by Simon Doonan
I was shocked.
I scoured my brain for any telltale signs.
Maybe it was Paddy! When we were young schoolboys, and wearing gray flannel shorts of our own, there was one particular bus conductor, an Irishman, who used to make a point of pinching and fondling our knees. He was called Paddy, a nickname commonly doled out to Irish folk, and he was absolutely incapable of keeping his horrid little hands off our porky legs. Paddy’s unwanted attentions had obviously turned Biddie into a big screaming pervert!
I had always thought there was such a strong bond between us. We always told each other everything. And now this!
“Daughter, it’s for you, I think,” I said, as I tried not to think about the possibility that Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London might one day move into our flat and become Mr. Biddie.
My turbaned roommate, complaining bitterly, emerged from the tub and stuck his head round the door. The foundation had sunk in nicely.
“I’m Gway-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks. Are you James?”
“Good evening!” ejaculated Biddie, who had become quite good at handling rowdies and assorted lunatics but now seemed lost for a snappy comeback.
“Oh, luv! I think you might have the wrong house,” suggested Biddie, much to my relief.
Gray-flannel-shorts let out another depressed sigh. He looked quite forlorn, like a child with a broken toy.
“Oh. I’ve had such a tewible wunawound,” he said, nibbling on his ruler and leaning on the doorframe. He relaxed with the air of one who sensed he was among like-minded folk. Our new friend then told us of his long and embarrassing trek from North London, and of various encounters gone awry.
“I’ve been all over Bwixton and out as far as Wichmond.”
The poignancy of his story enrobed us with feelings of fascinated discomfort. We wanted to know everything, and yet nothing.
“A man in a Cortina took one look at me and dwove off!”
“Oh, men! Well, if it’s any comfort to you, we’ve all been there, daughter!” chimed Biddie in a tone of comforting complicity.
Relaxing more and sweating profusely, Gray-flannel-shorts began to paint a picture of his life. He lived with his mother. She was always mad at him because he never went out to work and always wore a school uniform. In desperation to find love, he had corresponded with someone in South London via a P.O. box. All he knew about this person was that he shared Kneesocks’s proclivities and that he lived somewhere in Brixton. Kneesocks had been directed to us—somewhat vindictively—after randomly banging on a neighbor’s door.
Biddie and I felt a simultaneous surge of empathy. We knew what it was like to feel spurned and reviled. Either one of us could so easily have ended up like Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London. There but for the grace of God went Biddie and Simon.
“If I’d known it was going to be like this,” he continued, looking down at his own strange little costume as if it were something that someone had forced him to wear, “I would have bought myself one of those new Wed Wover bus passes.”
Biddie and I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. How could anyone survive without one?
As I contemplated our strange moist visitor on that warm August night, I was overwhelmed by the unfairness and precariousness of life. One false move and you could find yourself wandering round South London in scratchy school uniform with no Red Rover bus pass.
As much as we were fascinated and touched by our new friend, we had no desire to prolong his presence on our front doorstep. One never knew when the upstairs window dresser might get the urge to empty his chamber pot again.
I reached in my pocket and handed Gray-flannel-shorts my nearly expired Red Rover and directed him toward the Number 19 to Finsburg Park. He shoved it into his pocket without saying thanks, which was endearingly schoolboyish.
“I’ve got a gift for you too,” said Biddie, retreating to his kasbah and reemerging with Happy Harry.
“Take good care of him. Not too many sweeties. Now run home and do all your homework like a good boy!” said Biddie, who had by now thoroughly entered into the spirit of things, as had I.
“Hurry along!” I said, waving good-bye to the poignant misfit from North London. “And don’t talk to any strangers!”
CHAPTER 13
PUNKS
The second time I was arrested, I was living in Los Angeles and wearing a skirt.
The garment in question was a detachable mini-kilt and was designed to be worn, by both girls and boys, over matching red plaid pants. These were adorned with buckles and zips. Dubbed “plaid bondage trousers,” they were the brainchild of the rebel fashion visionary Vivienne Westwood. It was all very 1977 and very punk.
The most striking aspect of this getup was not the detachable kilt. It was the bondage strap, comprising a loose adjustable belt, which connected the legs at knee level.
This leg strap was less constricting than it appeared. Normal activities—walking, climbing stairs, ice skating (noncompetitive), running for the bus, disco dancing, and even driving, which is what I was doing when I was arrested—could be performed while wearing these bondage pants.
I was twenty-seven years old, newly emigrated to America, high on Life and also on something called tequila. Ensconced at the wheel of my hearse-size, white ’65 Dodge station wagon, I felt like a million bucks.
This useful, trusty vehicle played a key role in my window-dressing career. It was invariably crammed with tools, paint pots, and a wide assortment of props. At the time of my arrest, I was transporting, among other things, a small taxidermied spider monkey, strings of plastic frankfurters, an oversize fake Oscar made of chicken wire and papier-mâché, a bag of fluorescent-hued go-go dancer wigs, and a huge stack of unused vintage colostomy bags. These had been given to me by a nurse friend who had purloined them for me from her place of employ, thinking they might form the basis of an amusing window display. Unable to find a suitable context for such medical oddities, I had driven them around for weeks.
Me and my colostomy bags were headed south on Alvarado Street, through the much-sung-about MacArthur Park. It was after midnight, and I was weaving. My nonconformist maneuverings were not the result of a tangled bondage strap. I would have loved to have blamed my poor driving on my outfit—“Your Honor, it was my punk couture . . . ” But it wasn’t the strap. It was the hooch.
Two motorcycle cops with flashing lights appeared in my rearview mirror. I pulled over and pressed the button which read Park. My Dodge was the futuristic push-button model.
The two strapping policemen dismounted and swaggered toward me. Handsome, chiseled, and bursting out of their skintight uniforms, these two intimidating specimens were straight out of a Tom of Finland homoerotic drawing.
One officer eyed the stuffed monkey lounging on the red vinyl seat next to me. The other politely asked me to step out of my “vehicle.” Whenever the word vehicle is used, it is safe to assume that things are about to become a great deal less fabulous.
There was no time to detach my kilt or undo my strap. Affecting an upbeat, cooperative, breezy demeanor, I simply swung my legs out of the car as daintily as possible and hoped for the best.
Both cops were about one foot taller than me. They looked me up and down. And up and down. And down and up.
It was spring.
The Santa Ana wind ruffled my mini-kilt.
They stopped looking at me and exchanged bemused glances. There was a pause. And then it started. They began to giggle. Here were two of the butchest-looking cops in America—straight out of CHiPs—and they were tittering like a couple of birdbrained schoolgirls.
Something was going horrible wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In fact, this was the very opposite of what Vivienne Westwood had planned when she conceived of my punky plaid bondage trousers. They were not designed to be funny. I was supposed to look alienated, aggrieved, postnu-clear, and maybe even just a tidgy bit intimidating.
Nobody was supposed to giggle.
Eventually my two new pals got their mirth under control.
“So what’s with the kilt?” said Cop Number 1 somewhat rhetorically, while chewing tobacco. I was unable to furnish him with a response. Instead I embarked on an enthusiastic, somewhat slurred autobiographical ramble. I explained that I had recently moved from London to Los Angeles—“What a great city! Lucky me!”—and that back in the United Kingdom everyone, simply everyone, was wearing plaid bondage trousers. The giggling resumed.
Cop Number 2 finally got a grip.
“Time to walk the line, buddy,” he said, crossing his massive forearms. I lurched into the middle of the sidewalk and separated my legs. My strap dangled into view.
The giggling resumed once more. The giggling turned to seizures, and the seizures became convulsions.
I began to walk forward, placing one Doc Marten boot in front of the other as best I could. The kilt swung and the strap dangled and then straightened.
My memory of exactly what happened next is, thanks to the tequila, a bit foggy. I do, however, recall quite distinctly that one of the cops was slapping the seat of his cycle with uncontrollable laughter, while his colleague did the same thing on the hood of my Dodge. Or was he actually lying on the ground, slapping the sidewalk? I don’t quite recall. Either way, my new friends had completely abandoned all attempts to appear authoritarian.
Suddenly the action begins to fast-forward.
The Paddy wagon arrives, and the giggly rapport comes screeching to a halt. Handcuffs are applied, contributing substantially to the bondage theme of my attire.
I bid farewell to CHiPs.
“Thanks for everything!” I say in a sincere and desperate attempt to put an optimistic spin on a really dire situation.
On the surface I appear cheery. Internally, I am in a state of screaming desperation. As far as I can tell, my life is completely and utterly over. I am headed for the Big House, and I am wearing a skirt. Within twenty-four hours I will be massaging the feet of some incarcerated Hells Angel, having become his Bitch! For life! Forever!
“Get a grip, daughter!” I say to myself as the paddy wagon lurches off into the night.
All is not lost. I am an adaptable kind of person. I will adjust to life in prison. Anything is better than being ignominiously deported back to England. I had left all my London pals on such a glamorous up note. Being forcibly repatriated, with my bondage strap between my legs, only months after having left is more than I can bear. I decide that I would prefer to rot in an American jail in the tattooed arms of some uncouth brute.
I brace myself for the first round of humiliations down at the station. “If only they had not handcuffed me,” I say to myself as I sit in the back of the wagon looking like a wretched Weegee photograph, “I could have detached my kilt and bondage strap and stuffed them inside my jacket.” Without the use of my hands, I am unable even to arrange my kilt into a more discreet configuration. It is fanning out from knee to knee like a big old . . . skirt.
Hopefully, when we get to the station, I will be unhand-cuffed and permitted to adjust my outfit, thereby rendering it less incendiary and provocative.
But we aren’t going to the station.
For two or three hours we drive around picking up more drunks, many of whom are a great deal less savory than myself.
They are a diverse bunch. Some are down and out, some are upscale, some are vomiting, and some are members of Mexican cholo gangs. The latter, with their hairnets, baggy trousers, and teardrop tattoos, have a panache and originality which rivals my own.
All of my fellow drunks have one thing in common. They are all fascinated by my plaid bondage ensemble.
I affect what I imagine to be a doltish masculine demeanor and pretend to be a mute.
Finally, the paddy wagon fills up. We then drive to the jail in downtown L.A., where we are all Breathalyzed and thrown in the slammer.
* * *
After five minutes behind bars, all I can think about are the repeat offenders. Why? Why? Why? Being incarcerated is such a vile experience that it is impossible to understand the whole concept of career criminals. It goes against every notion of human psychology. There is Nothing delicious or hip about being locked up. It is smelly, incredibly scary, and horribly unfabulous.
After one hour in the holding tank, I have sworn off drink forever and devised all kinds of penances for myself. I will hike ten miles into the desert every Sunday and flagellate myself in a biblical fashion while lying on a sunbaked rock. I will shop at Miller’s Outpost for preppy khakis and never wear plaid bondage again. I will walk to Death Valley with dried peas in my shoes. I will go and live with Narg and bake shepherd’s pie for her and set her hair with rollers and teach her how to blend her foundation.
Two things save me from becoming the tank bitch.
1. I somehow manage to unclip my skirt and stuff it into my pocket before being thrown in the slammer with all the psychopaths and drug-crazed lunatics.
2. A shrill, cheap-looking hustler who had been arrested for God knows what on Santa Monica Boulevard is monopolizing all the available homophobic aggression. He screeches for his lawyer and his mother and starts to drop minor celebrity names. I am probably the only one in the holding tank who has even heard of Melissa Manchester, so it does him very little good.
Inmates snore. Time drags. Inmates belch. Rumors fly. Apparently we are all to be kept inside for at least three days. It is Easter weekend, and there are no officers available to process our paperwork. I lie on a yellowed plastic rubber mattress and think about how soon it will be before I develop hepatitis and my eyeballs turn the same color as my bed. I dream of freedom. It’s been three hours and already I feel like Solzhenitsyn. A large tear rolls down my cheek.
* * *
I awake twenty minutes later to the sound of keys clanking and freedom. I am officially charged with driving under the influence and given a court date.11
As I walk out into the sunlight, a feeling of unbelievable relief floods my hideously hungover consciousness. I am, give or take a legal problem or two, a free man. I skip home to the converted garage where I am living in downtown L.A.
Once inside I tear off my leather jacket and look in the mirror, expecting to see a long white beard and an emaciated visage.
Oh, my God!
I had forgotten about my shirt. This shirt was, in its own way, even more insane than the plaid bondage pants.
It was a forest green, short-sleeved garment, also from the fertile brain of Ms. Westwood. It had a contrasting Peter Pan collar. Emblazoned on the pocket were the words FRIEND OF SID VICIOUS.
* * *
Nothing could have been further from the truth. “Friend of Sid Vicious”! I was not a friend of Sid’s nor did I have any intention of being. I had encountered Sid in Vivienne’s boutique. I had trembled and left. He was a real punk. I was a mere poseur.
Prior to moving to Los Angeles, I was living with Biddie in Battersea, just over the bridge from Chelsea, the epicenter of the punk phenomenon. What 1967 was to the Summer of Love and Haight-Ashbury, 1977 was to the Kings Road and punk.
Punk was a graphic, stylistic revolution which permeated everything within screeching distance of South London. There was no way to avoid it. One minute you were a regular person, the next you were wearing a garbage bag, painting your eyes like a raccoon, and shoving a safety pin through your ear.
For Biddie and me, every outgoing or homebound journey involved a bus ride down the Kings Road through the punk mayhem which was 1977. Everywhere you looked there were girls wearing leather dresses and black lipstick, and boys wearing T-shirts with nihilistic slogans, torn black jeans, and brothel creepers, the thick-soled shoes which punks appropriated from teddy boys, much to the latter’s annoyance.
Everything which had preceded punk, the retro-glamour styles of the early seventies, now seemed pathetic and prissy and completely out of date. Biddie and I had no other choice but to jump onboard. It was plus grand que nous.
/> Biddie’s hair was dyed pink and black, which matched most of his clothing. I had my bondage trousers and various other garments. Our friends wore homemade clothes fabricated from Union Jack souvenir shopping bags. We were drowning in punk. And yet there was nothing punk about us. It was just a façade.
As soon as “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols hit the record stores, we ran out and snagged a copy. Here was the anthem of our times, sung by the antihero of the moment. On the record sleeve was the now infamous collage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with a safety pin stuck through her cheek. Excitedly we took Yma Sumac off the turntable and replaced her with Johnny Rotten and Co.
By the time we got to the bit where Johnny Rotten is screaming “No future! No future!” we were rolling our eyes and laughing. It all seemed so insanely camp and funny. An angry adolescent pose. After a while the jackhammering music grated on our nerves. I couldn’t wait to pull that disc off the turntable and return to Yma.
We had no idea why the Sex Pistols were advocating anarchy in the first place. We barely knew what anarchy was. Apolitical, TV-less, and contentedly superficial, we were oblivious to whatever injustices were fueling Johnny Rotten’s rage.
* * *
I tore off my Sid Vicious shirt and my plaid bondage pants as quickly as I could without popping any buttons or breaking any zips, and showered for hours. It didn’t help. I still felt utterly putrid. I was a fake. A poseur. A drunk. A felon. I wasn’t in a rock band. I was a fey window dresser. And now I was far from home in a town without pity.
I felt a teary pang of homesickness.
Why had I left Biddie and all my friends and family and come to this godforsaken hellhole, where the sun always shines and where nobody in their right mind wears a hot, thick, itchy, plaid skirt?
I shoved my outfit in a plastic garbage bag, never to wear it again.
* * *
Fall 1985 is, for me, a period of great contrasts. At night I crash on the floor of a benevolent friend in the East Village. During the day I am working in the legendary Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum as display designer for an exhibition called Costumes of Royal India. This is the most fancy-pants job I have ever had.