by Paul Magrs
He doesn’t follow. “You do me your special in two minutes, and I take that,” he says, provoking laughter in the boy at his side, who slouches and leans in close. “You’re laughing at me?”
“Yep,” says the boy. “I’m fuckin’ laughing at you,” making his friends beside me crease up even more.
“You do a special in two minutes,” says the Pole. “What do they do in the special?” he asks.
The boy blinks. “They’ll do you a deep-fried Mars bar.”
“A…?”
“A bar of chocolate. Tossed in the deep fat. Battered like a fish,” the boy grins. “Heart attack and chips.”
“You laugh at me again.”
“You take your pick.” The boy spreads his work-chapped hands.
Here the woman behind the counter gives me a rapid semaphore. She mouths half of two or three words at me. My fish is almost done. Two pounds seventy. Do I want salt and sauce on that?
And I nod back, shrug, mouth bits of things to her and between us make it all understood. So easy.
The Polish man is getting his friend to help him pick out things at random. They point at things in the glass tanks, where everything is battered and looks the same. Now his friend is in a hurry to go. He doesn’t speak the language, but he knows they are being laughed at. We are all laughing at them, even the grim woman serving on.
“Some of these...and this...and that.”
Battered mushrooms, black pudding, haggis.
“Salt and sauce?”
“Salt and yes, pepper, everything.”
The boy beside him explodes in mirth, “Pepper! You don’t ask for pepper!” His friends laugh too and I think, that’s right. You don’t ask for pepper in a fish-and-chip shop. But why not?
The pole looks at the boy and there’s a sexy look in his eye. Bless him if he thinks this is flirtation. “You think this is funny?”
The boy tosses his head. “Who is this cunt?”
“Come and eat my special with me?”
The boy tells him to haddaway tae fuck and the Pole’s friend – the less articulate, more cautious friend – leads him away, out of the shop, and down Leith Walk.
The woman at the counter rolls her eyes. She does it for my benefit. I’m thinking: I’m included. I’m part of those who get the joke. With a flick of her head she tells me the fish is ready.
I don’t often go to cloney, denim-and-leather, flock-wallpapered bars like this. I’m out with German Angie and this bar, in the New Town, quite close to the block of flats where she lives, is her favourite. And, to be honest, I’m ready for a more raucous queer night out after looking after Craig. Recently I’ve even been going to straight pubs. Tonight is my antidote.
Angie gathers a gaggle of fans. She is known here. As soon as we arrive, coming down the cellar steps, Angie leading the way in a floor-length shiny black PCV mac, we are surrounded. Fat Terrance, who claims to be half-Austrian, comes to sit beside her first. He wants to sing umpah-umpah songs again, he says, like they did a few weeks ago. They both know the same songs from their homeland. He beats a rapid time with his two big palms. His face is shiny and red and he swipes at it with a hanky. Before others join us, he talks earnestly about how he can make people have a nice time. He is like Angie, he tells her. He can be the bright spark in company. It’s all his brilliant facade, he tells us, as others sit round our table. My facade, he repeats, giving it a hard ‘c’.
Fat Terrance envies us and how we live in the middle of the city. He commutes from Falkirk each Friday night for his weekly excursion onto the gay scene. He says that when you have so little time you have to thrust yourself in on people, even when you don’t feel like it. “Because,” he goes, “all contact is about the eyes and you can’t do that on the phone or in writing, can you?” He’s looking at us dolefully and then, with one grand gesture, sweeps up all our empty glasses and dashes to the bar to buy us more pints. With all of Angie’s fellers around, I’m being bought loads of drinks.
A man with a tash who worked in Kentucky Fried Chicken was wearing a horrible shirt he proudly said had cost him a fiver in Debenhams. He sat taller than anyone else at our table on a very high stool. He clicked his fingers at the barman – his ex, he confided, tapping his nose raffishly – and had us more drinks brought. “But honey, I cannot let you,” said Angie. “For that money you earn hard plucking chickens!”
A burly man in leather sat by Angie. He told her she knew where he was if she wanted to take all of her clothes off later. Then he leaned across to tell me about his regular Amsterdam trips. “The bars with the dark rooms aren’t like they are here,” he said, sounding disgusted. “Over there they’re for real. It’s not two fuckin’ sad old bastards looking at each other across the room. I went to this one fuckin’ leather bar and this bloke wanted me to get in the fuckin’ cage with him. I said, ‘had away and fuck yersel’. Git away to fuck.’ He got in there with someone else and I watched them. That’s what I do over there. I like to go and see what’s going on.”
He slipped away from our party then, and came back ten minutes later, left again, came back. They all did that. Went to stand in different places, went downstairs. I had a look round the dark bar. All the rude, luminous murals. Skeletons with club-like cocks.
When I came back we’d been joined by Alan from Honduras. He was doing applied linguistics and wanting to write a manual on Scottish dialects for the folk back home. He was quiet, dark and twinkling.
“Oh, his eyes are beautiful,” said Fat Terrance later. “And he took a shine to you,” he told me. I said I thought he was genuine. We talked about the royal family and royal babies and I was camping it up something rotten, making then listen and laugh. I went into this whole routine about how I wanted to have a baby, like dykes can, and what I might do with a turkey baster. I said I’d love to have a baby.
“How we laughed!” Angie said. “We laughed and we laughed till the cows ran home!” Fat Terrance flings back his head and shrieks. While he’s laughing, his eyes are flicking nervously about the rest of the room. Then they sang their funny songs again. Angie did songs from Cabaret.
On our way across town we stopped for one in a drag bar.
Fat Terrance: “Oh, I couldn’t go for all that. Do you think that’s nice? Some of them are nice. They’re attractive boys underneath it all. But that one...oh, here. She looks like a clown. Or a monkey. A monkey made up like a clown.”
I was introduced to the transvestite manager. Held hands very delicately. We sat on the stage, under the lights, Angie creaking in her belted raincoat. I knocked over her pint and it pooled across the stage and soaked into the red plush curtains.
In Route 66 there was a French rugby team in. Fat Terrance said he didn’t like the look of them. “I won’t be going up Calton Hill tonight if that lot are up there,” he said with a shudder. “Goodness, you’d hear them coming, wouldn’t you?”
They were backslapping and doing the French national anthem. And was it just me, or were they singing ‘Wonderwall’ in French? Fat Terrance went for the nightbus. Angie stood outside, deciding whether to brave the crush inside CC’s or to taxi home.
“Listen, honey, I’ve had a lovely evening, the nicest evening, but now I must leave you.”
Off she tottered. I went to CC’s, bursting with a sudden enthusiasm, topped up with nine pints. I felt smart, dressed as a skinhead, boots and braces. I talked with the bouncer – the same one who wanted to throw out Cameron later.
“But what’s he done?” I asked the bouncer. For a ghastly moment I thought he was going to say Cameron was underage. And there I’d been in the yellow corridor outside the gents’, letting the boy stick his tongue in my mouth.
“He spilt beer all over the manageress,” the bouncer said. “He picked the wrong cunt tae fuck with.” Cameron’s eyes looked full of tears. “Now,” he was told. “Go and find your sister, and get the fuck out.” She was already in the coat queue, looking mistrustful.
“I can’t stay. Do
you want me to? Do you want me to go? Will you come with me?” He was pulling on me. His sister said she’d slipped an acid tab into his vodka. Then they were gone, catching a taxi back to their parents.
I saw Dan in the queue. I’ve just started work with her, in the Scarlet Empress. She grabbed me and we talked briefly. Said how much better we both felt for getting fucked regularly.
Later there was some older bloke, David, pulling faces at me. I kissed him on the stairs. “I just want to cuddle,” he said, when I pulled away. “Tonight I want someone to hold me. I’ll give you a wank, if you want. I’d love to. I love your jeans slashed like that and your boots. But I want holding.”
In the toilets no one would piss next to this bloke with a shaved head. There was a queue. I wouldn’t wait. “Ay, you’re not shy, are you?” he went. We had a conversation about how best to shave your own head. I like that about this place, when you talk to people and then see them later, as everyone moves around. It’s like the fair. You see people getting on new rides. Twirling about. People getting on and getting off all over the place.
I staggered back. Halfway down Queen Street I almost turned back to find scraggy David and say, “Go on then. I’ll take you home.” But I carried on. By then I wished I’d taken Cameron up. Imagining a young, pink body. A small and hot prick. He’d have a prick like a baby mouse, that turns hot and red and inside out when it gets inflamed. Really, he must be barely out of his teens. That David kissed me and said, “You need a shave.” He rubbed his chin where I had burned him. “So do I.”
“Right,” I said. “I must be a grown-up.”
At the top of the hill we had a nightmare. This was because Reet was wearing his stillies. I’d said not to, I’d said what the night was going to be like, that we’d be out on the hillside and everything. But you can’t tell him anything. I made him take them off and carry them. He was cursing me. but there was no way I was missing out.
Everyone was out on the hillside. Sat in the long, flattened grass at nearly midnight. Thousands, in their thousands, watching the fireworks. There was that clock tower in the way, but we got the effect. Free, too, which was smart.
They had a big fuck-off laser from the Bank of Scotland, shooting out everywhere. The fireworks were in time with the music, but the bastard laser wasn’t. It was all over the place. It made the sky look tiny. Reet said, just think how much money they’ve spent on this lot. Millions! And the seats down under Princes Street cost like thirty quid each. Who’d pay that? Someone daft. There’s always daft people.
Reet’s always on about money. He hasn’t got much and he’s saving up. I’m not sure what for this time. Doesn’t get much from waitressing he says. I says, I bloody know! I do the same job! And he looks withering and says, “Aye, but you’ve got your inheritance coming and you’re gunna be a rich cow, aren’t you?” And he looks at me venomous.
This is up the hill, watching the fireworks, for the end of the Festival, the end of summer.
Someone’s passed Reet a bottle of booze and he’s passing it me, but I’m looking at him like, anyone could’ve spat in that But he says they were friends of his, the fellers passing it along. I’d never seen them before. Reet reckons everyone’s his friend, though. That’s his downfall, bless him, he’s daft.
And someone ‘s got their tranny going. Ha! Tranny. I mean their radio. Reet would laugh. Well, he might.
And their radio’s coming live from the castle, from the thirty quid seats, where you can hear the jewellery rattling, I swear it. They’re playing Handel and Beethoven, mostly in time with the fireworks. I was wondering which they did first…were they speeding up and slowing down the playing of the music...?
Was all the orchestra watching the sky instead of a conductor? That’d be good.
Reet was telling us then about a friend of his who’d been sleeping with a feller who made fireworks. He invented and designed them for a living. Can you imagine? When they stopped shagging, the Pyrotechnician — that’s the word — took a big fuck-off Roman Candle round the other bloke’s house. Who thought he was being, like, funny at first. But he wasn’t. It was a parting gift. He said, when you set it off, whenever you choose to...think of me.
Turns out the other bloke hasn’t set it off yet. Hasn’t the heart. I reckon it’s Reet himself, the way he told the story, but he wouldn’t say. And then we got interrupted by some pretty loud fucking banging over the top of Handel’s Zarkoff the Priest or whatever. Scary piece of music and loud banging. And there’s golden showers! Loads of tinselly threads corning down. It must look fucking ace down on Princes Street. Cause you’d be right underneath it. Like it was coming down on you, filling the whole sky, like a big golden cage. From where we were it just looked like Tina Turner’s fright wig, the shape it was in. Like the castle was wearing Tina Turner’s frizzy golden wig.
It kept banging, getting bigger, and everyone’s cheering louder and some are just laughing, spontaneously.
“That’s the campest thing I’ve seen all summer!’ Reet laughs, standing up. Everyone’s starting to stand up.
I pull a face. The campest thing all summer...? Who’s he kidding. But we’re all shrieking and clapping and me and him have got our arms round each other and we’re nearly skidding down the steep bloody hill. It’s like Close Encounters. Or more like Baboon Mountain, in Flamingoland Zoo. When I turn to look, everyone’s clinging to the hillside in the dark like monkeys. Some feller’s got an amazing posh camera out, just behind us. His pictures are on the local page the next day and it turns out he’s press. He knew where to get the best view and that was with us.
And that’s what it’s been like, just recently. Like we’ve been getting the best view. It’s a feeling I get.
Anyway, I’m thinking, I’m a stupid cow. Call meself a photographer. Where’s my camera? When I start me classes, September, I could’ve bloody wowed them with fabulous shots of the end of the festival. But no, I was drinking brown booze with me tranny mate and fannying about on the hillside. I reckon I’ve got to get me act together.
When the fireworks were over Reet goes, shall we go dancing downstairs in CC’s. And I go, all right Reet.
It was down CC’s that I met Reet in the first place, back at the start of the summer. He came right through the crowd at me on Karaoke night. Giving us the gladeye. He thought I was a lad. It didn’t help when I said me name was Dan. Thought his luck was in. He bought me a drink. I drink Chocolate Vodkas. CVs I call them. They’re lovely. He was all togged up, tottering about, but there was no way I was mistaking him for a lass. You can always tell it’s him underneath all that shit. I’d never tell him that though, he’d be horrified. Anyway, I’d never go for a lass all dressed up like that. Not a lassy lass, if you see what I mean. Though Janice looked a bit straight. Especially at the end. Who was Janice’? Oh, well, ages ago.
The night of the fireworks then, we went swanning in past the bouncers and the place was completely packed. The lasses on the door made space for us though. Nice to see four brave strapping lasses on the door. In tuxes, too, looking great. I knew one of them, Daphne, lived in the same street all her life, near here, with her mother. Mother’s a dyke, too. They sing together on Karaoke night sometimes. Do ‘Wheel’s on Fire’ and bring the frigging house down. Everyone claps and shouts. All the dykes and gay boys want to be up there singing with their mams on Karaoke night. They’d love it. As if singing something daft together would make it all right. Like they were having their mam’s say it was all right. Daphne’s mam’s still quite fit, actually, for an old lass. Has a stick, tipped in gold.
“Tell me about it then,” Reet’s saying as we shove in to the bar. It’s heaving. You can tell it’s the end of the Festival. All of these lot’ll be gone by the end of the week. Then it’ll be a different story. This place will be down to the usual — bairns and pensioners. Club Fourteen-to-Seventy I call it. Most of them are bloody men, too. You’d think Reet’d be glad, but he’s bloody not. He kind of gazes round whichever place w
e go to and his eyes are out on fucking stalks, swivelling round. The talent. His verdict is usually: “Slim pickings.”And he looks all cross, as if it’s a personal insult.
Tonight at the bar he looks round and goes, “Slim pickings,” again, as if out of habit. And then he says, “Go on then. Tell us about last night.”
Oh, as if I’ve got anything new to tell.
I go, “Just let’s get our drinks and find a spot. I’m not shouting me business over this lot.”
“Aye, all right,” he nods and elbows his way right up to the bar.
And then he’s making cow eyes at that very young lad who serves on there. He’s really thin and pretty-slicked-down hair. Wears an Adidas T-shirt like he’s in Blur or something. And he’s always chewing gum and looking like he can smell shit. For the hell of it once, when we were standing on the edge of a dance floor together somewhere, I sidled up and asked, did he know they made chewing gum out of cow’s feet? And he just looked at me with his eyes all sly. The fucker said nowt. I could have slapped him. I bet he just couldn’t think of owt to say. I don’t know what his name is.
So there’s Reet batting his false eyelashes over the dripping wet bar at him. Then I notice the label hanging out of the back of his top. Something else he’s managed to nick from French Connection. Don’t ask me how he does it.
Turns out it’s a special Karaoke night tonight. Some bloke’s up on the stage, the little podium thing, fucking up that ‘Saturday Night’ song. Bloody Whigfield. He’s all long dark hair and a dippy smile and you can see he loves himself to bits. But he’s gone up there and he can’t sing a note cause his throat’s gone all hard and he wants to shit his pants and he hasn’t got the strength to climb down off the podium, never mind do the daft special dance he’s been practising all week in his bedroom. He can do the ‘da da da dee do da’ bits great though. But the DJ bloke stops him early and covers it over with some chat. The DJ bloke has pinched all his patter and mannerisms off Julian Clary. He’s in a kilt and everything and all of Julian’s make-up, but he’s looking a bit embarrassed and he’s stilted and less gobby than usual. Then I realize that’s because the real Julian Clary’s standing at the bar, surrounded by American blokes with knapsacks and he’s got a face like a smacked arse. He’s got no make-up on and these really big crow’s feet that you never see on TV and he’s really tall! Nearly taller than I am.
