by Swan, Tarn
Natalie gave an ear splitting screech of outrage and leaping to her feet made a lunge for Twinkles’ wig. I got in between them and stopped a fight breaking out, getting a kicked shin and a handbag blow to my left ear for my trouble.
Taking Twinkles firmly by the hand I towed him to the powder room where Lulu was demonstrating and selling beauty products. Declining to have a free facial, I found a corner and proceeded to have a quiet chat with Twinkles, telling him that I thought he’d behaved disgracefully, and I wanted no more of it. He was to behave himself and he could go and sort things out with Rick or I’d borrow Brian’s office and show his rear some hot action it wouldn’t like. He gave me one of his pouty ‘okay, okay, I hear you’ looks, adjusted his boobs in the mirror and stalked off to the bar, his feather fan busily wafting waves of crossness back at me. I cared not.
I returned to our seats, which Big Mary had kindly kept from being acquired, repelling all would be boarders with a steely look and a flexing of his Popeye size glitter dusted muscles. It was a busy night. The dance floor was packed, as was the bar, so tables were at a premium. I thanked BM and he took the opportunity to squeeze my knee. I made a mental note never to allow myself to be seated between Maurice and Big Mary. I’d be groped to death. The only person who had a table entirely to themselves was boring Barry. Poor Barry. I’ve mentioned before that he suffers from halitosis. I know he can’t help it, but it can be overpowering and even kindness can be defeated by it sometimes. I glanced at him in the dim light and felt a pang of pity. He’s a really dismal drag queen. In fact I don’t think he is a drag queen as such, but nor is he a straightforward transvestite like Priscilla. He doesn’t quite make either camp, if you’ll forgive the expression. For one thing he doesn’t have a feminine pseudonym, he calls himself Barry whether he’s wearing a frock and heels or not. For another thing, his clothes are tragically awful. Twinkles suspects that they’ve been bought not so much from a Help The Aged charity shop, as directly from the aged themselves and not the stylishly aged. They’re just not glamorous not even when he adds a pink and green feather headdress to the ensemble, as he frequently does. It seems to be his only really queenly possession.
Barry isn’t always as isolated as he was on Friday night. Most of the PP’s regular patrons are friendly and will make an effort to make people feel welcome, especially people who seem a bit on the outside. However, chronic bad-breath and fervent gerbil talk does tend to defeat even the best of intentioned. The breath problem was compounded on Friday because, as he apologetically explained, he’d spent the day preparing and bottling onions for pickling at the food factory he works in and he reeked of them and spiced vinegar. Pungent fumes were rolling from him in waves, hence the space around him. You could see people grimacing as they walked past his table and I wish I had a pound for every time I heard a voice exclaim, ‘fucking hell, Barry love, I don’t know what fucking perfume you’re wearing tonight, but it certainly isn’t Opium by Yves-Saint-Laurent.’
Twinkles came back to the table, somewhat unsteadily, saying he and Rick had kissed and made up and had a little drink together. He’d had more than one by the look of him. I suggested that he buy Natalie a drink to make up for his very vulgar comment and he said he’d tried to, but Rick said they didn’t sell Hemlock. I told him he was naughty and he said if I played my cards right he’d show me just how naughty he could be when we got home.
Cherie Pie came on stage to start her spot, looking daggers at Lulu who upstaged her by arriving late on account of brisk trading in the powder room. As soon as she launched into Dancing Queen by Abba, Natalie leaned her chair back and nudged Twinkles saying, ‘I reckon she’s got all four members of Abba inside that jumpsuit with her. All that flesh can’t belong to just one person.’
I shook my head as they both broke into cackles of laughter. Honestly, the only time they unite is when they’re tearing lumps off poor Cherie. I told them both to be quiet and let the lady sing and they pulled a face at each other, but otherwise shut up. To my mind, it should be obligatory for all drag queens to have a Dom who practices discipline. They all need keeping in line.
I went to the bar to get drinks and for some reason decided to buy Barry a measure of Glenmorangie whisky. It’s his favourite tipple, but he rarely buys it, as he doesn’t have much money and tends to stick to the cheaper lagers and beers. I think I was feeling guilty after noting his isolation and was trying to make up for not having the moral courage to invite his pungent person to pull up his chair and sit with us. Cherie Pie was belting out Fernando when I took it across to his table and I was humming the tune. Despite not being an Abba fan I still find it impossible not to sing or hum along to their songs. I soon stopped humming though. I could see immediately that something was very wrong with Barry. He was leaning heavily on the table, his head resting against his left hand. The mirror ball above the dance floor was spraying out flashing shards of light and they caught and silvered the tears that were streaming down his face. I was shocked.
Sitting down beside him I placed my hand over the one he had resting on the table and asked what was wrong? There was something under his hand, a small brown pill bottle. It was empty. My heart started to race. I asked him what the bottle had contained and he mumbled Librium. I asked how many he’d taken and he said all of them. I asked him to quantify all of them and he said fifty-five. I’m no physician, but that sounded like at least fifty-four too many. I asked how long ago and he said almost an hour and my heart raced faster. They’d be well into his system. I urgently signalled Twinkles to come over, but he held his nose and shook his head. Body language is a wonderful thing, because he suddenly twigged that I wasn’t offering him a choice and hastened over. I quietly told him that Barry was very unwell, and he was to discreetly go and tell Brian to call an ambulance. Twinks took in the sight of Barry’s tear ravaged face, the empty pill bottle and made the connection. He said SHIT, kicked off his heels, hitched up his skirts and galloped off in the direction of Brian’s office, ploughing through people like a glamorous torpedo…so much for discretion.
Brian was soon on scene. The emergency service operator had given him two instructions, keep Barry warm and keep him talking. Between us we managed to get him into the office, telling the curious he’d had too much to drink and was feeling rubber legged and queasy. We settled him on the couch and I hunkered down holding his hand. Discretion has never been one of Twinkles’ strong points and soon he, Lulu, Big Mary, Natalie, Cherie and Gloria had joined us, more would have tried, but there was no room left.
To my alarm Barry’s eyes began to lose focus and his body temperature dropped as his system went into some kind of shut down. It was probably his body’s way of trying to stay alive by channelling blood to the major organs. His hand felt like ice and I chafed it, speaking to him all the while, telling him to hold on and nonsensical things like that. Lulu fetched a blanket from the stage room and carefully tucked it around him. Twinkles quipped, ‘don’t worry, Barry love you’ll be fine. Cherie’s singing has driven me to consider suicide at times.’ The lady in question smacked Twinks smartly across the head and told him he was a cheeky bitch.
We all made an effort to keep him talking. I asked if there was anyone we could contact for him, family or friends? He said he had no family, not if you discounted the PP. He’d always thought of it as a kind of family, not always a nice one, but a family nonetheless, as well as a friend and that’s why he’d chosen to do what he’d done under its roof instead of at home. At least here his body would be discovered before it rotted, and anyway he hadn’t wanted to be totally alone. He’d had enough of being alone and he wanted to die where he could at least hear the sounds of life going on.
Twinkles tearfully told him not to be a drama queen because he wasn’t going to die and Natalie asked who would take care of his poor little gerbils if he died. He said he’d already put them into the care of an animal rescue charity. They had promised to find them good homes. I think that brought home to us the serio
usness of his suicide attempt. He’d obviously being planning it for some time. His eyes closed and his hand suddenly felt like a lead weight in mine. I feared we’d lost him. He was so heavily sedated by the medication he’d taken that I couldn’t find a pulse. Thankfully the ambulance arrived and a rather bemused pair of paramedics did their job with calm and kind professionalism. They must have felt like they’d been dropped into a scene from Moulin Rouge. Twinkles, Lulu and Natalie were crying and Gloria and even Big Mary looked close to succumbing, though he claimed later it was the onion aroma that was making his eyes water. Brian gave the medics his telephone numbers in case they needed a contact.
After they’d gone, Brian patted my face and said I looked like a man in need of a drink. He wasn’t wrong. We all had a drink and talked about Barry and discovered how very little we knew about him. Natalie said she’d heard a rumour he’d once been married, but no one could confirm it. We didn’t know his surname or how old he was. We only knew that he worked in a food factory and bred gerbils as a hobby…that much he had told us, and the rest we didn’t ask. None of us were even a hundred percent sure about his sexual orientation, whether he was gay, straight or bi. Gloria, legs splayed, wig on her lap, looking less like a lady and more like the truck driver she was, spoke the awful truth in the way that only a drunken drag queen could, slurring, ‘if only he smelled better and was less boring and a bit taller…and had more dress sense.’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘do you think there’s any truth in the rumour that he supplied gerbils to Richard Gere?’ Snatching the wig from her lap Twinks beat her about the head with it and told her to have some sensitivity and shut her lanky legs, as they could all see what she’d had for breakfast.
To a varying degree I imagine we have all suffered from loneliness at one time or another in our lives. I have and I know Twinkles has, but what kind of consuming loneliness makes a man want to seek to end his life in a place thronging with people? It reminded me of something Steven said in the posthumous letter he sent round. He asked the question, where does loneliness have its origins and concluded that it was probably a different place for all of us. He also said loneliness wasn’t an external thing. It came from within. I think that’s true and I think that’s why Barry was weeping in the club. He’d realised that his loneliness was inside himself and not even the crowds around him could take the raw edge from it.
Neither Twinkle nor I slept well that night. He felt guilty for all the times he’d cut Barry short or avoided him altogether or made some bitchy comment about his clothes. Why hadn’t any of us noticed how lonely and depressed he was? I didn’t have any answers. Maybe the shameful truth is that we just didn’t care enough to notice, because as Gloria had said, Barry has more minus than plus points in his favour.
We discovered later that Barry suffered heart failure in the ambulance on the way to hospital. Thankfully the paramedics managed to revive him. He’s in intensive care and as such is currently too unwell to receive visitors. We’ve sent flowers and cards.
So, that was our weekend. I’m actually on holiday from work this week, though the way things are going I’ll need another holiday to recuperate. We had another charming letter from our anonymous well-wisher yesterday. It contained newspaper cuttings concerning a recent spate of homophobic attacks and the cruel murder of a young man in London. The word Repent had been pasted across them. Twinkles says we should put the letters in the bathroom and use them for the only thing they’re fit for, toilet paper.
I must sign off now. I’ve got to call next door and beg Frank (Gabby’s dad) to come over and help us with a mythical electrical problem. Katie’s mother and sister are over for a visit and he needs an excuse to escape for a few hours so he can watch the football on Sky. It should be an interesting evening. I can’t remember the last time I watched a footie match and I don’t think Twinks ever has, not to my knowledge anyway.
20th October 2005:
Francine The Football Queen Gives Over
When I doubtfully enquired of Twinkles whether he knew exactly what a night watching football with Frank would entail, he rewarded me with a frosty look saying, ‘just because I show a well-turned ankle in a Dior gown doesn’t mean I know nothing of the rougher male pursuits. I’ll have you know, Mr Swan Lake, that I can appreciate a sweat stained jockstrap with the best of them. I went to a school where football was lauded and I was part of the team.’
Despite him calling me Swan Lake, I was impressed, wondering why he’d never told me this before. I asked what position he had played in, at which point he grinned and told me he was winding my key, ‘Tarn darling, do I really look like the type of boy to run around a muddy field wearing nasty studded boots. I mean, they didn’t even come in a choice of colours.’ Any propensity to swat his cheeky backside vanished when he revealed what position he had filled in his school’s team. My poor baby was the ‘team mascot’ i.e. whipping boy. His classmates all used to slap him around the head for luck before a game and again afterwards and harder if they lost. I gave him a hug of sympathy. He smugly told me that he’d got his own back on the bastards by sneaking into the changing room before an important match, unscrewing all the studs from their boots and dumping them in the deep end of the swimming pool.
When Frank arrived he handed us both a Newcastle team shirt to wear for luck. Twinkle’s facial expression was priceless. Holding it between finger and thumb he said he couldn’t possibly wear anything that was so synthetic it was giving off enough static electricity to charge a nuclear reactor. He feared he might spontaneously combust if he wore it. Frank told him to stop jawing and put it on. When Frank first encountered Twinks he really wasn’t sure what to make of him, particularly as he was wearing a black negligee at the time. It took him a while to acclimatise, a process greatly helped when his daughter chose Twinks as her skipping partner. Since then he’s got to know us a lot better and realises that we’re relatively harmless. The way he tends to cope with Twinks is to respond to most of what he does or says with the words, ‘give over, man,’ and variations thereof.
In the spirit of good sportsmanship Twinkles did put the shirt on, though the look on his face was suggestive of a man forced into wearing a soiled grave cloth. Frank then solemnly handed him a can of beer and Twinkles immediately got up to fetch some glasses. Frank rolled his eyes and told him to give over because real men didn’t drink Newcastle Brown out of a glass, and certainly not in the house while watching football. Twinkles held the can at arms length and opened it as if he were unpinning a hand grenade. He cautiously took a sip and gagged, asking me to slip a shot of vodka and a glace cherry into it to make it palatable.
The evening was entertaining though I confess not entirely from a football point of view. For a start Twinks, who usually sits with one leg crossed over the other, a pink mule elegantly swinging back and forth against his foot, decided to emulate Frank. Sitting on the edge of the couch he leaned forwards with his legs splayed and elbows resting on his knees, clasping a beer can in his hands. I’ll give you the edited highlights of their conversation:
“Just look at that other team’s outfits, they’re a disaster. No one suits that shade of shiny yellow, not even Cherie would be seen dead in that material in that colour.”
“Give over, Twinks man, they’re not outfits, they’re strips.”
“They should be stripped…off and burned.”
“OH, what a foul, he’s a dirty little player that one. Did you both see that, because the ref doesn’t seem to have?”
“I did see it, Frank, and it’s more than foul, it’s disgusting, spitting like that on the lawn.”
“Will you give over and take this seriously and it’s a pitch, not a lawn.”
“Why do they do that when they score, leap on top of each other? If Tarn and I did that in public we’d get arrested.”
“Because scoring a goal is a beautiful thing and it has to be celebrated. The feeling of hitting the back of the net is just amazing.”
“Tarn oft
en says that to me when he scores, but it’s got nothing to do with football.”
“Aw man, Twinks, give over, don’t give me anymore details.”
“I wouldn’t mind leaping on number nine. He’s got nice legs and judging by the way he keeps sticking his hand inside his shorts there’s something pretty lively and in need of attention lurking there.”
“Tarn man, how do you put up with him?”
“Frank, sitting here with you I feel just like a Footballer’s WAG. If our little troupe score can I have a kiss? I promise not to use any tongue, not unless you want me to.”
“Will you bloody well GIVE over and behave yourself, man.”
Frank’s team didn’t score and for once I think he was more relieved than upset. When it was over Twinkles said that seeing as he had watched football, drank beer, belched, broken wind and worn a nylon supporter’s shirt like a real macho man, Frank had to come over to his side of the fence for a visit.
And so it was that Frank ended the evening watching To Wong Foo (well I never knew that Patrick Swayze was gay) while wearing a blonde curly wig, a purple floral kimono and red lipstick. Handing him a cocktail called Comfortable Fuzzy Screw composed of Vodka, Archers Schnapps, Southern Comfort and orange juice, Twinks officially renamed him Francine the football queen. God knows what Katie thought when he rolled home still wearing red lipstick.
On a sadder note, Barry is still very ill. He’s suffering from respiratory problems and is in intensive care. Brian paid him a visit yesterday, but he didn’t even know he was there. It really upset Brian because of course it brought back painful memories of when Steven was in intensive care. We’re praying for a happier outcome for poor Barry.
