by Liam Livings
I shook my head. “US…what was it?”
“Unique selling point. What is it that makes you as Kev The Performer, unique, different from all the other drag queens in all the other pubs and clubs across the land.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm.
“I dunno.”
“Have you written it down before?”
“No, why would I?”
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. “What about your plan? Do you have an idea of where you want to be in two, three, five years’ time?”
“Suppose so.”
“Have you written that down?”
Clearly, I’d not written anything down, I’d been getting the bookings and carrying on from day to day, and although the Plan had been ok at the time, with Ian in the driving seat, it all felt like it would be much better organised, much clearer, and also it would all be written down. He seemed to put a lot of store in writing things down, because then you knew what you were aiming for, could make sure everything you were doing was helping you get to where you wanted, rather than splashing around without a plan.
“We’ll call it, the Plan 2000.” Ian’s eyes lit up, he mimed the name appearing in lights. “There’s a lot of this year 2000 stuff going around at the moment isn’t there, so why can’t we get a slice of the action?”
Although it felt a bit odd, a bit weird talking about business plans and USPs and minimum income per month, lists of venues I’d played, lists of venues I hadn’t played, it all felt much more like work than it had before. But as Ian pointed out, “Your mum and you are relying on this to pay the bills, so it is work, it is a business, like I said before. And with a business you work out what you need and break it down to easy targets.”
Targets? Get him! The nearest to a target I’d come was the unused dart board in some of the pubs I’d played.
I spent most of the day there, breaking for lunch, when Daisy joined us, beaming with pride at how Ian’s face was lit up. Ian hadn’t stopped talking, rushing about, stomping up and down the study telling me things, asking me things, making me write things down on the laptop I’d got a bit used to using.
We broke down how much I needed to make to contribute to the house with Mum, how many performances at my new higher rate, I’d yet to start charging for everyone “love, if they don’t want to pay that, tell them to stick it and trust me, you’ll find others who will. Because, like they say in the adverts, you’re worth it.” And once we had that, he introduced a star system for my calendar, when I had enough bookings that month to meet my target, I got a star, when I didn’t, he knew he’d need to make more calls to drum up some more work. “Darling, I know most of the venue managers from the bits I’ve been doing for Daisy, so a few words about this new up and coming performer I’m managing, and they’ll bite my hand off for you.”
“How do you make money on this? I’m a bit confused what’s in it for you,” I asked, sure he’d mentioned it before, but aware it had probably gone over my head once I’d noted to never pay a manager up front.
“A percentage of your fees. Do you want me to handle the money side?”
“They normally pay me cash on the night. Is that wrong?”
“Nothing wrong with cash love. Everywhere takes cash, but like I said, you’ve gotta get an accountant, and start declaring it. I do her books, do you want me to do yours too?” He cracked his knuckles and started talking about his new spreadsheet he’d been itching to use and now he could.
We agreed on eight per cent of my earnings for him, which was about half what the standard agents’ rates were. “I’m happy to do it for you, for a bit. You know, as a favour.” He winked, nodding to the living room where Daisy was watching one of her TV programmes.
Ian gave me some exercises to practice for the next time I saw him. “You need to develop how fierce you are, how fearless you are. You told me about the I am Kev, hear me roar. Well, I want the audience to feel when you come on stage, none of this meek and mild rubbish, you’ve got to fill the room with your personality.”
I’d thought I already was pretty good at that. But when he asked me how I dealt with hecklers I gave some examples, and he said that wasn’t heckling, that was audience participation. He explained heckling was someone shouting at me from the back of the pub that I was shit and couldn’t sing and did I want to suck his cock. I realised maybe my heckling skills could do with a bit of polish.
“Dress during the day a bit more. Not the full evening gown, more every day, like Ginger Spice, you told me about. You’ll get plenty of comments and heckles doing that, think of what to say back to them. Not instantly rude, because most of the time a little put down will shut most up, it’s only the odd one who you really need to get properly fierce to. If you can go to a supermarket dressed, walking up and down the aisles, either ignoring the comments or coming back to them if you need to, you can do anything. Because let’s face it, people expect a drag queen at a gay pub, they don’t expect one in their local supermarket, do they? Worst you’ll get is some of the shit ex of yours said to you, at least you won’t be going out with these arseholes.”
He said the contract would be in the post. Two contracts in the same week. Get me. Mum and Dad would be proud. And then it came back to me, once again. Crashing back around my ears, the memory that Dad didn’t want anything to do with me, with this part of my life, and that I wasn’t something he could handle in his life.
Fucking marvellous how the comments of a disapproving parent could bring me so far down from so high without him even being there. But no, I wasn’t going to allow him to make me feel that way, not after I’d started on the Plan 2000 with Ian, and together we were going to make my career fly, with its USP whatever, and my new pricing, and him telling everyone I was the next biggest thing. I was going to be unstoppable. I am Kev, hear me roar. I am fierce.
Chapter Seventeen
ONCE HOME I absentmindedly opened an envelope with a window address hole, a credit card obviously. Nothing very interesting. I stood in the kitchen reading it, the logo on the top right of the letter wasn’t Barclaycard, it was some blue-green group of stick figures, hugging each other, something about family planning services and the NHS. The NHS, what was this?
Dear Mr Harrison,
Your blood sample tested for the HIV virus came back with the following result: positive.
Please contact the clinic to access further services such as counselling, medication advice etc.
Yours sincerely,
A scribbled signature with PP next to it, and the name of the clinic manager.
PP, what does that mean? So, it’s sincerely for someone’s name. Positive, that’s good, isn’t it? Keeping things positive, that’s what people said all the time.
I reread the letter, holding onto the work surface in the kitchen as I felt sick and the floor seemed to tilt to one side.
Mum breezed through, a brush in one hand and a duster in the other. “All right, love. Got yourself a manager, have you?”
Blimey, I’d totally forgotten about that. The euphoria of all that had long since gone, replaced with the feeling of uncertainty, not quite believing, having to check the meaning of positive and negative in this particular context, and also having to deal with the tipping floor and sick stomach.
“Love? How was he?” Mum leant forward to kiss my cheek.
I wobbled to one side slightly, clutching my stomach and crumpling the letter in my pocket. “Fine. I’m going up to call Tony. Won’t be long.”
“’Scuse me.” She tapped her cheek.
“Sorry.” I kissed her cheek briefly, not waiting to hug, and walked to the bottom of the stairs.
“Another bill was it?” She rolled her eyes.
“What?” My foot was on the first step, I couldn’t wait to leave, but I didn’t want to make her suspicious as I knew I couldn’t cope with a full-on interrogation.
“The bill. I saw you had some post.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to.” I made the sig
n for a phone and ran upstairs two steps at a time, holding my breath, holding my everything, barely daring to let my heart beat as it pumped my blood around my body. I shut the door behind me, pulled the letter from my pocket smoothed it out and reread it.
Tony answered on the first ring. “Got my letter today. I’m so relieved. Of course it was negative. I always knew it would be. I knew I’d have felt something was wrong. I’ve told the ex. He’s gone. It’s all finished. I can put it all behind me. Such a relief. Oh, I said that. What you been up to? I rang yours earlier and your mum said you were seeing this Ian about being your manager. How exciting. Tell me all about it.”
“I got my letter today. Only I thought they said they’d call.”
“She did say that, didn’t she? Anyway, nothing more to access, no need to go back, it’s all over now. So, what did this Ian have to say? I’d love to meet him, and that Daisy, they sound like a right pair.” He babbled on for a bit.
I tried to compose my thoughts, swimming through his words, reading the words on the letter. And all that jumped out at me was the PP at the bottom and the positive at the top.
Tony had stopped talking. “You there? Sorry, I’ve been rabbiting on, like some…rabbit. I asked you how you were and haven’t let you tell me. I’m so relieved, so pleased, it’s all over. You must be relieved for me, are you? Kev? You still there? Kev?”
“What does PP mean? At the bottom of a letter.” I blinked a tear away and it fell onto the letter, leaving a circle of wet that smudged the signature at the bottom of the page. And then I couldn’t hold it in any longer; then it all came out, in a wave I felt would engulf me, lose me in its midst until all that was left was the letter and the little test tube of my blood. I felt myself becoming untethered to where I normally was held. My life drifted away beneath me. I floated above my life, as if I was viewing it from the other side of a glass window—the others in my life were actors in a film.
“You crying? What’s wrong? What happened? Do you want me to come round?” Tony continued to try and get some sense out of me for a few moments.
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “Once. The only time I do that, and this happens. And I can’t even remember his name. I felt I was having such a good time. All for one fucking fuck, in his van. And look where it’s got me.”
“Kev, what you on about? I’m coming round. Wait there. I’ll be round in a bit.”
“Don’t come. I don’t want her thinking anything’s wrong. If you turn up, she’ll know. She’s not stupid. She’ll know.”
“Tell me what’s happened. One word at a time. Slowly. Take breaths and tell me. All right?”
“I’m coming undone. Undone from my tether. I’ve reached the end of my tether. This is me, untethering. And what does the PP mean, at the bottom of the letter? PP, is that a person?”
“It’s Latin, it means per procurationem. When the power is delegated to someone else. Why?”
“And when people talk about looking on the positive side of things, that’s good, isn’t it? But in some instances, positive isn’t good is it?”
“Kev, what you on about. I’m getting in my car, now. Wait there.”
“I got my letter. Positive it said.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can read. I might not know what PP means, or whether it’s yours sincerely, actually I do, they’ve used sincerely here for dear Mr. Harrison. Is that right?”
“Yes.” He paused. There was silence on the phone, except for our breathing. “What do you want me to do?”
“Unless you can find a cure for HIV, not much.” My hand hovered over the hang-up button.
I heard Tony’s voice shouting from the phone as it was away from my ear.
I put the phone back to my ear.
Tony said, “I’m coming round. You can’t be on your own.”
“Do not come. I’m not telling her. I’ve got a headache. Maybe it’ll all look better with the lights out.”
“But…” came his voice from the phone.
But I’d put the phone down. I turned off the light, climbed into bed with the only light in the room, the dim green glow from my mobile phone.
As expected, Mum came up to fetch me for dinner. She switched the light on, stood with her hands on her hips. “What’s going on? Dinner’s ready. Come down.”
“I’ve got a migraine. Feeling sick.” I buried myself under the covers. “Turn the light off, would you? Just leave me. I’ll be better in the morning.”
She walked to my bed.
“Don’t come any nearer. It might be flu as well. I’m feeling hot, and cold. Leave me alone, would you.”
Chapter Eighteen
OVER THE NEXT few days, I stayed in bed, occasionally reading the letter to check I’d not misunderstood it. I turned my phone off and every time the house phone rang, I ignored it. I didn’t need to put on an act to pretend to be ill, to have the symptoms of flu, as I had them in spades, or buckets, or gallons, or something.
As well as the feeling of being as ill as I’d ever been, I felt disconnected from what was happening. I felt like I’d drifted further and further from my body, my life, and was now staring at it from a cloud above my room, as people walked on and off stage, trying to persuade me to get up, giving me water and food at irregular intervals. I imagined I was staring in my own production of Great Expectations as Miss Havisham, locked in the attic in her wedding dress, with the windows closed, the wedding cake moulding away in her room. I might not have remembered much from English GCSE lessons, not the verbs and the nouns and the letters, or stuff like that, but somehow, for some reason, that story came back to me, in my room, in darkness, on my own. The story of Miss Havisham in the attic became my story. I was her; she was me.
Only I wasn’t mourning my wedding as I’d been jilted, I was mourning my life; the life I wouldn’t live, as with one stupid mistake, a mistake tens of thousands of other young people made every day, resulting in sometimes a baby, or sometimes a dose of the clap. But I’d done it and had ended up there, with the letter, offering the other services they could give me, medication, blood tests, clinics, counselling. All the things that had sounded so wonderful, if they hadn’t been about that, when the black shaved-headed nurse had explained them to us, all those months ago. All those days ago, I corrected myself.
I told Mum I had lost my appetite as I felt sick. The flu was taking hold, I told her. She kept trying me with food, but all I had was water, and the odd aspirin for my temperature. I thought about saving up the aspirin over the days, so I could take a handful at once, washed down with big glugs of water, to end it all, save everyone, including myself from the horrors I imagined ahead for me. But even that seemed like too much effort. Breathing seemed like too much effort. Only my body refused to stop doing it.
I replayed that night in my head time and time again. The release from the frustrations of work, the perfect feeling of being drunk, of enjoying the moment in the Duke. The laughs and chats I’d had with the decorator, who’d just so happened to be working at the pub. A gay decorator too—actually that wasn’t too much of a surprise since the landlord was very for gay businesses, giving them the work rather than others. And his van, the smell of the paint, the dust of the sheets, it had all passed so quickly, one minute the perfect anticipation before sex, and after the soreness, the ache and the dampness. No matter how many times I asked myself why, why, why? I couldn’t come to any conclusion apart from because I was really pissed, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I’d been lucky, the odd time I’d almost made the same mistake, but had stopped just before, at the moment after which it would have been too late, how I’d turned, pulled away, withdrawn, jerked to the reality of the situation and said we’d do something else instead, something different, something more fun, something…safer. But not that night. I must have been a few drinks beyond the withdrawing, pulling backstage; I’d been at the everything seems like a good idea, let’s go, no brakes, only an accelerator pedal.
&nb
sp; Chapter Nineteen
THE LIGHT HURT my eyes. My curtains were open. And then, my covers were thrown off. What was happening? The door banged. I adjusted my eyes to the light.
Tony stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips, fringe swept back, eyes staring at me. “Your mum might well leave you alone and go easy on you. She told me it’s flu and said I shouldn’t come in. I’m not her. This—” He gestured around the room at me, in the foetal position in my bed, then shouted, “This, IS NOT KEV!” He walked to my bed, shifted me from my lying position to partly upright, and shook me by the shoulders. “You are not shrivelling up here. Where’s the letter?”
I nodded to my pillow.
He pushed me off the pillow, leant me against the wall and retrieved the crumpled letter. He scanned through. “Nope, that’s it. That’s what the letter says. So, we’re going to have to get on with it.”
I started to cry, little sobs came from my body, starting in my stomach, working their way upwards shaking my whole body as they moved, leaving my mouth in little cries, weak sobs, a pathetic little whimper. I wiped my face, shaking my head.
Tony lifted my head towards him, then slapped my face.
“What’dya do that for?”
He slapped me again, on the other cheek.
“Oi” Both cheeks stung, my eyes watered, but this time from the pain, not the little whimpers I’d been enduring earlier. I reached out to grab Tony’s nearest hand as it was inches from my face. “Fuck off! All right. Fuck off and leave me alone.”
Tony held my hands, leant backwards, lifting me into a partly standing position. “That’s better. That’s what I wanted. Where’s your get up and go? Where’s the Kev I know?”
“It got up and went.” I smiled to myself slightly for the first time since the letter had arrived. My own little joke, then it all came rushing back to me, my stupid, awful mistake. I put my head in my hands. “I can’t go to Out! I can’t tell Bruce, it’s the whole point of the group, he explained that’s how it gets its funding. And look at me, look at what I’ve gone and done. Stupid twat that I am.”