Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Kenny Rogers I Presume?

  As a musician I was always going to live the bohemian life of experimentation but it’s hard to recapture the unique carefree simplicity of those times of sexual freedom we had in the Sixties and Seventies. The disillusionment caused by the withering of Flower Power and the moral panic fuelled by the AIDS epidemic obliterated all that. The Pill separated sex from pregnancy so it could be enjoyed without fear of consequence. Women became more assertive now they were free to experience their sexuality and I met girls who released me from the necessity for pursuit: a thrilling innovation.

  I had an important advantage: I was a musician and front man in a locally esteemed band and girls are drawn to performers. They equate your confidence with sexual potency; they’re wooed by the sentimental or sexy songs performed. They are actually relating to a fantasy, not a real human being but often the combination of confidence and fantasy-induced arousal works. As far as I was concerned it would only work if the girl was also intelligent.

  Fantasy works both ways, of course. I was having a drink with Des at a pub that brewed its own beer – Sunrise or Sunset – and we were having a good time. I couldn’t help but notice an attractive dark-haired woman and she was noticing me as well. As the drink flowed and we kept looking at one another I began to fantasise about her. She was probably Spanish. Definitely. An au pair. I wondered if she would play with my castanets. She leaned forward – I could smell her musky perfume. She leaned forward with her unlit cigarette like someone in a film. This was my moment – she was leaning closer and closer until she was looking in my eyes. Gazing.

  “Fuckin’ ‘ell! I thought you were Kenny Rogers!”

  I don’t know what deflated me the most: the broad Stoke accent exploding my fantasy or being mistaken for a performer ten years older than me.

  Dress Down

  A theme runs through my experiences, on stage and off: the other side of dressing up has been dressing down – to the point of nudity. Amongst the women, that is. I’ve been very fortunate: many of my fantasies and fetishes have become reality. On holiday in Germany with my girlfriend, one of her breasts became exposed. This is called a wardrobe malfunction these days. An officious knobhead at another table felt it his duty to point this out: “Excuse me – I think your dress has slipped.” “I’m sorry – is it embarrassing you?” she replied, slowly, very slowly, covering up. The covering up was as sexy as the exposure! It wasn’t embarrassing her. Another time I was out with a girl who was wearing a basque and a similar thing happened. Damn it all – these things would just keep on happening. One of our companions mentioned that the tops of her nipples were showing. “Oh! Don’t you like it?” was the reply. Both women challenged a man’s right to make them cover up by handing the embarrassment back to him. I applaud them.

  A woman has the right to dress as she wants, as far as I’m concerned. I think a lot of women would like to wear sexy clothes but are in repressive relationships. One of my ex-girlfriends appeared in a hairdressing display wearing not very much see-through chiffon over no underwear. I had bought her the not very much and she provided the rest: you could count the dots round her nipples! It was difficult to focus on the hairstyle. Her soon-to-be boyfriend was in the audience. Fast forward to the wedding photos: she’s dressed like Mary Poppins! I rest my, er, case.

  I think my liberal attitude to self expression is unusual for men of my generation. I’m more likely to be upset by sexual infidelity or betrayals in friendship than by exhibitionism. If someone reveals their breasts for fun, or the pleasure of others or just for themselves, what’s wrong with that? Some sexual expressiveness is independent of observers. Perhaps the wild rock chicks exposing their breasts in salute at biker gigs would behave in a more outrageous way than the ‘conventional’ person, though this is not necessarily so. I’ve been to some very posh parties, professionally and socially, that ended up with all the women naked in the swimming pool.

  I asked one of my partners about the liberated behaviour of my girlfriends. She agreed that it was because I was always supportive and never censorious: “Jealousy pushes a woman away. Men must be afraid you’ll run off if people can see you but it’s the jealousy that makes you go.” I asked my first wife too: “You’ve got to put yourself on the line if you want to have fun,” she said. We used to go to Cornwall in an open-topped sports car and she would enjoy the opportunity to wear unrestricting clothing. She was a political activist and feminist like Zoe and I’ve come to realize that the nudity, especially the discarding of the bra, was an important political act for women. The tabloids trivialised it, of course.

  I think Pete wants his women to be something he can be proud of. He’s envious of a woman’s ability to be sexually powerful. He feels they have an advantage in a way men can’t have.

  Zoe Johnson. (2)

  I have photographs of my parents on a barge and in a cycling party: evoking a countryside long since diminished and a culture of fresh air and physical training popular in the Thirties throughout Europe. My mother is wearing cycling shorts and riding a bicycle with a cross bar. Apparently, this caused a stir although looking at the photograph it’s hard to understand out of the context of the interwar years. I think this was the equivalent of women in the Sixties discarding their bras. My mother is the prototype for all those girls who wanted the freedom to express themselves by dressing or undressing in a certain way. It isn’t just a question of exhibitionism; it’s a matter of individuality. It’s political. Women I went out with carried on the tradition.

  I do believe that what a woman wears should be appropriate to the occasion, though; dressing appropriately is a matter of social intelligence. If a girl is at a cocktail party in non-cocktail clothes and she has a reason and is confident, that’s all right. If her choice of clothing is based on ignorance or lack of intelligence, it’s not all right as far as I’m concerned. If you’re socially intelligent you don’t break the rules but you can as well!

  Consequences

  Of course, my sexual experiences had consequences of one kind or another. I have two fine sons for a start.

  Attraction is fairly simple with men, whereas with women it is more complicated and I know this is a cliché but it seems to me that every bloke has to learn this for himself, unfortunately. Although I was conventionally married by my early twenties, my lifestyle as a musician gave me a lot of freedom of movement and opportunities for extra-marital relationships: serious or fleeting. My wife appeared to tolerate my other relationships as long as she and I had a relationship that was not affected. But in the end it was affected. Perhaps from her perspective it always was but this remained unspoken. I was the transgressor and my ultimate transgression was with regard to my responsibility as our son’s father. I failed to show up when I should have.

  There came a time when the balance changed. Matthew was born and I no longer wanted the excitement. Also, someone had to stay at home with Matthew and Pete was not very reliable when it came to this. He was having a ball. We lived parallel lives and Matthew and I waited many times for Pete to appear but something always turned up to grab his attention. His excuse would be that the arrangement hadn’t been firm. I was very unhappy, increasingly so, but I didn’t make a noise about it because I didn’t want Matthew to experience domestic tension. I had expected Pete to leave me. He was so part time that we’d been split up for several weeks and Matthew hadn’t noticed. I had to tell him that daddy didn’t live here any more. I suppose I had realised things had to change when I went on holiday and found that I didn’t want to go home. What I really experienced was the feeling that I didn’t want to go home to Pete. People have asked me why I put up with this unsatisfactory life for so long. Even in happier times I often found myself in a role I didn’t always enjoy – ferrying partying people about, for example. I would be the sober sensible one feeling excluded and fed up.

  The reason I did put up with things was because of a secret vow I had made when I was nineteen. Pete’s paternal grandm
other looked after him when his mother was ill. They were very close. Once when we were on holiday in Cornwall, driving about in the car, I became aware of an impression – it wasn’t an image – it was an impression of Pete’s grandmother standing totally upright: younger and not bent as she was in old age. “You look well,” I said to her silently. “Yes. I’m dead,” she said. I wasn’t sure what to do about this. I didn’t want to upset Pete unnecessarily; I didn’t want him to think I was mad. I found that I had promised his grandmother I would look after him. This happened on the middle Friday of our two week holiday. When we arrived back we found that Pete’s grandmother had died around the time I ‘saw’ her. After that I had a strong loyalty towards Pete because of the promise. But I am naturally a loyal person, sometimes to a silly extent. Much later, when Pete was going through a particularly bad time after he had split up with Lynn, I felt guilty.

  I did have an exciting time with Pete though I think I should have ended the marriage earlier. It would have been better for both of us. I don’t find it emotionally draining to talk about him. I really couldn’t give a damn – it’s too long ago. I’ve sorted things in my own head and I can live with them ok. I should have talked more to him about how I felt. I have been happier since he left. I had developed independence and I can’t imagine wanting to do any more of all that again. I can’t imagine sharing my space with anyone else. My mother says I should be married to a merchant seaman!

  I have kept in touch with Pete over the years. He’s Matthew’s father and I always liked Pete’s family. The Billingtons were just like my own family and I have gone to their funerals. At our wedding the two families really got on and at one point they were queuing up for the piano-playing. I play and so does Matthew.

  Linda Johnson. (3)

  Things remained unspoken until it was too late in another long-term relationship. I more or less lived with the girl in question until one day I arrived home for tea and found that she had ironed and folded my clothes. Me and the dog (whom she adored) were both sent packing. She claimed she wanted to spread her wings; I had perceived no sign of this. All our friends were astounded: they didn’t think she’d have the bottle for it – we were regarded as inseparable – but everyone was wrong. I offered to marry her but she said it was too late. In retrospect I realize that a lot of this was down to me: she had always been fun to be with; I had not. I didn’t realize how depressed I was after the death of Whitty and Brammer. She was a lot younger than me and if she wanted freedom she must have felt stifled by something. This split was the most hurtful of any of the broken relationships I’ve experienced but neither she nor I could have predicted the devastating effect it would have on me.

  I hit the bottle for a while.

  I knew it was important to go to new places and do new things. The most help getting over the heartbreak was Dave Evans. About this time I started giving him lessons in blues playing and I ended up sharing Dave’s flat and we used to go to the pub together. I went from being a married man with a mistress to being a married man with a bachelor!

  This was the time of the topless piano-playing and what I thought was a simple relationship for fun. I underestimated two things: the girl’s emotional attachment to me and her dependence on alcohol. Why didn’t the bottles of spirits she carried in her handbag ring alarm bells? But the relationship was a bit on-off and I was in party mode too. What alerted me to her feelings was an incident concerning my younger son. We had been invited to a high-profile birthday party – a fairly respectable affair – at which I was behaving with restraint because I was taking my son Matthew somewhere the next day. You have to make a commitment if you want to retain involvement. Miss Topless Winifred Atwell was behaving much more flamboyantly and refused to leave when I did. So I left her at the party. According to friends she ended up in some kind of a frolic involving Johnson’s Baby Oil. The humorous reference is obvious. She was furious with me because my priority was Matthew, not her fun and because I didn’t contact her. The relationship did not recover although she kept in touch.

  This beautiful, vivacious woman died of alcoholism aged thirty-four. Three months after her death her parents returned the guitar I gave her as an eighteenth birthday present when her life seemed full of opportunities. It looked sad in its case. I have no photographs and I don’t know where her remains are. The piano now plays in a minor key. But we had a dynamite time.

  Would things have been any different if I had been more aware? I doubt it. At the end of the day I wouldn’t have stayed with anybody for any length of time at that period.

  I had a chance relationship with another girl who kept gin and vodka in her handbag but she did a detox and then opened a temperance hotel on the North Wales coast. I don’t think I’ll be visiting!

  My horse-riding girlfriend with whom I spent five years was a complicated mixture of fun and trouble. I admired her independent spirit: she drove a Bedford CF utility wagon and survived in a career dominated by men. We had some tremendously good times together but the relationship began to deteriorate. She had some strange, boring men friends and started seeing a counsellor. I don’t know if this was the cause or effect of the downturn in things between us. Wanting her freedom, she took the hippie route: counting thistles in fields in search of something. She grew away from me and it became hellish to live with her. As far as I was concerned, this seemed to come out of the blue. Again! She said she was emotionally upset – it was like a breakdown – and became inappropriately attached to her counsellor. We would part and I would stay at the shop but then she would turn up at the shop. The emotional fallout was extremely debilitating and I ended up going to live there permanently. Literally. John Darlington and his girlfriend occupied the upstairs flat so I had to sleep behind the shop counter. But it wasn’t long before my strange, estranged girlfriend was knocking at the door again, seeking refuge from a random addict with whom she had become involved. So some nights we both slept on the shop floor until I could take no more of the see-saw life I was living. I had tried to retrieve the relationship and failed.

  As before, it was a bachelor friend who pulled me out of despair. I took myself off on an uncomplicated boat trip with Des which clarified things and sorted my head out. When I returned I took possession of my territory: I gave the tenants notice to quit, took a bath in my own bathroom and felt lighter. Des moved in, heralding two years of relative harmony. Shortly after this sea-change my girlfriend left for Ireland.

  In retrospect I realize that she had brought a lot of baggage to our relationship. I suspect, from things she said, that there had been some past sexual abuse and that she was ripe for unsuitable relationships of one kind or another. Why didn’t she just stick to horse-riding with me? So many of my girlfriends opted for a deterioration in emotional stability. One married an alcoholic after rapidly spiralling down from one unsatisfactory relationship to another; someone else ended up in an abusive situation in Holland; a third one had to flee from a heroin addict and some unpleasant publicity. There must be some reason they left the relative stability I provided. Perhaps it was boring.

  Soft spot isn’t the right phrase for how I’ve felt about Zoe. She’s my friend and my wife. She shares some of the qualities of my other partners but there are important differences that gave the relationship its durability.

  Zoe is a socially and sexually confident woman. She’s so photogenic! There are some stunning portraits of her: Zoe is a natural when it comes to posing for the camera, having the professional’s poise and a strong sense of the effect she is aiming for. Her first husband was an artist and she had been brought up with a liberal attitude towards erotic art. Photographs I took of Zoe in her fifties compare favourably with the photos of previous partners in their twenties. I remember with pleasure an occasion when she dressed in basque and suspenders to my World War II fighter pilot outfit. Arriving back at Zoe’s flat she said, referring to her basque, “You can take it off if you want.” It’s one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t but it was ear
ly on in our relationship and I couldn’t quite believe it was happening again.

  I have thought about how Zoe fits into the pattern of my relationships with women. She has the sexual confidence, translucent skin, slim body and nice breasts that I’m always drawn to but she doesn’t have the self-destructive tendencies some of my girlfriends have had. She has enormous optimism and enthusiasm for life – her father described her well: “She’s like a sponge; you can’t hold her down,” he used to say. Zoe is her own person although there have been times with other partners when she has had to fight for this. I haven’t had to encourage her to do and be as she wishes. She knows what she wants and where she’s going and although she will take risks she has boundless confidence that she can survive. As a mother and grandmother she is a matriarch who knows where life’s priorities are. She just does it; I support it; she reciprocates. Many of my girlfriends have been more timid and hesitant. I applaud the fact that she has a life separate from mine, that she is successful and publicly confident in her work for Tanzed – a charity that supports primary education in Tanzania – and is able to face the rigours of third world living. I can’t.

  I had lived in a very oppressive relationship and was used to fighting like a fiend to do what I wanted. When Pete and I got together again we were both surviving failed relationships and understandably concerned about entering a new one. But it was very comfortable. There was a coincidence of objects we both brought to the relationship which made things seem auspiciously compatible: small leather suitcases, old-fashioned coal-scuttles, wind-up gramophones and the same school photograph with both of us on. We knew everything about one another; there were no skeletons. When we were deciding what to do about our relationship it was established that we would both do the things we wanted to do. I have a caravan in Wales, for example; I like to go to Tanzania with my charity work. Pete has just restarted trial biking; I supported his going to Georgia. The relationship wouldn’t work if we didn’t have this mutual freedom. If I stayed long enough in Tanzania he’d come and visit me, even though he didn’t enjoy it that much.