The Naked Drinking Club

by Rhona Cameron

  ‘Have you got a tattoo?’ I slurred, as he marched me. He didn’t reply. His angry silence made me giggle, which made him tighten his grip, which only made me giggle even more. I didn’t care about anything, and felt increasingly mischievous.

  I wanted to get back to the saxophonist and read the date on his arm. I looked to Scotty for help but he had joined in singing with the old guy. I grew tired of the restrictions, and decided to enter the talent contest, which seemed to be pretty relaxed. I walked up the steps onto the stage with my schooner in my hand, and grabbed the mike.

  ‘WHAT’S THE SCORE WITH THE TATTOOS?’ I boomed out over the music and the band tuning. The big guy looked up from the bar and gestured to the bar man.

  ‘LET’S FUCKIN’ LIVEN THIS—’ The mike went dead. I put down my schooner on the stage and removed my vest, swirling it round my head. A couple of instruments began the familiar, world-famous opening bars to ‘The Stripper’. Very soon the whole bar was watching me, even the few women that were there, many of them joining in the notes. They seemed happy with the situation, which gave me no reason to stop.

  ‘Na, na, na, naah! Na, na, na, na.’ I threw my vest into the crowd; Scotty lunged forward and caught it. The drummer joined the saxophonist; I moved my hips to each side in time to the thud of the drums.

  ‘Na, na, na, naah! Na, na, na, na!’ I kicked off my flip-flops; again Scotty caught them and clutched them tight to his chest. I pulled down my jeans, to which I got the biggest cheer. Hands were clapping above heads. I felt numbed-out nothingness. I took off my bra to almost a full band, bar the keyboard player. Everybody seemed to accept my topless dancing, which was now in full swing. I felt the crowd was with me, so I pushed things further, and began shaking my tits a little, much to everybody’s amusement.

  ‘Na, na. Na, naah! Na, na, na, na …!’

  I caught Scotty’s face: he was making the finger across the throat sign, but I ignored it, feeling no danger, just stupid fun. I began taking off my pants. I dropped them to my ankles at first then kicked them up into my hand. Some men from the back moved the crowd forward, pushing people out of the way to get to the front. I circled my pants above my head before throwing them out to the crowd.

  Two large men in matching T-shirts, advertising a beer I’d never heard of, moved to the front and climbed the steps to the stage to grab me. Scotty waved for me to follow him. I was completely naked. The men didn’t know what to do. They wanted to be forceful; I could see the intent in their faces, but they couldn’t touch me. I loved the feeling of being so free and naked and open, yet my nudity felt like a protective forcefield. Nobody wanted to grab me; it would be seen as too intrusive. It was bizarre, and I loved it. The band played the final chords of ‘The Stripper’, as I jumped down onto the floor. Other men pushed forward to grab me, while the rest of the bar just watched and cheered as the chase began.

  I ran behind a table with Scotty, who still had hold of my clothes. It was hard to run for laughing. The bouncers and Scotty were not laughing. I noticed Scotty looking scared, but I had no idea why, and no sense of danger. Instead, when the two men moved one way, I moved the other, using the tables and chairs and the circular central bar to avoid them. I was too absorbed in the chase to notice that Scotty was gone. I ran round the bar for the second time, this time running to the right. Then someone grabbed me from behind and twisted my arm, and marched me out of the bar, a different way from where I came in. I was walked through a small kitchen and outside to a yard where beer barrels lined the wall. I expected we were going to be thrown out, and that all my clothes would follow behind us.

  In the yard, Scotty was being held by two men, while another two stood around; with the one escorting me, that made five of them. I registered that as soon as I entered the yard. Then I saw Scotty punch some guy, and it all degenerated into a chaos that we were just too out of it to deal with. Three men set upon him as he lay on the ground, trying to curl up against the kicks. There was blood near his face. The other two gripped me. I struggled to break free but couldn’t. I saw my clothes in the corner beside a garbage bin but didn’t care.

  ‘How do you like your boyfriend now?’ said the one holding my left arm.

  ‘He’s not my fucking boyfriend,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Not so fuckin’ big now, is he?’

  Everything happened so quickly, it was hard to know what to do next. There seemed little point in pleading with them to stop, as they wouldn’t stop until they felt satisfied. I felt no fear for my own safety, because my nudity was still protecting me, but I felt really bad for Scotty. They took a break from kicking him and threw me my clothes. The guys holding me let go. The others moved away from Scotty, and I felt relief that it was over.

  ‘Put them fucking on,’ one commanded.

  I put on my jeans and vest and flip-flops, and stuffed my underwear in my pockets. Scotty stood up and spat out blood, wincing in pain.

  ‘Scotty, you all right?’ I said, breathless from adrenalin. He was bent over, spitting onto the ground, his hands on his knees. He stood up, and wiped his hand across his mouth, and looked straight at one of the men.

  ‘Fuckin’ small-town cunts!’ he said, signing his own death warrant.

  ‘Scotty …’ I ran over and held Scotty, trying to get between him and the man I suspected was about to hit him. He tried to push me off. I tried to resist but the big man behind pulled me away from him. The moment I was moved away, Scotty took a massive blow to the face at close range and he fell to the ground, before hitting his head on the fence behind him.

  The man beside me laughed as Scotty slid down. I hated the ugly big fat fucking laughing face of the man, and the switch just clicked inside me. I delivered him a right hook with everything I had. It didn’t quite make the impact I had hoped, but it was enough to make him hold his mouth and drop his head forward, swearing at me. The other two men laid into Scotty again; he was trying to stand but finding it harder than before. A man lunged towards me, and I jumped up and headbutted him. I felt the crunch of his nose, or teeth, I wasn’t sure which. He fell backwards, his nose flattened across his face, blood spraying out. While he was holding his face with both hands, I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could. I felt as though I’d broken my toe in the process but kept going. He fell onto his knees, alternately clutching his balls and his face. The remaining three men grabbed my wrists and ankles and picked me up despite my wriggling around and shouting.

  With all the grappling and pulling, we fell back inside the kitchen. Things smashed around. The man gripping my right wrist moved in close to my head to get through the doorway, and I tried to nut him as well. A punch landed across my face, and knees and feet kicked my back and ribs. I didn’t feel much pain; I just kept going, kept kicking and punching out best I could.

  ‘Fuckin’ kill the cunts!’ screamed the headbutted man from the yard. Scotty appeared behind me and hit one of the guys over the head with a bottle, which shattered everywhere, bits flying into my mouth. I felt the grip loosen round my other wrist, as the man holding me struggled to deal with Scotty at the same time. Scotty was screaming like a mad man, his face covered in blood. I wrenched my wrist free, and punched the man in the balls. He bent over double, then Scotty punched him. A red light swooped through the kitchen from outside.

  ‘FUCKIN’ COPS ARE HERE, YOU’RE FUCKED!’ Scotty screamed, as Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’ belted out from the bar next door, making it impossible to hear anything of what was going on. Somehow I got to my feet but rammed my back against a fridge door handle. I looked for a knife or some weapon, for I truly would have fought on to the death – I didn’t give a fuck. I felt nothing but heart-pumping madness with no time to think of how bad things could get. There was nothing lying around, but it was hard to take anything in because of all the bodies pummelling each other and the glass, and the blood, and the floor being most of my view. Most of the violence was aimed at Scotty again; so I decided to make a run for the door, back out to the smal
l yard with the headbutted man in it.

  I swung the door open; the man was gone, and another door round to the front of the building was open. I ran out, I saw walls, blurred lights; a police car parked outside; and an empty, lopsided road, which I ran onto, like in a dream. I was running full pelt but the trees alongside me were not really moving. I shouted out loud to myself, as I ran, a mantra: ‘Come on! Keep going! Come on!’

  I was free and heading back along the road the cab had brought us from the beach. Then I stopped to breathe, my hands on my knees, panting. Momentarily, I was feeling pretty pleased that I’d escaped relatively unharmed. I was right, I was truly indestructible. I expected to see Scotty running towards me as I waited at the bend, and I planned that if anyone ran after me, I could climb up the verge to my left, or cross over and run through the trees down into the blackness of the beach, where I would just lie and wait until it all passed. I longed for the security of trainers, loathing combat in flip-flops. I turned again to look for Scotty. I had been sure he would make a run for it as soon as I was safely out of the kitchen, but he didn’t show. I had two options:

  1. To run back into the main bar area and find the police, but risk arrest, jail for the night and possible deportation.

  2. Tokeep on running to the beach where I would sleep off my drunkenness and start again in the morning with a clear head.

  My breathing eased slightly. I looked up to the night sky. It felt quiet and peaceful where I was standing, and it was somewhat surreal that in the bar down the road Scotty was getting the kicking of a lifetime. I breathed in slowly through my nose and shut my eyes, wanting it all to be imagined. I knew I would have to go back, and just wanted a few seconds of pretending things were not as bad as they were before they got worse.

  I couldn’t leave Scotty there alone, no matter what. Whoever the hell he was, he was with me, and I was with him, and leaving him was against the rules. I wouldn’t do that to someone. I ran back with newfound resolve, cursing my flip-flops as I went. Out front the police car was still empty. A man leant against the wall vomiting. I ran round the back, increasingly fearful of what I might find by now. I could hear shouting and banging and scuffling from the yard; when I got there the numbers had doubled and about eight men were kicking the fuck out of Scotty, who was rolled up in a ball on the ground. I jumped on top of the crowd and punched anything I could. The tight group round Scotty broke up slightly, in an attempt to deal with me. Scotty crawled towards the door under an assault of assorted footwear around his head and body. There was no time to get a good look at him, we just had to get out and back onto the road. The kitchen door swung open just as I received the worst blow so far from a fat man in a checked shirt with curly hair. As he punched me in the side with enormous force, I felt something crack and fell down onto Scotty.

  Two policeman burst into the yard, but the size of the yard and the fact that there were now twelve of us in it meant they had some obstacles in their way before they could get to us. Two of the men pushed the police out the way and tried to run back inside, making one officer chase them back inside to the kitchen and out to the bar. Two other men ran out the back door onto the road. During the chaos, I grabbed Scotty, trying to help him up.

  ‘This is it, Scotty, come on, NOW!’ I yelled. We both lunged up towards the back door and out along the side of the bar towards where the police car was parked.

  We didn’t talk, we were in such pain, and Scotty couldn’t stand upright. I made a split-second decision to head behind the bar through the trees, despite how dark it was, and back towards the sea. We ran, bent over like apes, with no idea of what ground was under us. I caught my leg on something and felt wetness trickle down my ankle onto my foot. We moved branches out of the way as we headed downwards, until we felt sand, then we dropped down and lay as flat as we could. Voices came closer, first from behind us and then from nearby, slightly downhill; a torch light swooped over us and the trees we’d just run through, and I pushed Scotty’s face into the sand to muffle his moaning and his wincing. I held onto him tightly, trying to keep us as still as possible. His T-shirt was soaked through with sweat that stuck to my hands. He began sobbing and I pushed his head further into the ground and held him even tighter.

  ‘Must have headed back onto the road,’ said a voice. A radio clicked on, as another voice spoke through the fuzziness.

  ‘Nah, mate, one female, another male, copy.’

  The torch swooped to the right of us.

  ‘I’ll head up there now, over.’ The voice spoke some more but I couldn’t hear what was said; it became fainter as whoever it was walked back to the bar.

  Scotty’s body was shuddering as he sobbed.

  ‘I’m fucked, mate,’ he cried. It was too dark again to see anything.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, suddenly feeling lucid. ‘We’ve got to try to stay near the road, to get some help – a lift or something.’ I tried to hold his face in my hands but I could tell it hurt him too much to be touched. I kissed his forehead and dragged him up. I couldn’t move my right hand, something had happened to my thumb. My forehead felt numb in the middle, and when I felt my nose, there was an enormous lump above the bridge.

  We stayed close to the road but in the safety of the trees. We waited for a while in case the police drove past, but they didn’t. Scotty threw up a couple of times; I watched the road. It was still dark, the few streetlights being back nearer to the bar. Scotty stayed further back, sitting on the ground and resting his back on a tree. He kept complaining he was cold. I told him it was because he had been sweating and now he’d cooled down, but I hadn’t had a proper chance to take a look at him. We must have waited half an hour, maybe more. Then I heard the big old meaty Kingswood’s exhaust chug past where we were hiding on the road, heading in the direction of the bar. I thought I’d heard it twice before but wasn’t sure, and we had been too far back from the road to catch it, but this time I knew it was there.

  ‘Stay there,’ I said to Scotty, before I ran out onto the road, waving my arms in the desperate hope that Jim would see me before he disappeared round the bend, but I was too late. The putt had faded and the car gone from sight. I crossed back to the tree side for protection, and tried running as best I could after it, but it was hopeless. There was a terrible pain in my ribs now, making it too difficult to run. I gave up, and leant against a tree panting, trying to figure out where I had left Scotty. I stumbled back the same way again, wondering how many times Jim had driven back and forth to find us, and what chance he’d have of sighting us, out here in the dark.

  When I got back to Scotty, his head was resting forward on his chin, like he’d fallen asleep.

  ‘Scotty! Scotty. It’s Kerry, wake up. Wake up.’ I shook him gently but he didn’t answer. I searched in his jeans pockets with my left hand, my right hand now throbbing in agony with what I took to be a break, and found his Zippo. I lit it up and lifted his face with my elbow under his chin. I didn’t recognise him.

  I couldn’t see his eyes, they were so swollen and cut; his nose was broken, there was no doubt about it, for it lay well over to the left of his face, and his chin was elongated and out of shape. His ear was torn at the bottom. The worst thing for me was his T-shirt, which was saturated with blood, not sweat. All the time I had thought sweat was pouring out of him, he was losing blood. I remembered him complaining about being cold. I began shaking and crying, and felt for the first time ever that things had gone way too far in a bad direction, and that I was completely unable to cope. I felt paralysed with fear that Scotty might die. I prayed in panic to anything; I made quick promises of change, if Scotty were saved.

  Then I heard what I thought was the Kingswood coming back towards us, and I ran back to the road crying and begging.

  ‘Oh God, please, please!’ I waved my arms. ‘Jim! JIM!’ I screamed.

  Jim pointed to the trees from the driver’s seat, indicating that he was pulling in there, as it wasn’t safe to stop just after the bend. When he stopped,
I slumped down onto the bonnet until he got out. His face was white; his eyes darted all over my face as he asked me where Scotty was.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he said, about to touch my head with his thumb, then deciding not to. He looked as though he was going to explode, but bit his hand instead and composed himself.

  ‘It’s not good, Jim. Scotty’s not good,’ I blubbered, as I led the way to the tree he was resting against. As soon as Jim caught sight of Scotty, he ran to him and crouched down.

  ‘Scotty.’ He shook him but got no response. He started feeling his pulse under his jaw. That’s when I lost it.

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, no, please, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.’ I paced around, convinced Scotty was dead.

  Jim said, ‘I need you to go into the boot of the car and get the first-aid kit, it’s in a green box with a cross on it, OK?’

  ‘Oh fuck, Jim, what the fuck.’

  ‘Just do it, please.’

  ‘The fuckin’ police are looking for us, we can’t stay here, Jim.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Jim stood up and took me by the shoulders. ‘I need you to be calm now, Scotty needs our help. Stay here and breathe, OK.’

  I nodded through tears, then fell to my knees in front of Scotty, praying while trying to stifle my sobs.

  I heard Jim shout ‘Fuck!’ from the road. He ran back to us.

  ‘Fucking took the box out to make room for all our stuff in the boot, didn’t I?’

  ‘Jim, we were in a massive fight in the pub down there. Scotty bottled someone, the police came, please, we have to get him in the car.’ I looked up anxiously to the road.

  ‘FUCK!’ Jim clutched his head, then grabbed me to steady me and get my full attention. ‘Right now, I need to ask you some things, OK, so I need you to listen.’