Julian Standen - The Gatecrasher lyrics

He shows up at the party in a pair of dark gla**es His grandfather wore in the war Saying nothing to no-one, just drinks as if that's What God gave him his ugly mouth for And he doesn't make pa**es at the girls in the corner In their Bolshevik gla**es and black When they giggle a little and look at him funny The gatecrasher only looks back He takes in the faces, never quite placing them Squinting his short-sighted eyes And each one reminds him of someone he's known Or someone he faintly dislikes And he can't understand the naive curiosity Forcing two strangers to talk When language is always and everywhere language And people are like cheese and chalk So he lifts himself out of his squatting position And gets up for something to eat But the ham is too pink and the turkey is cardboard And the plate is as floppy as meat So he fills up his gla** with a bottle of vodka Snatched from some new arrivals who stare As he tips back his head like a man seized with laughter And spits the drink into the fire And he looks so appealing with eyes like a bloodhound And hair like the 'Quatre Cent Coups' With the holes in his trousers designed to arouse us He looks like he'd know what to do On the rims of his eyes there's a trace of infection Or maybe the mark of a tear Is it mascara or is it bacteria, there where the white disappears? And which of those girls isn't scared of him And which of us isn't the same And maybe that's why, of the four of them No one remembers the gatecrasher' s name Absentmindedly licking the tip of a finger He's just used for scratching his ear He wrinkles his nose at the taste of the wax Which, like him, is acidic and sour And just for a second something comes back to him Something so real and remote That he flings back his vodka to blank out the thought And he grins as it scorches his throat Maybe he thinks of his mother, how she kicked out his father When he'd pushed her around once too much And how he'd pretended to sleep as she hugged him And how he'd been calmed by her touch Or he's sad with nostalgia for a little Italian Who worked in a bar in Milan While they swept up the gla** on Piazza Fontana He knew she'd be thinking of him She'd be thinking of him Or he wonders why Hitler liked lemon verbena And whether he loved Eva Braun Or maybe he thinks of his cheap bed and breakfast On the far side of town