Swan Songs

by Swan, Tarn

  Anyway, let me now return to the tale of Twinkles’ cosmetic accident on the night of the charity Ballroom Dancing event. When Lulu came galloping over to the table babbling about cosmetic accidents I wasn’t too concerned. My first thought was that Twinkles had poked himself in the eye with a mascara wand again, he does that fairly regularly, mainly because he talks too much as he’s applying the stuff and doesn’t pay due care and attention. I had to fight my way through a throng of fussing queens to get to Twinkles (including one brazen hussy who tried to evict me as being improperly dressed for the cross dresser’s toilets) I found him in a state of hysteria with his hands clamped to his right eye sobbing that he was blind. His hysteria wasn’t helped by the hysteria of his friends whose idea of comfort revolved around telling Twinks that glass eyes came in a variety of colours and they were sure the doctors would do their best to match him up. I got him out of the loo as quickly as I could and into Brian’s office, where I managed to persuade him to let me examine his eye. It was a real mess, very red, very swollen and weeping sticky fluid, as well as runny mascara. Brian took one look and reached for the phone, ordering a taxi to take Twinkles and I to the eye infirmary.

  It transpired that one of Twinkles’ false eyelashes had come adrift and he’d forgotten to put his eyelash adhesive in his handbag. Lulu hadn’t brought any either, so Twinkles ended up using spirit gum that he borrowed from Cherie Pie. Spirit gum is used to slick down heavy eyebrows. It’s wholly unsuitable as an eyelash adhesive because it burns like mad if it gets in the eye and can cause permanent damage. As such it’s a forbidden substance. Luckily he managed to re-fix his eyelash without mishap. However, at the same time, Lulu was demonstrating and attempting to sell a new product from the company he’s an agent for, namely cosmetic contact lenses. The lenses came in various colours and patterns, even animal and Vampire affect. They were causing some excitement and Lulu was doing a roaring trade. His commission was on target to be the highest yet. Twinkles, of course, decided he too had to have fashionable designer eyes. He opted to try in a pair of lenses that had a star pattern, only, instead of putting a drop of the contact lens solution on the lens, he picked up the wrong bottle from the sink and put on a blob of the spirit gum he’d just used on his eyelashes. In short he glued a contact lens to his eyeball with a caustic substance. He quickly realised his error and at least managed to pop the lens out before the gum set, but no amount of cold water soothed the burning sensation in his eye.

  Lulu insisted on coming to the eye infirmary with us and stubbornly squeezed himself and his frock into the taxi. Twinks was his best friend and it was his product that had been glued to his eye. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of tulle with Twinkles on one side of me and Lu on the other. The taxi driver couldn’t keep his eyes off us, spending more time viewing us in his mirror than he did the road. It was a miracle we didn’t crash.

  The local eye infirmary is housed in one of those very old, gothic style buildings; the sort that a film crew would choose as a location for a horror movie. Because it was after hours, everything was closed up and we had to go to a side door and ring the night bell. There was an intercom on the wall from which a peevish voice demanded to know what we wanted. I said I needed a doctor urgently, as my partner had inadvertently got spirit gum in his eye and was in a lot of discomfort. The voice snapped that the doctor on duty was resting and could we come back to the main clinic in the morning. I said certainly not and if the doctor was on duty he could do that duty and do it quickly. There was some muttering and then the door, a huge wooden affair, creaked reluctantly open. I half expected to see Lurch standing there and fixed my eyes at about the six foot level in anticipation, only to have to drop them by a good six inches to view the churlish night duty nurse. He stared at us in silent disbelief and who could blame him. There I was, a man in a tuxedo, wearing a shirt with a bad fake tan, sandwiched between two ball-gowned transvestites one of whom was sobbing his heart out.

  Just as I thought he must have been struck permanently dumb, he suddenly broke his silence by dramatically clapping his hands to his face and shrieking, ‘Oooohhhh, ballroom queens and in my clinic! I just love your dresses, ladies they’re divine. Did you make them yourselves?’ He then roared over his shoulder, ‘Cindy, Cindy, get a wheelchair quickly, it’s an emergency!’ Another nurse appeared pushing a wheelchair and helped her colleague bundle Twinkles into it, following his instructions about arranging his dress so it wouldn’t crease. The male nurse then sped the chair down the long Victorian corridor while bawling another name at the top of his voice, ‘Maurice, Maurice (which he pronounced More-reece) wake up, lovey, we’ve got company, your talents are needed.’

  A long thin figure, whom I assumed was Doctor Maurice, shambled out of a side room, wearing a surgical face mask, which was all askew, mumbling, ‘for goodness sake, Teddy, I’d just got over, what…then he clocked a proper look at us and topped Teddy’s earlier shriek by several decibels, ‘OOH, why didn’t you say it was royalty I would have hurried!’ I felt like I’d fallen through a rabbit hole into some alternative gay universe. Teddy and Maurice, who obviously shared more than a work-based relationship, circled around like a couple of camp hyenas, exclaiming over Twinkles’ and Lulu’s outfits. I pinched myself, convinced that I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming, but no, it was really happening. When I drew the doctor’s attention to Twinkles’ eye dilemma, Teddy drew it to the sequinned trim on his ball gown, ‘hand stitched, Maurice, not glued, you don’t see that very often these days and look at those seams, faultless.’ Fighting off a fit of hysteria I firmly insisted that they leave sequin talk for later and attend to their patient’s eye.

  Once they got going, Maurice and Teddy, with Cindy’s help, proved to be a very efficient team and soon had Twinkles made much more comfortable with a pain killing injection so his eye could be examined and treated. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Maurice said although the eye was very inflamed he didn’t think there was any permanent damage to the cornea and it should regenerate perfectly well. Throughout the treatment they both spoke to him as if he were about seven years old, patting his hands and calling him a brave little princess, as his eye was sluiced and cleaned. I have to tell you he absolutely lapped it up. It was shameful.

  As they worked, Teddy proudly related how he and Maurice had won The Gay Gordons Ballroom Dance Trophy three years running at the annual Drag Queen’s Gala in Manchester’s Gay Village. Giving me a rather baleful look from his good eye, Twinks said he would love to take part in something like that, but unfortunately he was lumbered with a partner who had two left feet. After treatment he was prescribed some eye drops and given a clear eye guard to protect his sensitive eye until the inflammation subsided.

  I was ready for home, but Teddy insisted we stay and have a cup of tea and a biscuit with him, Maurice and Cindy. They obviously wanted to quiz Lulu and Twinks and as they were happy to be quizzed, I let the four of them get on with it while I sat and helped Cindy do a crossword puzzle. No one can gossip like a gaggle of queens. Cindy kindly offered me the use of a pair of earplugs to block out their vocal exchanges, but I declined, preferring to keep track of what Twinkles was saying. I didn’t want him arranging for me to have dancing lessons with Teddy. Mum’s name was bandied around as a seamstress par excellence, with Twinkles promising to make introductions to her, as well as to the PP. Maurice and Teddy it seemed were relatively new to the area, after moving down from Brighton and were not yet fully au fait with the local TV scene.

  To cap it all Twinkles and Lulu, partnered respectively by Maurice and Teddy, ended up waltzing down the long corridor. I’m afraid I must admit to a twinge of jealousy, as I noted that Twinks and Maurice made rather a fetching couple, despite one of them having an eye patch and the other being dressed in surgical scrubs. I hadn’t realised Twinkles could move so gracefully, a half decent dance partner made all the difference. Teddy and Maurice then proceeded to teach Lulu and Twinkles the finer points of a competition standard P
olka. It was then that I phoned a taxi to take us home.

  As a postscript to that saga, his eye is fine now. All the swelling and redness have completely gone and he can focus without his vision blurring. We had a lengthy discussion about his decision to use spirit gum to re-fix his eyelashes. I wasn’t happy about it at all and considered it to be reckless disobedience on his part. He tried to point out that it wasn’t sticking the eyelashes that had caused the gum to get in his eye, he’d been very careful about that. It made no difference. He had used something we’d agreed was NEVER to be used near his eyes. In the end, I decided that the pain and trauma he’d suffered as a result of his decision was more than sufficient to teach him a lesson about safety and was far worse punishment than I could or would ever devise. I settled for warning him that if he ever used spirit gum again I would invest in a very large paddle.

  19th June 2005:

  Father’s Day

  Twinkles was in one of his martyred moods this morning. He floated around the house in his favourite weekend peignoir flicking at things with a feather duster, while muttering just outside my range of hearing. Then he sat down, folded his arms, crossed his legs and began swinging his foot back and forth so that his mule clacked against his heel. He oozed telling little sighs while glancing up at the ceiling. I hate it when he does that. He wears this look on his face: longsuffering, wronged, hard done by, tight-lipped. It drives me mad. I calmly asked what the matter was? Nothing, he said, but his mule clacking against his foot like a stenograph was telling a different story. He was just fine…even though he’d recently almost lost his sight and been left horribly disfigured by a deadly virus. I told him not to worry, as the spots would soon fade. He said, rather enigmatically, that emotional scars were the hardest to deal with.

  I gave up trying to read the Sunday papers and gave my full attention to the smouldering Martyr, telling him bluntly that I wasn’t spending Sunday playing guess what’s eating Stardust Twinkles. If he didn’t spit out what was bothering him, I was going to whack his arse.

  He immediately demanded to know why I hadn’t bought him a card and a gift for Father’s Day. I’ll be honest and say this flummoxed me. It was something that had never arisen before. To me it was obvious why I hadn’t gotten him a card, why I’d never in fact gotten him a card…he isn’t my father. I said so. To which he dramatically replied, ‘no, but I’m the godfather of your godson and I thought you would at least have got me a card on his behalf.’ It hadn’t crossed my mind. For a start I’d actually forgotten it was Father’s Day. Normally I would visit my dad and take him a card and a present, but he and Gill have gone away to Paris for a romantic weekend. I wasn’t certain that being a godfather qualified you to receive cards on Father’s Day. I wasn’t certain they even existed. Suddenly what had been a straightforward kind of thing was now a potential hazard area and very confusing. This is where life is much easier for mixed partner parents and godparents…Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, one of each, nice and simple. How do children of transvestite parents cope? Do they buy their father a card on both mother’s and father’s day?

  Like I said, it was all very confusing. Twinkles dissolved into tears at what he termed my heartless disregard for the godfather of my godson. I said the same could be said of him, as I was the godfather of his godson, and he hadn’t got me a card. At which point he whipped up a sofa cushion and with a flourish produced a large white envelope. It was a sweet card with a flotilla of little blue ducks on it. It read ‘To a wonderful godfather on Father’s Day.’ Is there ANY permutations not covered by the greetings card industry? I humbly thanked Twinks and begged his forgiveness for my lack of thoughtfulness, which he graciously gave, but with a slightly injured air.

  I slipped out and went to Tesco, and low and behold they had some godfather cards. I chose one with a big blue teddy on it. They also had some that read: to my uncle on Father’s Day, which was just totally beyond my comprehension. Whatever next, to my beloved Tom Cat on Father’s Day? As well as the card I bought a bottle of champagne, some fresh strawberries and a tub of cream and of course chocolates. Twinks has had a rough time lately and he’s missed some nights out at the PP, so I thought it might be nice to treat him to a picnic lunch in the garden. It looked like it was going to be a sunny day for a change. He adores being spoilt and I knew I was forgiven. To add to his pleasure, Karen and Paul dropped by with a card and some flowers for us from Dominic. I was pleased too. I reckon I could get used to this Father’s Day thing. I thought it especially kind of Paul to allow us a small share in the limelight of his special day. In all likelihood being godparents is the closest that Twinkles and I will ever come to experiencing fatherhood, and it’s really rather wonderful.

  The garden picnic was lovely. Twinks, despite still being spotty and lathered in several inches of sun block, looked gorgeous in his white t-shirt and little white shorts. He sat under a lacquered Chinese parasol, nibbling strawberries and sipping champagne. It felt as if summer had finally arrived. We’d just finished the champagne and were having a bit of a kiss and fondle when a huge clap of thunder sounded. He went skedaddling indoors leaving me to clear up. Another British summer over with.

  The rain is still pounding down. Two more days and it will be the summer solstice, and then it’s all down hill to the dark nights. Twinks blames Wimbledon, which starts tomorrow. He says it buggers up summer every year without fail, guaranteeing a fortnight of torrential rain. As I write he’s snoring away on the couch. Drinking wine on an afternoon always knocks him out. Before sleep claimed him he told me a sad thing and a sweet thing. The sad thing was that he wished he could have sent his father a last Father’s Day card, one that told him he was forgiven and loved. The sweet thing was that if he were given the chance to re-live one moment of his life again, it would be the moment he looked up and saw me walk through the door of the jeweller’s shop where he works. I was touched. He asked me what moment I’d choose and I said it would be the moment when I walked into the jewellers and he smiled and asked if he could help me.

  It’s funny how just one moment can change your life. I had walked past that small jeweller’s shop many times and not so much as glanced in the window. Then one day while I was out, my cell phone rang. It was my sister asking if I’d remembered it was mum’s birthday. To my shame I hadn’t. That call couldn’t have been more beautifully timed or placed. It halted me right outside Twinkles’ shop. Kismet I thought as I pushed open the door, and I was right in more ways than one.

  So, there you have our Summer Sunday. I wish you all as fortunate in Kismet as I have been.

  29th June 2005:

  Skipping And Waxing

  He’s is in a huff with me this evening. He’s sitting on the couch looking very hard done by. Why? Because I’ve confiscated his new skipping rope, that’s why. Why? Because he’s a pest with it, that’s why. He read an article in a magazine a few days ago that claimed skipping was an excellent way of boosting your metabolism and thus burning more calories and that it also toned your shoulders, legs and bottom. Doing a minute of energetic skipping every half hour or so throughout the day is guaranteed to get you in film star shape in less than a fortnight. So he hurried forth and bought a skipping rope. Of course Twinks being Twinks, he couldn’t just buy a plain old skipping rope. Oh no, he had to buy a bright orange and pink thing that makes a high pitched whining noise as you skip. It drives me up the wall.

  In principle I have no objection to him skipping. What I did object to was his insistence on skipping in the house. The weather has been rather inclement here lately and skipping outside is less than appealing. I tried to be understanding, but I told him yesterday, after he’d taken out the kitchen light bulb twice with the wretched thing, that he would have to wait until the weather improved so he could skip outside. In the meantime he was not to skip in the kitchen again. He wilfully interpreted that as meaning it was okay to skip in the sitting room and as soon as I disappeared upstairs to shower this evening he did just that. Cons
equently he took out the sitting room light bulb, smashing the shade in the process. In the same movement he whipped a mug of tea off the coffee table, it flew through the air and crashed through the television screen. I was not pleased at all.

  He said he was sorry for what had happened, but it was imperative that he skipped this evening. I asked what the urgency was and he confessed that he’d bought a load of bargain chocolate from Bent Barry’s confectionary stall in town this afternoon and had already eaten most of it. He was hoping to boost his metabolism and burn off the excess calories by skipping. I asked whether he seriously thought I’d approve of him skipping in the sitting room when I’d made it plain I didn’t approve of him skipping in the kitchen? He reluctantly said no. I said damned right and spanked his bottom. I then took his rope away, telling him that if he couldn’t use it responsibly then I wasn’t going to allow him to use it at all. Hence his huff with me, he thinks his need to burn off chocolate calories amounted to extenuating circumstances, and I should have been more understanding. All I understood was that his bargain chocolate binge had cost us a fortune and we’d had quite enough expense lately due to his thoughtless actions.