by Julian Clary
I sat next to a girl called Linda at the ‘welcome’ gathering in the theatre that morning. She had spiky hair, glorious cheekbones and wore a green glittery tie over a man’s white shirt. She told me she was the lead singer in a band called Linda and her Genitals. She had worked with the Royal Court Youth Theatre and was cool, confident and intelligent. Afterwards we wandered through the hall for the Freshers’ Fair, and signed up for the Drama Society and the anti-Corrie Bill pro-abortion march. I hovered at the Gaysoc table but didn’t like the shirt the boy manning it was wearing, so moved on.
At lunchtime, wearing our ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’ badges, we went to the bar. Linda shrieked with punky laughter when I ordered a Coca-Cola. She ordered lager for me instead. It was on special offer.
In the first few classes, where we often had to pair up and do ‘getting to know you’ exercises, we gravitated towards each other whenever possible.
Between the English and drama departments, we were offered a stimulating mix of academic and practical work. Greek tragedies, war poets, Edward Bond, acting and improvisation classes soon filled our timetables. I raced from lecture to seminar to studio with a happy heart unknown to me at school. The silly superiority that Nick and I had paraded evaporated now. It had only, after all, been a defence mechanism in the face of aggression. Now in a new world – by choice not force – I was shocked into near normality. Instead of one friend I had lots. I was no longer on the outside looking in with disdain.
There was even a dance class. I wrote excitedly to my parents: ‘I’m feeling loose already and can twist my legs into all sorts of positions. Today we listened to a recording of The Cherry Orchard in Russian and were told to tune in to the different emotions.’
Being immersed in higher education had obviously had some effect on my letter writing, as this reply from my mother indicated:
Thank you very much for explaining or translating for us expressions you now use in everyday conversation, which clearly would be over our heads. We would never have got the meaning of your sentence, which contained the word ‘vociferous’, without your help! Nevertheless I have some doubts as to your alternative word (noisy) being quite accurate enough for us to be sure we can substitute vociferous. For instance, can one really describe the traffic as being vociferous, or can one say your father is a vociferous sleeper? Perhaps you shouldn’t yet throw away your Thesaurus! Still, you are clearly destined to get a good degree. And kind with it, since you know we don’t understand long words so put alternatives down.
Pao is missing you, and is a disturbed cat, acting as if psychotic. (Ask someone what this means.)
Apart from the course work, the third-year productions were always looking for actors, and auditions were held at lunchtimes. Within a few weeks I had my first part. ‘I’ve got myself into a play called A Scent Of Flowers and I play the undertaker and the priest. Both parts are very funny although I don’t think much of the play as a whole,’ I wrote.
After that I was in a different play every few weeks, from Shakespeare to Poliakov. Nine productions, no less, in my first year. I even played a lumberjack in one show. ‘At the moment we’re having trouble making my voice gruff enough for the part.’
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, I also developed an infatuation for a boy I saw in the refectory one day. He was quite short and slight and wore a battered leather jacket, and I would seethe with jealousy as he canoodled brazenly with his girlfriend. He slouched a lot and had tousled hair and moody lips. An art student. I think his name was Michael, although I never spoke to him. In my diary I referred to him as ‘the Boy From New York City’ – not because he was, but because he seemed streetwise and daring. It was also the title of a hit single at the time by Darts. Also, I needed a code for my diary in case my secret documentation of each and every sighting was discovered.
I was quite happy in my private agony, swooning from afar. He sometimes caught me staring at him and would look back, more bemused than smouldering. Spotting ‘TBFNYC’ became a kind of hobby for me; I worked out the prime times for a sighting and would position myself in the refectory where I had a clear view of all possible approaches, heart fluttering in anticipation. I didn’t tell anyone of my feelings.
My curiosity about sex was gathering pace. Soon just looking and longing would not be enough. My virginity was becoming a burden. I was not aware that anyone fancied me in the slightest, but it seems they did. One day after college a boy on my course called Chris invited me to the Rosemary Branch for a drink. He was a lanky, hippyish type with a northern accent and a straggly beard. He had kind eyes and rolled his own cigarettes. He lived in a hall of residence right next door to Goldsmiths, and as we had an early lecture the next day he invited me to stay over with him. Oblivious to his intentions I said yes. It would save on the bus fare. He had the luxury of a single room, so I tried to sleep on the floor in a draught. After a bit of late-night chat, he said, ‘Why don’t you get in with me?’
When I hopped in he said, ‘Good lad,’ and kissed me. The beard scratched me as his passion mounted and the pink, wet tongue waggled around in my mouth like a newborn panda. His penis jabbed away at my thigh until he came. It was a bit like having sex with an Irish wolfhound. Or so I imagine. I felt quite grown-up the next day, but far from sure that I had been fully deflowered. Nevertheless it was a step in the right direction. Chris gave me secret smiles and knowing invitations to the pub for the next week or so but I didn’t want to repeat the experience. I sometimes went to the college bar with Linda or my other new friends, but often I went home to write my essays. I took to writing comic monologues for my own amusement, and a couple of plays. These often featured tough, working-class girls, the type I’d observe at the bus stop at New Cross.
‘Marcia, Marcia, look at the arse on ’er!’
You would hear that cry every day in the playground when Marcia and I were kids. Mostly from me. Well, it was true, anyway. She’s got a lot to thank me for, she has. I’ve been the making of that girl. She’d never have gone on a diet if it wasn’t for me. I toughened her up. You see scraggy rooster where once was succulent chicken. That’s bad news if you’re a hungry wolf but a blessing if you’re Marcia. She’s a masterpiece. When someone stole her plimsolls in the third year I told her not to mess about. Burn the bleedin’ school down, I told her, you can borrow my matches. So she did. Marcia got reform school, the rest of us got a month’s holiday while they repaired the damage. She came out of that reform school a sight to see. Hard as nails and with a tattoo saying ‘I Love Leslie’ on her inside thigh. No one calls her fatty any more and she’s got me to thank.
I got an evening job at the Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo as an usher, selling programmes and ice creams. During the performance I would do ‘foyer duty’, which meant ushering in late-comers and sitting on the stairs reading a book. Miguel, a half Portuguese Royal Ballet student who worked behind the bar downstairs, would sometimes call up to ask if I wanted a drink. I asked for a Coke but he said no, have a gin and tonic. After work we walked to the station together and one time he said, ‘Would you like to come and stay with me for the weekend?’
Wising up at last to the subtext of the casual remark, and realising for the first time that he was gay and, what’s more, had his eye on me, I said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’ I thought he meant sometime soon at our mutual convenience, but at Waterloo he bought two tickets to Dalston. He smiled and gave me an imperious look, which I’d seen before from Rudolph Nureyev when he took his endless curtain calls.
Miguel was quite a catch. A lean, handsome, curly-haired boy. At 24 he had taken to ballet rather late in his youth, but as he chatted to me on the tube that night he revealed a self-confidence that thrilled me. He told me about his life and his ambitions to dance, his belated epiphany. Then he locked eyes with me and told me I was beautiful. No one had ever paid me a compliment like this before. A week before in the refectory, a fellow drama student called Wendy Hallam had turned to me and said, ‘Yo
u’re such an Adonis!’ – but her tone of voice implied a hint of sarcasm. Miguel’s words were from the heart and I almost wanted to cry. Much to his amusement, I’d had no idea our casual chats over the previous weeks had been part of the courting process, and I was somewhat taken aback to find myself whisked off to north London in this fashion, but by the time we got off the train at Dalston Junction I was in love.
The flat, above a betting shop, was small and untidy. In the kitchen piles of dirty plates filled the sink, and we watched as a fat mouse scurried about the floor, selecting only the freshest morsels from the many on offer. Miguel’s flatmate, an amiable smiling woman, wafted in wearing a faded kimono, looked me up and down and said, ‘Here he is then . . .’ Clearly up to speed with Miguel’s romantic intentions.
In the bedroom were orange curtains and piles of sweaty dance clothes. Miguel quickly made the bed before we got into it. He could sense how nervous I was and we lay there for ages talking before he kissed me. This time it was most satisfactory. He climbed on top of me and parted my legs determinedly using some balletic manoeuvre with his knees. Baby Lotion was his lubricant of choice – a smell to be forever associated with him. I was tense, unresponsive and barely breathing. My inexperience revealed, he coached me and reassured me throughout the proceedings, but any virginal protests were denied, his determined personality apparent even between the sheets.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said afterwards, in a business-like way. He was rather thrilled to be my ‘first’. Miguel was misty-eyed the next morning, stroking my face and kissing me awake. Passing a stool the next day was a painful experience, a bit like (I imagined) giving birth, but this too made me feel grown-up, at last.
That night I wrote a monologue for a character called Lucille Spinks (aged 62). It seems somehow relevant.
I met a man on the tube once, name of Albert. He took me back to his flat and we had sexual relations. It wasn’t a love affair, it was a sex affair. Albert was black as the ace of spades, and his body all muscle and no fat. All was hunky dory and a little occasional straightforward sex might have done wonders for me. But Albert, sad to say, was very partial to your anal intercourse. I’d be laying there slipping into the land of never-never and before I knew it was Christmas he’d stuck a finger up me bum and was reaching in his disco bag for some lubrication. And that was just for foreplay. Come the main course I was sick in a bucket. Talk about square pegs and round holes. No thank you. Sex and bottoms have very little in common as far as I’m concerned, and I couldn’t abide the practice. I felt like a poodle flattened by a Doberman pinscher.
‘Leave it out!’ I said to Albert, but it was no good. He was set in his ways and he nearly got set in mine. I thought of England, I thought of Berlin, but it was no good. With respect, lying there with your face buried in a pillow is no way to spend your time, however short. You can’t get a grip on your turds the next day, neither. So it was a case of happiness or haemorrhoids. It was on your bike for Albert, and I settled down to a family pack of Murray mints and a toothache.
I, on the other hand, showed more perseverance. The affair was conducted almost entirely in Dalston, after shifts at the Old Vic. I shared a room after all, and Miguel had a double bed. I felt like a fully fledged homosexual at last, a card-carrying member. Nick from school, now a trainee actor at the Guildhall, had signed up too, and we discussed our menfolk on the phone like moaning housewives.
First attempts at love are a bit like first attempts at woodwork. I was full of enthusiasm, immersed in the task, but the result was neither sturdy nor functional. After three months we were firewood. I was busy rehearsing a principal role in Twelfth Night for another college production most evenings. Miguel got fed up with the prolonged separation and told me over the phone, as I stood in the lino-covered hallway at the bottom of the stairs in Blackheath House, to decide: him or the play. I thought for a moment. There was a meaty part to be had on both sides of this equation, but what should I do? Orange curtains or velvet tabs?
Well, let’s just say that my Andrew Aguecheek was a triumph, still fondly talked of by those who were lucky enough to catch it. I wonder if it has been thus ever since? Love scorned in favour of career? Many’s the husband there at the beginning of the tour and absent by the end . . . and I am no stranger to the mid-TV-series personal problem. These days, I cling to the wreckage for dear life. But at 19, dipping my toes into the world of gay love for the first time, I was remarkably unconcerned.
LINDA AND I made friends with a girl called Renata, soon renamed ‘Neen’. She seemed posh and cerebral at first, but in fact she was a scream. A keen gossiper like Linda and me, she had a Germanic talent for cutting to the chase and a clucking, seductive laugh. The three of us basked in each other’s company. ‘Who else was interesting in our year?’ I asked Linda recently. ‘Well, we were the interesting people, really,’ she said. Linda, Neen and I were the core, at the very throb of any social or theatrical event.
We were terribly exclusive, guarding our ‘area’ in the refectory with all the enthusiasm of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. Others were welcome to visit, such as Janine, a pretty, ringleted girl, all long skirts and lace shawls. (She turned up in tears once because a Jamaican woman had stopped her as she walked through Deptford Market with her Asian boyfriend and told her, ‘Pork and beef don’t mix . . .’) Stephanie, luxurious of hair and buxom as a Rubens nude, contributed a kind of rustic Diana Dors glamour. There were a couple of Steves, one who wore military jackets all the time and would clearly have been happier at Sandhurst. When Linda asked him for a cigarette one day he made the unfortunate response, ‘I’m sorry, I’m down to my last seven.’ Steve McNicholas was funny and delightful, but thought better of uni life and left to form a band called Pookiesnackenburger. Later he co-created Stomp!, the innovative stage show where young men in vests make a lot of noise with dustbins. Chantal was a cashmere sweater and pearls kind of gal, destined to fall victim to one of my early attempts at audience humiliation.
We soon took over the Drama Society. No one else got a look-in. We hijacked the annual budget for the culmination of our ambitions at that time: a fully staged production of Coward’s Private Lives, to run for a full week in the main theatre. Directed by Neen and starring Linda and myself in the roles of Amanda and Elyot. Family and friends came to watch.
Dear M and D,
It’s been one surprise after another. After your grande arrival on Wednesday, when I was taking my make-up off yesterday I had a message that Noreen was downstairs. I told her about the show when I rang her at Christmas and she remembered the dates. Such a surprise as I haven’t seen her for ages. Hasn’t changed, mind you, still wistful and old-fashioned, but it was nice to see her. We had nearly a full house last night so it should be packed out tonight. The record player broke, so we had to improvise our way out of that. My nerves vanished after the first act and I really enjoyed myself. I recorded it too. I wonder who will turn up to surprise me tonight?
Went out to dinner with Linda’s shoplifting cousin after the show last night. (She’s in court this morning.) It was very embarrassing but highly amusing. She complained about the wine and the price of everything then demanded breast of chicken and nothing else in her curry! But she did pay the bill – with some very suspicious-looking luncheon vouchers.
No more news really. It was lovely to see you all.
Be home soon as you know,
Love Julian
Emboldened by this success we decided college life needed a bit of light relief, so we staged a series of lunchtime cabaret shows called Camping on a Shoestring. Again the stars would be Linda and me, and Neen would produce. What others thought of our shameless ambitions and relentless self-promotion I don’t know, but there was no stopping us. We booked the coffee bar for a week, renamed it ‘Nina’s Nooky’ and set about putting some sketches together. There was an advert in the Stage selling ‘100 music hall gags’, ‘100 drag queen gags’ and, intriguingly, ‘100 ad libs and heckler stoppers’ f
or £2 per assortment, so we sent off for them. Most of them weren’t very funny, but we got one or two gems such as: ‘My father was a boxer . . . and my mother was a cocker spaniel.’ And: ‘Who did your hair for you? Was it the council?’
Then in a dusty old shop in the backstreets of Soho, we found a pile about four feet high of Victorian musical monologues and humorous songs. They were dated and sentimental, occasionally even offensive: ‘Wot’s De Good Ob Grousin’? (An Old Nigger’s Philosophy)’ being just one example, but we found a few that were definitely worth a spin: ‘I May Not Be Clever But I’m Clean!’ sounded like a winner, as did ‘I Wonder If My Mother Ever Knew?’ and ‘The Man With The Swollen Head’.
The show started with Linda and me dressed as two cleaning ladies called Glad and May. The agony of their domestic drudgery was made bearable because they at last had a captive audience.
‘Hello, I’m Glad and I’m glad to be here.’
‘And I’m May and I may be glad to be here!’
We were loud and anarchic and had a number of catchphrases: ‘I’m human, you’re human, everybody is human’, and ‘It’s uncanny and unnatural’.
‘We used to work in a factory. Monkeys could have done the work we was doing – hairy monkeys covered in hair – then one day in walked Lionel Fart. He took one look at me – one look was all it took – and he said, “You, May, have got something that not every woman has got.” And Glad had a little bit herself, tucked away within. Anyway, he whipped it out, there and then – he whipped his tape recorder out, and it was next stop Hollywood.’