Johnny Bananas - Flash Fiction (909 Words)

    Whenever someone walks into the club and asks for Johnny, it always reminds me of the Pink Floyd song, Have a Cigar. By the way, which one’s Pink?

    The club is called Johnny Bananas and even as I write this it still sounds better to me in an American accent, as if Johnny Bananas was a New York gangster from the fifties. It sounds ridiculous coming out of the mouths of locals, with their broad Norfolk accents. I’d thought more than once about putting a video on TikTok asking people with different accents across the UK to record themselves saying it, just so I could see which was the funniest. I bet that it would be Brummie or Scouse, but I’d like to hear it, just to be sure.

    Johnny Bananas isn’t a person. There isn’t even a John on the payroll. The owner is an ex-Para called Rob who opened the club after a mate of his won the lottery. He’s made a point of getting to know all the local veterans and he started the place to give them somewhere to be. You see, the thing about being ex-army, or ex-RAF, is the ‘ex’ part of it. It means you used to be part of something, but now you’re not. You no longer belong. Somehow, after devoting almost every waking hour to a lifestyle, you’re supposed to just walk away and overnight try to become something else. Someone else. It’s hard.

    Veterans find it harder to get a job, because for the past five, fifteen or thirty years, they’ve not had a job, they’ve had a lifestyle. The nine-to-five for them is as much of a shock as basic training would be for the average thirty year old couch slob and a lot of them can’t handle it. So they drink, they get into fights, and more of them end up homeless or in prison than any other walk of life, and let’s not even mention the suicide rate.

    The club saves lives. That’s not an exaggeration. Most of them won’t admit it, obviously, but I reckon half of the blokes that come in here would’ve ended up on the street, in the cells or at the end of a rope if they didn’t have the club, because for most of them, this is now where they belong. It’s for ex-army, ex-RAF, ex-Navy, even ex-coppers. Some might say it’s a crutch, just something to replace the support they used to get from the military, and I say, so fucking what if it is? Are people suddenly not allowed to use crutches? People need support in all sorts of ways and if feeling like they belong to something is what they need to get them through the day then where’s the harm?

    Most of the blokes who come in here don’t see themselves as visitors. They’re members. There’s no form, no subs, not even a plastic card or a pin badge, but they’re members all the same. You can tell the visitors a mile off. They come in and ask for a coffee or a sandwich while most of the blokes will head straight for the kettle and the fridge without stopping to ask. They know they don't have to. The visitors can’t tell the staff from the rest of the guys - and to be honest, I’m not sure I can now. I know Stacey and Trevor are staff and I think if they could afford to do it for free, they would, but like the rest of us, they have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Simon and Amy definitely aren’t staff. Amy’s not bad, even for an ex-copper. I can’t work Simon out though. He’s the one who gave Rob the money for the club, but he doesn’t look like he’s loaded and he certainly doesn’t act like it either. He’s just as happy to scrub pots in the kitchen or sweep the floors as anyone else. He even mucked in with the redecorating after the chip pan fire.

    I’ve wandered off track a bit. I started off talking about the name of the club and how people keep coming in looking for Johnny Bananas. Well, we’re all Johnny Bananas.

    Did you ever have one of those stupid classes at school where they show you how to use a condom? You take it out of the packet, squeeze the tip… well, you know. In that lesson they give you a banana so you can practice putting one on. Some teachers use a cucumber, but they’re not fooling anybody. Most of them use a banana, and at the end of the lesson the bananas go in the bin. Nobody wants to eat a banana that’s had a condom on it, so they all get chucked. If you think about it, though, there’s nothing wrong with the fruit, just a bit of lube on the skin, and you’re not even going to eat the skin are you? But even knowing that, I wouldn’t want to eat a condom banana and I bet you wouldn’t either. 

    Except here in Norfolk, like a lot of places in England, we don’t call them condoms, or rubbers. Sometimes they’re called Durex, but most of the time they are rubber johnnies, or just johnnies. 

    So that’s us. We’re the bananas that nobody will eat because after we’ve been useful for one thing, nobody wants to know us. We are the Johnny Bananas.