Setting Fire to my Armpit Hair

From Tim Hayward

Tue, 28 Nov 1995

OK. Enough of the British reserve. This is a final act of shameless self-publicity - a final vain attempt for a lowly place in a dark corner of the janitor's cupboard in the basement of the AT Hall of Fame.

I have regaled you with 'Losing my Virginity in a Clown Suit', 'My Cornish Pasty Dick', the immortal 'Worst Date of All Time' and now it is time to reveal my ultimate humiliation 'Setting Fire to my Armpit Hair'.

I work for a TV company in London, a repository for the very worst in Armani Suited, Gucci Booted, ponytailed cliches. I was, at this early point in my career, much taken with a young research assistant who had recently joined the company, and decided to impress her with dinner at one of Soho's more pretentious watering holes.

'Est' has a clean, well lit Scandinavian interior, with blonde wood everywhere and a long, 'L' shaped bar. The front is all glass and just inside the door is a coat-rack (a ludicrously costly confection, looking much like a bundle of oversized Cervical swab sticks, probably designed by an unimaginative German with a Gynaecological fetish). The restaurant was crowded and the stools along the bar were draped with expensively black-clad women with immaculate nails and bored looks. Over the tooth-grindingly tasteful background music could be detected the persistent sussuration of silk against cashmere. Suits stood, two-deep around the women, humming seductive mantras of expensive designer names and unimaginable sums of money. The perfect place to seduce an impressionable young pezzonovante in the TV world. Needless to say, I looked immaculate in my unstructured linen suit. The scene, as they say, was set.

The meal, as expected, was perfect. Its exquisite flavours exceeded only by its extreme smallness. Each plate was lovingly assembled by a highly paid art director with a tunnelling electron microscope. The cuisine was so nouvelle, it was unlikely to be invented until 1998. My seduction technique was perfect and my date was beginning to audibly moisten.

Emboldened by her melting looks and the obvious promise of radically athletic sex, I began to consume more wine (a particularly splendid Merlot, as I recall) and the evening began to take on a warm and quite delightful haze. (Readers of my previous posts will hear warning bells at this point). Conversation tripped lightly from my tongue in a sparkling stream of bon mots when suddenly my eye was drawn to the door. A man had reached his hand around the door and was taking a ridiculously expensive leather jacket from the coat rack.

I am not a man easily aroused to anger, but this was a clear felony and, of course, an opportunity to further impress upon my date that I was not merely a well rounded raconteur, wit, chef, entrepeneur and outstanding lover, but also a man of action, a Very Parfit Gentil Knight, as schooled in the arts of war as in the arts of love. I leapt to my feet, knocking over my chair and depositing two glasses of Merlot in my date's lap, lunged across the room, hurling customers hither and yon and grabbed the felon by the arm, yanking him through the door and twisting his arm up his back.

'Is that your coat'? I cried, as every man in the room gazed at me in awe and every woman suffered an involuntary uterine twitch.

'Yes' he replied, calmly.

Fortunately, the English are not a demonstrative people and, as I made my mumbled apologies, most of them had the decency to stare into their drinks in embarrassment. I returned to my table and my date, who had by now adopted a strangely cold attitude. The manager approached the table and sweetly thanked me for 'at least trying' and although the man I had assaulted was a valued customer, would I care to come to the bar after my meal, for a drink at her expense.

I drank more at the table, mainly to hide my utter shame and slid gently from the second bottle of wine into the port without pause. Finally my date pointed out two vacant seats at the end of the bar and we adjourned there. From our seats I could see the lifeless, fishlike eyes of every yuppie, boring into my in a finely wrought combination of contempt and pity. There was nothing for it but to drink more.

When the Manager arrived to serve us I ordered a Sambuca which was promptly served, already lit and merrily flaming. At this point several things crossed my drink addled mind....

1. You are supposed to extinguish a flaming Sambuca by cutting off the air to the flames with a coaster.

2. I had been taught an old chef's trick of pouring brandy over the hand and lighting it without burning myself.

3. I needed to pull off something fairly spectacular if I hoped to get laid.

..So with James Bond like nonchalance, I placed the palm of my hand firmly over the mouth of the glass.

I suppose it was fortunate that I was drunk, because the smell of cooking flesh hit me before the pain did. I raised my hand to see the glass, firmly stuck to my palm by suction and very, very hot blue flames lapping from the tips of my fingers. I, and the barful of yuppies, gazed in stupified wonderment at this human incendiary as I reached up, with my other hand to snap off the glass. It was actually cooked into my palm and it took a couple of second before I was able to break the suction, sending a stream of flaming Sambuca down my arm, up the sleeve of my loose jacket and directly into the hair of my right armpit.

I leapt to my feet and tried to beat out my own armpit, screaming as I did, subsiding into silence only when I realized that every eye in the room was on me.

I spent the rest of the evening with my hand in the ice bucket, my addled brain replaying how delightful her ass had looked as she stormed out of the door.

That's it. If that doesn't warrant at least an 'honourable mention' then I'm fucked. Remember that if I don't make the list, I may neglect to give you 'Butt-fucking the 400lb Woman' or 'Trail of Blood - My Night as a Tequila Slammer Girl'.

Yours in Christ

Rt Rvd Ruprecht Cinnamon-Chive