I took the necessary details for the stag from Bob, quickly rang Brigitte to check she was on board, and returned to the bathroom. Chris had scooped Nick out of the bath and wrapped him in a huge, soft, warm towel. His hair was all wet and little drops of water tickled him as they trickled down his cheeks. His laughter was infectious and his face a picture of sublime happiness. Chris passed him to me and I hugged him close, nuzzling his neck and breathing in that amazing baby smell. I took him upstairs to put him to bed, lay him in his cot and gently stroked behind his ear to soothe him to sleep. I crept downstairs so as not to wake him, grabbed a quick snack, kissed my darling Chris, picked up my bag and left my boys at home.
It was already pitch-black when I set off. The roads were wet and shiny and that wonderful damp smell rose up to make everything feel very close. I was lost in thoughts when I suddenly realised I must be very near Brigitte’s flat. Sometimes I got really pissed off when I had to act as a taxi service. But Brigitte was an exception – we just clicked. There was something about her that set her apart from the other girls. She’d worked in the Middle East and her passion was writing and playing her own music. A lot of the girls didn’t like her, but she was just different. It seemed to me that she hadn’t been successful in masking herself and that’s what made the girls and men nervous of her. She did an act using lit candles, which she would squat over and then produce a knife that glittered in the stage lights. It was all a bit too ritualistic and symbolic, and, for the ordinary working man, ‘fucking weird’ – and too much.
I pulled up outside Brigitte’s, left the car running and ran to the front door. I had to give three rings of her doorbell, wait, then ring twice more. Brigitte’s little safety code. She shouted down from her first-floor window, ‘Hello! I’ll be right down, Scarlet.’
I waited in the car and unlocked the passenger door to her little taps on the window. She kissed my cheek. ‘Hello, my darling.’
‘We’re at a restaurant in the West End – God knows where I’ll park. Some office Christmas party. Jackie and Marianne are with us, so we’ll have to pair off.’
Brigitte laughed and her eyes glinted with mischief. ‘I’ll make mad, passionate love to you and I’ll scream as I have my orgasm.’
That’s what I loved about her: she could laugh at the odd situations we got tangled up in. The lesbian act we’d perfected was a sham, but the guys never knew. They were so locked into the moment. We held genuine affection for each other as women surviving in a very real world, both playing roles within roles.
We reached the restaurant. There was always a feeling of trepidation walking into a place, with thoughts scattered in every direction, mentally marking the exits, making sure the dressing room (or what passed for one) had a functional lock on it, how to be approachable, sussing out the guys as you go, making sure they kept a safe distance. Many of the girls sold sex at the end of the shows. I’d never done that. Sometimes, out of safety for myself and the other girl, I’d step in if a girl was having a hard time getting a guy to come. I hated doing that – the guy would always insist I tried it. No way – they had to be content with my physical presence in the room. Sex was, in part, a profession to me, but I’d managed to keep all this side of it from crossing over and intruding into my own sex life. Sex with Chris was precious.
All four of us girls were chatting away when there was a knock on the door. ‘Girls, can I come in?’ a pathetic voice pleaded.
‘Who is it?’ Marianne shouted.
‘It’s me, Tom.’ He was the organiser for the evening. He was allowed into the inner sanctum of the ladies’ loo (our luxurious dressing room). He had a large plastic carrier bag in his hand and a sweaty face.
‘What’s in your bag, Tom?’ Marianne asked with irritated sarcasm.
He was obviously embarrassed and in difficulty. ‘Well, erm, you see, well, we thought … Would you girls mind, err, using some of these in your act. I mean, if you don’t mind.’
Ever so business-like, Marianne tipped the contents unceremoniously on to the small table. As if we all hadn’t guessed already. Dildos, vibrators, a whip and a very nice school cane. I quickly snatched up the cane to take home.
‘You’ll have to pay us extra, and Scarlet doesn’t do blue, by the way,’ Marianne proclaimed.
‘Oh, we, err, were, err, hoping all four of you would, err, do something,’ Tom stammered.
They always tried to persuade me. A little extra money. They really didn’t get it. I never wavered.
I sat quietly while the girls sorted out their extracurricular fees, then announced to Tom that Brigitte and I would be happy to do a lesbian act, and that we wouldn’t be needing the dildos or vibrator, but the whip would do nicely. Brigitte liked whips.
Tom’s eyes went from disappointment to boyish anticipation.
‘Come on, Brigitte, let’s eat each other, with a little discipline for the men. And don’t go mad this time!’ I said with a grin as I took Brigitte’s hand and we both walked out into the restaurant to the sounds of the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’. Brigitte took one side of the room and me the other.
I targeted a small, quiet man who wasn’t drunk but faking disinterest. This was quite common and always a challenge to me. I walked around the back of his chair and firmly nudged the side of his face with my hips. My red satin miniskirt parted down the side and I let it slide down his cheek on to his lap. A smile crept across his face and his hands twitched restlessly. As expected, he was reluctant to show interest or make contact. I had no intention of allowing him to. I bent forward, my tiny half-cup bra bursting with my peachy breasts. They were an inch from his nose. My G-string teasingly covered everything he and the rest wanted to see as I leaned forward, moving my hips in time with the music. I whispered in his ear that he must be good and not move. I sat astride his knees, my back arched and arms wrapped around his neck, all the while my hips still moving with the music, sensuously, rhythmically. He was safe. His face was flushed with pleasure, not embarrassment, and I left his lap knowing he was hard.
Brigitte had been stern with some of the men. She strode over to me, whip in hand, traced the curves of my body with it, stroked my breasts, unfastened my bra and dropped it to the floor. She cracked the whip and clawed at her clothes, rubbing herself against me, pleading for me to be naked too. Flesh on flesh. We rolled on the floor, caressing, kissing. My tongue savoured its way down Brigitte’s neck, around her small, hard nipples and over her firm stomach. We were lost in each other, Brigitte writhing and uttering sounds of ecstasy. A strange, wet silence hung over the whole scene. The music had ended; the men were mesmerised. Brigitte winked at me. We exchanged a knowing look of triumph. Applause and cheers accompanied us to the dressing room.
I dropped Brigitte off and got home around 1 a.m. I slipped into bed next to Chris, only too aware, as usual, that my hair stank of cigarettes. I hated that and knew Chris did too, but he never mentioned it, just always asked if I was OK. Always so thoughtful and caring. He knew some nights it was difficult for me and talking about it helped me make sense of the whole evening. My head spun, my body buzzed, but I was home, safe in Chris’s arms. I fell into a deep sleep.
Not all the girls got on with each other and there was a lot of competition between us. Some could earn good money and others very little. But there was some camaraderie amongst us. When there was any trouble, we’d stick together and protect one another as we all recognised that it was a case of ‘us against them’. That’s not to say I didn’t like the men I came across, just that it would be fair to say the nice and good men were outnumbered by some real arseholes. The agency had a variety of girls rated in terms of how they looked, what they’d do, how they performed and their personalities. But all of them had one necessary trait: they were all strong women, and I defend and respect them and their choice to do what they wanted with their bodies. Inevitably, like it or not, the girls fell into categories depending on the jobs that came in and their suitability. It was the same for me. I didn’t alwa
ys fit the job. I suspect the competition between the girls was fed as much by the agency, to keep them on their toes, as it was by the girls themselves. The ‘blue’ girls, who offered sex extras, earned the most and between them they competed to be the top earner, as much a mark of their sexual expertise as their desire to make as much money as they could.
A lot of the pubs I worked at have either closed down or been turned into shops, or, like the Arabian Arms and Browns, become ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. I’ve not been inside a strip club for over thirty years. I think my eight-year stint is enough for a lifetime. I don’t know how ‘gentlemanly’ these clubs are, but in the early 1980s I did work a few times at one gentlemen’s club near the Mall. It was tucked away and frequented by suited gents on their extended lunch breaks. The layout was very different from the pub circuit. Tables with crisp, white linen cloths were arranged around a catwalk. Backstage we had a proper theatre-like dressing room and would be notified politely when we were requested on stage. We were only booked to do a couple of strips each and were instructed to keep them ‘respectable’. It was like going back in time to the 1960s, and brought to mind Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice-Davies. A thoroughly enjoyable timewarp, and a welcome relief from the smelly, noisy pubs.
Dancing and stripping meant I had to keep in shape. The dancing itself more or less did that for me, but the body being the focal point also meant you had to keep free of bruises and unappealing marks. I woke up one morning and went to scratch my head. ‘My head feels weird,’ I said to Chris.
He turned and looked at me with horror. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘What?’
He jumped out of bed. ‘You need to look in the mirror.’
My head, eyes and mouth were swollen – I looked like I’d done ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Then I looked down and all of my torso was covered in huge, red, swollen, itchy blotches. I rang my agency straight away and cancelled my bookings. I said I’d get back to them after seeing my doctor. But it was more serious than I thought. I’d had a severe allergic reaction to aspirin and was put on steroids straight away. It was a strange feeling, watching as the swelling shifted from one area to another, all the time hoping that my throat didn’t close up as the doctor had mentioned it could had I not gone to her so soon. I couldn’t dance for a week. I’d been lucky it hadn’t happened during my work for Steve Dwoskin on his Shadows from Light documentary film on Bill Brandt.
But a week off did give me time to focus on an art action I was going to do at an arts venue near St Paul’s Cathedral. I had Chris video me as I worked and send the live feed to a monitor placed in front of me, giving me immediate visual feedback that I used to create a loop of action and response. The space was small but full of people, and as I was clearing away afterwards Stevo from Some Bizarre Records came up and started excitedly shouting at me and Chris about how he wanted to sign us to his label. It wasn’t the best time to approach us and we told him we weren’t the least bit interested, but thanks anyway. As the place emptied we got talking to a guy called Dooby who worked at London Video Arts (LVA), an organisation that provided support and free access to facilities for video artists. He invited us to their place in Soho to see if we’d like to use it.
The use of LVA’s resources came at just the right time, not only for my art video works but because we’d just finished filming Elemental 7 and needed affordable access for editing and post-production. We booked time in LVA’s editing suite and mastered both Elemental 7 and, later, European Rendezvous. There were fractious moments as everything was done in real time with no back-ups. With the video completed and put to one side, we prepared to do our first gigs since TG – as CTI. Rough Trade bookings organised the shows for us and we, along with John, went on a European tour.
Although we’d released our first album as Chris & Cosey, our work since then had mainly been collaborative and under the banner of CTI. The months leading up to our first gigs had been taken up with recording with different people. Glenn Wallis, one of the first TG fans and roadie, formed a band called Konstruktivits and we worked together on a CTI 12" single.
While recording the tracks, me and Chris had been taking regular morning and afternoon trips to the Muswell Hill day nursery to drop off and pick up Nick. We’d pass 23 Cranley Gardens every day and didn’t give it a second thought until news broke of the arrest of a serial killer and necrophiliac who’d lived there and carried out multiple murders in the house. His name was Dennis Nilsen. He was put on trial and convicted of murdering gay and homeless young men in his flat, hiding the corpses under floorboards or dismembering them and stuffing body parts down the drains of the property. Passing the house on the way to the nursery was never the same again. We took a photo of it and used it for the front cover of the 12" and called the title track ‘Hammer House’ – the house of horror.
Our 12" single ‘Thy Gift of Tongues’, made with Brian Williams (aka Lustmord), had a similar dark theme, but based on myth: Asmodeus, Prince of Hell, the demon of wrath and lust. For Brian I suspect it was about the power of wrath, and for me, the power of primal lust. Brian had first got in touch through writing to TG, and then met us at a record-store signing. He’d started doing his own music and I suggested he contact SPK (Surgical Penis Klinik), who were among many musicians and artists squatting in one of the houses in Bonnington Square, Vauxhall. We knew SPK through the musician Graeme Revell, who had written to TG; back in 1980, Industrial Records had released the first SPK record, the single ‘Slogun’. Graeme was intense and ambitious and would often ring or call round, blatantly asking Chris to give him the inside information on how we did things on certain tracks, to use in his own music. We never collaborated with him – it was too much of a one-way street. Brian ended up joining SPK and would stay with them off and on during his trips from his home in Wales. We became close friends, visiting him and his partner, Tracey, after they moved to London into a squat overlooking the Oval cricket ground. Tracey worked for a video-editing and duplication company in Soho and helped us out with mastering and duping our gig videos.
*
Nick’s few hours a day at the local nursery gave us the opportunity to record. Chris had put together some sequences using our new Roland MC-8 sequencer and tentative rhythms for a track, and asked me to try out some vocals to it. I lay on our bed as he spoke to me through my headphones. ‘Just try anything,’ he said.
He felt so close, and his voice so soft and sensual, that it put me in mind of when we’d phone each other during the tough times while we were apart. I started talking to him about our struggle as lovers, being impeded by other commitments, how he made me feel and the joy of being together. I started with when we initiated our love affair – on the Charing Cross Tube escalator on our way to the ICA in 1976. ‘You took my hand on the stair. You said we could be lovers – I just had to say the word.’ I hadn’t meant it to be the actual lyrics; I just wanted to tell him what he meant to me. He came into the room. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘I love it. Let’s take the song in that direction and sing a chorus and a melody.’
The track was completed that afternoon, other than tweaking and the final mix. ‘October (Love Song)’ came from such an intimately personal few minutes and became a signature Chris & Cosey track. It was a total departure for us, unlike anything we’d recorded before – romantic but so uplifting. It was fun running with the love-song theme and making an accompanying kitsch video using LVA’s facilities, with the assistance of David Dawson, and photographer Steve Pyke taking stills from the video and promo photographs – one of which we used for the cover of our next 12" single collaboration project, ‘Sweet Surprise’ with the Eurythmics.
*
It hadn’t taken long for TG bootleg albums to start appearing. There’d been a few while TG were still together but it accelerated to a ridiculous level after we split. We weren’t informed or consulted about such releases and were referred to in a letter from Gen to Geff Rushton, dated 1 March 1982, as ‘Thee Negatives (Chris & Co
sey)’, with Gen giving his (and Sleazy’s) permission for Geff to release TG work: ‘E hereby give mine & Sleazy’s blessing to your TG best of boxed set project, ASSUME POWER FOCUS … DON’T tell Thee Negs … They are best ignored on these kind of projects …’
When we discovered Assume Power Focus was by Geff, we rang Sleazy, who apologised and sent us a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds. By that time, he and Geff were working together as Coil, having distanced themselves from Gen. Over the years, as more bootlegs of live TG recordings appeared, I was sent information by concerned fans (the quality was bad). The main source was revealed with proof supplied to me by different labels and people involved, including licence agreements signed by ‘Genesis P-Orridge’. Despite the paper trail of evidence, there was no offer of apology or accountability: our approaches were just met with indifference. I’d get irate phone calls from Geff on our and Sleazy’s behalf, urging me to bring Gen to book. I managed to retrospectively get some of the bootlegs converted into legitimate releases and the label to pay me, Chris and Sleazy our due royalties. It was tough, as the label had already paid a large up-front payment to the seller of the tapes.
Keeping track of unofficial TG releases that were subsequently licensed on to more labels over the years wasn’t something I wanted to waste precious energy on. IR and TG signed a licence agreement with Mute Records in May 1983 but that only covered the main catalogue and the Fetish Records releases. And Fetish turned out to be a bad experience, considering TG’s generosity towards the label. Rod Pearce (who owned Fetish) insisted on 50 per cent of TG’s advance and royalties from the Mute deal. I felt like we were being well and truly shafted from every direction.
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