by India Knight
‘Holy Virgin,’ says Regina. ‘Do you go out with Yungsta? So called. I happen to know he’s at least forty-one.’
‘Not go out, no. We had a date.’
‘I can do all of that, you know,’ Regina says. ‘With the hands. Watch.’
There is a chandelier on her right, and an expanse of wall by her side. ‘Look,’ says Regina. She folds and bends her fingers, the light shining. The shadow of a dog appears on the wall. ‘Yo! Homie! Don’t fuck with ma bitch,’ Regina says, voice-perfect.
I start giggling helplessly.
‘I can do ducks, too,’ Regina says, demonstrating. ‘I reckon all that hand-signalling is really a very competitive way of letting your “crew” know you can do the tricky ones, like Da Antelope or Da Wolf.’
I am actually snorting with laughter as Regina continues her display, forgetting the shadow-play now and just concentrating on saying ‘Yo’ and turning her fingers into da rabbit and da fox. ‘Come on, girlfriend,’ says Regina, herself laughing like a drain. She has a really rough, raspy voice. ‘We are toilet bound.’
‘Do you know him, then?’ I ask, trotting after her and feeling small to the point of midgethood – she must be at least six foot four in her heels.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Here’s the toilet.’ She looks me up and down. ‘Wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’
We wedge ourselves into a tiny, pee-scented cubicle.
‘Line them up, girl,’ says Regina.
‘Could you? I haven’t done this for ages.’
Regina does, expertly, with the help of my Sainsbury’s Reward Card (‘Oh, will you look at that. We’re not in Kansas any more, are we, Toto?’). Regina snorts up a couple of fat lines, while I content myself with a smaller single one. Everything Regina says makes me die laughing: I honk like a seal every time she opens her filthy mouth. I must bring Papa here, I think to myself – he’d love it.
We trot back to the top of the stairs.
‘Through there,’ says Regina. ‘That’s the piano bar. I think you’ll like it. I’m doing a turn myself in ten minutes, so I’ll see you then. Tell Kevin behind the bar that you’re with me.’
I part the dirty curtains – ooh! missus! – and sigh with pleasure. This is more like it. I’m in a smallish, square room, redly lit, with a mini-stage at the front, five or six tables in front of it and a general bar-cum-milling area at the back. There’s a piano by the stage, a baby grand, which a balding, middle-aged man is playing. Another drag queen, this one in green sequins and a black beehive, is draped across the piano, singing. The words – some fabulous old torch-song about her man doing her wrong – send goosebumps racing down my arms. I am in heaven. If all nightclubs were like this, I’d be in one every night.
I actually beam with happiness, like a simpleton. Everyone else in the room – a mixture of all sorts of men, young, middle-aged, old, fat, thin, plain, lovely and a couple of women (female guests, presumably, are allowed) – seems to be beaming too. There’s a friendly buzz of chatter and a sense of anticipation. I walk over to the bar and introduce myself to Kevin – an enormously fat, barrel-chested skinhead – who pours me a double gin and tonic and waves away my money.
A man appears on the stage. We’re having half an hour of singing from ‘our resident goddesses’, after which we’re all allowed a go. I down my G&T in two gulps. I briefly wonder about Adrian, and Frank, and Louisa downstairs, and then push them out of my mind. One’s working, and the other two are making tongue sandwiches. It’s no fun. This, though – now this is fun.
Regina reappears and introduces me to Miss Chastity Butt and the Hon. Fellatia Lipps, her fellow artistes (drag queens, I notice with some sorrow, seem to have the monopoly on amazing legs), and to a sweet man called Barry, who apparently comes here every night. I like them so much I offer them my coke too, and take a second line myself, and then a third. There’s still masses left, and after an hour of listening to their singing – all my favourites, plus some I didn’t know – I am in such a spectacularly good mood that I offer my coke to every other person I speak to, which is to say half a dozen people. In return, they buy me more of Kevin’s giant G&Ts. By the time the floor show starts, I am hysterical with happiness. And, possibly, drugs and alcohol.
I must have been right about Regina being roughly my age, because the bulk of the floor show concerns itself with the Eighties. It’s not really a ‘show’ as such, more a series of performers – the girls, and later on members of the audience – stepping up to the microphone and camply bellowing out a classic, accompanied by the man on the baby grand.
It would be fair to say that I am flying by this time, and so when Regina nudges me and asks me to go up and do a duet with her, I want to kiss her. I love Regina, I love the piano bar at Fist, I love ‘Prince Charming’ by Adam Ant, which Fellatia has just performed magnificently, and I love, love, love my life at this moment.
‘Come on, then, miss,’ says Regina, taking my hand. ‘Let’s show them how it’s done.’
‘What shall we sing?’
Regina looks me up and down. ‘You seem like the sort of girl who knows her Judy Garland,’ she says. ‘Are you?’
‘Well, Regina, yes – obviously. By heart, actually. But isn’t it, you know, a bit of a cliché? Sing Judy to the poofs? Follow it up with a bit of Barbra Streisand?’
‘It may be a cliché, but, darling – who doesn’t love a bit of Judy of an evening?’
‘Not me,’ I say happily. ‘I love a bit of Judy three times a day.’
‘Exactly,’ says Regina. ‘Let’s go. Do you know “You Made Me Love You”?’
‘Every word.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Regina growls. ‘Come on.’
We clamber up on to the side of the stage. ‘Look at the knockers on that,’ says the compere as I take off my coat.
I am, it must be said, looking a little the worse for wear. My hair, for instance, has collapsed: the soigné chignon of two hours ago is just a messy mass of curls, and my tits are indeed falling out somewhat.
‘And here, ladies and gentlemen, for your delectation, are Miss Regina Beaver and friend.’
Since half the audience have sampled my drug wares, we get a rapturous reception. The audience, small as it is, whistles, stamps its feet, whoops.
‘You made me love you,’ Regina starts. ‘I didn’t wanna do it, I didn’t wanna do it.’
‘You made me love you,’ I continue, ‘and all the time you knew it, I guess you always knew it.’
I am a natural. I am a born entertainer, I think to myself. Suck my dick, Judy Garland, I think, except I say it out loud, much to the audience’s delight. Haa! I love my time. Could anybody’s time be better than this? Regina and I have got a crap dance routine perfected: we twirl around, pulling Judy-faces, camping it up for all it’s worth. The bliss of not having to be cool in a nightclub! The fun of not pouting!
Oh, and look: Frankie. Frankie’s here. This seems almost miraculous: I left him three floors down, in another world. There’s Louisa, looking worried, following him. I see them before they see me. I decide to dedicate the rest of the song to Frank, who has sweetly come to join in my fun. What a pal. What a pal. He is weaving his way through the crowd, looking left and right, looking everywhere, in fact, except up at the stage.
‘You made me love you,’ Regina starts again.
We’re nearing the end of the song: time to give it some welly. I join in with the end of the chorus, looking straight at Frank, who has finally clocked me and is shaking his head, smiling. I give it, as they say, all I’ve got. The rhythm changes, and I decide to go for a little shimmy from the hips as I sing to Frank.
‘Gimme gimme gimme what I cry for
(leery wink – returned by Frank)
You know you’ve got the kind of kisses that I die for
(thrust – Frank blows kiss)
You know you made meeeeee love yooooooooo
(total collapse: I am hysterical with laughter).’
The crowd, who have been singing along, go mad. Regina and I drop into deep curtsies. Clap clap clap, whoop, go the audience, more. I really think I missed my vocation.
‘We can do another later, if you like, after the disco,’ says Regina. ‘You can be my bitch for the night.’ She high-fives me, gives Da Rabbit, and totters off to find her pals. I stand by the stage, drenched in sweat and feeling somewhat dizzy, but in a good way. I’d rather like Regina to be my mother, I think to myself. Pity she’s a man. Still, there’s always Papa.
‘Stella!’ says Louisa. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘Have you? Well, here I am. Ta-daa!’
‘We thought you might have gone home,’ says Louisa reproachfully. ‘We were worried.’
‘Why on earth would I go home? I just got bored,’ I tell them playfully, poking each in the tummy in turn, ‘of watching the pair of you suck face. Suck suck suck. Yuck.’
‘Adrian was looking for you too,’ Lou continues. ‘In the break between his sets.’
‘I’m up here,’ I tell her. ‘Here I am. Spread the word. But don’t spread your legs.’ Oops. Where did that come from?
‘My nan would love you,’ says Frank. ‘You’d be a laugh down the pub. I didn’t have you down as a chantoose.’
‘Chanteuse,’ I correct. ‘Well, you were wrong. I chante away. Will you chante with me, Frankie?’ I curl an arm around his waist. ‘Go on. You know you want to. Go on, Frankie,’ I whisper in his ear. ‘You’re gagging for it, gagging.’
Frank smiles his cryptic smile at me again. We are standing extremely close.
‘We are standing extremely close,’ I tell Frank meaningfully.
‘Hot lady,’ he says, which breaks us up.
‘Can we go back downstairs now?’ says Louisa. ‘It’s better down there. What are you, Stella, some kind of fag hag?’
‘Better than that, Lou. I am in fact a fag,’ I bellow. ‘I am trapped, trapped, trapped in this body, but really underneath I am 100 per cent pure poof. Like father like daughter. I am an homo.’
‘You had the coke,’ says Frank, grinning.
‘Hey, Einstein. Do you know what? I did. And I have revised my opinion of drug taking. Want some?’
‘Come on, babe,’ says Louisa. ‘Are you OK up here on your own, Stell?’
I don’t like the ‘babe’. The ‘babe’, I don’t like.
‘Stay, Frankie,’ I tell him, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Sing with me.’
‘I think we’d better stay a while,’ he tells Louisa. ‘She’s completely off her face.’
‘I am not. I am a little bit cheerful, but you should be pleased. A little bit. Une petite bite. One day I’ll tell you what that means in French. Come on, Frankie, don’t stand there like my grandad. Let’s dance.’
Frankie shrugs at Louisa, who stomps off to the bar, and allows himself to be led by the hand to the tiny, packed dance floor.
We dance to ‘Enola Gay’ by OMD, ‘It Ain’t What You Do’ by Bananarama, ‘You Spin Me Round’ by Dead or Alive (which I especially love: watch out, here I come, I explain to Frank, could be a lyric made for him), ‘Don’t Go’ by Yazoo and ‘The Look of Love’ by ABC. We dance our arses off, in stitches half the time as one or the other of us remembers some long-forgotten little dance routine. And then it’s a slowie – ‘True’ by Spandau Ballet – and suddenly here is Louisa, snaking herself around Frank, while I slink back to the bar.
Only one slowie, though. And then, oh joy – and do please forgive me my exaggerated sense of kitsch – it is, grotesquely, splendidly, fabulously, Agadoo time. Clearly, much of the assembled crowd considers this one irony too far, but I leap across the room and back on to the dance floor, grabbing Barry-who-comes-here-every-night on the way. Barry, in turn, grabs the Hon. Fellatia Lipps, and the three of us tumble on to the dance floor.
And that is how Yungsta finds me: I am pushing pineapple, shaking tree with a fat middle-aged man and a seen-better-days drag queen, pouring with sweat, more or less hysterical with laughter.
‘Stella?’ he says.
‘Yo,’ I say. ‘King kickin’ in da area.’ I howl with laughter at my own joke. My time downstairs wasn’t entirely wasted: these things clearly seep into your head by osmosis.
‘I bin lookin’ for ya, man,’ Yungsta says. He is standing by the edge of the dance floor. I am still on the dance floor, because I need to shake the tree one more time before the song ends.
I smile pleasantly at Yungsta, who’s come all this way to get me – bless – and snog me, probably. Unfortunately, maintaining eye contact with him, I notice he’s not looking too chirpy: incandescent would be a better description, also disgusted. I also notice that, clothing-wise, he looks absolutely absurd. I’ve noticed it before, obviously, but not so violently. Looking at him now, Mr Forty-one-year-old DJ Yungsta, it becomes as clear as glass that there is no point whatsoever in pretending to myself that I fancy him, because I simply don’t. Not unless he were to ditch all the clobber, and the facial hair, and the faux-accent. Not until, basically, he’d had a complete makeover, personality included, and how likely is that? And then he’d have to learn the art of conversation. So, no.
The song finishes.
‘What da fuck are you doin’, man?’ asks Yungsta.
‘Dancing.’
‘That ain’t dancin’,’ he spits.
‘It is to me,’ I reply politely, though I don’t think much of his tone.
‘I came lookin for ya,’ he says.
‘Well, you found me.’
‘You look mingin’,’ he says.
I don’t know what this means, but I don’t like the sound of it.
‘And what’s with da battyboys?’
‘So sorry. Was having a good time.’
‘Where da snow?’ Yungsta demands. ‘Where da snow, man?’
‘In the cold clouds in the sky,’ I reply.
‘My coke,’ he hisses.
‘Oh. I thought it was my coke, so I shared it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Up these nice people’s noses. There’s a tiny bit left, I think. Sorry. I didn’t realize it wasn’t mine. Have some money, and then you can get some more.’
‘Man,’ says Yungsta. ‘You is dumped.’
‘MC Yungsta on da wheels of steel,’ bellows Regina, who has arrived by my side. ‘Make some noiiiise.’ She does Da Fox at me, and nearly sets me off again.
‘Gerroff, man,’ says Yungsta.
‘Adrian’s a homophobe,’ explains Regina. ‘Never comes up here. Thinks he might get diseases.’
‘I is not goin’ out with a lady that does that,’ Yungsta explains to me. T is a top DJ.’
‘Cut the crap, will you,’ I say, ‘and speak normally, Adrian.’
‘You are so dumped,’ he says, looking at me as though I were a poo on the sole of his shoe. ‘You have no class. You have no taste. I can’t possibly go out with you. I have my reputation …’
‘To maintain,’ says Regina, in an incredibly posh comedy voice. ‘That’s right, Aidey, you do. Now leave, before I kiss you.’
‘Don’t worry, freak. I’m outta here,’ Adrian, my nearly-man, says nastily. And off he goes.
‘I think,’ says Frank, ‘that this is probably quite a good time to go home.’
16
As soon as I am capable of thought the next morning – which takes a while, since at first I am only capable of sickness – my thoughts are as follows.
My first thought is, obviously, that I feel incredibly crap, especially around the jaw and sinuses, and that I am too old for this. My second, more troubling, thought is that I am an unfit parent. My third thought – the thought that makes me sit bolt upright, and then sink down again when I realize its full implications – is to wonder whether Louisa is here. Whether Louisa slept here. With Frank. In bed. Make fucky. Jiggy-jig. Humpty-hump. Oh, God.
It’s funny how it is possible to have moments of absolute lucid clarity when your head and yo
ur body are such poor, befuddled things. And I have such a moment right now: I know, crystal-clearly, that I don’t want Louisa to have slept with Frank. No no no: I don’t want it.
I groan, and slide back under the covers to think. Ten minutes later, I’m no less troubled, but at least I know what I have to do. It’s time to get up.
I can’t quite remember how the night ended. I just about remember falling through the front door, and then Frank half carrying, half pulling me up the stairs. I think I remember Frank putting me to bed; at least, I remember him looking down at me, for ages. Did he undress me? Somebody did: Louisa, perhaps – I’m wearing a T-shirt, not the little black dress. And then I don’t remember anything: for once, I didn’t fall asleep listening to Frank having sex.
But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have any. Did he have sex? I must know. It’s urgent.
I heave my shaky legs out of the bed and sit, feeling queasy. There’s a bottle of Evian on the little bedside table and I drink half a litre. What’s the time? Where are Honey and Mary? Did Frank get laid, did Lou?
Maybe she went home. She was looking pretty pissed off when we were dancing. Maybe she came back here, undressed me and went home. She must have gone home, because what about her baby-sitter? Or did her baby-sitter stay the night, like Mary?
I manage to stand upright without hurling, find and pull on a pair of red flannel pyjama bottoms and a clean T-shirt, and stagger into the bathroom to brush my teeth. No sleazeball condoms floating in the lav, which is a good sign. I realize that the T-shirt I slept in was Frank’s – what does that mean? Did he take it off there and then, kindly, or were he and Louisa so busy getting sexy that they started taking their clothes off the minute we got back home? Did they get half-naked before he helped me upstairs? Did they pre-shag gruntily while I was lying there in a comatose heap? Not that I remember, granted, but I don’t quite trust my memory this morning: there are huge gaps, like the journey home.
I blow my nose, and blow again, and still it doesn’t feel better. The house is absolutely quiet. I splash some cold water on to my face and go downstairs. Quiet, quiet. No Honey, no Mary, no no one.
