I got dressed again in an elegant party dress, a long green satin number with embroidered flowers and vines crawling up one side, and a hefty split as high as my hip on the other. And after half an hour fixing my hair and my face, I went downstairs to feel wanted, and be a part of something, once again – while I still could.
The place was busy, but not the fullest I’d ever seen it. Most of the Kits were hanging around the bar, with Gloria chatting up some youngster at a nearby table, and swinging her low-cut top in front of him every time she leant in to pick up her beer glass. I managed to turn a few heads as I crossed the floor to approach them, and was sure I heard someone mutter something about ‘Poison Ivy’ as I passed by. As it was, I had come rather overdressed, as Mel and Olivia were still lounging around in jeans (albeit very well-fitting ones) and Gloria was rocking out in a black leather jacket and leggings.
“Ah, so you’ve come back to join us,” Olivia smiled. “You always light this place up with your presence.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep for all the noise,” I said as I sat down. I scanned the crowd slowly and carefully, looking to see who might be worth a little investment of my time, when the doors opened and a woman in her late forties or early fifties walked in, dressed in a three-quarter length faux fur coat, looking curiously around herself as though searching for someone. I saw Mel stiffen and poke Gloria as the newcomer came closer and waited to be served.
“Oh my God,” Gloria squealed, “Trixie? Is that you?”
The older woman at the end of the bar hurried towards us and exchanged deep hugs with our one-time top girl.
“It’s me,” she said. “How the hell are you?”
“Hanging on, just about. For one more night.” Gloria grabbed my hand and drew me closer. “Hey, Phoenyx? This is Trixie. She was part of the furniture when I started; Mel’s predecessor. We used to call her our Robin Redbreast because when she sang, she’d get so emotional she’d blush bright red all the way down to her chest.”
“Great to meet you,” I said.
“Charmed, sweetie,” Trixie told me, and shook my hand. “Can’t wait to see you in action later.”
“So what’s new?” Mel asked. “C’mon, fill us in.”
Trixie turned back to Gloria. “Well, I finally got my op,” she went on, “I’ll be ten years as a real woman next year.”
“Oh wow. That’s so wonderful. How are you finding it?”
“Heh. I have ups and downs. But I’ve got the most gorgeous little Moroccan shoe salesman to help me through. We got married in San Francisco in ‘87. Nothing fancy – not even really planned or I would have had to fly all you hotties out there for the reception. No, it just felt the right thing to do. And we’re still together, all these years later, so I guess it really was a good move. Hell, he was even talking about adopting a child recently. I said, ‘Darling, I’ve got you – why do I want another kid running around the house and making a mess?’”
She sat down on a stool and looked across at the walls opposite, suddenly serious. “Horrible to hear about Petra. And that told me I had to come back here. I dropped everything and jumped on the first plane in. To say farewell to her again, and to check up on all the rest of you.”
“Ah, we’re doing okay,” Gloria sighed. “Older now, slower, a bit saggier. But deep down inside, we’re still the same bunch of ass-kicking hell-raisers you remember.”
“And you’ll always be, darling,” Trixie sighed. “Nothing will ever change that.”
Svetlana reappeared from the direction of the Ladies’ and filled the bar with a whoop of joy, quite unlike anything I’d ever heard coming from her direction. Everybody heard it and looked around as the Russian shot into our midst with the speed and accuracy of a cruise missile and, with barely a whisper, picked up Trixie like a child and swung her around in her arms.
“Whoa...hey, take it easy there, Tsarina. I’m an old woman now, y’know.”
Svetlana replied with a loud smacking kiss on the lips. “I love your new look,” she said. “I told you you’d get there, Babushka. And I can’t believe I’m going to be on stage with you again after all this time.” She set Trixie back down on her stool again. “Sorry, I’m just so happy to see you again. I don’t cry much, not any more. But when I do…”
And she did, Svetlana’s face reddening and shining as though it had been polished. She angrily lashed a stream of tears away from her jaw.
Trixie smiled at the sight of the copious waterworks, and dried away the rest of it with the hem of her top. “Don’t apologies, dear. We’ll have to do some serious catching up.”
“Those two seem to have some happy history,” I said aside to Gloria as the chit-chat among the others went on.
“Well, yeah. Trixie rescued her from the streets. Nobody knows what happened to ‘Lana’s family back in Russia but somehow she ended up outside this place, and Trixie literally fell over her one day. Took her in, cared for her, and got her a job here. Oh yeah, Trix was mother and father to ‘Lana, that’s a fact.”
“You never told me that!” I squeaked.
Gloria shrugged, and smiled. “Well, Trix confided in me before she left the Klub. So only I ever knew the truth, since ‘Lana never liked to bring up her past.” She threw an admiring glance over the Russian’s robust frame. “And to look at her now, you’d never think that she was once a skinny little waif-thing in a torn cardigan.”
“I remember the day I danced on that stage wearing a cardigan,” I sighed with a glance over at the velvet curtains. “A handmade one at that. My mother’s birthday present to me when I was fourteen, because she couldn’t afford to buy me anything.”
“Was that for your audition?”
“Yeah. Well, when I say ‘danced’ – I mean, moved around like a buffalo with a wasp up its ass.”
Gloria laughed into her drink, spattering drops of dark froth onto the table.
“Well, I remember you when you started,” she said, serious again. “I remember seeing you on that first night, before you went on, and thinking: ‘I’ll give her a month’. And yet, you made it, baby. All the way to the very end.”
She held me with a straight, honest stare of respect, a look of past grandeur somewhat humbled. And it only occurred to me then that Gloria and I had never really gotten to know each other very well. And now, it seemed we were set to part forever without knowing very much more.
“I’m stubborn that way,” I said, smiling.
“And that’s what made you what you are. The star of this place.”
“Oh, really…”
Her hand grabbed mine, suddenly, unexpectedly. I looked down at the long, thin fingers, the pale veins standing proud of the skin on the back of her hand, the big emerald and sapphire rings flashing. And the wrinkles across the knuckles, the unavoidable, untreatable gnarling which betrayed her real age. Come to think of it, she had been wearing long white cotton gloves on stage for quite some time, components of her high-school costume which never came off.
“No. When Sissi left, I didn’t think anybody could ever take her place, or even shine half as bright as the star that she was. Except maybe myself. Yeah, I was an arrogant bitch, and I admit it. Then you came on the scene, so timid and flustered, and I just wanted to laugh – it looked like cruelty to me, the way you got thrown to the wolves back then.
“But you survived. You were the tortoise to my hare. And one day, I woke up and found you kicking my ass all over that stage. That bloody tattoo of yours turned you into something new, something I’d never seen before. Then I knew my time was up, I’d had my fifteen minutes and I was only making up numbers after then. You took my crown, Phoenyx. And you know what? I loved you for it.”
Her hand squeezed mine, proving that she meant it, and confirming exactly what Honey had observed all those years before.
“Well,” I gulped, “thanks, Gloria.” I didn’t know what else to say. None of that mattered any more, anyway; except as more evidence that being a Kit was something very specia
l indeed, an experience to be savored and treasured.
Then Olivia came steaming towards us at an alarming rate of knots, where she succeeded in catching Trixie totally by surprise with a huge bear hug from behind.
“I know who that is,” she gasped without looking round. “Olivia...?”
“Just about. Welcome back, Trixie. I was hoping you’d be able to make it.”
I smiled to myself as the reunions continued, and everyone else caught up on lost time. I turned my attention back to the crowd again. There were half a dozen men, and a couple of women, that I wouldn’t have minded dragging upstairs with me later on, yet the notion had now abandoned me completely. Perhaps it was just my libido dwindling with age, or a sign of the advancing, dreaded mid-life period when our hormones gamble everything we possess on the table and hope that we turn up some good cards to get us through the decades ahead. Or perhaps it was a growing acceptance of the fact that it was something more stable, longer-lasting and important – not to mention, mature – that I was seeking now, and would be unlikely to find it in a club devoted to the fetishism of the flesh, where I could probably have had fifty men at my feet at the end of any given performance. But how many would be able to see me for what I was, and be able to accept the rest of me, on a daily, monthly, yearly basis?
I wasn’t liking this ‘maturity’ thing much. And yet the changes were coming, whether I wanted them or not.
I forgot about myself and my selfish needs and turned back into the little circle of warmth and friendship which was currently held in thrall by Trixie, relating some breathlessly funny story. I whispered a request for a Martini in the barman’s ear and pulled my stool in to listen, and get to know this veteran Kit better.
Trixie spent every evening and most days around the Klub, and I quickly grew to like her a lot; she was a delightful character, full of self-effacing humor and possessed of a sharp observational eye but without the hard, hormonal edge of Honey. And when the end of the month came, the time for the big send-off, it seemed like no time at all had passed since that prickly-eyed meeting in the bar when Mel first gave us the shattering news, and decided upon her plan of action to remember Petra, and bring to an end our days at the Klub. We’d all been too engrossed in planning it all out to really notice the time, until the night before when we all sat at the bar and realized that it had sneaked up on us.
“Tomorrow night’s the night, then,” Olivia summed up over her glass of wine. “How are we all feeling?”
Trixie clutched at her bare shoulders as though a cold wind had just blasted past her. “Scared,” she said. “It’s been so long, and feels so funny being back – just in time to leave again for good.”
Gloria hugged her tight. “I know how you feel. But you’re back with us, that’s all that matters. And you know you would have kicked yourself afterwards if you’d missed out on this chance. Wouldn’t you?”
She nodded sadly. “Yes, I would’ve. And I’m so glad I did. But still—”
“No, no buts,” Mel objected. “At least, none apart from the bare ones we’ll all be showing off tomorrow night.”
The laughs dissolved any further dissent or objection. At which point Trixie stood up, bent over the bar and flicked her flared skirt up over her back to show off a very fine example of bare butt indeed.
“Oh, you fucking tease,” Gloria sniggered. “Good to see you’re in the spirit, honey.”
Svetlana leaned across and grabbed herself a handful of butt cheek. “Hm, pretty firm. Could sure take a good tanning.”
“No S & M tomorrow night. Good, old-fashioned clean fun only,” Mel reminded her. But Svetlana had thawed with age, and seemed to have finally settled into her place in a Europe which had shrugged off the yoke of totalitarianism, as well as a role at the Klub where she was no longer the alpha female. I couldn’t say what had contributed to curing her anger, but my ego wouldn’t let me ignore the possibility that my public display of booting her ass had something to do with it.
Trixie shook her tail and lowered her skirt again. “My husband will be along to cheer and embarrass me,” she said. “So feel free to throw him out if he gets too obstreperous. I’ve told him to behave, but he’s never seen me perform so I can’t say how he’ll be.”
“We shan’t be throwing anyone out,” Olivia said. “Everyone’s welcome, and the more noise, the better.”
As it was, noise was something we had plenty of.
The final evening began with a bang. I was backstage with everyone else, applying the finishing touches to make-up and hair, when one of the bar staff appeared in the doorway.
“They’ve just opened the doors and started admitting people,” she said, sounding breathless, as if she’d run all the way around the city to tell us that. There was a grey blot of sweat on her tee-shirt, just above the bust line.
“Great,” Gloria said, and applauded. “So we’ll have an audience, after all? How many have we got now – three? Four? Remember, the guide dogs don’t count.”
“Uh, no,” the barmaid went on. “The doormen have just told us that we’re queued twice around the block. I went out to look, ‘cos I didn’t believe him. And they were wrong.
“It’s actually more like three times around.”
I think everyone else froze at that moment. We all looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
“What’s up?” Trixie asked, the first to speak when we realized that Petra’s send-off would be even bigger than we could ever have hoped for. “Are you not used to this?” She passed us all with a sassy smile and slapped each one of us on the back in turn. “Cheer up, girls. It’s all paid off. I’m off for a little Dutch courage.”
The barmaid hung around the threshold of the suddenly quiet changing room, looking slightly anxious.
“Just thought you’d want to know,” she said, “‘cos we’re gonna be rushed off our feet.” And with that, she hurried off again.
Everyone else looked at Mel, who’d been responsible for organizing the publicity and getting the word out.
“Well, I’m glad I got plenty of spare tickets printed now,” she said. “And that I’ll be able to exceed the charity’s expectations next week.”
It was Gloria who flung herself off her seat and wrapped herself around Mel’s neck. “You did it,” she sobbed. “We did it. For Petra, and for everyone else. I knew they would come.”
Mel replied with her usual salacious smile. “Yep. Now let’s go out there and make ‘em all cum again.”
By nine o’clock the place was packed. Mel told us that she had carried out some calculation based on the average amount of floor space required for a standing individual, divided into the amount of total public floor space in the main club area, threw in a 2% margin for error (i.e., her having failed every mathematics exam she ever took at high school) and ordered up a number of tickets from the local printers based upon the result. The venue was officially declared filled to capacity by the doormen when there were five tickets left unsold.
Mel turned to me with a self-satisfied grin when we heard the news. “Looks like I finally passed a math test,” she laughed.
It wasn’t easy to hear the public while backstage due to the acoustics of the club, and the proximity of the band, but tonight for the first time in years – at least, since the days when Honey was a star attraction – I could hear the bubbling hubbub of conversation over the warm-up music. Josh was fiddling around on the keyboard in his usual manner, swapping from famous classical pieces (in this case Pachelbel’s Canon in D) to pop and jazz numbers and back again. When I dashed out through the curtains to pass a note to Odo regarding the start time, Josh clocked me and immediately segued into Stravinsky’s Firebird, which I didn’t recognize at the time but Olivia, being far more cultured than me, informed me of when I went backstage again. The sound men had just finished making adjustments to the PA, which necessitated testing half a dozen microphones and shouting random numbers over the top of Josh’s exquisite medleys, but it ensure
d that Mel and Trixie would be at their best when they opened the formal proceedings.
Mel checked her watch as the music faded to a close and we heard the appreciation from the crowd rumble through. Suddenly, I felt those butterflies again, which I hadn’t experienced since my first stumbling, amateurish days back in ‘79. It was as if everything else had been a dress rehearsal for this moment, the climax to my career.
Not everyone turned up, of course; there was no sign of Empress Sissi, my legendary predecessor; nor Bruno, for that matter, although he was undoubtedly with all of us in spirit. There was no Gang of Four, no Hansel and Gretel, and no GOSM to ogle us that one last time. But those who did make it were guaranteed a night to remember.
Mel put her arms around Trixie and gave her a huge hug.
“Go do your thing, sweetie,” she whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
And so off she went to open the night’s proceedings and bring the curtain down on the Kitty Klub’s seventy-odd years of uninterrupted, non-stop erotic cabaret.
Chapter Thirteen
Last Tango in Berlin
Out in the middle of the stage, Trixie stood alone in the spotlight, looking pensive in her satin dress, long gloves and boa which all echoed the heyday of Petra, and by extension, the old Klub itself for as long as any of us had known it. The lights washed over her in pale pastel shades of blue and yellow. Finally, she spoke.
“I don’t know if many of you will remember me,” she said, but a few yelps and cheers from the floor told us that she had definitely not been forgotten by some older patrons, “but I joined the Kitty Klub in the early 70s. ‘73, in fact, now that I bother to think. Back then, I had a bit of a Joel Gray Cabaret thing going, when being a loud and proud camp young man was still a little bit radical – how times have changed. Because I’m now a slightly quieter and much prouder older woman.
“And I may also be the oldest transsexual swinger in town, but I wouldn’t have missed this night for anything. And I want to dedicate this song to our dear departed friend, the warm, funny and damn fucking sexy Miss Petra Maria Liebowitz.”
Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire Page 29