The Security Thong

It has taken me a day or two to get my head around the events of last weekend. I made allusions to them yesterday, but only now have I found enough slack in my storytelling thong to tell you all about a dire episode full of lust and lethargy.

If you recall the start of last week, The Chipster had suffered a miserable few days. His spirits bottomed out around Tuesday, but then recovered enough to expend the last of his energy in one mad night of exotic dancing for the ladies of Bangor. The weekend had meant to be one of rest. You might say I was in the mood for contemplation not gyration, but that’s no excuse for what a happened.

Yet in order to understand everything, you must first understand a thing or two about thongs. You must know, for example, that I have two types of underwear: I have my everyday thongs and my performance thongs. Even if you’ve got a trained eye, you’d be hard pressed to tell much difference between the two types of underwear in my drawer. My everyday thongs hang a little lower and have stronger stitching. Performance thongs are delicate things, meant to fly with precision. They’re the Cruise missiles of thongs: they can take out a target to a degree of accuracy measured by the inch.

Now, among the many types of everyday underwear I own, I also possess a few pairs of what I call my ‘security thongs’. Think of a money belt but in the form of a posing pouch and you’ll have the idea. They have a pocket sewn into the crotch, allowing me to keep my valuables next to my valuables. I rarely wear them but, with Gabby up in Birmingham, I had been feeling a little anxious about getting locked out of the apartment. That’s why I’d been wearing my security thongs all week with the spare front door key tucked into the gusset.

Now bear all this mind when I tell you about Friday night.

I had decided to make an early return to the Green Dragon Tavern. My back was feeling stronger so that by Wednesday, I’d even been dancing around my apartment, throwing off my clothes every time I heard a tune with a 4/4 beat. When Friday night came around, I bounced up onto stage at nine o’clock sharp and began to do an effortless routine. Rarely has my dancing been greeted with so many gasps and whistles. It took me twenty minutes to go from business suit to birthday suit. The only problem I’d had was earlier in the day when I’d forgot to pack a pair of performance thongs in my bag. When it came time to dance, I’d been forced to do my act wearing my everyday underwear. It’s not the first time and I doubt if it will be the last.

At the finale of my ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’ routine, I turned to the crowd and shouted ‘get ready!’ The room was immediately filled with female voices shouting ‘fire!’ and in one effortless motion, I dropped my thong, caught it on my foot, and launched it out into the darkness where it grabbed by a pair of welcoming hands. Before you could hear the gasp of astonishment from the crowd, I was off the stage, back in my dressing room and relaxing with a fruit juice and Kit Kat.

Unfortunately the thong had cleared the building by the time I remembered about the spare front door key still stuck in its hidden pocket.

That’s why I made my appeal on Saturday afternoon. And that was my fateful mistake.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, I was awoken by the front door opening. I groggily assumed that it was Gabby, home early after worrying herself silly about the hens I’d cruelly disturbed when I selfishly protected my heterosexual credentials by rejecting the offer of doped tomato soup from the poultry salesman who come onto me in a potting shed in the middle of the night.

I staggered from bed and opened the bedroom door, noticing through bleary sleep-soaked eyes that the clock said two thirty and that Amy Winehouse was standing in the hall.

Of course it wasn’t Amy Winehouse. It was the woman who looked very much like Amy Winehouse I’d met in the coffee shop a fortnight ago. Back then, she’d confessed to having a crush on Lembit Opik and seeing some resemblance, promised that she would be setting her sights on me. At the time, I’d run off, hoping to never see her again.

‘Hello lover!’ she said, and before I knew it, ran up to me and threw her arms around my neck. A metal tongue stud cracked into my teeth and something wet and wilful begin to thrash around my gums like a freshly landed trout.

‘Oh, Chip! I’ve missed you!’ she gasped as I applied leverage to her arms and slipped beyond her grasp. I couldn’t say a word. Tiredness clung to my body as I stumbled my way to the living room.

‘What are you doing here?’ I finally managed to ask, my mind still clogged with dreams trying hard to merge intimately with this nightmare.

‘Call me lover!’ she said and held up a hand. The spare key to the front door glinted in the darkness. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot about me! Oh, I only found the key this morning after you mentioned it on your blog. I’ve waited all day to surprise you. You are surprised aren’t you, Chippy, my love?’


‘Would you mind terribly if I asked you to leave?’

‘But I’m here for a night of lust!’ she cried and threw herself down on the sofa. ‘You promised me!’

I began to cry but they were the tears of a long yawn. ‘Well, that’s really quite wonderful but I really need sleep,’ I explained, thinking it better to avoid the issue of her sanity. ‘Lust is totally out of the question, I’m afraid.’ I nearly added ‘I only do it with the sane’ but I thought better of it and, besides, didn’t know if it was true.

‘You don’t like me?’

‘I’d like you if you left,’ I said, trying to smile.

My guest went pale but it could have just been the blood rushing to her hands which bunched into fists. ‘Leave?’ she howled. ‘Why would you want me to leave, lover? I’m here for you. All these years and we can finally consummate our love tonight.’

‘But I don’t even know you name,’ I said, turning on the lamp standing in the corner of the room. It pained my eyes buy cleared my brain. The weirdness of the dream levelled out to the normality of my reality.

‘Call me Esther,’ she said and peeled off her top. Lembit Opik gazed at me from the back of the snake tattoo that trailed across her shoulder and up her neck.

‘Well Esther,’ I said, thinking quickly, ‘if you’re so determined, who could say no? Perhaps we could have a drink before we get started. Loosen us up a bit?’

She followed me into the kitchen where I was searching out a bottle from the refrigerator. ‘Do you like wine?’ I asked, grabbing one of the narrow necked bottles we keep hidden behind the veg.

‘Oh, I love wine, lover!’ she said, wrapping her arms around my waist as I struggled with the cork to the bottle.

Five minutes later, she was back on the sofa and had already downed three glasses of the clear stuff with barely a drop touching her taste buds. I’d put on some music, if only to waste a few extra minutes, and the whole place was looking quite romantic.

‘What exactly is this stuff?’ she asked, finishing a fourth glass with a smack of her lips. Before I answered, I poured her another which was soon gone.

‘It’s potato gin,’ I explained as she finished.

‘Very good,’ she said.

‘It’s strong enough to take off your tattoos,’ I replied. ‘My girlfriend brews it.’

‘Your girlfriend?’ She laughed. ‘You have a girlfriend?’

‘She’s Romanian. Prone to terrible violence when crossed. You’re lucky she’s in Birmingham.’

‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be getting me drunk?’ asked Esther.

‘Oh, you’re beyond drunk,’ I assured her and stood up. ‘Are you coming to the bedroom?’ I asked. This was the moment when I would see if my gamble would pay off.

He eyes flared and she rocked in her seat. Then she just sat staring at her legs.

‘Why won’t they move!’ she moaned.

I said a silent prayer to Romanian moonshine.

‘You’ll be like that until the morning,’ I said, throwing her a cushion. ‘Just lie back and try to sleep. I’ll ring the police in the morning and we can sort this whole mess out then.’

‘You bastard!’ she screamed. Her eyes crossed and then closed. ‘You absolute…’

‘And God bless potato gin,’ I said to the shape, now unconscious on the sofa before I turned and walked merrily back to the bedroom.

In the morning, I made good my promise and rang the police who took a good hour to arrive but less than five minutes to take my guest away. They seemed to know her quite well and told me that they’ve arrested her countless times for causing a public nuisance by stalking celebrities in Bangor to appear in pantomime. I explained about the key, about her quite understandable fixation on Lembit Opik, and why she’d decided to sneak into my apartment. I also explained about the potato gin and how she would regain use of her legs in another twelve hours.

Gabby got back on Monday and I told her the whole story. She laughed about the whole thing over a glass of her moonshine. I even took a sip or two myself until my lips began to go numb. I really can’t remember much that happened after that, but as I always say: forgetfulness can sometimes be a virtue. I have the vaguest recollection that it involved Gabby singing her latest single.