The Office Party

I
Looking in at them:
people out of context,
in violent relation to
each other…

II
underage drinkers,
stereotypes…

III
…and nobody notices
the silent Outsider
in his little bubble
floating just out of reach.

IV
Alter Egos and Subconsciouses
dancing while their Consciences
sit and get bottled at the bar.

V
Drink just frees the mind,
the heart and the hands…

…and mental blocks become
chips on shoulders.

VI
Time hasn’t got a membership card
so They won’t let him in.

VII
Three of Them have got the
Outsider in the toilets;
They’re trying to smash
his bubble.

They’re trying to tear off
his mask, but They can’t,
and even if They could it
wouldn’t matter: his face
isn’t real either…

…but then again,
neither’re Theirs…

VIII
…records’re jumping…

IX
These are not real people.
These are photocopies…

X
…plastic ice in the drinks…

XI
“—but the fog is getting thick enough I don’t have to watch. And somebody’s tugging at my arm. I know already what will happen: somebody’ll drag me out of the fog and we’ll be back on the ward and there won’t be a sign of what went on tonight and if I was fool enough to try and tell anybody about it they’d say, Idiot, you just had a nightmare; things as crazy as a big machine room down in the bowels of a dam where people get cut up by robot workers don’t exist.

But if they don’t exist, how can a man see them?”

Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest


30 August 1976
 
  

I said in my last post I’d find a poem about drink and post it. I found three actually, ‘The Reception’ (#393) from April 1976, ‘Eight Concepts from a Beer-Glass-Drama’ (#415) and the above. I was sober when I wrote the first one—the one and only time in my life I’ve chosen to drink tomato juices—and the second is a more pretentious version of ‘The Office Party’.

I did most of my drinking in the late seventies. I was not very good at it but everyone else was doing it and I wanted to fit in. I went to the above party with two lads I worked with, Richard and Gerry. I stayed with Richard that night and I have a very clear memory of him getting up in the night, going to his wardrobe, locating a plastic carrier bag, vomiting in it and then going back to bed. That had a surprising impact on me. That someone would make such preparations. I’d been sick several times due to drink but it had always come as an unexpected and unwelcome surprise, a disappointment. I never wanted to be sick and I’ve always hated being sick.

August seems an odd time for an office party. I remember a Christmas party in the same place—the staff canteen—and I expect there was more than one because I can also remember being there with my first wife while she was still my girlfriend; she was drinking Pernod and blackcurrant. I was a cider drinker back then since I pretty much hated beer and lager although I developed a taste for 'Newkie Broons’ (Newcastle Brown Ale) some years later.

I’ve always found drunks interesting from a distance. Some say alcohol makes you more honest but I’m not sure I agree. Maybe you think you’re being honest. In social settings like this I always head to the outside the better to watch what’s going on. I have no idea how much of this poem was written whilst under the influence but it was certainly started on the night. For all my failings in my later teens the one thing you could always be sure of it that I’d have a notepad and pen with me. Never went anywhere without them.