and spare change elsewhere.
This policeman was of the appropriately tall variety.
I know they reduced the height restrictions for very proper multicultural and political reasons, but I quite liked the days when the Police loomed over you like giants. I recall an image of my Dad, not a tall man, if you recall, but not tiny, when I was a little boy; he was massive to me then, as all fathers are to their young children, but he looked up at a Policemen he’d asked for directions in the manner of a hobbit questioning an orc.
The policeman studied me as I approached and passed, and I nodded nervously to him as I shuffled by. I didn't recognise my surroundings, but I guessed correctly I was somewhere off Soho, and set off in search of change with which to continue my journey.
I passed night vendors and bars which seemed too sleazy to venture into, and settled instead upon a nice Greek woman in a little all night newsagents off of Frith Street to exchange a ten and two fives for a twenty, then ten minutes later I stepped into the Superloo outside ‘Les Mis’.
Again after I stepped inside and pulled the door closed, opening and closing the door as if I were playing a slide show of the seedy side of London; but still got no nearer home, until, after about twenty different scenes I opened the door onto the very Soho street I had so recently vacated. Not only this, but the policeman who had stood tall nearby was now directly in front of the door waiting to make use of the facility himself.
Much to his surprise and obvious irritation I slammed the door back closed, and when I reopened it I looked at out onto Watford, onto yet another Dixy Fried Chicken Shop and a dodgy looking nightclub closing up for the night.
Ridiculous, I thought, and resolved that if or when I found myself in a busy part of town I would beg my bus fare home, and then begin a routine journey back home on the drunk-bus and for about twenty minutes I danced eclectically back and forth across London. But not once did I step back into my part of suburbia or even anywhere close.
Then it all went wrong. I opened the door on to a busy street at last, one which I now knew only too well, gawking up into the face of a now extremely indignant policeman giant, who had already forced his boot into the doorway before I could slam it shut for a second time.
"Fucking little shit,” he shouted poking me hard in the chest, “playing silly buggers with me are you? You little prick. Did you think this might be a nice place to sleep? Cosy little hole to curl up in rest your drunken pisshead skull? Well don't worry you've got somewhere now you little sod. It's more spacious than this, but funnily enough smells even more strongly of piss and vomit."
I did consider giving my odd version of events, but figured that with this ammunition he would probably have me committed.
There are worse places than a drunk tank I decided, knowing with my creeping exhaustion I would certainly sleep regardless of surroundings.
I soon discovered then there were indeed far worse places than the drunk tank and that one of these was being handcuffed to a railing outside a Soho toilet waiting for an arresting officer who even now was probably wandering around Croydon, dazed and confused, and wondering how to explain his situation to his Duty Officer.
I had tried to persuade him that it'd be safer to lock me in custody up first, but he told me to “belt up” since he's been waiting for too long outside this ‘fucking toilet already’, to not now relieve himself.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he told me.
And that was that me. Locked to a wrought iron railing at two in the morning in the middle of London.
I felt unsafe to say the least. Rather worried for my health. As much as I could I lowered my coat sleeve over the cuffs to try and conceal my obvious vulnerability, quickly losing any hope my policeman had just beamed round the corner.
After about an hour of avoiding the glances of passing crowds, trying to look nonchalant, I spotted a girl staring at me from the corner. Sixteen or seventeen maybe. Dressed for clubbing by the look of it. Sober looking though, and watching me hawkishly.
I returned her gaze she approached me.
"Blow job, Thirty, full sex, Fifty. Anything else negotiable."
I decided to take the trusting approach and ask for help, showing her the cuffs and offering an invented explanation. I told her I was getting married in a couple of weeks and that my idiot best man thought this was funny. Play the sympathy vote. My hooker with a heart of gold. “Please help me.”
Like Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places.
“I'll get my boyfriend,” my tart with a heart told me suspiciously, and thirty seconds later he’d appeared.
A small but solidly built man with pinkish skin and bottle blond hair wearing a flamboyant green check suit appeared from the shadows of a doorway, and made his way along the street. He appeared to have styled himself after the stereotypical nineteen seventies American pimps and made his way along the street with an ambling flamboyant gait which could have been lifted directly from a Scorsese film, and he examined my trapped wrist carefully, tugging at the cuffs, before withdrawing a massive machete from inside his suit.
“What’s that for?” I asked in a panic, desperately assuring the man that there were numerous preferable ways to assist my escape from my predicament, none of which involved the removal of a hand.
“Nah,” he said, “what yaa got?”
“Eh?”
Sensing I was confused at the question he then ordered me to first remove my rather expensive watch and then directed his girlfriend to empty the credit cards from my wallet.
"You're not helping me them?"
"Heh, and spoil the fun?"
He turned to walk away and had made it a few feet when a new thought clearly occurred to him, and he rolled back round, peering at me, seeing me anew. Pinning my free arm with one hand and he forcibly removed my shoes, trousers and, to my utmost terror, my underwear with the other.
Leaving me half naked in Soho; the most embarrassing half as well, exposed to the night’s warm air, which now felt far less warm.
While he’d helped me out of my clothing he became very insistent I seriously chastise my friends next time I see them, and that the next time they chain a groom to a railing they “need to do it properly, blood.”
Then he wandered off with the girl, cackling, in search of more dodgy dealings no doubt, or maybe to see how much they could spend on my Barclaycard before I cancelled it.
I prayed for death, a quick and painless death, rather than this humiliation.
Mostly the passing strangers just laughed at me, although on one occasion a woman in her early twenties pulled a Polaroid out and started taking photographs of the amusing scene. Certainly no one thought to help. I was part of the night’s entertainment.
I figured this was too public for even the most brazen rapist to molest me, but these sorts of fears also lingered, however, those passing who seemed they would might have been inclined to this sort of thing mostly just made lewd comments about my predicament, as the cooling air grew even colder with embarrassment.
I’d grown extremely sober by this point and decided there was no option but to begin pleading with the passers-by for assistance, but the only effect of this was to make the general levels of amusement even more raucous, or did until, one kind woman peeled off of a group, and wrapped up my embarrassment in a kind of shawl, which when draped round my waist made me look as though I was wearing a skirt.
This being Soho; I could cope with skirt wearing.
If it’s good enough for Beckham, I thought, then I suppose I can live with it.
However, it didn’t help that I was still attached to the railing and I asked the Samaritan with the shawl if she could call the police for me.
There was a hiss, and the Superloo re-opened.
I prayed it would be the Policeman, but instead an Italian man stepped out and started exclaimed rapidly in his mother tongue, presumably expounding his confusion, then with a shrug which suggested he had made the mistake, easier to accept than magic toil
ets, I suppose, and he made his way into the still bustling night.
I decided to try and outline a version of the truth and explained to my Samaritan I had been arrested then abandoned by a policeman, and she agreed to call the police from a nearby phone box and was about to leave when the door whooshed open again and this time the Policeman stepped out looking startled.
He sidled over to me. Looking shifty.
“Er,” the ‘Er’ was long and cautious, “why didn’t you say it did, that?”
“You’d have listened to me, then? or assumed I was even drunker than you’d thought?”
“Fair point,” he answered, pulling his keys and undoing my bonds, then noticing my current state, “where did your trousers go? And your pants? And - everything? Where’d you get that skirt? What the bloody hell have you been up to.”
“The night attacked me,” I explained, shooting the policeman an exasperated look, “a not so friendly pimp took them and my watch, after you abandoned me here. I wasn’t in much of a position to argue.”
The officer pulled a face which expressed a mix of guilt and embarrassment.
“Anyway, on your way,” adding as an afterthought, a reluctant, “Sir.”
“Looking like this?” I gestured to my skirt.
“I’m afraid so, Sir. Want money for the bus?”
He rummaged in his pocket and handed over enough for the bus, along with a couple of more twenties pees, in case I wanted to “risk the bloody TARDIS again,” then he strode