"Glossy acrylic latex paint" & "Confessions of a Club Toilet" by Beetle Holloway

Glossy acrylic latex paint

Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer. 

Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer. 

I say this twice more driving into Dove Meadow Retail Complex. No way I’m going to get mugged off by the guy in Paint Passion or, more importantly, let him know I’m the type of person that doesn’t know anything about paints and, ergo, am not very handy or outdoorsy and probably just some soft-fingered digital nomad that writes marketing copy all day. Which I’m not. I have eczema.

I sometimes wear gloves to hide it, but even on this balmy November afternoon, I’m gloveless. Rough skin out, calloused and proud. Really authenticates my workwear get-up. 

I pull up my Prius alongside a white van outside Tool Planet. I swap my Birkenstocks for Caterpillars and light a ciggie. Three tokes are enough for the odour to stick to my fingers and chore jacket, which I got second-hand when I was in Philly, so yeah, bonafide Rust Belt. Unlike Freddie’s. I know he buys his Carhartt at Flex.

I wiggle my jaw in the car mirror and rough up my beard. 

Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer. 

Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer. 

I stroll, workmanlike, from Tool Planet to Cooper’s Wires to Paint Passion. The sliding doors part and I’m confronted with my first unexpected challenge: tins. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I expected Paint Passion to sell paint tins - that’s why I’m here - but I didn’t think every paint tin would look like, literally, identical. You can’t even differentiate by brand or colour or —

I feel a clammy drip under my trucker cap. I didn't check what size I needed. All these tins are like small barrels. Do I really need that much paint to turn some gourds into Christmas decorations? I doubt it. But I can’t ask now can I? Would blow my cover. ChatGPT said wood and gourd paint were very similar, so if the store assistant asks, I’m painting an old bench. Much more…what’s the word? Workmanlike. Yeah. 

Despite my confusion, I don’t hover around the entryway like some confused non-painty white-collar dufus. I make a beeline for Aisle One. I want to show the store assistant that I’m in a hurry. A got-to-get-to-the-next-job-stat kinda hurry.

In Aisle One, I start reading words I sort of know but also sort of don’t - matte, silk, sheen, eggshell - until the dark blue uniform comes into view. Bogey at high noon. He’s scrawnier than the pot bellied, old-timer with greased hair and working class accent that I imagined, which makes him even more terrifying. He’s a contemporary. That’s a whole new level of judgment. 

His name tag says Marc. He smiles with smoker’s teeth that, ironically, could do with a lick of paint. 

‘Y’alright mate, where’s your glossy acrylic latex? Swear it used to be ‘ere.’ I say, a bit too quickly. 

‘Glossy acrylic latex?’ Marc says. He’s just had a coffee; his breath engulfs me. 

‘Yeah, oil-based,’ I say. 

‘How much do you need?’

‘Nuff for this old bench I’m doin’ up.’ I arrange my face into a practiced tut. ‘The stuff people throw away these days, eh?’

Marc looks at me weirdly. I realise that line was set up for the pot-bellied old-timer greaseball as a way of building camaraderie and not for a contemporary, with bad teeth, bad breath, and actually, really nice skin. 

I roll up my sleeves and crack my wrists, performatively. 

‘What’s the bench made out of?’ Marc says. 

‘Wood.’

‘What type of wood?’ 

For some reason, the only words I can think of are varnished and timber. ‘Oak’, I say. 

‘You sure you want glossy acrylic latex paint with an oil-based primer?’ Marc says. I shrug like an Italian. ‘Sure, it’s got the durability and weather-resistance for most woods, but for oak, I’d go chalk-based. Nice matte finish. Outdoor bench, I take it?’

Our Christmas tree will be 100% indoors, in the corner of my and Tilly’s one-bed. Right where Peanut, our cockapoo, sleeps. I haven’t told Tilly yet, but I’m going to paint Peanut’s face on my gourd decorations when we do them this weekend. She’ll love that. 

‘Yeah, outdoor, but a bit indoor too,’ I say. ‘Like on a porch. You know, outdoor, but covered.’ He studies my face. ‘Near my shed,’ I lie. 

‘Right, well acrylic latex paint is better when exposed to the elements,’ Marc says. ‘Doesn't fade, crack, quick drying, all this you know.’ 

I suppress my smirk with sincere, workmanlike nodding. ‘Yeah, yeah. I used it for my shed.’

‘Honestly, though, if I were you, the chalk-based paint would look nicer and do a decent protection job if it’s sheltered from the worst of the elements.’

I think of our little tree sheltered between the bookcase and the ottoman. 

‘Yeah, it will be,’ I say. ‘Alright, chalk it is.’

Marc nods. I follow him wordlessly to Aisle Five, feeling like I’m not just getting away with it, but nailing it. I can't wait to rub it in Freddie’s face. Not literally, obviously, it’s just Freddie bangs about those gardening tools he inherited from his grandpa’s estate as if he were Alan fucking Titchmarsh. And don’t even get me started on Tim’s motorcycle chat. One year he had that Vespa and now he’s constantly saying words like carburetor, alternator and fork leaks like a regular greasemonkey. 

Marc crouches down on his haunches. I join him. A handy man’s squat. 

‘This,’ he says, holding a can the size of a baby, ‘is our new range from Morris & Macpherson - so you know, good paints.’

Sounds a bit fancy for my liking - no Granocryl or Hammerite I’d seen earlier - but I nod anyway. 

‘What colour are you after?’ Marc asks. 

Peanut is liver-coloured. But I need some white for the background and obviously some red and green for the general festive vibe like we saw at the Tulleybridge Christmas Market.

‘Well, I’ve actually got quite a few jobs comin’ up, all oak, so maybe I'll getta couple. Brown, green, red, white, that sorta thing.’

‘Sure,’ he says. He gets four tins. Cafe Luxe, Scandinavian Forest, Emperor’s Silk and Portland Pebble. 

They all sound a bit interior for my liking. I bet Granocryl and Hammerite’s paints are called something more simple and workmanlike: Bear, Grass, Blood, Stone. 

I inspect the one litre tin of Cafe Luxe. £26.50. I scratch my hands to show off my callouses. 

‘Ok, I’ll ‘ave a think.’ I think that over £100 seems quite a lot for a few gourd decorations. ‘Thanks’, I add pointedly, so he leaves. 

I keep an eye on Marc in my peripheries. As soon as he turns out the aisle, I check ChatGPT. Turns out, I can buy a small set of multiple-paint colours in mini-pots at the arts and crafts store near our apartment. £10 all in. And ‘perfect for gourds’. Yay. 

I stand up. Marc is loitering around the corner of the aisle, no doubt waiting to mug my attention. 

We catch eyes. ‘Looks good,’ I say, ‘but I’m gonna ‘ave a think. Need to cost it up, you know.’ 

He nod-shrugs. I nod-shrug back. Then strut out the store workmanlike.

 Confessions of a Club Toilet

So they play this song, yeah, in the club I work at. It’s all about shaking that booty and there’s this line yeah, which goes: ‘I get mo’ ass than a toilet seat’. 

And I’m always like: doubt it, bruv. And I’d know, being a toilet seat and all. 

To be fair, I’m a club toilet, in the men's, so most ass tryta avoid me. If I wrote a rap, the lyric would go: ‘I get mo’ pees than fish and chips’. Na’ mean?

I get puke too. Vom normally in the bowl tho. And my lid is coke central. The crowd in this joint obviously never heard of keys - why would you snort anything off a toilet? 

But I don’t mind. Snorters are way better than the sprinklers, sprayers and shitters. 

And I’ve got it lucky. I only work weekend evenings. I got mates in offices workin’ the reverse 5:2. And those poor bowls at train stations: 7 day shifts, 18 hours per day. No fuckin’ way bruv. 

That’s not right. We need a union or someink. Or at least more attendants. My first club had this guy, right, had some kind of speech impediment or whatever as he was always saying these rhymes like ‘no spray, no lay’. ‘No splash, no gash.’ ‘No Armani, no poonani’. 

Weird bloke. Sold lollies. In a toilet. 

Should have sold funnels. Men in that club would just sway and spay all over me like they was waterin’ plants in a drought. 

But, gotta hand it to ‘im, it never smelled that bad in there and it was all over by 3am. 

Unlike this one gig I had. Big club, big toilets. Me and five others. 12-hour shifts, 10 til 10. Music growled non-stop. Bass honestly shook my cistern, man. Serious. But that’s pretty much the only thing that did. Hardly anyone peed. I remember this one guy, right, standin’ with his shrunken knob out, yeah, eyes wide, speakin’ to himself, willin’ himself to pee. 30 minutes he waited. 

I do remember a coupla gross shits and vomits, but mostly the men in those big clubs come in, unzip, get a bag out, snort, and flush an empty bowl. Which I don’t mind, cos it feels like gargling innit.

Funny tho. When I think bout it. I’ve been slept on, I’ve been fucked on, I’ve been drawn on, I’ve been flyered on, but I wouldn’t change it. You learn a lot of weird-ass shit in toilets. And one day, we’ll rise up and shit on you.

Beetle is a UK-based copywriter with a weird name. When he’s not writing words for other people, he likes to write weird, funny and dark short stories - mostly about everyday people in unusual situations or unusual people in everyday situations.