Hound Dog

by Richard Blandford

  ‘So, Em,’ I say, ‘what is it that you do?’

  ‘Oh, I work in a nursery.’

  ‘Really? That‘s fantastic. Plants or children?’

  ‘Children. Little ones.’

  ‘Well, I should imagine that’s very fulfilling.’

  ‘Yes, it is, very.’

  ‘I bet you’re very good with kids.’

  ‘Well I can’t have them myself, so…’

  ‘What? That’s terrible.’

  ‘Buddy and me would love to have kids, but I have a thyroid condition which makes it practically impossible for me to conceive. We’ve tried, god knows we’ve tried over the past year, but we’ve been told that the chances are very low. We’ve thought about adoption, but that’s a whole nightmare in itself.’ She sheds a tear as she gives this unexpected confession. She must trust me more than I thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘mustn’t get tearful.’

  ‘No, please don’t apologise. I admire you for your strength in coping in such difficult circumstances. You’re a very brave and remarkable woman.’

  ‘No, no, I’m really not. I don’t even feel like a proper woman, I can’t give Buddy kids, I’m…’

  ‘Now don’t you talk like that. I can’t believe that Buddy holds it against you in any way.’

  ‘Oh, but he does,’ she sniffles. ‘He’s sweet most of the time, but every so often, if he’s had too much Baileys, he lashes out and shouts at me and says it’s my fault he’ll never have kids. He’s always sorry afterwards, but it hurts so much, and he’s right, it is my fault…’ By this point her face is a streaming red mess of tears. ‘Shit,’ she says softly. ‘I hate crying in public.’

  ‘Why don’t you come out with me to the van for a minute, give you a chance to collect yourself.’

  ‘O—OK,’ she whimpers. I lead her gently outside and open the passenger door for her. We sit in silence for a minute while I stroke the back of her head, until finally, she stops crying. ‘I’m sorry, I really am, it’s just that most of the time Buddy is as sweet as anything, but there’s another side to him that nobody except me gets to see. He’ll be fine, and then something will just snap and he’ll be shouting and being aggressive. Sometimes he breaks things. And I get frightened, it really scares me. And I don’t know where it all comes from.’

  ‘You must really love him.’

  ‘I do, I do, of course I do, but it just gets a bit lonely sometimes, you know, being the only person who knows about that side of him.’

  ‘Well, you’re not alone any more. Now you have a friend to share it with.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do,’ she smiles and looks at me with warm, wet eyes. I take her hand and cradle it between mine. We sit there like that for I don’t know how many minutes, and you know what, I’m as hard as a fucking rock. Meanwhile, she looks out of the window absent-mindedly then catches her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘God, I look a state,’ she says. She turns and smiles at me again, then goes back to gazing out of the window. I free one hand, unzip my trousers with it and pull out my cock, which stands up like a flagpole in my lap. Then I slowly take her hand and place it around it. A puzzled look passes over her face before she turns to see what she’s suddenly holding. Her mouth forms a silent O, which I think for a second means she’s about to suck it. But instead she snatches her hand away while a hurt expression crosses her face. ‘Oh Elvis, you are silly,’ she says faintly.

  She says that she’d better go and fix her face. I don’t attempt to stop her as she quickly slips out of the van. Instead, I watch her big arse wobble across the car park while I masturbate frantically. I come long before I expect it, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it spraying all over the steering wheel. Christ, where did I go wrong this time? I suppose it would have to be when I got my cock out, but it just seemed the thing to do at that moment. Absent-mindedly I rest my hand on the wheel as I consider what just happened, until I’m interrupted by the beeping of a car horn behind me. Driving into the car park is Soundcheck Stu. Hurriedly, I zip myself up and wave a spunk-coated hand at him.

  ‘Hello there, Soundcheck Stu,’ I shout out from my window, ‘it’s not time already is it?’

  ‘Certainly is, Mister Elvis,’ he says, getting out.

  ‘Well you can help me lug the gear inside then. I’m running late.’

  ‘You don’t pay me for that sort of thing, you know.’

  ‘I know, I pay you to do the sound, but seeing as you always make a pig’s ear of that, you can help me set up free of charge.’

  ‘Elvis, I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you’re a complete and utter cunt.’

  ‘Many times, many times.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, I got a phone call from Gaylord today, saying him and the Fatman had left you to do their own thing, and would I be interested in mixing their sound for them.’

  ‘Well, what did you say?’

  ‘I said yes, of course.’

  ‘You’re a fucking traitor, Soundcheck Stu.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. What’s that on your hand? Do you know you’re getting it all over your new equipment? If any gets on the mixing desk, then I’m going home.’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ I say as we go inside.

  Chapter 13

  I set up the gear with Soundcheck Stu, then run through a few numbers to get the balance right. Of course it’s never right with Soundcheck Stu, and you just have to make do with whatever crap mix he comes up with. I need to get Buddy out of the dressing room for his soundcheck, but I hesitate because I can’t see Em anywhere, and if she’s in there telling him that I just tricked her into touching my manhood, then things could get a little messy. I put my ear to the door, but I can’t hear anything inside except him singing bloody ‘Heartbeat’. I take my life in my hands and open it. Inside, Buddy stands on his own, posing in front of the mirror with his guitar.

  ‘All right Bud,’ I say, ‘not wanking in front of the mirror are we?’

  ‘Nah, I’m just going over a few things. I’m still not sure about this not going to the loo thing though. I’m finding it really hard to concentrate. By the time I get on stage I’ll be wetting myself.’

  ‘Exactly. It makes you work harder. And that’s what we want.’

  ‘I guess. You haven’t seen Em, have you? She popped out to get me a half and she never came back, and that was over an hour ago.’

  ‘No, mate, I haven’t, sorry.’

  ‘Maybe I should go and look for her.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we need you to soundcheck right now, so I’m sure she’ll turn up, yeah?’

  ‘Oh right, OK. She can’t have gone far I suppose.’

  ‘It’s OK, love, I’m here.’ Em’s standing in the doorway, with her idiot grin intact, although it seems strained. But then, maybe I’m imagining that. ‘I just had to pop into the loo for a bit, women’s stuff.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ says Buddy. She walks over to him and they paw at each other like a pair of puppies.

  ‘Now you go out and be great for me, OK?’ she says.

  ‘It’s only the soundcheck, hon.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, you’ll still be brilliant, because you’re always brilliant. You’re the best.’

  They dribble over each other some more, until she backs away towards the door. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to it,’ she says. ‘Good luck, both of you.’ She looks at each of us in turn with kind eyes that only seem to falter slightly when I meet her gaze. She turns to leave, but Buddy stops her, gently grabbing her shoulders.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks softly. ‘You seem a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine, fine.’ She nods her head maybe a little too vigorously. ‘You know, like I said, women’s problems. Got to go to the toilet again.’ She pulls his head towards her and kisses him. ‘I love you, Buddy,’ she whispers to him, although I can hear it perfectly well from across the room. Then she’s gone.

  ‘Come on, Bedwettin’ Bud. Time for you to soundcheck. And don’t piss your pant
s while you’re singing, or you’ll electrocute yourself and we’ll have to peel you off the stage. Not that that would be too bad, seeing as we wouldn’t have to listen to your bloody awful smelly bed-wetter music.’

  ‘Um, yeah, sure.’ He’s not even listening to me.

  Even with a bladder full of piss, Buddy’s bloody brilliant. He sings just one song and captures the attention of the entire room. Admittedly the room currently has only four people in it, but it’s more than I managed to do, bellowing out ‘Kentucky Rain’. And of course Soundcheck Stu manages to give him a perfect mix. I realise the apparent incompetence Stu has demonstrated over all these years is obviously just an act, no doubt intended as a personal attack on myself. Why didn’t I see that earlier? I immediately fill up with anger, and have to fight back the urge to slam his head into the mixing desk. But as I stand there, watching Buddy sing his speccy ginger-twat heart out, all my anger is transformed into an awful, inescapable sense that I’ve been beaten and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. No matter how much I attempt to turn Buddy into a nervous wreck, no matter how much piss I make him hold in, he’s still going to wipe the floor with me. Perhaps I have nothing else to do but await my own public humiliation. But still, I just can’t give in that easily, it’s not in my nature. I resolve to carry on with my plan, even though it’s hopeless.

  Buddy finishes his number, and receives a warm round of applause from the bar staff and the cleaning lady. Seems that the trollpeople like him. Soundcheck Stu also claps especially loudly. Buddy bows to his audience, puts his guitar on its stand, and walks over to me. ‘Was that all right?’ he asks.

  ‘Buddy,’ I tell him, ‘that was reasonably good, but it lacked intensity. You’ve got to keep your mind on that dormitory and being soaked in piss, with the boys tormenting you and stealing your clothes, and the ladies laughing at your naked piss-drenched body, or you won’t communicate. Now, what are you drinking? Half? Mate, have a pint.’

  They’ve opened the doors and the place is beginning to fill up with the usual mix of the living dead, the alcoholic unemployed, cleaner wives and their big-titted teenage daughters. But there’s something particularly scummy about this lot. It’s not that they’re dirty or anything, but they just seem like they don’t quite belong to civilisation. In fact they look almost feral, as if they live out on the marshes instead of in houses. Anyway, it’s time to retire to the dressing room to put on the jumpsuit and wig and snort up a couple of lines of charlie for luck. I leave Buddy nattering to Soundcheck Stu, and remember the bag that he handed me with my Elvistrousers in. I take it with me along with the rucksack in which I keep the rest of the gear, all badly folded and rumpled up. As I open the door, I catch a glimpse of something to the right of me. I turn, and see Em coming out of the women’s toilets. We both stand, hovering at our respective doors, accidentally caught in each other’s gaze, saying nothing. Then she breaks away, walking quickly towards the bar. I watch her as she goes.

  Back in the dressing room I take the trousers out of their bag. They are completely spotless and indeed spunkless. The groin area, however, is now decidedly frayed. There is a hole starting right in the area of where my sizable manhood should be. It’s not quite broken yet, so it will probably hold through the gig. Or maybe I’ll just have a great big hole in my crotch, with my grubby boxer shorts that don’t even have any buttons left on them any more exposed to the world. The hole depresses me so much that I decide I need to do an extra line of charlie to counteract its effect. So I snort it all up and sit riding the wave of euphoria until there’s a knock on the door and some trollwoman pokes her head round. ‘You have to go out now,’ she says, suspicious of what magic trickery I might have up my jumpsuit sleeve.

  The way I’ve decided it’s going to go is that I will do half of my set, Buddy will do his thing in the middle, and then I finish things off. That’ll give me a chance to claw back a bit of the glory, I figure, although something tells me all it will really do is prolong the pain. But like the troll-lady said, it’s time to start, so facing up to the inevitable, I stand in the corridor, waiting for Soundcheck Stu to start playing the opening tape of Also Sprach Zarathustra. It lasts forever, it lasts no time at all. And it segues into the riff of ‘See See Rider’. I make my entrance. There’s a ripple of hairy-handed applause, not that enthusiastic, as I make my way to the microphone. It’s quite a full room, but not that many of the trollpeople seem to have realised someone dressed as fucking Elvis has just walked in, seeming more concerned with playing strange board games with wooden pieces they probably whittled themselves. Nevertheless, I start singing,

  I said see, see see Rider,

  Oh see what you have done

  in a good Vegas rumble, but I can tell I’m not connecting with these people. It doesn’t help that Soundcheck Stu’s up to his old tricks again and making me sound like I’m singing from the far end of a long tunnel. I finish the song, and of course there’s a bit of applause, but it’s all but drowned out by the babble of their strange troll tongue.

  Still, it’s early days, and I’m sure I can warm this audience up a bit. Yeah, right. So anyway, I do a couple of love songs, go out into the audience, sing to the troll-ladies. It’s a mixed reaction, and although some of them might as well be corpses, a few of them get into it so much you could swear they actually knew I was there. I mean it’s ridiculous, one of them just carries on gibbering to her trollfriend even though I’m singing right into her perm. Still, maybe I can win them over with a bit of audience participation. I’ve had to revamp this bit of the show now that Fatty and Gayboy are no longer on board, one big change basically being that it’s now me that has to put on the fucking grass skirt for ‘Blue Hawaii’. ‘Well, uh, I’ll need some volunteers for this next here number ladiesandgentlemen, welluhthankyouverymuch,’ I say. And do any of the trolls volunteer? Do they fuck. None of them want to put on a stupid fucking grass skirt and quite right too, I guess. Meanwhile, though, I’m standing there wearing one singing ‘Blue Hawaii’ on my fucking own, doing stupid Hawaiian dancing and looking a complete fucking tit. And then of course there’s no applause. None at all. I’m dying on my grass-skirted arse up here. These trolls are the worst audience I‘ve ever had. I can see Soundcheck Stu smirking to himself behind the mixing desk. God, he must have been waiting years for this.

  And the thought hits me that, really, it’s nothing to do with the audience. It’s me. Maybe I’ve never really been the star of this act at all. What if Gaylord and the Fatman were the real stars, and I’ve just provided the soundtrack for their over-earnest freak show? What if it was their passion that people were responding to, and now without it, there is nothing to look at but an ageing cokehead who clearly hates Elvis, but for some unexplainable reason still has to go out pretending to be him in public? The thought drains me of any comprehensible impetus to carry on, but still some strange, buried instinct forces me to struggle on through the rest of the first half, entertaining nobody and being rewarded with little applause. As I head off to the dressing room, it seems hardly anyone even notices that I’ve gone. I pass Em and Buddy standing at the bar on the way, no doubt trying to hide their pity. Buddy follows me in.

  ‘Quite a tough crowd tonight, Elvis,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, bunch of cunts, the lot of them.’

  ‘God, it’s making me really nervous. If they treat you like that, how are they going to react to me? I’m going to bomb, I know it.’

  ‘Have you been to the toilet?’

  ‘No, Elvis, I swear I haven’t. I’m going to wet myself any minute, but I haven’t been.’

  ‘If I call you a bed-wetting smelly freak, does it make you feel quite upset?’

  ‘Yes, Elvis, it does actually.’

  ‘Then you’re going to be fine, my son.’

  ‘Ah, OK.’

  ‘Look, I need a few minutes to myself. Can you just leave me alone for a bit, then call me when it’s time for the second half?’

  ‘No problem, Elvis.
Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just need to psych myself up a bit. Get in the zone. Clear my head of all thoughts. Do a bit of Zen.’

  ‘Never had you down for a practitioner of Eastern philosophy, Elvis.’

  ‘Why not? Goes with the fucking karate.’

  And so Buddy finally fucks off, and I’m free to do another line. But even the comfort of the charlie can’t muzzle the thoughts that nag at me. Could I have been wrong all this time? Have I always just been totally fucking shit, and only got by because the Fatty and the Gaylord were out there geeing things up a bit? How come nobody told me? Probably because I’d have punched the living crap out of them, I guess. No, I tell myself, it can’t be true, or at least it can’t be that simple. I was good before I even met those two jokers, but way back then I felt that strange feeling more often, the way I felt when I sang for Eddie by the swimming pool, feeling as if I was doing what I was meant to do, what I exist for. But I hardly ever feel that now. Maybe having Gayboy and Fatman out there compensated for it, took attention away from the fact I was just coasting. But they’re not there anymore, and I’ve got to feel that way again, right away. But how? You can’t force that sort of thing. But maybe you can fake it. Maybe you can fake it with charlie. Lots of charlie.