Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire

by Morgana Blackrose

  “We’re not just going to let you run away, you know,” Mel said. “You’ll get a big fat going-away party out of us, that’s for sure. This very weekend, so you’d better not have anything planned until after then. OK?”

  He stretched out an arm and pulled Mel close to him, sandwiching himself between her and Olivia.

  “No, I don’t. And I know you ladies will make it the most amazing party I’ve ever been to.”

  “Dammit,” Gloria snapped, “there was me thinking we were gonna get away with a quick beer in the café around the corner.”

  With Bruno out to lunch and the rest of us milling around backstage, it felt as if things would never again be the same. The guy had given us all such a break, letting us do what we all loved doing – entertaining – and there wasn’t a dry eye anywhere among us now.

  “So what do we do?” Gloria asked as she pulled herself up onto the dressing-table. “I don’t think a round of champagne is really worthy of him. Only something special, something unique and memorable will do.”

  “I’ve got such a something up my sleeve,” Mel said, and reached up behind one of the lockers. She pulled down a card binder and withdrew a bundle of stapled-together pages. “Well, it’s something I started working on a while ago, actually – it started off as a couple of songs I was writing - and totally forgot all about, until I first got a whiff of His Nibs wanting to call it all a day. So, I rushed it through to the end and, I thought, maybe it could fit the bill.”

  A photocopied handout was passed through our hands.

  “What the hell is this?” Olivia asked with a raised eyebrow, page flicking.

  “Theatre, my lovelies,” Mel purred. “Something a little special that I hope The Man will never forget. This is, after all, still a cabaret venue. And this little musical drama of mine evokes the earliest days of that wondrous art-form. Bringing us full circle, if you will. Don’t worry; I’m the only one who’ll be doing the singing. All you lot have to do is look sexy.”

  We read over the pages first with skepticism, then growing amusement, and finally, admiration. Melissa wasn’t just a pretty face with an endearingly filthy sense of humor and a wonderful voice – it seemed she could write pretty good lyrics, and more, when she put her mind to it. I looked up from the pages to ask her a question, and I saw her looking down at the floor, scratching at something on the back of her head. That fearless, exhibitionist, raucous woman was, for the first time in all the years I’d known her, looking self-consciously anxious, as though expecting a tirade of negative critique.

  It was the first time she’d presented us with something serious, something so personal, something so damn important.

  “It, uh, works better with the music, obviously,” she said, her voice fluttering a little in a flustered tremolo, so unlike those bold, ballsy tones that shook the old plaster pseudo-classical pillars of the Kitty Klub on a weekly basis. “Uh, I’ve figured it all out with the guys in the band, if you want an undress rehearsal sometime.”

  Gloria smiled. “Mel honey, you’ve been holding out on us.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just a silly little thing, really. But I thought it might work. Something different, y’know? Something he might cherish a little. Something we can put a little heart and soul into.” She flicked open the pages of her own copy of the script. “Here, I’ll run through it for you.”

  And she sang the whole thing without a hitch, as though singing and flaunting her body were the only ways with which she could connect confidently with those around her. It was a bouncy, infectious number in mostly two-four time, revolving around a simple riff which she hummed as the intro and the outro and which I imagined clattering out of a honky-tonk piano.

  Five minutes later, we stood in a little semi-circle and applauded her.

  “You think that can work?” she asked, still sounding rather too much on the nervous side. And I still couldn’t remember the question I was going to ask her earlier, but it didn’t matter much now.

  “Oh God, Bruno’s going to love this so much, darling,” Olivia sighed. “It might even help make him change his mind when he realizes what talent he has here.”

  Mel leant back against the drawers and blew a puff of breath towards the ceiling.

  “Kick ass,” Gloria grinned. “I think we’re going to have a good time with this. Aren’t we?”

  “I get to slap bitches. I’m up for it,” Svetlana smirked, making Gloria’s grin tremble slightly. Still feeling her relief as a tangible wave around her, I slid in close to Mel and gave her a big hug.

  “Let’s do it,” I whooped, and smacked her deep on the cheek with my lips.

  We’d have less than a week to rehearse the whole thing, but it was for Bruno, and therefore worth it. And when the night of his official public departure came, it was to a packed house that Mel’s little number was premiéred, much to everyone’s delight:

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Berlin Girls’

  An Erotic Play in One Act

  with music

  by

  Melissa W. Wagner

  Dedicated to Bruno

  Characters:

  The Gambler – Mel

  The Red Angel – Phoenyx

  The Behrenstrasse’s Bitch – Svetlana

  Berolina - Olivia

  Militia - Gloria

  [Curtains open. Pale spotlight falls on our Gambler, wearing a man’s white suit and top hat, astride a chair. She looks wistfully and longingly out into the audience, playing with a pack of cards as she does so.]

  The Gambler: ‘Fell in love with a Berlin Girl, just the other day

  Saw her in the chorus line of the Domino Cabaret

  Among the same old regulars, incognito on the town;

  The boys who might be girls, and the young thugs in black and brown.

  [She is left holding the Queen of hearts, which she presses to her lips.

  Enter the Angel, wrapped in red velvet.

  The Gambler gets up and follows her around but the Angel is too busy appealing to the audience, and gradually slipping out of her dress, to notice this lovesick fan.]

  The Gambler: ‘In this midnight, twilight world there is something for everyone

  A thousand ways to be disgraced, to let loose your idea of fun;

  In black and white they’ll strut their stuff, on every night down town

  But if like me, you fall for one, expect no sympathy

  For that broken heart

  She’ll leave you with...

  [Enter the Spirit.]

  ‘Oh oh, those Berliner Girls

  They’ll take you to another world.’

  [The Gambler, now delirious with delight at the sight of her Angel, begins to disrobe; first her bow tie, then opening her blouse, and sliding off her jacket which she places down for the Angel to walk on as she strides past gracefully.]

  Gambler: ‘One day, some day, you’ll see her somewhere

  Standing on a smoky backlit stage.

  Bad news, headlines, forget about the world’s crimes

  For an hour or two she’ll help you turn the page.

  In chorus lines, she’ll look divine

  Stepping out in perfect time

  With a flash of something

  With a flash of something

  With a flash of some forbidden fruit.’

  [The Gambler flops down in her chair, half naked, and reclines lazily, dreamily. She takes off her hat, shakes down her hair, then puts it back on again at a jolly angle.]

  ‘Throw me another cigarette, I’ve got something to say

  Fell in love with a Berlin Girl, just the other day.

  The nasty drink-fuelled nationalists can say just what they like

  But we all know that anything goes and everything’s all right.’

  [Enter the Bitch stage left, dressed in black leather and thigh boots, and Militia, in black and fetishistic 1930s military gear, stage right. These two formidable females both carry riding crops and stare each other d
own. One slaps the other, and again in return, but neither backs down. Cue blood-red stage lights, as things get decidedly darker and decadent liberty battles tyranny in the background.]

  ‘There’s horror, lust and ecstasy on stage at the White Mouse

  The Behrenstrasse’s Babel and Berlin’s (second) wildest house!

  There’s love and pain a-plenty dressed in shiny leather boots

  But whips and chains and naked hips are nothing when you see

  With your own eyes,

  This fantasy...’

  [The Gambler and the Angel approach each other. They circle, then link arms, and gradually undress each other while the Bitch unzips and unlaces herself. She has subdued Militia after a fearsome catfight, stripped her and now holds her by the hair, on her knees, in front of the stage. Finally, under the fearsome command of her mistress, Militia submits totally and prostrates herself under the Bitch’s heel. The Gambler takes the Angel’s hand and kisses her. All turn to face the audience.]

  ‘Oh oh, those Berliner Girls

  They’ll take you to another world.’

  And so Mel sang her self-penned jazz number in G minor – by turns plaintive, raucous, and very sexy, much like the woman herself – while the rest of us acted out, to the letter, her stage directions to Odo’s merrily tinkling piano. The full band slid in only for the final chorus, a great big pumping, grinding, slithering sidewinder of a climax which saw us all disrobing together in unison; rude trumpets and thrusting double bass had the whole house clapping along, and the pride and relief was clearly visible on Mel’s face as her little show wrapped up without a single hitch.

  Now naked apart from her boots, gloves and top hat, Mel came back to the mike and blared back into the music with a semi-improvised announcement, “And now it’s time to say farewell to the man who brought us here. Let’s get his ass on stage right now, and give a great big cheer.”

  Every head turned in the direction of Mel’s pointing finger, and just in case Bruno thought he might have escaped this one unscathed, the stage lights swung out and drenched him in swirling red and blue spots. The applause erupted as he bowed his head, raising hands in appreciation as the house refused to be quiet, and in fact got even louder the longer it went on. But knowing his obligations, he hurried out between the tables to laughs and cheers from all around, to pull himself up onstage beside a bunch of naked women, all of whom were now dedicated to making him the centre of attention.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mel announced as he bowed to us all, “May I present Mister Bruno Fassbender, without whom we’d all be working in grocery stores, and you’d all be at home staining the pages of Penthouse. Thank you, Bruno. Thank you for everything.”

  So that was his name! Bruno Fassbender. Our jolly tanned giant who was now rapidly turning a wonderful shade of embarrassed.

  We hung around him, over him, reclining at his feet, snuggling up to his side. Our Hugh Hefner, we pawed at him and looked up at him like the star struck starlets we probably all still were at heart, frolicking around him as he stood centre stage and beamed.

  And then the camera flashguns detonated from the other end of the bar, an extremely rare sight as Bruno never allowed the press inside the venue, or permitted the public to photograph us, either. Yet he sat there grinning as the white lightning cracked over us, stabbing out of the dark like the thunderbolts of Zeus to capture the final moments of his career as boss of the Kitty Klub.

  And the look on his face when we presented him with his going-away gift – which all of us, from the band to the bar-staff, to the cleaning women and the twin doormen, had contributed to – was within a day immortalized in a huge blow-up portrait placed proudly behind the bar. Every drinker in the Kitty Klub from then on would be presented with Bruno’s gaping, wide-eyed look of astonishment as he pulled apart the gold gift wrap and found himself looking at a beautiful blue Burmese kitten in a gold-plated travel basket.

  As usual, I was the last to find out the true significance of the present until after the event, when Mel confided in me that Bruno’s own beloved cat, an elderly Burmese he’d inherited from his mother, had died the month before of old age, and was part of the reason why he had become so withdrawn and quiet of late. The story helped to make me feel a stab of guilt over Boris, but I quickly pulled those hooks out of my skin. A long time had passed since Boris and Honey, Johnny Iko and my days of angst and woe. Whole weeks went by when I even forgot about the phoenix blazing across my back, until I happened to catch myself in a mirror with my top off and noticed the flickering wingtips sneaking around my shoulders like the fingers of a lover about to embrace me. And long gone were the days when I based my whole stage show upon the revelation of that piece of work; tattoos had become so commonplace now, it seemed that every other sportsman, girlie pop singer or Hollywood idol was to be seen sporting a new example of ink work somewhere on their flesh. Mine was still a flamboyant paradigm of the art form, of course, one of the greatest I’ve ever seen; but for all that I did not think of her, or see much of her now, my firebird was still a part of me, making me what I am, and what I had been in the past.

  And as we had predicted, things at the Klub began to wind down with Bruno’s departure. We got a postcard from him a month later, sent from some resort in Biarritz telling us what a wonderful time he was having, but wishing he was with all of us in the Klub on a Saturday night. And we believed him, so the postcard got tucked inside the front of the frame that held the big photograph behind the bar, rapidly becoming in the space of a few weeks something of a shrine to Bruno, our earthly Father who was not quite in heaven, not any more, but who would be comforted in the knowledge that his angels still cared about him and worked his stage for the benefit of mankind.

  We got another letter six months later, advising us that his new Burmese was not a he but a she, and with a litter on the way. Eventually six in all were born, and he named them Phoenyx, Melissa, Gloria, Olivia, Svetlana and Petra, whether they were female or not (two of them weren’t, and I waggishly suggested that he ought to have named one of them Honey instead). Photographs soon followed, and of course they all got pinned up in the special public space as well, an area that was now in danger of taking over half the bar.

  Melissa had already taken over the running of the place, and I helped her out when I could, with simple administrative tasks – the place was after all still my home – but the world was spinning on around us, and traditional erotic cabaret with live jazz bands and songs and such was no longer all that cool. It sounds strange to describe a strip club as ‘innocent’ and yet that was the kind of atmosphere we fostered, and enjoyed. The regulars were all perfect gentlemen, and the ladies never seemed to look down upon us or show any kind of jealousy towards us. Quite the opposite, in fact – we seemed to be inspiring for some, and were loved by many. There was never anything crass or gross in what we did – and maybe that was part of the problem, as it turned out. The adult entertainment industry had changed so much, while we remained in our time capsule. The regulars from the time I first joined had begun to fade away, their numbers getting more threadbare as the years passed. Gone were the Gang of Four and Heinrich, and Hansel and Gretel. BCKIG still hung around, but not as frequently as he used to and whole months went by without his stoic, silent presence to perturb and bemuse us.

  The younger generations expected something harder, more punchy, and more modern. Gloria had been the first to put over that kind of act but by now she was over forty, and while still sickeningly supple and fit beyond all credulity, there was nothing that she could do which younger kids on the block could not do also. Half of her make-up drawer now consisted of primers, concealers, and other hideously expensive products designed to hide wrinkles, or appear to do so, at least.

  Our younger dancers came and went like moths, either filling in time between college courses or while making up their minds what to do with the rest of their lives – and the rest of us were, in truth, getting on a bit to the point that we were alm
ost in danger of becoming a parody of ourselves. This wasn’t rock and roll, where age bred respectability and growing legions of followers; the secret of our success was literally skin-deep and I’d already overheard a couple of the veteran Kits discussing cosmetic surgery. That was a path I had no interest in treading.

  The writing was appearing on the wall like dirty graffiti, and while I had no wish to read it, there was no avoiding it. And when finally it came, it did so with a dour-faced, melancholy inevitability, a quiet whimpering with no bang in sight.

  Melissa called us all into a meeting in the Klub late one Monday morning before the doors were due to open, and I knew it wouldn’t be a pleasurable gathering.

  She got straight to the point.

  “Well, we’re another body down again,” she said with a glance at the performance rota, the weekly calendar usually pinned up in the backstage area. She crumpled up the page and pinged it behind her. “Gudrun hasn’t bothered to return my calls, so I guess her no-show at the weekend means she’s not interested in her last pay packet.” She picked one of the temporary weekly green pay slips from the bar beside her (the monthly pay slips we old pros got were blue in color) and shredded it into confetti which she showered behind her, beneath the goggle-eyed gaze of Bruno, who still looked down silently upon us all from on high.

  “We outclassed her,” Olivia sniggered. “I could see it in her eyes – she was plain jealous.”

  “Shame,” Svetlana said. “I was looking forward to putting her over my knee, as well.”

  “More overtime for someone, then?” I assumed.

  Mel sat down on a bar stool. “The point of this little Klub Hug wasn’t to ask who wants to cover her shift. But to ask a bigger question: how much longer do you all think we can keep this up? Be honest now.”