Downfall Of An Egoist

When I was young I conceived ‘extreme karaoke’ before karaoke even existed – (unless you count the Mitch Miller sing-along as such). This was one hopeful adolescent, mouthing into my mother’s hairbrush and sneering lasciviously at hordes of ecstatic maenads hungering for my flesh. I had long hair. I could be Mick Jagger, couldn’t I? In a virtual world anything was possible though not perhaps desirable. I visualized a machine that seriously amplified “Come on’ and at the same time project an  audience of screaming girls on to my bedroom wall. Oh, and a microphone too. I was sick of getting hairs in my mouth.

Those days are gone. My bedroom wall is pale magenta and I wouldn’t know what to do with a screaming girl other than offer her a strong cup of tea.

But my hips still swing, usually when I’m cutting meat and the radio’s on. I’ve been known to dance in the kitchen – less a ‘dad’s dance’ more a  'twitch,’ and serially mocked for it by my daughter who invariably catches me out.

She though is an affectionate critic, her barbs barely tickling a far deeper scar. The thought of it still brings me out in a light sweat.

It was end of term tidying up in the History Stock Cupboard, which separated two classrooms, sliding doors at either end. It was break. The classrooms should have been empty. I had the radio on and came alive when this song suddenly burst through the dust and books. 

‘I’m To Sexy’ 

Some demon possessed me. I sang along and then did more. I danced, fingering my shirt suggestively and scraping shelves with even more suggestive hips.

'I'm too sexy for my shirt too sexy
For my shirt so sexy it hurts and I'm
Too sexy for Milan (2x) New York and
Japan'

I was in heaven.

I’d got as far as ‘I’m too sexy for my hat…’ when I heard the first tittering.

Some of my class had stayed behind catching up on late homework. 

I searched for my gravitas, but have since stopped looking.  It will find me when I’m dead.