Delilah's

by John Maley

  She bought fish suppers from the local chippie and they made a grand ceremony of eating them, hunched over the kitchen table and declaring every bite of the burnt chips and bony fish ‘delicious’. His sister Leanne plastered nearly a whole bottle of tomato sauce over her supper to ‘bring oot the flavour’. The meal was washed down with weak tea and more old memories.

  But George didn’t want to be cynical about this. He loved his mother and sister and he loved hearing their voices, the lingo – it was so refreshing. His accent was a mess, years of trying to be understood in London. The funny thing is, nobody ever did understand him in London or any fuckin where. He loved, too, the family photos. There were a couple of albums, but the real gems were to be found in an old shoebox. There was a hilarious picture of him at fifteen holding a Bullworker that was supposed to give him a Samson-like physique. He had a funny look on his face. He remembered something Allen Ginsberg wrote about ‘that haunted look all young fags have’. Was that it? Haunted?

  There were nice photos of his father. But they made George think about death and so they were shuffled under newer photos of Leanne and his mother and various pals and relatives. George’s favourite was a picture of his mother wearing a psychedelic dress and sporting a Harpo Marx perm. It captured her essence – ridiculous, ebullient and lovely. At times like that he thought of his mother not as his mother but as an old flame.

  On the Saturday afternoon, as they wandered about town, there was a difficult conversation about George’s fictitious girlfriend. He had had a string of fictitious girlfriends over the years. It was easy and lazy and stupid but there was a vicarious pleasure in inventing a relationship that would pacify his mother. It saddened George that all the real love, blood, sweat and tears were hidden in favour of banal tales of going steady with a nurse from Newcastle. (There had been a nurse from Newcastle – a big hairy guy who had begged to be spanked. This, however, was not the nurse under discussion.) George didn’t feel too bad about lying to his mother – family life was founded on delusion anyway. But he felt he had performed badly with this latest romantic deceit and that maybe his mother was, after all, wise to him all along.

  It was good to see Leanne again. The baby was cute and was, according to the consensus of those in the know about these things, ‘a good baby’. Leanne was pretty laid-back about motherhood and had somehow managed to skip the family neurosis gene. There was always a distance between him and Leanne that had been determined by the ten-year age gap between them. George felt more like her mother than her brother.

  On Saturday night he felt compelled to get away from the house after a bout of paranoia following his nurse-from-Newcastle number. He headed into town after making up some story about looking up an old pal. George made for a pub he had formerly known as La Maison. On arriving there he saw it had changed into a place called Delilah’s. It was still a queer shop, though. It was much more mixed than the kind of taverns of testosterone he had been used to in the old days. But he liked women’s company.

  George wasn’t cruising. But he had this need to be in a gay environment. That was all it was. Just to have that sense of ease, of belonging. There was a drag queen called Joanie behind the bar who seemed pretty friendly. George had a couple of drinks and immersed himself in his own thoughts – family reminiscences, morbid thoughts about his own future, images of dead lovers. He was left in peace for a while to reflect and watch and listen. But an enormous tranny, who was obviously on the lookout for a new and possibly gullible face, suddenly parachuted into his lap. He panted and purred and blinked giant false eyelashes at George, rubbing his crotch with a big sweaty hand. George hated himself for getting a boner. The transvestite put his scarlet lips to George’s ear and whispered, ‘My body is a secret, urgent to be told.’ A fleeting look then passed between them. A kind of understanding. Or maybe this was just some line from a trashy porno video where two muscular male models mechanically fuck each other on some crappy beach to a warped muzak soundtrack. The femme fatale gave him a warm, welcoming smile and shimmied off to plump his fat arse on somebody else’s unsuspecting lap, like some giant pussycat. George made his escape.

  My body is a secret, urgent to be told.

  George sat on the couch and watched his mother sleeping in a chair. Like he had once sat and watched a lover sleeping. His mother was a quiet sleeper, unlike his father, who roared like a bull elephant when he slept. His mother had once asked George if he’d heard of a cure for snoring. Suffocate the bastard, he had replied (the voice of teenage rebellion). George thought he saw a bogey hanging out of his mother’s nose but a closer, more focused inspection discovered it to be hair. They were a hairy-nosed family. George clipped his own nose hair with nail scissors. He had once slept with a man who had shaved his pubic hair off. The guy said it heightened sensitivity.

  George looked at his mother sleeping and felt a desperate compulsion to wake her up and declare his love, to tell her he loved her, that maybe he would die before her, that he was sorry he had become a stranger but that his exile was not self-imposed. But he decided not to disturb her or be a drama queen or provoke any extreme emotions. He hadn’t cried in ages and felt if he started now he’d never stop until he choked himself. He let her sleep; his mother, his lover, his old flame.

  On the train back to London he munched sandwiches his mother had made for him that morning. He had stood and watched her prepare them just as he had stood as a boy and watched her make ‘the pieces’ for his father for his work. He had nearly cried then and had to look away. Now, he thought of Leanne and her baby sitting on the couch like Madonna and child. He thought of his mother’s sleeping face. He decided he would buy her a coat and send it to her. He began to cry. He cried for himself and for his mother and for all the unacknowledged pain and unspeakable love that welled up inside him, urgent to be told.

  Bridging the Atlantic

  Tam sat at the bar and watched Joanie wiggle his arse, pour endless pints, and blink his big false eyelashes. Joanie had fallen in love.

  ‘He’s a Yank,’ Joanie had beamed at Tam. ‘Six foot two, eyes of blue. His name’s Lance. He’s a computer software man. I’m interested in his hardware.’

  Tam sipped his pint and nodded approvingly. He only sipped his pint because he had been so drunk the night before. It was nice to watch Joanie now, suddenly, transformed by love. Well, if that’s what he wanted to call it, who the fuck was Tam or anybody else to disagree?

  Tam had tasted love, American style, too. He’d been in Bennets one night when he was cruised by a big beefy guy called Johnny. Think William Shatner and half the size again. Johnny was a trolley dolly doing Boston to Glasgow runs. It had been one of those tento-three nights. Ten-to-three and no man. Then of course the dance of the desperadoes started. Johnny appeared out of nowhere. By three o’clock they were in a taxi, heading for the Morgan hotel, Johnny’s big right hand down the front of Tam’s trousers. Sometimes you gave a fuck what the taxi driver thought and sometimes you didn’t.

  The hotel foyer had seemed floodlit and Tam suddenly felt shy as he followed Johnny like a lost puppy-dog past the bar area and into the lift. It being late, it was just the two of them. Johnny turned to look at Tam with adoring eyes.

  ‘You’re so handsome.’

  Tam liked the complimentary approach. He glanced up and down the length of Johnny’s body and felt pleased with himself.

  In the hotel room they took off their shoes, had a dry hump on the bed, then raided the mini-bar. There was no beer, so Tam drank some gin and tonic. As he mulled over his drink he looked at Johnny stretched out on the bed. Johnny’s tee shirt had slid up revealing a big hairy belly, and two things came to Tam then. First, so much for trolley dollies being skinny male models and second, there was no rapport. They had nothing to communicate to each other.

  ‘Jerk me off.’

  Tam sat astride Johnny and wanked him. Johnny closed his eyes and smiled contentedly. He might as well have been doing it himself. After he’d come Johnny
wiped his belly with some tissues and pulled at Tam’s zip.

  ‘I’d like to return the compliment.’

  During the night Tam woke and lay beside Johnny in the darkness. He listened to Johnny’s breathing. He couldn’t see his face. He could see the back of his head, his fine sandy brown hair, his broad, bare back. Tam leaned forward to brush his lips tenderly against Johnny’s back.

  Walter Weinstein had been Tam’s other American. He was older. Forty, maybe. Tam had been aware of Walter for some time. His face had kept cropping up throughout the night. Firstly, in Delilah’s, through the smoke and the stench, he’d seen him smile. Then in Club X, Walter loitered in the shadows, smiling again. Smiling at Tam.

  He had his own company. Something in travel. He gave Tam his card. On it was the name of the company and ‘Walter Weinstein, Company Director’. The sceptic in Tam thought anybody could have a card printed. ‘Tam McCormack, President of the World’. But he had no reason not to believe Walter. They got a taxi to the Wagner. Tam would have walked.

  Walter sat on the edge of the bed drinking a soda and lime. He wanted to talk. He talked about how beautiful Scotland was. How he travelled for business and pleasure. He talked about Ohio, where he lived and worked, and how he lived alone. He used to live with a guy as house buddies but ‘got pissed with it’. Walter said it’s hard to live with another adult you’re not having sex with. Tam felt so tired he lay down on top of the bed. It was then that Walter began to take off his clothes, slowly and unselfconsciously. Tam yanked at his own clothes. This wasn’t going to be a shagging party. The tone of the evening had been set.

  Once they were both under the covers, Walter turned off the bedside lamp. Everything seemed magnified; the sound of Walter swallowing, the creaks of the bed, the smell of Walter’s aftershave – whatever it was. Walter put his arms around Tam. He held him so tight, Tam thought his ribs would crack. He was still in Walter’s arms. This was all that was needed, this closeness.

  In the morning the sun shone into the room. Walter made small talk and coffee and they sat on the unmade bed. Walter looked older and sadder in the morning. Tam was usually depressed anyway after a one-night stand. It used to be guilt a long time ago but now it was just the alcohol and wondering how the fuck to get home. Then again, Walter had further to go home than he did. After a while they fell quiet. Tam thought about hotel rooms and how they seemed to have been especially designed for casual sex. He thought it was a good idea. Neutral territory. Neither was at home here.

  They each had a shower, but Tam could still smell the stale cigarette smoke that had stuck to the Brylcreem on his hair. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was defying gravity. As he dried himself he thought he could hear Walter whistle in the room.

  Dressed, Walter and Tam stood a foot apart at the window. Walter had opened the curtains and they both looked out at the city below. They never said a word. They just stood there, looking out at Glasgow, bathed in strong winter sunlight. It was as if they were both trying to remember who they were, where they were.

  Papa and Mama

  Everybody loved Papa Spenser. He was a fine figure of a man. But he was a fool: he drank too much, chased chickens and threw his money around. He had silver hair, cut short and neat, and a warm, weathered face. Some guys swore they could see all the colours of the ocean in his deep blue eyes. He always seemed to wear the right thing: when he wore a suit it hung on him beautifully, elegantly. When he dressed casually he looked like he’d just stepped off a yacht somewhere, cool and collected. Some older guys thought they could knock twenty years off their age by wearing Lycra shorts, living half their lives on a sunbed, chewing gum and pretending they could dance. Not Spenser. He seemed to have come to terms with the ageing process effortlessly. A weakness of Spenser’s, however, was the demon drink. He wasn’t the only steamer in Delilah’s by any stretch of the imagination. But somebody as dignified as Spenser had further to fall from grace.

  He was an estate agent, a senior partner in a prestigious Edinburgh firm. People said he preferred the Glasgow scene because he found it less pretentious. He was certainly rarely out of Delilah’s. He often came in alone but for a period of around a year he had brought a lady friend with him. She was maybe late thirties and called herself Miranda. Nobody liked Miranda. She was rude, bossy and worst of all used to get pissed and sit on Papa Spenser’s lap – a coveted spot if ever there was one. She wore so much gold it would have taken a mining expedition to rob her.

  There were various tales about Miranda. One of them was that she was a Glasgow madam who built up her business from a spooky bedsit shop to a string of penthouse flats where the good and the great got their rocks off. Other people said she was legit – and had her own accountancy firm. Many Delilah’s regulars resented her presence on the arm of the stunning Spenser. Guys who had formerly fluttered around Papa Spenser now felt intimidated. Any conversation was now three-way, Miranda constantly butting in. Even when she was quiet, which was a rarity, her gaze was ruthless. No one escaped her scrutiny. Prior to the addition of Miranda to his company, Spenser had always been approachable. He still was, but it was hard to flutter about and fawn over the sweet silver-haired Papa Spenser when everything had to be done under the rather large and snooty nose of Miranda.

  ‘If he’d only get shot of that big-beaked fag hag,’ complained one of Spenser’s unrequited loves, ‘I might stand a chance. I mean who is she? His mentally defective sister?’

  ‘I think she’s a scary big dyke,’ said a love rival. It was generally agreed that this wasn’t the case – that Miranda was straight and that there was maybe a business connection between her and Spenser. Bobbie, a punky lesbian in her late thirties, fancied Miranda. She even claimed to have finger-fucked her in the ladies loo. But as Bobbie had also claimed similar carnal delights with, amongst others, Jodie Foster and Madonna, her conquest of Miranda was consigned to the realms of pussy pulp fiction.

  Although Miranda gave the initial appearance of vivacity, it soon became apparent to anybody with an ounce of sense that she had all the social skills of a rabid dog. One of her nasty habits was to slap whoever she was talking to and guffaw loudly. This was almost forgivable if she’d just been told a hilarious joke, but she did it no matter what was said to her. You could have told Miranda your only child had just croaked and she’d skelp you and howl with laughter. One evening she made the mistake of hitting Joanie.

  It had been an especially rowdy night in Delilah’s. A karaoke competition with the major prize of a week’s holiday for two in Gran Canaria (and, swore the compere, all the cock you could possibly suck) had been held. The place was mobbed and the sense of hysteria pervasive. In the thick of it were Miranda and Spenser. Every now and then Miranda would unfurl herself from Papa and go on her rounds, slapping and howling all the way. On one occasion she knocked a pint tumbler off the bar. Joanie stepped round with a brush and dustpan to sweep up the debris. The problem was Miranda. It didn’t dawn on her to either move or attempt to assist Joanie. She simply stood amongst the remains of the pint glass giggling. This irritated Joanie.

  ‘Move yer ass tae I clean up the glass!’ he yelled.

  Miranda fixed Joanie with a look of astonishment, slapped him hard across the face, and shrieked with laughter. Joanie wasn’t taking this lying down. He slapped Miranda back and in a matter of seconds the catfight to end all catfights broke out. It began in the main bar with a wrestling match that looked like two blind drunks trying to do a waltz and ended in the ladies’ loo with Miranda trying to flush Joanie’s head down the toilet.

  Now I’ll tell you why Spenser came to be known as Papa. Spenser had a young boyfriend for a while, a young Italian waiter who looked sixteen but claimed to be thirty-one. He had brown eyes the size of small planets and hair darker than the night. He affected a thick Italian accent but it transpired he was born in Govan and had never been to Italy, land of his parents. It was he who christened Spenser ‘Papa’. He’d look lovingly at Spenser, drape his arms
over his shoulders and sigh ‘Papa.’ It caught on and soon everybody was calling Spenser ‘Papa.’ Even when the Italian boy had cut loose (a police inspector had offered him a plum position as a houseboy) the name Papa had stuck. Papa Spenser was nowhere to be seen during the Krystle versus Alexis catfight in Delilah’s.

  Bobbie said he was in the men’s room giving a rent boy a wank but her story was never confirmed. Despite his lack of involvement in the slapstick fight between his lady friend and Joanie, Papa Spenser was barred by the management, along with Miranda. For a while nothing was seen of Papa. There was a rumour that he’d sold his business and moved to London and opened his own bar. Bobbie said that she had it on good authority that he had married Miranda and was regularly giving it to her up the arse.

  Quashing both these rumours, Papa Spenser came into Delilah’s one night with a new lady friend, Edith. Papa presented Joanie with a small bouquet of flowers by way of apology, and, visibly moved, Joanie said that as the catfight really had fuck all to do with him, Papa wasn’t banned after all. Edith was fifty and didn’t care who knew. Everybody took to her right away. Bobbie, who initially commented rather acidly ‘Papa’s got a brand new fag hag,’ soon ensconced herself into her company, saying she felt Edith had a ‘matronly glamour’.

  Edith was a neurosurgeon at a hospital on the South Side. Everybody was impressed. Bobbie said she bet she had a good bedside manner, and it was only a matter of time before she dragged out another tired old finger-fucking fantasy. Edith didn’t know much about her predecessor, but the whole of Delilah’s soon dished the dirt. Edith warmed to Joanie and she often stood chatting to him at the bar, leaving the coast clear for Papa Spenser’s many admirers to put their various proposals to him.

  One night Edith and Joanie spoke about the catfight. Joanie explained that he was deeply ashamed that he had stooped to violence, which was something he absolutely abhorred, but ‘that woman,’ as he called Miranda, had been provocative in the extreme. Joanie also divulged to Edith that his daddy had beaten him when he was a boy and he had vowed never to let anyone hit him again. Edith had heard Joanie had given a good account of himself in the bar-room brawl, but Joanie shook his head. He said his face was nearly down the bend of the lavatory pan and his whole life had flashed before him when Miranda pushed the flush button for the third time.