Half A Bitter

 The convention was one of bookish first editions on trestle tables as well as dealers’ rooms, conference lectures, self-contained readings and a bar. Despite the bar, everyone seemed dowdy and sad, not dressed in colourful clothes, rarely smiling. I’d only dragged myself there, despite my health condition, to maintain friendships in this book world and its fantasies, some of which world migrated into open land around the conference hotel, weather permitting, some attendees flying kites that flopped back to earth, others trying to chat to each other with some alacrity, but failing. Even a few alpha males seemed downtrodden and unsure of themselves. One person conducted a tombola stall with prizes comprising some dog-eared books he or she didn’t want any longer. There was also a rumour of a future mass raffle with similar prizes. The talks were quite interesting, but often confrontational even litigious. The hotel bedrooms with windows that hadn’t been cleaned for 23 years. I bought one book that I later regretted buying, renewed one friendship and started afresh with another. But all done in a half-hearted manner with a half a bitter in my hand. Many people didn’t even know who I was.

But, and this was a big upbeat BUT, the rumour of the raffle was later replaced with that of a disco party in the evening at a purpose-erected marquee just over the brow of the hill from the hotel. I noticed glints in the eyes of those around me at such news, even talk of Pink Floyd providing the music, or maybe it was one of their tribute bands, but some tributes can be better than the original, a bystander told me, a complete stranger wanting to befriend me, instead of the other way about. Things began to appear less pear-shaped as the evening drew closer. Would I go? Would my health permit? Did I have enough fineries to fling on me for a possible fling? And eventually I heard distant music from the dark side of the hill, now lit up, as if in a Close Encounters encounter, and my heart strained at its bit. I saw others traipse off with tiny leapfrogs in their own glory clothes, not a book in sight. Some of the individuals actually seemed sexy, some fresh and dappled in daisies, as if they had only arrived for this disco party. Even I myself did not look bookish at all. This was the fantasy fulfilled.

I plodded bouncily, unescorted, but still living in hope, until I realised that I would never quite reach where others had already reached, the cosmic music, true, gradually louder in my ears, but the distance between myself and the place whence the music was generated seemed to stay relentlessly the same. Was this a dream? The final fantasy of all? Would I wake soon behind a hotel bedroom window?  I was only partway there when I realised that each part of a part distanced between parts formed, forever, a part of the next part, while making these parts turn a Party into more of a Paradox than a Paradise.