At this point, I must say that the following story is profoundly grim. A young man’s first entrance into the world of what the local radio DJs call ‘bonking’ should be, one feels, strewn with rose petals and shot in soft-focus, but this particular encounter fell a long way short of mystical. I actually had rose petals with me. I still carried the ones Mick Jagger had scattered on me at the Odeon, but I would not have liked to squander them on a night like this.
And the challenge had come quite early in the evening, so my focus was still unnervingly sharp. What I’m saying is, there’s still time to pull out and skip to the next section. If you continue with this one, don’t come crying to me.
Here goes. I drove with my unofficial sponsor to the street where he had spotted these women. Sure enough, two of them were on the prowl. On the way, I had dropped some very heavy hints that there was still time to back out, we could nip in for a drink somewhere, he could have his fiver back, and no one would be any the wiser. But no, he was determined that the challenge should be met. I had never done anything remotely like this before but reckoned I knew the type of thing that was said. We pulled up and I wound down the window. It was, as far as I could tell, the more attractive of the two women who approached the car. This was probably the last good news of the night. The other, a tall, broad-shouldered white woman with afro hair, reminded me of the cartoon-character Hair Bear. I was already scared as it was. If she had approached the car I would have been worried that she might possibly overturn it in a fit of pique. The approaching whore, also a white woman but with straight, jet-black hair, was probably in her early thirties. She wore so much make-up it was hard to tell. This was how our exchange went. Throughout this conversation, she chewed what I hoped was gum.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘I wondered if you might know where I could find a good time.’ Suddenly, I had become a nineteenth-century gentleman, leaning out of a hansom cab window as he once more gave in to his secret vice.
‘No,’ she said, as if surprised by my enquiry. Perhaps she had taken me literally and thought I was trying to use her as some kind of late-night Entertainments Officer. If I’d thought my mate would have let me off, I would have said, ‘Oh, well, sorry to bother you,’ and wished her a respectful good night, but I knew he wouldn’t swallow it. Which was more than I could say for her. So, I persevered.
‘Oh, really? I thought you would.’
‘Look,’ she said, impatiently, ‘d’you want business?’ Now, whereas I felt that my euphemism had got a disarming jolliness about it, hers, well, it just made the whole thing sound sordid.
‘Erm, yeah,’ I said, loath to share the metaphor.
‘Ya got five?’ she asked. Every element of my being wanted to say ‘I dunno, I’ve never measured it’, but she really didn’t look like a woman who enjoyed persiflage.
‘Erm, yeah.’ What a time to develop a catchphrase.
‘Come on,’ she said abruptly, with an air of ‘There’s work to be done.’ I stepped out on to the street, with my mate explaining that he was going to just pull round the corner. I think he meant the car.
My new friend opened the front-door of a terraced house and I followed her in, taking one backward glance at Hair Bear. I must have been hysterical by this stage because I actually said, ‘Are you gonna be alright out here on your own?’ She looked back at me as if I was an inanimate object. I paused to wonder if a more inappropriate thing had ever been said. And then I entered the whore’s lair.
It was a small room with a tiny, dark-blue three-piece and, surprisingly, a rather enticing coal-fire. She turned and held out a hand. Maybe she always liked to begin proceedings with a hearty handshake? ‘Got the money?’ she asked. She was obviously used to having it up-front, so to speak. I handed over my mate’s fiver. I have to say, I had liked her better in streetlight. Under a harsh, bare light-bulb she looked like Cher’s six-month-old corpse. Still, I didn’t feel it was my place to suggest a lamp-shade. She put the fiver in the pocket of her long denim coat. In fact, she was all in denim, with matching jeans and waistcoat. It was going to be like fucking one of Status Quo. She took off the coat and hung it on the chair. Then popped open her waistcoat, which had studs rather than buttons, to reveal small naked breasts and a pot-belly that had so many stretch-marks, it looked like a grey slinky. I would have walked out there and then had it not been for the coal-fire.
I produced a condom from my pocket. ‘D’you want me to wear this?’ I said. I’d been carrying it around, just in case, for about two years. ‘It’s up to you,’ she said. Well, I was in two minds, really. There would have been something satisfying about just sneaking in so close to the ‘Use By’ date but, on the other hand, I had never actually put one on before and I was worried I might come across as slightly gauche. ‘I won’t bother,’ I said. Stifle that shriek. This was the early seventies, before Aids was invented. I was only risking old-fashioned ailments like syphilis, gonorrhea or trench-foot. Besides, there was no sign of a waste-bin and I didn’t want to put the fire out.
She kicked off some unpleasant sandals and removed her jeans and pants simultaneously. She had very little sense of the dramatic. However, I was able to peer down into the jeans as she held them in front of her. This was an error. I won’t upset you with the unpleasant details but let’s just say that, judging by her pants, her arse was a very heavy smoker. Now, I’m no snob, but you would think that someone whose job involved working with the public would have had a tad more pride in her appearance. She was just filthy. As she stood naked before me, I could see white lines down the length of her inner thigh where some indefinable fluid had run down her legs, cutting its way through the grime. (Don’t you wish you’d skipped this when you had the chance?) She sat on the floor, with her elbows on the seat of the settee, and spread herself in anticipation. A blind man would have presumed that someone had opened one of those tins of salmon rescued from Scott’s Arctic expedition. I dropped to my knees, hoping that I could get underneath the smell, the way people trapped in burning buildings get underneath the smoke, but there was no escape. I noticed that she had ‘Corky’ tattooed on her thigh. ‘Is that your name?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s a nickname.’
‘Oh,’ I said, wondering if perhaps she was a lover of fine wines.
I undid my powder-blue flares and revealed myself to her. She looked at it the way Imelda Marcos might have looked at a pair of supermarket plimsolls. With a bit of manual assistance from her and a nostalgic flashback to four girls’ bums in a physics lab from me, the deeply unsatisfactory deed was done. This was an even worse experience than you might imagine. Half-way through, the door, presumably leading to another room, began to rattle. I heard children’s voices. ‘Hey, come away,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Corky’s got a gentleman in there.’ This truly was the nineteenth century. I felt sure that at any moment the woman would tell the children to get back up the chimney. But I heard no more.
Her part played, Corky began to thaw somewhat. In fact, she became what I would almost describe as chatty. ‘What’s a nice bloke like you doing in business?’ she politely enquired. I had to admit that I was starting to favour her euphemism over mine. I explained that it wasn’t my fiver. It could be my imagination but I think she looked a bit hurt.
‘You should come over to my place in Aston,’ she said. ‘I’ve got all sorts of equipment there.’ Hopefully, she meant soap and water. She even offered me use of what seemed to be the communal J-Cloth to clean myself up. It lay at the side of the hearth, and looked like it might scurry for cover when she reached for it. As she picked it up, it crackled in her hand. I declined. She gave herself a quick wipe-round and put it back to dry. Finally, she explained to me that, for eight quid, I could have her and her friend outside, for a threesome.
Now, I love a bargain, but in the end I declined. Although I did imagine with glee sliding the eight quid across the bar-room table towards my mate. As I left, I shook Corky’s hand and actually said, ‘It’s been a bus
iness doing pleasure with you.’ I don’t think she got it. Or maybe she’d heard it before.
I spent the next two weeks having to tell this story to my friends, which is why I remember it in such grim detail.
When I got back that night I went for a piss, and suddenly, when my once-virgin nob emerged, that tin of Scott’s Arctic expedition salmon was opened once more. No wonder Captain Oates went for that walk.
At seventeen I started to get a bit disillusioned with the Catholic Church. It was the usual stuff. I wasn’t convinced by their views on contraception, masturbation, divorce, or even homosexuality. I single out the last one because up until my mid-teens I had, like everyone else I knew, felt that moes, as we called them, were worthy firing-squad material. By the way, the term mo was, as you may have guessed, an abbreviation of homosexual. I had assumed that it was a common expression but think now that it may have been exclusive to our area. This was made evident when I did my first-ever paid gig at London’s Comedy Store and told the audience I had just been to see a fabulous gay musical entitled Five Moes Named Guy. The audience just looked at me. (You know, I’m having the same problem with the plural of ‘mo’ as I did for the plural of ‘Des’. Should there be an ‘e’?)
My view on moes had changed totally after watching a TV drama called The Naked Civil Servant, featuring John Hurt as Quentin Crisp. For the first time, it occurred to me that moes could be witty, clever and likeable. The anti-mo characters, on the other hand, were all ignorant and humourless. I know people slag telly off and say it’s mind-numbing and low-brow, but I believe that watching that drama made me a better person and its influence has stayed with me. I even wrote a gay anthem called ‘Marmite Soldiers’. That’s a joke. I never said I’d stopped doing gags about them.
Anyway, these sort of objections to Catholic teaching were fairly widespread. My other doubts were a bit more hardcore. Papal infallibility, the concept of purgatory, transubstantiation (oh, look it up). These were more technical problems. My mate Tim’s family were Christadelphian, and I started to get interested in that. I even toyed with the idea of switching to the Church of England, though I wouldn’t have been seen dead in a purple crimplene safari-suit. I hadn’t stopped believing in God but, putting it simply, I was uneasy about the power, riches, grandeur and resulting attitudes of the Catholic Church, and felt that wasn’t what religion should be about. I imagine similar doubts occasionally run through the minds of people who support Manchester United.
So I stopped going to Mass and announced to my parents that the Catholic Church was hypocritical and un-Christian. If you don’t come from a Catholic family, it’ll be hard for you to understand the upset this caused, but what did I care? I was young, idealistic, headstrong and, of course, drunk. So the Catholic Church and me parted company.
Meanwhile, Tim’s family were very keen for me to join their lot. I suppose they thought my conversion might bring Tim back to the fold.
I was with Tim one night, driving down Broad Street, one of the main roads that lead into Birmingham City Centre. Well, he was driving. My attempts at getting a driving licence had come to an emergency stop a few weeks before. I had done my driving test in nearby Quinton. About two minutes in, having just turned the corner from the Test Centre, I stopped at a zebra crossing to let people cross. So far so good. I took off the hand-brake (hand-brake at a zebra crossing! That brings back memories) and set off again, but suddenly there was a loud bump and an old man was on the bonnet, his terrified face about three inches from my windscreen. The examiner yelped in horror like a puppy that’s had its foot trodden on, I braked, and the old man slid back on to the road. Obviously, all these things happened more or less simultaneously. ‘I couldn’t help that,’ I snapped at the examiner. ‘He just dashed out.’
‘Dashed out?’ said the examiner, in a voice that would have hit the ‘Oh, pretty baby’ note with ease. ‘He’s about seventy. He hasn’t dashed anywhere for thirty years.’ By now, the old man was limping away – I think I heard him say ‘young fool’ – and the examiner got out of the car to call him back. I suppose there were forms to be filled in, but the OAP was having none of it. He muttered something about not wanting to get involved and hobbled off. The examiner reluctantly returned to the hot-seat, I took a breath and drove on. You would think that the examiner would have stopped the test there and then, but he didn’t. He had me doing three-point turns and reversing round corners, even an after-the-horse-had-bolted emergency stop. It says something about my naturally optimistic view of life that by the end I was starting to think that I might have just sneaked it. I didn’t. And I was so disheartened that I didn’t drive again for ten years. If that old guy hadn’t stepped out, I might have passed my test, bought a car, had my drinking legally restrained, and led a very different life. At the same time, I might have passed my test, bought a car, carried on drinking, and ended up killing myself and a number of innocent fellow road-users. But I failed, and slid across into the passenger seat of life.
As Tim, all after-shave, leather bomber-jacket and signetring with the family crest on, drove down Broad Street in his blue Mini Clubman, he broke the news that his mom had set up a date, for me and him, with a couple of nice girls from the Christadelphian church. I explained that I had no intention of going on a date with two ‘my vagina’s a closed book’ girls from his mom’s church. Tim was pissed off by this. ‘Oh, you really get on my nerves sometimes,’ he said. He leaned back, over the seat, and started steering the car with his knees so he could punch the ceiling in frustration. We were doing between 50 and 60 mph, and I watched as the car headed towards the central reservation. This was about nine on a Saturday night.
I remember saying, ‘Watch that fuckin’ pylon’ (I thought bollards were called pylons) as we ploughed through a bollard, uprooted a grey-metal lamppost, and overturned so that the car was skimming down the street on its side. Neither of us wore seatbelts – we thought they were for puffs – and I remember lying against the side window, watching sparks hitting the glass as the door-handle ground against the road surface. When the car finally juddered to a halt, right opposite the statue of Birmingham’s industrial founding-fathers, Watt, Boulton and Murdoch, Tim’s eight-track came on. It was Deep Purple’s ‘Highway Star’, the first line of which is ‘Nobody’s gonna take my car, I’m gonna race it to the ground’.
Tim, who had slid down on top of me, pushed open the driver’s door directly above us, and we climbed out. Loads of Saturday-night revellers came running over and we stood on top of the car, doing a gesture of celebration that no one seems to do anymore. It consists of interlocking your fingers to form one big fist and then shaking it either side of your head. We stood there, relieved to be alive and unhurt, like two astronauts who had just clambered out of an Apollo capsule. We were so excited we danced on the car for a bit, and then ran off into the city centre to get drunk, leaving the written-off car behind us. Incredibly, apart from an admonishing letter to Tim from the police, no further action was taken.
That could easily have been that. If we’d been going slower, we wouldn’t have had the momentum to uproot the lamppost. The car would have stopped and Tim and me would have gone through the windscreen. So, the moral of this story is drive faster. Seriously, though, it was close. Looking back, I would have hated to have died not-Catholic.
Hughes and Johnson’s was doing my head in. I’d been there for two years. My fellow drawing-office worker had gone and I was left solely in charge. I sneaked my guitar in and spent my days learning Bob Dylan songs. He was replacing the Stones in my affections. Elvis, of course, was an ever-present. No one seemed to care if I was busy or not. Because my office was separate from the rest, I was able to turn up late, and did so on a regular basis. I once had two days off, and when I returned I realised no one had noticed. But I was bored, bored, bored. Of course, there were laughs as well. I was spending more and more time in the factory, measuring broken pipes and stuff. It was a strange place, with massive hammers banging red-hot l
umps of metal into shape. It was loud and scary and everyone who worked there was deaf and had three fingers. I remember a driver up from London remarking on the fact that the factory was a bit out-dated. He was amazed, for example, that it had soil floors. ‘All that’s missing is the three-cornered hats,’ he said.
Then there was Joe. Joe was a labourer, about six feet tall and with the look of a young Spike Milligan. He was a friendly chap but not, to be honest, the brightest lamp in the shop. His wife, who I’d seen in the New Inn a time or two but not always with her husband, had just had a baby, and she nipped into the factory one day, needing to see Joe about something or other. Everyone likes a baby, and even the biggest and toughest men came over to wiggle what fingers they had left at the new arrival. I mean the baby, not the wife. Soon, there was much muttering among the ranks. Well, actually it was not so much muttering as slightly reduced shouting. Muttering would have been pretty pointless amongst the thudding hammers, especially if you’re deaf. The big topic of conversation was Joe’s baby. It was very obviously of mixed race, a fact that Joe had mentioned to no one and didn’t refer to even when the baby was being shown off. Joe and Mrs Joe were both white. Eventually, after wife and baby had left the premises, one of the freer spirits among the work-force asked Joe whether it bothered him that his wife had given birth to a baby that was obviously not his. Joe looked puzzled. ‘What d’you mean, not mine?’ he said.
Frank Skinner Autobiography Page 22
