Proposition on Sauchiehall Street

I had read, in some travel scrap or other, that despite its appearance, the street name is actually pronounced ‘sickle’. This seemed perfect to me: beyond how pleasingly a Glaswegian accent would render the word, there was the dissonance between its spelling—phonetically suggesting an extra syllable—and the compressed noise it represented; and there was the fact that it formed a neat homophone with the English word Sickle. This association lent the name an undercurrent of danger, befitting the street’s reputation for late-night rowdiness; and, symbolically, it evoked labour, which even post de-industrialisation felt appropriate. I carried this insider tidbit with me the entire time I was in Glasgow, smugly believing I was one of the few outsiders in the know. Each day, after I had crossed onto the street from the motorway, I would relish the sound of the two syllables in my head, forming redundant thoughts simply so I could employ the word. Here I am on Sickle. Once more on Sickle. Look, I’m leaning against a wall on Sickle. Of course, as it turned out, I had been misinformed. Sauchiehall Street is not Sickle Street. Sauchiehall Street is Sauchiehall Street. There is some disagreement among locals, but the correct pronunciation is either ‘saw-kee-hall’ or ‘suh-kee-hall’, with an aspirated k—meaning it’s actually fairly close to being phonetic. But the title scans better if you pronounce it ‘sickle’.

I was leaning against a wall on Sauchiehall, the daylight fading into gloom, pedestrians and traffic streaming before me, when I was yanked from my reverie by an interfering world. ‘Reverie’ is perhaps misstating things a tad; I was really at something of a loose end. I had a vague plan to catch a gig at Nice N Sleazy, the dreadfully named bar I was then standing beside, but it wasn’t due to commence for a couple more hours and I had run out of itinerary. In the end, I opted to—well, I opted to lean against a wall on Sauchiehall Street. The interfering world came in the form of a woman with long dark hair and bright lipstick, carrying a shopping bag. She was a little older than I was, perhaps in her late 30s or early 40s, and she wore jeans and a smart beige coat.
“Excuse me,” she repeated. “I need to…”
I apologised and shifted to the side—I had been blocking the keypad to her apartment building.
“It’s really OK,” she said, amused by the earnestness of my manner. She moved forward and began punching in a code. Then she paused.
“Do you want to come up?”
“Hm?”
“Do you want to come upstairs?”
I blinked, unsure how to process this surprise query.
“W-what for?” I eventually managed.
“I don’t know.”
I was not reassured by this answer.
“Your face is red,” she observed, helpfully. “You’re shy?”
“Yep.”
She laughed.
“So do you want to come up?”
“Uh, no, I’m OK, thanks.”
“All right, then.”
The woman disappeared inside the building and I resumed my leaning.

The exchange replayed itself in my thoughts, recurring like a stuck record. I wondered if I had done the right thing—if I had acted appropriately. Surely it was only sensible, given the limited information available to me, to have heeded my internal warnings and declined the offer. Who knows what terrible fate might have befallen me had I acquiesced? I could have been the target of a scam, some sinister operation where hapless men are enticed into secluded areas before being divested of their valuables by thick-set goons-in-waiting. I probably seemed an easy mark, too: alone, diminutive, foreign. And why stop at robbery? Who’s to say I would not have been chloroformed the moment I set foot in the apartment, that I wouldn’t have been crammed inside a large sports bag, transported to a meat locker and coaxed back to consciousness in order to witness my own (protracted) disembowelling? Admittedly these were remote possibilities, but the solo traveller is wise to exercise caution. I did, yes, consider a more plausible scenario: that I had been propositioned by a sex worker. After all, what had I done, exactly, that would induce a complete stranger into inviting me up to their place? I had obscured a keypad. I had moved out of the way and said sorry. And there had been no special effect in my utterance of that one word. If anything, it had been poorly enunciated. A seasoned broadcaster may have been able to inject those two syllables with charisma and charm, but a seasoned broadcaster I am not. Or was it offensive to assume there had been some ulterior motive? Was it insulting, sexist, narrow-minded to believe this woman was not just acting on the agency of her own whims?

Let’s assume, for the sake of another paragraph, that this woman had simply asked me up to her apartment because she felt like having company and sensed that I did, too. What would have happened if I had followed her up those stairs? As I leaned against that cold Sauchiehall wall I imagined something far worse than being scammed or robbed—something more terrifying, even, than being dissected in a meat locker. I could picture every detail. She would unlock the door of her apartment and I would follow her in, hesitantly, trailing a few paces behind. She would place her groceries on the counter and her keys in a bowl, and I would shuffle over to some awkward spot. Then she would say “I’m back”. I’d freeze; there would be someone else there—a roommate, a friend, a partner. It wouldn’t matter who it was. The only thing that would matter would be the fact that the woman who had just brought me into her apartment would have to explain my presence to a third party. And I could not conceive of any explanation that would not be mortifying, that would not cause this person to look on me with utter disgust. You mean you just asked a random guy on the street to come upstairs and he said Yes? And this is him? This… thing blushing in the corner? 

And if there hadn’t been anyone else there? If it had just been me and her? What then? I might be straining credibility by saying this, but to the extent that I was tempted by the proposal, it was not out of any carnal consideration. Which isn’t to say I didn’t find the woman attractive, or that I would have objected, necessarily, if the evening tended in that direction. Rather, it’s that my dream outcome would have been chaste: a connection forged over long, unexpected conversations with a stranger, on a memorable night out in Glasgow. Had I let my nagging doubts scare me away from the very thing I was seeking in my travels? Not to evoke mediocre Jim Carrey vehicles, or the mediocre books upon which they are based, but I am so inept at meeting people, and so desirous of new experiences, that I had resolved, in the days leading up to my departure from Melbourne, to go along with anything; to break out of my comfort zone; to do things I would otherwise avoid. I would obey the call to adventure. Even if it meant something terrible happening. Maybe especially if it meant something terrible happening. And adventure had come calling. Adventure had come calling while I was leaning against a wall on Sauchiehall Street, wishing that something exciting would happen. And what had I said to adventure? Uh, no, I’m OK, thanks. What a fool I had been!
“Sure you don’t want to come up?”
The woman with long dark hair had re-emerged from the entrance.
“Uh…” I started.
I took a breath.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

The Great Silence

“I can’t quite place your accent. Where are you from?”
“Australia,” I replied, halting my breakfast preparations in the kitchenette.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you so pale?” 

I knew nothing especially concrete about Glasgow when I booked my accomodation. I had no knowledge of its constituent districts, no clue as to which areas would reveal the city’s character and which would thoroughly obscure it, only a hazy, indefinite conception of Glasgow as a whole. My principal considerations, in the dreary evening I spent surveying my options, were cost and proximity to the city. I eventually settled on one of the cheaper places that matched the brief, a shared flat about half an hour’s walk from the city centre, and forgot about it entirely until, a month or so later, the journey rolled around.

The morning after I settled in—by pushing my luggage into a corner and climbing under the supplied doona—I discovered I was fortuitously situated; so fortuitously situated, in fact, that for my second pass through Glasgow I tried (in vain) to book the same place. The flat turned out to be in Finnieston, the area which, according to The Sunday Times, was the hippest place to live in all of Britain. Whatever truth this assessment had at the time it was made—surely the true hippest place in Britain would never be recognised as such by The Sunday Times—the discoverer effect, not unlike the observer effect in physics, means that it is certainly no longer the case. Propinquity to a trending stretch of Scotland was not, however, the reason I was personally so pleased with the location. (Like any self-respecting hipster, I expend most of my energy trying to convince people I’m nothing of the sort.) The reason why my small carpeted room with the door that didn’t fully close, let alone lock, was so perfect was that it oriented me between the two parts of Glasgow I ended up sinking the most time into: a decent café and the Mitchell Library.

The Mitchell Library was, by some distance, my favourite location in the city. A multi-level behemoth under a magnificent rain-faded dome, it was both an excellent destination in its own right and the ideal place to go before, between and after my engagements, when I wasn’t quite up to wandering through drizzle. You find, the longer you travel, that places in which you can sit, read and rest, with no pressure to buy a coffee you don’t really want, and no sense that your presence is impeding business, are truly worth their weight. Thanks to the cafeteria on the ground floor—serving up affordable, if not terribly edible, fare—it is actually possible to spend up to 11 consecutive hours inside the library without ever needing to leave. It is especially renowned for its ancestry and historical resources, though I confess I never really bothered to investigate them, opting instead to brush up on my Japanese and, I don’t know, write these ghastly things. But of all its qualities (soundproof music booths! Did I mention soundproof music booths?) perhaps the most commendable is the ease with which you are able to secure a library card and avail yourself of its services, even if you are, as I was, a mere passer-through. It was the library, more than anything else, that convinced me to return to Glasgow for an extra week before I left Europe. 

I sampled a fair handful of cafés during my stay, but the one right around the corner, on Argyle Street, was by far the best. Its food was hearty and well-balanced—rarely a given—and it offered a choice of filter coffee distinguished by method and bean variety. It was, as should already be evident, on the hipster end of the spectrum, and it was a little odd that the staff had no counter to stand behind, necessitating a lot of conspicuous leaning, but it was laid-back enough that neither of these things was sufficiently off-putting to, well, put me off. When not too busy, it was a joy to read and write and while away the morning in, bested, at this point in my travels, only by a Dunedin joint whose write-up I have excised from the historical record.

Of course, I didn’t spend all my time in libraries and cafés—just the overwhelming majority of it. At the art school up the Scott Street slope I caught a gig by Spoon, supported ably by Adam Buxton. The former was tight, boring, undeniable; the latter, affable, impish, amusing. Nothing life-altering, but I did get to witness Spoon’s frontman, Britt Daniel, (accidentally) cut his pinkie during one of the recitations of “I turn my camera on/I cut my finger on the way” on ‘I Turn My Camera On’. And, after ducking into a pub to escape the weather, I did befriend, sort of, or was befriended by, sort of, a group of theatre folk, afterwards accompanying them to a performance-art piece in which a man dressed as a giant baby (an associate of theirs) balletically assaulted a pram.

It rained, of course, and more than once, but the weather was generally pleasant, in line with my grey tastes. According to a local, I had caught Glasgow on the one or two days a year in which it is habitable.