Kins had invited me to a 'native mixer' which made me laugh as the guests were all foreigners. Native speakers in Poland weren't Polish speakers like you'd imagine but speakers of foreign languages who are from the countries which speak those languages such as a Spanish speaking Spaniard or an English speaking Brit, Aussie or Yank.
We were greeted upon entrance by a cockney named Dave but I couldn't see his mate Chaz anywhere.
"Welcome, here's a name sticker guys." He gushed as he handed us a large white sticker and felt tip pen. "The bar is over there and most people are mingling, just introduce yourselves around guys."
I remember thinking that it might not be too bad. Kins had been to these things before and hated them. He needed them now though as they were a major opportunity for his new company. Most of the ‘natives’ didn’t speak Polish and would need a translator. There were practically zero English translators who spoke Polish. Kins was a rare breed and if he appreciated how rare he was, the power that he held in this kind of company, he would have been more confident than he was.
We slapped on our name tags and grabbed a drink then began circulating. I had gotten accustomed to such schmoozing working for Minkins and Minkins but this time I wasn’t selling anything, I should have been selling myself. I would have been as well if I knew what I wanted to do.
There was a woman coming our way so I nudged Kins to alert him and as he turned to her she spoke.
"Tulisa." She said offering her hand to Kins.
"To lose a what?" I laughed.
Kins shot me a look that I hadn't seen before but instantly knew meant that he wanted me to go fuck myself. So I obliged and I left him to mingle while I drunk.
I sat at the bar and threw back the whiskey while I thought about what I wanted to do. I eyed up the barmaid as she shook her cocktail shaker and rump in unison. She was positively Kylie sized tiny and she was working the room harder than anyone. She saw me watching her and I saw her watching me watch her but said nothing. I just listened to the bad pick-up lines that came her way from all the ex-public schoolboy journalists.
“What’s the biggest story you’ve broken?” I questioned one of the aforementioned journos.
“Am not an investigative journalist. I write up,” He checked himself and readjusted his oversized tie. “I keep people informed of developments within the industry am writing about. What do you do? Teach?” He snarled.
“No.” I answered and downed my whiskey.
Just as he picked up his drinks and turned to leave I decided I could find some fun at the drab event after all.
“So you write up press releases?”
This was before Twitter but am sure if it happened now I’d ask his handle and followed him immediately for all his earth shattering insight.
“More than that.”
“What then?”
He turned back around placed his drinks down and saddled up next to me. If it was an attempt at intimidation the fields of Eton have something to learn from the streets of Bradford.
I just smiled at him.
“Last year I won awards in my profession, what did you win?”
He shimmed his shoulders like a peacock fanning its feathers.
“I won a trip to Poland. What award? A Peabody?” I enquired.
“No. I won the feature writer for Eastern European Development Publications.”
I actually fell off my stool laughing.
“What the fuck? Then I won the most improved managerial achievement award within my own office and employee of the month the last six weeks.”
I hailed the barmaid for another drink while the award winning journalist stomped off to another round of back slapping and jolly-ho’s.
I got my drink and felt revitalised enough to start mingling. I met a lot of boring people but I had never been in a room with so many aspiring writers who weren’t actually writing. I heard tons of bad plots, woes of writers block which I always countered with, ‘Wayne Rooney never seems to get footballers block’.
They’d invariable say that he had off games but miss the point that he still actually played. Writers write bad books, some writers never write a good book but if you can’t write it isn’t writers block it’s just that you’re not a writer.
My favourite example was one of the teachers who babbled on about his story set in Roman times following various leaders and warriors lives. It sounded suspiciously like the BBC and HBO TV show ‘Rome’ but when I mentioned it to the guy he snapped back furiously that he ‘had thought of it first’. That show had already finished two seasons so if he had thought of it first, how the fuck hadn’t he finished his book?
I was also quiet sure that you can’t claim to have thought of a story about Rome first. I know there is a Hollywood trend where they like to copy successful formulas but I doubt even J.K. Rowling thinks she thought of a schoolboy wizard first, she was just more successful than most with the concept.
I kept quiet about my writing aspirations. I didn't want to be another Hollywood waitress pretending I was something I wasn't. I would say I was a writer when I had written something, not when I sat in a coffee shop with my laptop open.
These people made me doubt myself, made me hate my dream.
Was that who I was to other people?
An obnoxious cunt who was so obsessed by his stupid idea that would never come to anything?
I had to let it go so I plonked myself down in the first available seat and started shaking hands and grinning wildly. Among others on the table were three very fresh, very smiley, arrogant fucks who proudly announced that they thought they were better than everyone else as they were lawyers who were on loan from the British office to the Warsaw office of Eversheds.
“Oh did you study Polish law?” I asked.
"No." They echoed.
“EU law maybe?”
“No.” They said laughing among themselves.
“So what the fuck do you do then? Make coffees and photocopy stuff?”
And with that their better than you attitude faded into the ether, thought so fuckers. You are nobody, actually you are a Polish secretary’s bitch.
How are those law degrees working out for you now?
I could have been nicer to the female of the three but she had obviously been charmed by one of the males, while the third was his bum bitch. They took their little love triangle to a different table as everyone else laughed it up.
The only thing worse than being useless, is thinking that you are useful when everyone else can see that you’re not.
"Well we know who to call when we need a lunch run." A Scottish guy sniggered. “Hi fella, am Danny.”
“James.” I said shaking his hand.
Danny was an IT guy and his wife was some sort of artist. She had a modern art hairdo that seemed inexplicable to the rest of the population and by the time I’d figured it out, it would have fallen out of fashion.
I bit my tongue. Danny seemed like the coolest person there and the easiest in his own skin. In a room full of try-hards me and Danny were about as cool as it got.
“Thanks for getting rid of those wankers.” Danny said.
"At their hourly billables you wouldn't want those fuckers holding a door for you let alone getting your coffee. They might be useless but they'll be on double what their Polish colleagues get and it’s those poorly paid fucks who will actually do all the work." I pointed out.
“This guy here is Hamish, my wife is Zonda and these two are Mandy and Astrid.” Danny said rounding the table.
Hamish was another Scot with typically fire red hair, while Mandy and Astrid where both from Sweden. I know what you are thinking and no they weren’t leggy blondes. Mandy looked like she survived on baby seal blubber and Astrid wasn’t ugly but she wasn’t attractive either. She was forgettable.
The time passed quickly as I yakked it up with Hamish and Danny. Zonda who had adopted her ‘African’ name was happy talking to the very forceful Mandy while Astrid just sat quietly, like I said, she was very forgettable. Mainly because she just blended into the background. Kins waltzed over to our table and looked weary.
"Shoot me now." He uttered as he closed his eyes and collapsed onto the table resting his head on his arms.
"Let’s make a move then." I said. "Danny, do you wanna come?"
Only Danny and Hamish interested me as possible friends but Mandy and Astrid got up to leave as well. They were not only dead weight, and a lot of it, but annoying dead weight.
Fighting our way out was nearly as hard as surviving the earlier part of the night and as we made our way through the throng we were accosted by two Spanish property salesmen. They thrust cards in our faces but as we smiled and tried to move past they almost straddled us. I took the card and read it, Miguel Puyol, head of La Cactus apartment complex.
“Hola Miguel. Bueno mucho.” It sounded Spanish.
We continued but his leg was between mine and I didn’t want to end up on the floor in some unseemly tryst.
“How are you doing my friends?” He said. “Can I have your cards?”
“I don’t have a card. It’s not the 1980’s but Kins does. Give him your card.” I ordered.
He had already fished out two cards for the Spaniards and handed them his details before they finally moved to one side.
“You don’t fancy some senoritas do you?” I asked flicking my head in Astrid and Mandy’s direction.
He shook his head and disappeared. As Miguel and his buddy headed off Danny stood in awe of a group of men at their table.
“It’s the Legia lot.” He gushed.
“How do you know?” I asked.
I knew Legia were one of the Warsaw football teams and probably the most famous in all of Poland but I didn’t know any of their names, never mind what they looked like.
“Our company has a box.” Hamish answered. “Am not asking for an autograph.”
“Me neither.” Danny agreed and we kept moving towards the exit.
We were nearly free until that cockney bastard Dave sprang in front of us offering to introduce us to the Legia boys. We politely refused and started to move but once again he stopped our advances. This time he was introducing his
‘good friend’, a painter whose name escaped him. The artist didn’t mind, in fact he seemed to care more about boring us with details of his style. Only Zonda was interested and as she amused him we sloped off.
Outside we made our way to some Turkish dive bars and then texted her the directions. It hadn’t been a bad night after all but it wasn’t giving me any reason to be optimistic. I had learnt that my skill was verbal and that skill was lost here.
I couldn’t sell much when most people didn’t understand the nuances of my vernacular.
I sat around a shisha pipe with the Warsaw misfits and wondered how I was going to support my family with no transferable skill set.