The Heel Bar

Ch. 3: Saturday night at the Heel Bar.

Having served the fourth Friday of my Monday to Friday 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. shift in the Heel Bar on Tockenham Coat Road as Barstool Footboy 9, my four-week sanction-Placement was duly completed.

From listening to the stories of similarly sanctioned barstool footboys -- some of whom had incurred a corrective black eye or two resultant of their resistance to provide even the bare basics of barstool facilitation -- thus unscathed apart, my weekday early-shift experiences were generally the same as theirs.

Upon the doormen opening the Heel Bar to female patrons at 5 p.m., the tendency of the first arrivals -- predominantly office workers and shop girls -- was to occupy a barstool and its attendant footboy just for as long as it took to enjoy a winding-down post-work tipple.

I had found though, during my two-hour early-evening shifts, that there were exceptions -- end-of-shifters who, either habitually or for some other reason, liked to have another.

One of these latter, some-other-reason exceptions occurred yesterday evening, on my final day of sanction-Placement.

Miss Pamela Pettiford, my Case Worker at the Job Centre who had sanction-Placemented me, had been persuaded at the suggestion of her barmaid friend Chloe to extend her usual one-drink occupation of Barstool 9 and its attendant footboy, given it was his last day of service as Barstool Footboy 9.

Making short work of her thirst-quencher first, downing a habit-breaking second, and then taking her time over yet a third bottle of ice-cold pilsner lager, Miss Pettiford had availed herself of my barstool 'facilitation' for almost an hour before finally vacating Barstool 9 and heading for Tockenham Coat Road tube station and home.

But before leaving the Heel Bar, Miss Pettiford, evidently under the influence at being persuaded by Chloe to indulge in a couple more of her favourite strong beers on an empty stomach, had imparted to me some things that perhaps after her customary one pilsner lager she wouldn't have.

The hoppy fumes of three pilsner lagers on her breath, my loose-tongued Case Worker at the Job Centre Miss Pamela Pettiford, had said: "You've astonished me, male citizen Carl. What has happened to your trademark insolence? What has become of the uncouth, ill-mannered youth, who as your Case Worker I am responsible for and burdened with the unenviable task of introducing to the notion of industrial endeavour?

"Believe me, I've been looking for fault, waiting for fault -- expecting fault. But I can't fault your behaviour here over the last four weeks, at the Heel Bar.

"With your uncriticisable conduct, you have epitomised the Authoritarian Female Party Prime Minister Caroline Flynt's idealised exemplar of the model male citizen.

"So different, to your sulky demeanour toward me at your Job Centre interviews when I ask you the perfectly reasonable questions as to why you haven't found work yet that you find so inflammatory.

"So in contrast, to your resentful attitude when I advise you that I am AFP-empowered to reduce your unemployment benefit, or suspend it indefinitely if I see no sign of improvement in your lacklustre job-searching efforts; if I discern no attitudinal change in your approach toward disencumbering the hard-pressed tax-payer of the easily avoidable expense of keeping you.

"So unlike, your sullen defiance when I remind you that if I deem it conducive to adjusting your workshy mindset, not only will I stop your dole money but I will exercise my Job Centre Interviewer's prerogative of serving a Community Service Order on you and put you on attachment with the CSO-supervised Domestic Work Detail.

"Here at the Heel Bar, you are transformed entirely: No longer intractable, no longer intransigent, no longer resistant to requirements -- you are cooperative and compliant.

"Your barstool facilitation has been exemplary. Truly commendable. Impeccable, I would go so far as to call it.

"And, not only to me: your satisfaction ratings by the barstoolistas are among the highest. Or -- and more to the point: complaints about you are among the lowest.

"To help us with monitoring their rehabilitative progress, we at the Job Centre receive from the Heel Bar regular sanction-Placemented barstool-facilitator performance reports.

"And as for your own, behavioural statistics over the last four weeks, my barmaid friend Chloe has kept me fully informed: Neither Chloe, any of the other six barmaids or the Heel Bar proprietress Ms Andrea Leasome have received a complaint about you from a barstoolista.

"And believe me, I know very well that barstoolistas can be extremely challenging to serve.

"The average barstoolista is easily angered and, once riled, she is almost impossible to placate.

"The typical barstoolista is not slow to officially register a complaint with the barmaids about what she considers to be substandard barstool facilitation -- but even quicker to take it upon herself to administer instant justice and to deliver a corrective backheel or two to the vulnerable inches-away face of her noncompliant or otherwise disagreeable barstool footboy to black-eye stigmatise him as a message to others.

"Knowing you as I do, you cannot imagine my surprise -- no, my utter amazement -- when you deprived me of a perhaps immoral and vengeful but, nonetheless righteous revenge that, right from the moment I sanction-Placemented you to barstool-facilitate at the Heel Bar, I'd looked forward to enjoying with such sweet anticipation:

"To relieve my irritation and vent my frustration and channel my annoyance with your workshy ways -- by blackening your eyes for you -- male citizen Carl Carson!

"To have people who see you know what had happened to you:

"Backheeled at the Heel Bar by a barstoolista. Either in chastisement, at her regarding your barstool facilitation as substandard, or just because she could.

"You cannot conceive of my incredulity when during your early-shifts of the last four weeks you did not provide me with even one justified opportunity to black-eye discipline you -- when not once, did you provoke me to mete out to you the corrective chastisement that is the common comeuppance of many an uncooperative barstool footboy.

"Not even once, did you give me a legitimate reason; never, did you give me an even remotely valid excuse to exploit your total vulnerability and to inflict in good conscience the good, corrective hard backheels to your inches-away face that would have given me not only immense satisfaction to administer but such heartwarming joy.

"Most gratifying though it is, your commendable compliance; your exemplary, model-male-citizen barstool facilitation at my after-work nyloned feet is entirely expected of you anyway.

"And so it is no condolence, is no compensation, is no consolation -- is no redress: your uncriticisable conduct does not begin to alleviate the lingering ache of my unfulfilled expectation; does nothing, to assuage the anguishment of my unrealised greater gratification.

"My disappointment at your not giving me the opportunity to backheel black-eye you righteously, gnaws away at me; irritates me, like an itch I cannot scratch.

"Somehow, you have successfully contrived to thwart the rightful retaliative redress that for four weeks I have dreamed of dealing you.

"So I suppose it's over, now ... a pity.

"I'd been hoping you'd give me a bona fide excuse -- however trivial, however trifling, however tenuous -- to enable me to extend in good conscience your weekday early-shift sanction-Placement at the Heel Bar as Barstool Footboy Nine, to keep you literally as well as figuratively at heel. Or -- and more to the point: at my heels.

"And, do you know why, male citizen Carl Carson? Hmmn? In hopes of backheel black-eyeing you in revenge apart? Hmmn? Because I've been enjoying it -- that's why! Oh, how I have come to love it -- barstooling you!

"Sitting on Barstool Nine right over your impertinent little head, prising off my office pumps and hanging them by their heels on my barstool's rounded rung where you cannot help but look at them, and then making you sniff and inhale the stinky fumes from the soles of my pantyhosed feet while I rub them on your face while I chat to other barstoolistas and Chloe and savour an ice-cold pilsner lager after a long day at the Jobby dealing with your kind.

"But my disappointment at not getting the opportunity to rightfully backheel black-eye you as you so thoroughly deserve is a nagging torment that, now, with your four-week sanction-Placement duly completed satisfactorily, that curative remedy has been denied me.

"Ahh ... I wish I hadn't been so lenient with you. I must be soft-hearted, letting a miscreant like you off so lightly.

"I could have used my Job Centre Interviewer's discretional power and stiffened the terms of your sanction-Placement: To seven-day-week barstool-facilitate at the Heel Bar from five p.m. to ten p.m. for as long as you remain a statistic on the unemployment register and a needless drain on AFP government resources."

Miss Pettiford was giving vent to her all too obvious regret that my four-week sanction-Placement awarded by her to serve 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. Monday to Friday at the Heel Bar as Barstool Footboy 9 -- the barstool 'facility' that normally she had priority-patronised just for as long as it took to enjoy a winding-down post-work pilsner; yesterday's triple-tipple extension the single exception -- was concluded.

Or -- and more to the point: in her loose-tongued candour she was expressing her great surprise and articulating the depths of her disappointment that I hadn't given her the slightest valid, conscience-salving excuse to extend it.

Satisfying her vengeful eye-blackening ambition apart, Miss Pamela Pettiford might be surprised to learn the extent to which I shared her regret.

Right from the first day of my four-week sanction-Placement, I was sure that my enjoyment at being forced to sniff the under- and in-between-the-toes scents of her 9 to 5 Job Centre Interviewer's dark-nyloned post-work feet ("I want to feel you sniffing -- or I will award extra, add-on hours to your sanction-Placement") had soon begun to exceed even her own.

I recalled my initial indignation; my shocked outrage at being similarly subjugated by my first anonymous Barstool 9 occupant -- a flexitime first-arrival barstool-grabbing dark-pantyhosed black pump shod office girl who had ordered a Campari and soda with one lump of ice and the barmaid Camilla had greeted as Leyla.

Only to be surprised -- no: astounded by an overwhelming wonderment of thrilling sensations and turbulent innermost emotions -- when I'd found myself not revulsed but attracted and not enduring but enjoying and not resisting but participating in a previously unimagined service-sector activity: barstool facilitation.

When Miss Pettiford had arrived at the Heel Bar ten minutes later and the barmaid Chloe had decreed Reserved Occupancy of Barstool 9 for her friend Miss Pettiford, my disappointment did not last long at Chloe's eviction and barstool relocation of my enthralling/shoe-playing loin-stirring/facial foot-rubbing first barstoolista.

But what lured me back to the Heel Bar the next day at 10:05 p.m., was not only in hopes of barstool-facilitating my Case Worker Miss Pamela Pettiford again; but this time, in the guise of her Saturday-night out-on-the-town letting-her-hair-down persona.

Possessed of the compulsion to slake the sleep-depriving nighttime needs of another and, by now, all-consuming desire, I was siren-called back to the Heel Bar by the irresistible charms of the barmaid Chloe.

With my plan, founded upon snippets and snatches of overheard over-the-bar-counter conversations between barmaids and barstoolistas, high on hope and low in expectation and fraught with concern, I was in pursuit of the nightly fantasised realisation of my own, curative remedy.

***

As though I was just an ordinary pedestrian on Tockenham Coat Road, I tried to adopt an air of mild passer-by interest as I glanced in through each of the four floor-to-ceiling windows of the Heel Bar.

But given the goings-on I'd glimpsed as I'd faux-strolled around the rectangular building, affecting an attitude of idle curiosity wasn't that easy.

One of the most popular Theme Bars on Tockenham Coat Road, the Heel Bar was in full swing -- not as I'd ever seen it, during my Monday to Friday 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. early shifts as Barstool Footboy 9.

On weekdays, the early evening barstool occupants were mostly one-drink office workers and shop girls -- the first arrivals, flexitimer stealing-a-march barstool-grabbers -- popping in after work for a relaxing glass of wine or a refreshing lager before heading home. One leisurely AFP-subsidised drink, while they chatted to other barstoolistas or listened to the popular music played over the sound system at moderate volume, and then the office worker/shop assistant would vacate her barstool and its attendant footboy, making the facility available to the next in line ticket-holder barstoolista.

But this was night-time -- and Saturday night at that -- and the place was jumping.

It was a far cry from the early-evening ambience I'd experienced during the week; even from outside, I could hear the lively thumping beat of the cranked-up Saturday-night music.

And what was happening inside was a real eye-opener.

As I'd walked past the four sides of the glass-faced building, I'd seen the barstoolistas -- many of them, exhibiting classic signs of latter-stage inebriation -- bopping to the beat on their barstools.

Already actually brought to heel at the inches-away feet of their barstoolista, the barstool footboys were just as literally having their barstool-facilitator predicament rubbed in their nose: irritated by the absentminded antics of alcohol influenced shoe-players; tormented by pantyhosed/socked/barefoot facial foot-rubbers; subjected to forced under-the-toes foot-sniffing, and corrected by backheeled blackeye-stigmatising chasteners.

I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that some of those fun-loving ladies had been first in the queue to ensure first-claim to a barstool, and had been occupying their barstool and their attendant barstool footboy since the two black-suited bouncers had opened the doors to admit entrance to female patrons at 5 p.m.

And, because there was no time limit on barstool occupancy, there, those lady revellers might stay, downing their AFP-subsidised drinks right through a succession of however so many on-the-hour footboy changeover reliefs and, powder-room visits apart, only vacating their barstool and abandoning its latest and last facilitator at closing time at 2 a.m.

During my walkaround reconnoitre I'd also seen that all of the crimson-velveted booths, situated by the floor-to-ceiling windows, were fully occupied by ticket-holder in-waiting ladies.

From my four-week sanction-Placement experience, I knew that all of those ladies had extracted a numbered ticket from the wall dispenser by the entrance doors and that, upon their number appearing on the digital readout displays (873 -- 25), they would proceed to the bar to claim occupancy of the just-vacated barstool and high dominion over its attendant footboy.

But as I'd looked through each of the Heel Bar's four floor-to-ceiling windows, the objective of my observances was to ascertain whether or not all of the barstools were 'facilitated'.

Of all 50 barstools -- 15 along each of the two longer sides of the rectangular bar; 10 along each of the two shorter ends -- just two of them were not 'facilitated'.

One of them was Barstool 37.

I'd thought it quite the coincidence that the other was Barstool 9.

*

In the event of all 50 barstools being 'facilitated', I would have had to try my luck again after the next on-the-hour barstool footboy changeovers at 11 p.m. and, if unsuccessful, return at midnight ...

But as I had discovered that two of the barstools were unfacilitated, I could now, at 10:10 p.m., attempt to implement the perilous plan that I'd devised in desperation.

Timing was important: at 10:10 p.m. I was arriving just after the scheduled 10 p.m. coming on-shift/going off-shift barstool footboy changeovers.

From listening in on Miss Pamela Pettiford's conversation yesterday evening with the barmaid Chloe, one of the over-the-bar-counter snippets I had overheard was that today marked the Authoritarian Female Party government's UK-wide introduction of the Instant Response Standby Unit.

Utilising longer-term unemployed males, eighteen-year-old school-leavers with no work or training to go to, and a back-up haul of other Job-Centre-Interviewer-identified Welfare Benefits claimant idlers, the On-Call Emergency Replacement Programme was the AFP's new failsafe ten-minute-response scheme to cover Heel Bars for barstool footboy no-shows.

What I was about to do was fraught with risk: punishable by a 1,000 - 2,000-hour Community Service Order -- possibly attached to the dreaded Domestic Work Detail, whose two-man teams are assigned to clean/tidy-up the houses and flats of housewives and female flatmates who book the free service through the Community Service Liaison Officer's office.

I had to consider too the further probability of punitive 100-hour incremental add-ons, awarded at the discretion of my AFP-authorised Case Worker at the Job Centre, Miss Pamela Pettiford, upon her eventual discovery of my ulterior-motived activities.

Miss Pettiford's putting me on attachment to the CSO-supervised Domestic Work Detail, might be considered as something of a let-off.

If at her discretion she determined that a harsher, custodial sanction was warranted, it was in Miss Pettiford's power to refer me to Tockenham's Community Service Liaison Officer, who was also the Authoritarian Female Party MP for Tockenham and Highberry: Ms Alma Ruddy.

Ms Ruddy MP -- even by AFP standards a stern and severe no-nonsense woman who people in the know were tipping to soon become an AFP Cabinet Minister and the next Justice Secretary -- would arrange to have me admitted to one of the AFP's Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities.

Most likely, the one just north of Brighton: the notorious Greystone Prison. Where prisoners are corrected and rehabilitated by the infamous cane-happy female prison officers who, because of their pale-blue uniforms, are known as the 'Jailhouse Blues'.

Released inmates of Greystone Prison claimed it was not the relentless clanging of slamming heavy metal barred doors that drove them all to distraction -- and neither was it the almost constant agonised yelping of prisoners being bare-bottom caned, even during the night.

It was the slap-slap-slap slapping of the Jailhouse Blue female prison officers' uniform-issue thin-rubber soled flip-flops, rapping against the bottoms of their bare heels as night and day patrolling singly or partnered-up in pairs they ascended and descended the stairs connecting the cell wings known as the Levels looking for the slightest excuse to use their canes.

But, come what may, I would have to take my chances -- I was in the grip of something I could no longer resist.

I approached the two black-suited bouncers, recognising the doormen on duty tonight as Vince and Tony.

I'd found them both likeable enough when they'd signed me in for my weekday early-shifts along with the forty-nine other 5 p.m.-start barstool footboys -- but I doubted they would recognise me now.

But I was beaten to it by another guy, coming on at the double.

I knew who he had to be: the first of the two On-Call Emergency Replacement Programme respondents.

I had no choice now but to wait, while the doormen signed him in.

I looked at my digital watch. It was 22:12.