by Liam Livings
As we walked back to my car, Tony put his arm through mine, pulling himself closer to me. “You don’t get many women like that around here. Lovely, wasn’t she? She almost made it OK.” He flicked his fringe from his eyes, wiped something out of his eye with a tissue, took a deep breath and turned to me with an almost smile. “Thanks.”
I nodded, rubbing his hand as it hooked through my arm. “What now? Shall we skive off for a bit before you go to work?”
“Like we used to at work, nipping out the back for extra fag breaks when no one was looking?”
“Yeah, just like that.”
The wind blew his fringe out the side of his head like a flag against a flag pole. “Fuck it, let’s get some pick ’n’ mix from Woolworths, eat it until we feel sick, and see if there’s any good crap at the market left.”
Chapter Fifteen
FREAKS, DEMONS, CHANCERS, and con artists. That’s all I got in response to my advert in the paper for a manager to, well, manage me as a performer.
“I will be your manager if you give me two thousand pounds.”
Or how about the man who called to say he’d been following my performances and would love to represent me, and when I asked who else he represented, said he’d once put his toy poodle into a dog competition.
Then there were the calls from men who thought it was a personal add, asking me what I looked like, how tall was I, whether I was a top or a bottom. I’d got better at gauging those and as soon as it got too personal, I put the phone down on them. Any manager who needed to know my waist, chest, and other intimate measurements wasn’t a manager I wanted.
My other favourite was the people who sounded very genuine on the phone, talked through who else they had worked with, naming acts I’d shared a stage with sometimes, talked about what their plans were, and then completely failed to turn up for the meeting I’d arranged at a pub. And when I called, these people either didn’t answer, and never called me back, or said, “I changed my mind, I can’t take on any new acts.” But they’d not thought to tell me this before.
I couldn’t call Tony as, understandably, he was still pretty wobbly since the test. I’d spoken to him and dropped in to see him a few times since then. He’d either been in total denial, overly happy, singing at the top of his voice about how it was a beautiful morning, and everything was going his way—even though it was the evening by then. Or he’d been buried behind his fringe, and not able to talk, gloomy about how the outlook was bound to be bad, as he always had bad luck. I responded as best I could each time, depending on which Tony I met. For some reason, the manic singing Tony was more unnerving than the hidden behind the fringe one, as it wasn’t him either. He was pretty upbeat, but not so much so that it made you think he was high on drugs, or drunk. The manic glint in the eye as he sang and danced and completely ignored any mentions I made about the test, or his ex-boyfriend, or anything really, was pretty scary. Who had killed Tony and replaced him with that man?
The uncommunicative hidden behind his fringe Tony was hard to get through to, but at least he listened to what I said, even if his only responses were to grunt and nod sometimes. I asked him what his parents had said about his variable moods.
He shrugged and said, “They think I’m being moody. Part of the goth thing.” He shrugged again. “And being single again. Suppose it’s best they think that rather than asking me lots of questions when I don’t know the answer. Yet.”
That had been progress, of him coming out of his shell, of actually engaging in a conversation with me. That had been the last time I’d seen him, and he still hadn’t had his results. Neither had I, but I knew mine would be fine, so didn’t worry, I was focusing all my thoughts and energy on Tony. I had been, after all, only along for the ride.
I didn’t want to call Daisy and Ian again, not after they’d been so helpful, and I’d not managed to do the one thing they’d said was most important.
Bruce didn’t have time to see me, he was writing a report on Out! and how it had provided good value for the council’s money and other stuff I lost track of, but he said he could spare a few moments to talk on the phone. “I need to look at something other than this bloody report. Have you thought about what I asked you?”
I had, but I still couldn’t quite believe it. “Activities I could do at Out!, as a youth worker, how about a singing and dance activity—getting them to sing together as a group, learning some dance routines as teams, and then having to perform them to the rest of us. Is sewing a basic life skill these days, when you can buy three pairs of socks for a quid and no one darns anything?”
“So, you have thought about it. I am impressed.” I could hear him smiling down the phone.
“And I wondered could we do something about basic English and maths? Not me doing it, because I’m useless, but I remember there always seemed to be someone asking you to write them a letter for a job or help work out if a bill was right. Stuff like that. Useful stuff. Not verbs, and adjectives, and the other ones…” I snapped my fingers.
“Nouns?”
“Those. All those in fact. People don’t need that stuff. They want to know how to write a proper letter. What to put on a CV, what not to put on a CV actually. How to work out a percentage, stuff like that. Useful English and maths. And it can’t be like going back to school, it’s gotta be practical, fun, useful. Or we’ll never get them back. Maybe surprise them with it. Don’t announce what it is, or people will assume it’s boring and not come. Spring it on them, say the week before, there’s a surprise. Make it, what’s that word when you don’t just listen, while someone talks to you?”
“Interactive?”
“That’s the one. Make it interactive, do group work, get them to do it in teams. Stuff like that. Basically, make it the exact opposite of how it’s taught at school. Cos I was taught all that stuff, fractions, verbs and everything at school, and I still don’t know how to write a proper letter, or how to work a computer, or the internet really. Shameful isn’t it? I panic, when I think of sitting at a computer, writing something, even if it’s an email. I freeze. Tony does it all for me.”
“Let’s come back to the sewing bit, I don’t want anyone accusing us of being out of touch with the youth of today. Just because you love to hunch over a sewing machine, doesn’t mean it’s something every young person wants to learn.”
“Fair enough. Only some ideas I’d been thinking about since you asked me.”
“And a good lot of thinking you’ve done on it. That’s the thing about you being just above the age of the young people, you know what it’s like to go through those things. I haven’t been at school for over twenty years. You were at college, what a few months ago?”
“Unfortunately yes, and look where that led me.”
He’d asked me to be a youth worker for Out! a paid one at that. One evening a week for five hours, to help him run the group, think of activities, go on trips with them occasionally, everything he did, except the office stuff, the report writing, paperwork filing parts. He’d explained that was his job, and why he did it full-time. I was relieved he didn’t think my ideas were totally shit.
“Can I take that as a yes, if you’ve thought about the ideas? Like I said, the other activities, weekends away, day trips stuff like that is probably only once a year, with plenty of notice, so basically it’s Thursday night from five till nineish.”
Someone asking me to tell other little gays about how I’d been a little gay, and now was a bit more of a grown up gay and getting paid for it. Who’d have believed it? I didn’t think I’d done anything at all remarkable since I’d started coming to the group at fifteen. But as Bruce reminded me all the shit I’d been through, being thrown out of home, living in the shared house, moving back in, Dad finally leaving, sticking with my cross-dressing, because I didn’t have any option but to be myself, the issues I’d had with boyfriends. And yet I’d somehow, somewhere come out the other side, and had the Plan now, maybe it was interesting, impressive, something t
o share with others. I thought it was my life, but that was exactly what Bruce wanted me to talk to the young people about, without turning into a teacher or preacher, only naturally about what I’d done.
We talked for so long about when I’d start, what he’d say to introduce me to the young people who might have known me as a member of the group before, the paperwork side I’d need to fill in for “audit purposes” whatever that meant, that I almost forgot why I’d called him.
Getting more and more excited as it became more and more real, I said, “Does this mean if we go to a pride march, I get my own clipboard and can lead them along like the Pied Piper?”
“Maybe we’ll work you up to that.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been looking into a few things—there’s this activities centre in the New Forest where you can stay in log cabins, do climbing, archery, other activities, make your own food. Like camping, without the tents.”
“Right.” I stuck my bottom lip out, trying to sound as sulky and unimpressed as possible with one word.
“Come on, you know you’d love it, once you got there. Sharing stories around the campfire.”
“I thought you said there was no tents, so where’s this campfire?”
“OK, in the living rooms of the log cabins.” He paused. “When did you last go rock climbing? Ride a horse? Ride a bike even?”
“Not since I was a child—the bike. But I’ve not done the others—and I’d like to point out, there’s a reason for that. Because I don’t want to do them.”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried them?”
I rolled my eyes, prepared for another of Bruce’s life is a journey speeches, about experiences, and not knowing what you do and don’t’ like until you tried it.
“We can work out who does what if you come. And there’s this Queer College thing I’ve been linking up with some of the London youth groups, they do this thing with some of the University of London colleges, and hold summer classes over, well summer for members of the youth groups. We could go to some of those.”
I packed away my sulky teenager, remembering I was no longer a teenager, and said, “Sounds great. It’ll be good to work it out together.” Because he had said that’s how it worked, and we’d decide what the group did together, and I’d be sort of equal to Bruce, and not the one asking him for advice all the time. To have come that far in the five years I’d known him was something I was secretly proud of, only inside though. “Look, I’d better let you get on with your report thingy.”
“Thanks, Kev. I’ll put the contract and letter in the post with all the details. Let me know when you can start, when you’ve cleared your Thursday nights. Bye then.”
“Actually, that’s just reminded me why I rang.” What an idiot, all that pride about myself and how much I’d grown and I’d totally forgotten what I’d wanted to talk to him about!
“You mean it wasn’t to have a chat about this fantastic job opportunity I’ve made you?”
“Yeah, you can leave the flattery and flannel now, I’ve said yes. No, it was about getting a manager…” I told him about the assortment of various different types of the wrong person I’d spoken to about the job.
“Call Ian. Ask him.”
“He’s retired. They’re both officially retired.”
“I called after you gave me their best wishes, and rather than Daisy I got Ian. He’s going out of his mind there, scuttling about making tea and sandwiches when they have guests. Daisy thinks he’s still her manager, but really, he’s not managing anything. Four or five appearances a year doesn’t need a manager. Ian said he’s basically the housekeeper and cook and cleaner, never mind manager.”
“I see. And how do you think Daisy would react to me taking her manager off her?”
“You’re hardly taking Ian off her, Ian would do both. Besides, leave all that to Ian, he’s been with her for forty years, don’t you think he knows how best to flatter and schmooze his boyfriend? How did they leave it when you saw them?”
“I should let them know if I needed any help.”
“Well then.”
Chapter Sixteen
AT DAISY AND Ian’s place, Ian was in the study going through papers and Daisy and I were in the living room.
Daisy leant forward conspiratorially from the sofa and said, “I thought he’d be OK, but good job you spoke to me beforehand so I could soften the blow, sew the seed. He likes to think it’s his idea, but really it’s mine. ’Course, like I said, I’m very happy to help you, but it’s Ian who needs to agree because it’s him who’d do the managing. I’m fine with losing a bit of his time, I’m hardly Dusty Springfield these days, am I?”
She not only wasn’t Dusty, she was also not dressed anything like the last time I’d come round. When a man in a red silk kimono, towel wrapped round his head and white facemask had answered the door, I’d asked for Daisy. The man said, that was she, and it had taken me a few moments to realise it was a very plain looking man with the same smile Daisy had.
“Shall I go in and ask him?” I wanted to keep up the show of tiptoeing around Ian as it was obviously something Daisy wanted to believe, she was protecting him from himself. But, pleased with Bruce’s information, I knew it would be an easy sell.
“Knock first. Flatter him, tell him you’ve heard me say so much good stuff about him as a manager, you can’t match that with anyone else you’ve seen.”
“Not to mention all the bloody freaks I’ve spoken to. Honestly!”
Daisy shouted across the house, “Ian, love could you bring us some tea, please? Be a darling would you.”
Ian threw his pen on the table, shuffled some papers, stood, and bustled past me in the hall as I hovered outside his study. “Did you want me?” He pulled his grey cardigan aggressively over his shoulders as it slipped from when he’d stood suddenly.
“I do actually.” I smiled.
“Suppose you want tea, too, do you? Might as well, while I’m getting herself a pot.” He waved to the study. “Take a seat, I’ll be with you shortly, once I’ve sorted her out.”
Daisy shouted from her seat, “Ian, love, Kev wants a word with you.”
Ian shouted, amid clattering of cups, “He said.”
I sat in the gilt-edged, purple-leather chair opposite the large old wooden desk, covered in piles of paperwork, with a small place where Ian had made space for a tiny laptop. The walls were covered in wooden shelves, filled with leather-bound books, and the odd photo album lay horizontally on top of the books. A large wooden radio the size of a modern TV sat in the far corner.
Ian appeared at the door, adjusted his cardigan, closed the door behind him with a quick “won’t be long, darling!” and then sat at the desk. “I’ve got to pretend I’m doing her a favour, but really I’m jumping at the chance, love. Jumping! She thinks I’ve got to be protected from myself, from doing too much. From doing too much when I’ve such a full diary, look at me! Six performances a year, and the tax, which is hardly worth doing really. And I even bought a special new laptop to do it all on, silly me! Shame the screen and keyboard are so small I can hardly read them with my eyesight, but no matter. So yes, darling I’d very much love to help you, to manage you, to do it all. I’ve been going out of my brain here. But between me and you, you begged me to do it and I accepted reluctantly, OK?”
I was so confused at this weird little subterfuge I nodded.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to since we last saw you, love?”
I told him about the advert for the manager and the people I’d had to fend off in response to it. “But at least this time I know not to pay anyone money.”
He looked either side, then leant forward, peering over a pile of brown A4 folders balancing precariously behind his laptop. “Why, what happened before?”
“There was this man, Suave Charles, who I sort of fell for, professionally and personally. And he asked for a lot of money to be my manager.”
“Oh, love. You didn’t give it
to him, did you?”
“All of it.” I felt myself welling up with the memory of last Christmas with no money and none of my savings or what Mum had lent me, and how I’d got caught up with the dream of what he’d promised me so believed, unquestioningly everything he’d promised me. I looked out the window, blinking quickly to prevent the tears falling onto my cheeks.
“You poor love. Well, that’s a mistake you won’t make again, isn’t it? You live and learn, love, live and learn.”
“I tried, and I told you what response I got. I don’t know what to do. I know I need someone to manage me to take me to the next level, but I don’t know anyone else, except you who can do it.”
“What about the other acts you bump into?”
“It’s mixed, some say their manager is a diamond, others don’t bother cos they’ve been burned like me. And I’ve never met any of them, and really only know the acts to hold a mascara brush with, or share straightening tongs, so it’s hardly like we’re besties.”
“I can’t sit around here all day listening to Radio Four and making the tea. She’s hardly got any bookings now. It’d give me an excuse to get out of the house instead of knocking about this place like two peas in a barrel, bumping into each other all day.” He walked round to my side of the desk and grabbed my shoulders. “Yes! Yes! I’ll do it. I will do it for you!” He shouted now, running about the study. He opened the doors, shouted he and I were going into business, as a favour to Daisy of course, he turned and said, “No time like the present. Tell me what you want, where you’re aiming, everything.”
I told him about the Plan, as he sat furiously writing notes in his pad.
AN HOUR OR so later, Daisy arrived with a tray of lemonade. “I thought the workers would like some refreshments.” She winked at me as she left.
Ian cracked his knuckles, then started typing on the laptop, hunching forward every now and again to check what he’d typed on the tiny screen. “And who is Kev The Performer? Tell me what your USP is?” More cracking of the knuckles, a sip of lemonade and we were off.
