleeve. As the tune at that moment was fairly quiet, I could hear him: “You listening to music, eh? Listening to music?” I gave him the look one gives crazy people – which is meant to be withering but apparently, when I give it, says: “Please talk to me some more. I find you fascinating and also strangely attractive.” He clarified by pointing at his ears, then at me, then back at his ears. “You listening to music, eh? It’s good, eh?” Erm…. Yeah. Back away slowly.
I let him get on the bus before me, so I could avoid standing close to him – no mean feat, as the bus was rammed. We managed to get almost halfway down to the tube station before I felt someone tapping my arm. This time I couldn’t hear a word, but he was all pressed up against me and there was lots of enthusiastic head bobbing and ear-pointing and toothless grinning and oh my, the halitosis. I somehow managed to extricate myself, nearly knocking over a sleepy-looking media type in the process, and wedged myself into the corner where the door hits your elbow every time it opens. You know the one.
I lost him in the tube station, though not without real effort. I actually caught myself ducking around a corner, all Mission Impossible, and then peeping back ’round to make sure he hadn’t seen me.
I won’t even get into the completely unhinged emails (yes, plural: to me *and* to a friend in the States) sent by the spectacularly insane man I dated (very) briefly 2 years ago and to whom we refer only as KrazyPantz.
So tell me the truth: do I, in fact, have a big fat neon sign over my head, visible to everyone but me, that says “I [HEART] CRAZIES”? And can someone help me turn it off?
Thanks.