by Max Schaefer
Adam planned to drink, so we took a minicab, for which I was grateful; on the bus my outfit could have precipitated in me a surfeit of neuroses. Inside we deposited our coats and paid the entrance fee to a goateed man with whom Adam exchanged a few familiar words. There was a mirror by the coat check: Adam examined himself again, and produced a length of metal chain from his pocket, which he wore as a necklace, linking its ends in front of him with a padlock that he left unfastened. He saw me beside him in the glass and said, ‘No specs.’
‘I won’t see anything.’
‘You’ll see enough.’ He lifted them off, folded them and put them in a side pocket of his combats: ‘That’s better.’ I could see his smile, but everything beyond had collapsed into a defocused haze, no man’s land fizzing with noise where sharp edges had been. I could no longer read the notice on the wall that outlined the dress code, the restrictions, the limits of responsibility.
I followed Adam in. It seemed tiny at first: a good chunk of the railway arch it occupied was taken up by the cloakroom and entrance area, from which we emerged against a bar wedged beneath the curving wall. Its ranged, illuminated bottles, simplified by my blurred vision into uniformity, like a kaleidoscope effect, reminded me for reasons I couldn’t grasp of the silent movie M, which I had seen at college and hardly thought of since. Before the bar was the narrowest of spaces, which extended into a corridor that grew quickly dark as Adam led me down, so architecture became hard to distinguish. I saw brick at times, in the red trickle of occasional dim lights; dividers of mesh and corrugated metal gave a maze-like atmosphere through which silent figures moved. Even with my glasses I would barely have seen them until they were next to me (with every man you passed there was a pause, a glance, like a factory conveyor halting for quality control); as it was, my short sight reduced people to their most cartoon attributes: heavy earring; beard; inked skull; leather cap. I thought: Isn’t it all skins, then? The muffled beat of musk pulsed like blood in the building’s walls, as if we were inside the head of someone listening. I was just thinking how all this was like a bad movie cliché of itself, and trying to decide if that disappointed me, when Adam rounded a corner and the space opened up around us. We had emerged into a second arch; I saw another bar, more comfortably proportioned, lit up like a town approached at night. This was the source of the music, which was revealed — as the dampening effect fell away, and with it any potency — as generic hard beat.
‘They’re here,’ Adam said ahead of me, waving, and pushed through to the bar. I kept my hand on the small of his back so as not to lose him, and eventually made out Philip and Tom leaning against the counter. We kissed hello, and Philip said, ‘Why, Miss Jones, you’re beautiful.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Are you wearing contacts?’
‘You know I don’t wear contacts.’
‘Can you see that?’ pointed Tom, and I squinted at the screens behind the bar: ‘I can see bodies,’ I said, ‘but not what they’re doing.’
‘Lucky you.’
I looked them up and down. Both wore ankle-length Doc Martens, jeans and short-sleeved shirts. It was the bare minimum: skin-casual. Philip at least had braces (just visible beneath a combat jacket) and, of course, cropped hair: as for Tom, I asked: ‘They let you in with all that on your head?’
‘Look around. It’s not unusual.’
I could see enough to tell that he was right, as had been my impression in the corridor. Of our nearest neighbours I counted three skins, two guys in leather, and a tall black man in a rubber apron, like something from a camp musical remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. ,
‘I thought it was a skin night,’ I complained to Adam.
‘It is. It just affects the proportions.’
‘But they’re not even bothering with the music.’
‘What were you expecting? Reggae?’
‘Yeah. You know’ — I did a little movement — ‘“I want all you skinheads to get up on your feet.” Or at least a bit of Cockney Rejects.’
‘You really have no idea, do you?’
Next to me a man with a shaved head, heavily tattooed muscles and mud-spattered hobnail boots asked the barman for a single Sapphire and tonic. ‘Life,’ I said, ‘is endlessly disappointing.’
‘Don’t knock it too much,’ Philip said. ‘We’re all here on your account.’
‘My apologies.’
‘Oh, I’m all right. I’m reliving my youth.’ He had been a skinhead of sorts, in his queer-activist days: it was the subject of an Ellen Marsh photo. He had been rather beautiful then.
The music thumped away; various blurred abstractions bought various blurred drinks. Everything was black surface, pinkish flesh. We looked vaguely about us; no one could think of much to say. After a while I announced brightly: ‘Theweleit says that the very prohibition of gay sex in the Third Reich made it a key area of transgression into which the fascist power élite had to be initiated.’
‘Who says what?’said Tom.
‘Klaus Theweleit. Because the anus, you see, is the ultimate sluice.’
‘They did put gay men in concentration camps, James,’ said Adam quietly.
‘So is that what we’re here for,’ Tom said, ‘your research? You going to “interview” some leather queens in the back room?’ He smiled sweetly, as if I was imagining any nastiness. For my best friend’s boyfriend, I hadn’t seen much of Tom since that dinner nearly a year ago. Either I deliberately saw Philip alone, or Tom was said to be busy in advance, or Philip simply turned up without him, alleging some work panic or stomach bug. How Philip felt about this I didn’t know: my own irritation at being snubbed was more than compensated for by Tom’s absence. I decided to ignore his dig.
‘Perhaps I should. I could march in and shout, “Take me to the LOG!”’
‘You’re still running with the conspiracy plot?’ Philip said. ‘Is there anyone you haven’t implicated yet?’
‘I’m struggling to squeeze in the political soldiers.’
‘Oh, that’s easy. Griffin, Fiore, Evola, Kali Yuga, Savitri Devi. Bish bash bosh.’
‘The problem is, Evola’s rather boring.’
‘I’m relieved to hear you say that.’
‘Actually, I’m getting slightly creeped out by the real connections.’
‘Between the Front and the occult?’
‘Between fucking everyone. I was reading the Scorpion, this would-be-intellectual journal put out by Michael Walker, who used to run a tour company with Nick Griffin and Roberto Fiore. So in summer ’93, just before Nicky died, Walker published an article by Stephen Cox, who ran something called the Jarls of Bælder, which as far as I can tell was a sort of occult, quasi-nazi homoerotic naturist group. Bælder had, or has, a secret inner order called the Fraternitas Loki, devoted to “covert aeonic action”: aeonics is a key Nine Angles term, and in Norse mythology Loki was the father of Fenrir, the wolf, right? The Above the Ruins album was Songs of the Wolf, and Fenrir was the in-house journal of the ONA … Anyway, Cox’s piece is this barking analysis of European history that says we need to reappraise the Third Reich and seek our destiny among the stars. And it’s illustrated with diagrams that say, at the bottom: copyright Order of Nine Angles. So this is explicit Nine Angles material appearing in the major British journal of the new right. They’re all over each other. Actually I was going to have the L in LOG stand for Longinus, because my plot’s based around the Heilige Lanze. But maybe Loki makes more sense …’
‘And on that note,’ said Adam, ‘I’m having a look round.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ It got darker the deeper we went into the arch. Under the higher part of the roof, metal dividers grew to a raised gallery. I followed Adam up the stairs, where I brushed against a descending skin, thirty or so, and caught his eye; at the top I looked back, but couldn’t see, in the unlit blur, if he was reciprocating.
The structure trembled under our boots. It could have been the prow of a ship: men promenaded (one even led a
n exposed, cowed creature on a leash), peered over the railing at the turmoil below or stood in close pairs, muttering over obscure interactions. Adam found a place at the rail. I stood next to him and put my hand against the small of his back. He kept looking down.
‘Kiss me,’ I said.
Adam pulled a face.
‘Go on.’ I kicked his ankle gently, with mock/real peevishness. ‘Kiss me.’
He did. We stood for a moment, and he smiled at me. Then he said, ‘I’m going for a wander, OK?’
‘I’ll come.’
‘I’ll see you back at the bar.’
‘Ads …’
He fingered my — his — Fred Perry. ‘This so isn’t you. Look at that.’ He pointed down to where a shadow seemed to move around a source of light. I squinted hopelessly. ‘What is it?’ I asked, but he had gone.
I blinked around me at the milling figures. One or two got close enough to catch my eye: I dropped my gaze; they walked on. I could make out the illuminated cluster of the bar, its light reflected in shaved heads, and thought I should go back to Philip and Tom, but when I made my way there, moving uncertainly down the metal steps (which seemed newly steep), I couldn’t find them. I bought another beer and investigated the warren of space beneath the gallery. Like a tourist at a spice market, nervous of being trapped into purchasing, I was careful to look across people rather than at them, and avoid staying in one place too long. I pushed through gaps, ducked round corners. The music’s unrelenting beat insisted it was a soundtrack to all this, and kept tricking me into believing there was a shape to my movements; when I noticed this I played a version of a game I’d once invented on a train, watching the landscape pass with my headphones on: to make myself perceive sound and action separately, in their utter lack of relation. I failed at this, as I always did.
I stepped into an alcove to let someone pass but he followed me in. It was the skin from the stairs.
‘Got a light?’ His accent was south London, or maybe East End.
‘I don’t smoke, sorry.’
‘Yeah all right, geezer.’ He smiled as if I’d made a joke, and didn’t move. We looked at each other for a long moment. He said, ‘Having a good evening?’
‘Not bad.’ I swigged my Beck’s. His eyes were close, enough to see now, pale and blue. ‘How about you?’
‘Yeah likewise. Just checking it out, you know, seeing who’s my type.’
‘So who is your type?’
When he rested a hand on my midriff I didn’t flinch. I could make out his freckles and orange stubble. There was a certain deliberate resolve to the set of his chin, as if pre-emptively forestalling some quibble.
He said, ‘You are.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well now. Young and cute, for a start’ He touched my face. ‘Fit but not a muscle Mary.’ My arm. ‘Cropped. Pale.’
‘Pale? Thanks.’
‘Yeah, I like pale skin.’
I couldn’t stop myself: ‘Not too big on black guys, then.’
The skin smiled and looked at the ceiling. ‘We-1-1,’ he said, stretching it out. ‘Yes and no, fella.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well I definitely don’t find them a sexual turn-on.’
I smiled: ‘As opposed to?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘As opposed to what kind of turn-on?’
He frowned, as if it was me that was thick. ‘I mean I don’t fancy them.’
‘OK.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I like white lads, me.’
‘Right.’ I thought: Please stop talking now and touch me again. But I had started a chain of thought, and I must have seemed too open to ideas, or perhaps, after that last exchange, in need of education, because he went on.
‘Just don’t like the black attitude, you know what I mean?’
With what I hoped was edge I asked: ‘What’s the black attitude?’
‘You know. Kissing teeth and all that. And the overall appearance.’
‘I didn’t know there was one.’
‘Oh definitely. Mind you, I do have black mates.’
‘Well there you go.’
‘But they’ve rejected a lot of that stuff.’
‘Have they.’
‘Says a lot I think.’
‘It does.’
‘So anyway.’ He smiled. ‘What’s your type?’
I said, ‘Yeah. Actually I think I need to find my friend, sorry.’
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. ‘No Worries, fella.’
I ducked out of the alcove without looking back and squeezed between the men lining this section of the corridor, aware that my constant use of ‘Excuse me’ was inappropriate but unable to restrain it. A few metres on someone grabbed my shoulder.
‘Who was that?’Philip said.
‘Who was who?’
‘Your little friend just now. You looked cosy.’
‘Oh. Turns out, a racist prole. Why are people such stereotypes?’
‘Because that’s how you want them. Did you get off on it?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Hmm,’ he said. He reached down for me and winked. ‘Liar.’
‘Where’s Tom?’ I asked.
‘Good question. Where’s Adam?’
‘Gone for a wander.’
He pinched my cheek. I said in a pissy whisper: ‘“They did put gay men in concentration camps, James.’”
‘Naughty,’ muttered Philip, and pulled me against him, hard. I opened my mouth. I closed my eyes. The beat was not our soundtrack. His chest hair tickled me through his shirt’s open neck. I fingered the long furrow of his spine, and tried to trap his tongue with mine when it came in quick sly swoops. My hands moved round him and down his front, grasping his braces like a ladder’s sides. Feeling his tug at my waist I grabbed his fly and got it open: worked my fingers inside, towards warmth and tackiness. I hooked two of them round my target and worked it gracelessly out; shook hands briefly to renew acquaintance, then looked down, breathed in, dived. But seconds later he was pushing me off again, and I strained my knees to stand. He said, ‘Tom’s over there.’
‘Where?’
‘Don’t look.’ He gave the inside of my mouth a final, furtive lick and said, ‘Find us at the bar in a bit.’
I walked off in the other direction, only realizing as my jeans sank around me that he’d unfastened them. Zipping up, I thought the action was garnering me credit, as if I had done what I’d set out to. In any case I needed to pee; I found my way somehow to the toilets, but as I waited, unzipped again, for the usual pause to pass, I felt a nudging against my shin that made me think of Adam’s cat. Beneath me a squatting figure, naked but for a jockstrap, was nuzzling my boots. As I looked down he smiled back with incongruous affection. He was South Asian, probably, thirty or so, with a scraggly mop of hair brushing the urinal and gap teeth revealed by a mouth so far open that his pleasant face contorted around it. With glasses on I could have seen his tonsils.
‘Go on,’ someone said, ‘it’s what he wants,’ and in apparent agreement the crouching man widened his maw further, twitching its corners in a grin and lolling from it a shadowy tongue.
‘It won’t cost you anything,’ said the voice.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled ashamedly to the waiting man, ‘I can’t.’ At once his expression turned flat and bored. He shrugged, and shuffled off.
The entrance to the smaller arch was framed with slouching figures like warnings or advertisements, who watched in lazy synchrony as I pushed my way between them. I progressed to its further recesses, registering with uninvolved curiosity the various shrouded gestures, the transactions and refigurings, taking place on the margins as I passed. A Socratic beard munched pedagogically on a glabrous nipple; a testis demonstrated its resilience; tattoos stretched and strained. What had I imagined: that I would discover beneath Vauxhall railway the persistence of a subculture unaltered by time, like a movie hero uncovering the rituals of the exiled Reich? At
the threshold of the final room, the level of illumination was, perhaps in reward, very slightly higher, so that its shape was more apparent: a brick chamber, relatively large (or so it felt after the constriction of the approach), suspended in a haze of the ubiquitous, uninspired red light. My eyesight had not, of course, improved, but I had rather got used to it, so that the vague apprehension I had of my surroundings now seemed about right, as if it would have been presumptuous to expect more detail. No, the blur was … appropriate: with this saturated palette it looked not so much like watercolour as long photographic exposure, and lent a particular expressiveness, but also a certain discretion, to the pair of shadows in the corner, studies for a more developed allegory of subjection and compliance; and the quicker host around, action sketches of grasps and nods. Much closer and more clearly visible was the man who stood with his back to me, his posture as legible as the others’ but more banal (shoulders — in a leather jerkin — slouched, head to the side, one booted foot tapping); and I realized why I had paused in this doorway: I had joined, unconsciously, the back of a queue. Peering past him I saw five or six men also waiting, the ubiquitous mix of skinheads and leather queens, their costumes progressively less discernible to me as they approached the object of their patience, a repeating and instantly familiar pink spasm in the corner. I put a hand on my neighbour’s shoulder as I passed, with the nonsensical impulse to reassure him I wasn’t jumping the line; and proceeded, slowly, along the wall of men, touching each in my partial blindness, and regarding their faces in profile: there was a heavily veined neck; one of those massively distending ear piercings (a huge black ring with the lobe stretched thin around it, like a rubber guard); a weak chin and prominent Adam’s apple; someone, with concave cheeks, wiping his nose. And then I was at the front, where an overfilled, checked short-sleeved shirt kept up a grunting totter against a thin, braced body that I knew. As I moved round to look at him (both of our heads touched the wall now — my ear, his brow) I saw that the padlock that linked his necklace had been fastened shut; it bounced and jiggled in the space below his chin. Adam had taken his shirt off, and his combats hung down over the tops of his boots. ‘I need my glasses,’ I told him, ‘I want to go,’ and he muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake,’ but I was already crouching to retrieve them. His braces trailed on the floor, and in the triangular space under the quaking little lean-to that he made I had to root for his pocket among the folds of cloth. Looking up I noticed that he still wore his jockstrap. I put on my glasses and stood. As I walked out I was careful not to hurry. Most of the still-queuing men avoided my eye when I looked at them, with a focus that now seemed hallucinatory.