Party Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

July 4, 2024July 8, 2024

The Intoxication of the Woman with Silver Hair

I was hosting a party and it was getting late. I stood in the kitchen, a long galley place with muted brown oak panelling but even though many people crowded around me I wanted to retire to my bed.

From one end of the kitchen into the bedroom I slipped out, and I went over to my pullout bed. Only a crack of light shone from the bedroom door back through to the kitchen.

May 25, 2023May 28, 2023

Getting to the Party on Time (via the Angels)

We are going to a party at Siobhan’s friend’s apartment on the south side of the Embankment and are taking the train. So we get on at the Angel and take the lift, an old wooden box, down into the Underground.

The platforms we walk through are dark and grimy, brown muddied walls and hidden tunnels, and the service is running slow.

We wait on Platform 2 of the Central line, it seems like for an age, before a train finally arrives, but when it comes to a stop it is already full, people crushed together, all the way up to the ceiling.

The bodies are pressed flat against the glass and there is no way we are getting on. We will wait for the next one.

The next train is a flat bed, cargo only, with a thick plain white rectangular box which covers the deck. It speeds through the tunnel, and we continue to wait.

And the next train will be a passenger train but it will be a long time coming. We wait in anticipation but by the time it arrives the train is ill-lit from the inside and it speeds through the tunnel and disappears the other side without stopping.

It seems we’ll never get there.

“We’ll take the Circle or the District line,” I suggest. Only you have to exit the station and cross the road to the other side of the roundabout to get to the platform.

So we leave, ascending once more with the lift and cross over to the entrance of the Circle and District.

“We can take either line,” I say as we enter down into a dark corridor, intersecting rail line tracks to our left, cavernous walls dark and dripping with sweat. We have to hurry as the District line carriages clank across the lines and past us, towards their stop.

But when we arrive at the platform the problem is the same; though at the start, there were only a few passengers waiting, the crowd begins to pile up. People in dark clothing, faces barely discernible.

“We are meeting at The Kestrel,” says Siobhan. She means Reed’s place.

“But that is nowhere near the Embankment,” I say. “That is in Hammersmith.” I pull out a piece of paper to work out the directions, but it is too small to write on.

“I need something bigger,” and I turn back to her. “Have you got something?”

But Siobhan is distracted, she doesn’t reply and I have to repeat it. And only then does she pull out a larger piece of paper, the size of my hand, that I can use.

“We should go back to the Central line,” I continue. I am getting frustrated that we wasted all this time waiting for the wrong train.

We are exiting the station, onto the road that leads away from both stations, when I suggest we can take an Uber. The greying light of dusk is in the distance.

“Why didn’t you suggest that in the first place?” she says, spitting the words at me, but it was her who got us lost in the first place.

“I’m not going,” I respond, “I’ve had it!”

And I walk away, to the right of me a chain link fence, a construction site behind the fence, both stations further behind me.

“I’m not going,” I reiterate. I walk slowly.

And she follows me, she too is going the wrong way.

But this is it. Where we will really part.

I circle even slower back round the roundabout, time and fear crawls, me slightly ahead of her, until we are back on the Angel side.

I am practically at a stop when Siobhan comes up alongside, to my left. She has thick pale blonde hair and a slightly pudgy face, thick lips like Becky Farmer, unvarnished, and she is attractive at that very moment; it is eating me up.

“I want to fly around naked,” she says and she smiles.

We cannot do it. Part. I don’t want to.

“Will you do that for me?” I ask her. And then I kiss her full on the lips.

Photo via Wallpaper Flare

May 10, 2023May 11, 2023

Death of the Journalist

He was only visiting for a short time but it was always a dangerous junction where the car accident occurred.

People crossed there all the time, under the Brentford overpass, at the cross walk; even though you were hidden in the shade behind the thick grey concrete supporting pillars of the freeway.

March 2, 2023May 2, 2023

No Longer Fit for the Party

I am in Paris in the banlieues and I am going to a party. Or at least I think I was invited. And I am parking my car on a deserted dusty brown and ill-lit side street. There are no other cars at first but when I park I find myself trying to squeeze in between a white van and a blue car. I have to shift my car back and forth to maneuver it into the space.

Once I am satisfied I get out, but my car is bumpered up against the blue car behind me.

The definition of curb and road is poorly defined as if it is a construction site and the dust of the concrete has blurred the partition.

It will do, I think, as I walk away, even though I see that I am a good two feet from the curb.

So I walk to the party, somebody’s house, and there are students there, a younger crowd, different nationalities, and they are having a good time. In one room, a few are lying on the floor under a beige duvet, laughing as they throw pillows on top of each other.

I go to another room, I think the kitchen, and a woman in a black dress, loose-fitting, says something to me about her phone but I am not paying attention. I see her breasts pop out from her dress, they are small and pert, with dark brown nipples. Her breasts are too small for her dress, and she looks annoyed or uncomfortable that I saw that. She pulls up the strap of her dress and walks away.

I lean out the window, look out at the houses opposite. Each balcony is brightly colored with sheets and shirts hung up on clotheslines. It looks homely, but happy, with an ease, the same ease as the people at the party.

Then it dawns on me, I don’t love my life. ~~Wife.~~

I return to the room where they are throwing the pillows, but I don’t fit in, I need to leave and I pull out my phone to see the way. Only it is not my phone, it is square with a blue screen and it has a different provider so I take it back to the woman with the black dress.

Black dress thinks that I took it from her, I can tell. She has an Irish accent. As she steps away I see she has a black wart on her back, just above her left shoulder blade.

These people are having fun, they love each other, or are comfortable, and I know I don’t belong. I sour the party. So I pull out my own phone this time and pull up the map. And the map’s locations are in French with some Arabic but the phone has only 1% battery and I need to hurry.

Back outside I am looking for my car and the streets are filled with life, new stalls brightly lit, people heading somewhere, or browsing, or with dinner plans, or rendezvous, or other parties to go to. I walk past them to my car only it is not where I thought it would be. There is a different line of cars, even on the dark street where I thought I’d parked.

I return to the main street, then back again to double check, but my car is not to be found. And I go up to a stall decorated with purple and white awnings advertising medical options or a pharmacy, I cannot tell. A white mortar and pestle are painted on the awning.

The owner is closing up but I duck under the awning to get some light on my phone. As I pull up the map I realize that I cannot get home without it. I’ve never been to this part of Paris before and I won’t be able to intuit my way back.

And the phone now indicates 0%.

I don’t want to, but my only choice is to return to the party to charge it even a little.

Photo by Viktor Solomonik on Pexels

December 8, 2022March 9, 2023

Throwing Sandwiches Doesn’t Do Any Good

I was sitting with Georgie when it was time to go. This was after cleaning up the avocado sandwich that I threw at the wall.

We were seated in deck chairs outside, in a garden with fake grass, and I had made the sandwich earlier with the only ingredients I could find. A piece of white bread, a thick slice of pâté, cut, but placed in one solid chunk on the bread. Then the avocado buttered on top.