The song proved a surprise dance hit, with its blend of rock and ska taking over the volume dials of the hippest stations. A pop scene tabloid writing up the video described it as “banal, paste-up punk,” declaring Warden the sole point of interest, describing his face as one ‘that unfolded slowly, petal by petal, like a sorrowful rose in bloom.’
In the clubs they were greeted with the aura of celebrities, dancing below while their images played in giant form on the luminous screens above. They watched Warden’s face come to life with Joshua’s penetrating voice behind it. On any given night an emcee might stop the show to point them out to curious clubbers.
Nights were bursting with possibilities. They had achieved the illusory suspension of time as they drew in all the glitter and brilliance around them, retreating from the shores of the everyday that devoured life.
The music beat on while videos threw light on dance floors and the partying continued as though no one worked at 7 AM that day or the next day or any day ever. Time was marked by the frenzied comings and goings of the party crowd colliding on their way home with workers rushing to repeat their yesterdays over and over, the blank looks on their faces saying they’d lost something precious and couldn’t remember what it was in the harsh glare of morning, grateful at least for the numbness routine afforded.
Warden was never sure where he fit into Joshua’s life, straddled as he was between hip society and the fashion mainstream, an anomaly in either case. The latter he knew to be a veneer stretched so thin it could scarcely be called a facade, rather just the illusion of a facade that changed its face at every moment. Nor was he taken in by the former. Joshua’s world claimed depth and meaning while offering stale poses of rebellion and cynicism, glorifying the tragic and pathetic. He wasn’t fooled by the demand for freedoms it hadn’t earned or the right to ignorance and apathy it claimed for its own.
Still, he couldn’t step entirely out of one world and into the other. Both had, to some degree, claimed him for their own. He was as much the lover in Wheel of Fire’s video to the first as he was the Fabiano Boy to the second. The question remained to what degree he could still claim to be himself.
The band’s growing prominence in London’s underground gave way to an interest in the personalities behind the scenes, as the watchful eyes of the media flickered over the exotic figures dwelling among them. Sanctuary had become home to any number of wanderers and refugees from the narrow pathways of society. From within its walls emerged characters whose dress and appearance was worthy of the indiscreet stares of passersby and neighbours who could not quite fathom the alternate society harboured in their own humble borough.
One day Warden met Maurice, a hulking black man with the gentlest eyes he’d ever seen. Maurice was a refugee from a guerrilla movement that had been instrumental in helping to dismantle apartheid in South Africa. Two years earlier his wife and children had been killed in a raid on their village in retaliation for his involvement. He fled the country knowing it wouldn’t be long till he was caught and killed as well.
Maurice enthralled Warden with stories of sabotage aimed at the government. He was well known for his ability to dynamite power installations, causing massive blackouts without human casualty. His efforts had disrupted the country and brought chaos to the regime. Public support grew with each successful strike. Money appeared stuffed in envelopes at the group’s headquarters as Maurice became a folk hero among the population.
Warden became used to sitting in on the fervent political meetings convened to help people like Maurice reclaim their lives. It astonished him to think how his own life had changed. The long grey vistas of his staid Canadian existence seemed light years behind him now, finding himself plunked down in a hotbed of rebellion, contemplating firsthand the issues he’d known only as ideas in books and newspapers before leaving home.
Maurice disappeared as suddenly as he’d come, leaving no trace he’d been there. When Warden asked where he’d gone, Joshua merely replied that he was “too hot” for them to harbour any longer. A week passed. One night the police raided the warehouse using a drug search as an excuse to tear the place apart with axes and physical force. Little of interest was found. Two runaways were seized and everyone was questioned.
“Where were you earlier this evening?” a surly bobby demanded of Joshua, taking down his name.
“At choir practice,” he replied.
“Don’t give me any smart business!”
“Don’t you believe me?” Joshua asked.
He began to sing the opening phrase of Ave Maria to the amusement of those listening.
“Shut your bloody yap!” the officer yelled, cuffing him so his lip bled. “I know who you are, you piece of AIDS-bait.”
Warden lunged forward, but Kareem held him back. “Don’t get into it, mate,” he warned quietly. “You’ll only make it worse for all of us.”
The event was recorded with great diligence by the press who smelled a larger issue behind that of general rebelliousness and the lifestyles of outrageous pop stars. The attention already focused on them continued to grow.
Throughout that summer Warden flew back and forth between England and Italy. Fabiano had decided to use him to promote the coming year’s fashions. Once again the photographer was Andreo. When he returned to Milan at the end of June the new billboards were up. Response to the campaign was overwhelming. Warden was asked to attend a publicity event with some of the corporation heads who’d requested to meet their star.
“What’ll I say?” he asked Andreo, unconvinced he should go, though Calvino urged him to stay the extra two days and accept the offer.
“Just say something so honest they’ll think you’re being witty,” Andreo replied. “Corporation heads are very stupid.”
He phoned Joshua in the afternoon. “I just wanted to hear your voice. You sound so far away.”
“I miss you, little fashion prince. When are you coming home?”
“Tuesday, I think. There’s a publicity event I’m supposed to attend tomorrow night.”
“Well, make it soon. I miss you.”
“All right—I miss you, too.”
In London a typical weekend went by with the impact of a mushroom cloud. Invitations appeared as if by manifestations of pure will. New clubs were continually coming into existence for the sake of those who couldn’t bear to be in the same place they’d been in a year before, as though new surroundings indicated some external sign of progress.
At the height of it, clubs seemed to open and close with the quickness of a fan, causing a brief flutter of air currents before lapsing into memory. Sometimes it seemed as though weekends never really began or ended but simply merged into one another around an unspecified mid-point of any given week merely for the distinction of calling one successive and the other regressive.
A new club, Radiation, vied with established venues for the privilege of turning away patrons from its constricted interior one hot summer night. It had been designed to resemble a nuclear reactor, with a glowing green dance floor. The fluorescent interior represented a world framed by its own nuclear anxiety. Ivan came dressed as a well-known member of the royal family, but the guise proved a deterrent rather than insurance to his admission.
“Let me through,” he screamed. “I’m a close relation of the Queen’s and I can have you shot.”
No one paid much attention to the screaming drag queen griping about a lack of appreciation for creativity. Both Warden and Rebekah would also have been turned away, having neither menacing nor creative enough appearances to satisfy the brooding miscreant at the door, himself a victim of some private holocaust of muscle and bone. The doorman seemed dimly aware of Joshua’s identity, however, and finally let them enter.
The interior was ablaze as they wandered among creatures both sacred and odd. They danced and drank what seemed like a tremendous amount and no one paid any attention to the hour. At some point it simply became time to move on. Rebekah took Warden’s arm as they exit
ed into the glittering night that flowed like a spectacular mist breathed over them by the city’s secret life.
They arrived somewhere and climbed long flights of stairs to the top floor where everyone seemed to be dressed in drag of some sort—anything to evade the truth of what they were—vanishing behind clothes, make-up and hats as easily as behind attitudes and poses.
Figures went by smoking numerous cigarettes and trailing endless furs with flocks of jewellery like some glamorous kitsch in a dazzling new aesthetic. Pillbox hats with veils seemed to be all the rage. There was one floating down every staircase or passing by at arm’s length, just out of reach.
The hostess, a woman—or maybe a man, no one seemed quite sure—wore a gold satin gown with enormous shoulders as though Joan Crawford had been resurrected for the evening. Her hands were covered in immense glittering rings. She appeared before them like a twentieth-century Marie Antoinette, all coquetry and charm, with her curious collection of guests. She waved to Joshua, then spied Warden for the first time and made a great fuss, shrieking and holding onto him.
“At last I get to meet the young man in your life,” she exclaimed, surveying him and spinning him around. “He’s altogether lovely!” she cried, fussing over Warden a moment longer before turning abruptly. “Well, darlings, enjoy yourselves—there’s a whole world of madness in here,” she declared, as she went off to greet the newest arrival.
Rebekah found someone she knew and Ivan floated off in hopes of meeting other royalty. People disappeared from around him complaining of asthma or harassment or anything at all, as strange hairstyles and outrageous fashions moved through the crowd. After a while even Joshua disappeared. Warden met a woman who told him her son had been in a coma for over a month. Just the day before, he’d begun thrashing about. Finally, just as she thought he might die, he regained consciousness that very afternoon.
“But I just had to come out tonight anyway,” she said, as though asking his pardon for enjoying herself. “You understand, I know.”
He smiled and nodded.
People winked by like elemental properties reacting to currents of change. He found himself in a bathroom the size of most living rooms, its walls and ceiling painted entirely black. A life-sized mannequin with blood-red fingernails proffered hand towels. Warden stood over the toilet, concentrating his aim to hit the bowl. Something stirred to his right. He looked over to see a man lying fully clothed in the bathtub, legs extended over the lip.
“Why don’t you come and piss on me?” the man said. He held out an empty glass. “Do you give free samples?”
The door opened and Joshua peered in.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
Warden smiled drunkenly. The man in the bathtub looked Joshua up and down.
“How ’bout the two of you together, then?” he said.
“Let’s go,” Joshua said quietly, then stepped over and turned on the shower. The last thing Warden recalled was seeing the man in the tub don a pair of dark glasses under the stream of water.
The next day Ivan recounted the end of the party. At four in the morning a crowd had arrived, climbing the stairs in a long queue led by a well-known London drag queen formerly associated with the singer Boy George. In they marched, lifting their feet in tandem like a troop of soldiers, picking things up as they went, spilling perfume in toilets, tearing down curtains, smashing vases. The hostess, he recalled, managed to restrain her temper until she discovered someone had eaten all her orchids and spat them out on the carpet.
At 6 o’clock the police arrived, having been called in by an exasperated neighbour. The remaining guests threw knickers and brassieres at them from the windows above. Meanwhile, Ivan had wandered out onto the balcony. Leaning over, he found himself face to face with “a mad old cow” living in the adjacent flat. She’d stretched a gloved arm across the divide and introduced herself as la Contessa di Castleville. She was seventy-six-years-old, dressed all in black, and kept thirteen cats. Ivan promptly joined her in his own royalty drag and sat regaling her with stories until nearly 8 a.m.
As he left, he addressed her by her royal title. She hastened to invite him back, saying, “You must call me Agnes, dear—just you and nobody else.”
24
Within a year-and-a-half of embarking on his career, Warden had been photographed on more than a hundred separate occasions. He had appeared on five magazine covers. An Italian periodical, reviewing the decade’s fresh crop of models, dubbed his “the face that turned on a nation,” referring specifically to the Fabiano ad with the trumpet, for which Andreo had won an advertising industry award.
At a newsstand one day a face caught his eye: broad cheekbones, sparkling eyes, a mysterious smile. The model bore an ingenuous charm, as though she hadn’t been posing, but rather sitting casually across a table in a café sipping coffee and happened to look up just as the shutter was snapped.
Qui est cette fille? read the caption. From what he could make out, the intrigue of the model—who had photographed with only one photographer—was that she was entirely unknown, had no agency and had never appeared in public. The photographer was Andreo. The face was his own.
Warden flushed with embarrassment. He paid for the magazine and left. In the flat he compared his image to the one on the cover. His reflection in the mirror revealed how much he’d changed in less than a year. He was altering rapidly, turning from a boy whose fluid androgynous features could pass for a young woman’s into the solid angularity of a man. His face would never again pass for anything but what it was. Its structure, its architecture, had changed irrevocably.
Rebekah knocked and opened the door. He tried to hide the magazine, but she snatched it from him.
“Oh, ho!” she said knowingly. “Getting vain, are we? Or just worried you can’t live up to your image? Don’t worry—you’re not losing it.”
She looked at the photograph in her hands.
“Oh, my!” she said, looking back at Warden.
Warden was ready to admit the truth and have a good laugh over it.
“A secret love? Who is this woman? She’s incredible!”
He smiled as it dawned on him that Rebekah suspected nothing. It wasn’t till months later that she would learn how he’d been talked into performing the trompe-l’oeil with his image. By then, it would be too late.
“Nobody suspects a thing!” Andreo gloated over the phone the next day. “They loved the photographs so much I had to release them, bello. They wanted you both for next year’s campaign. I had to talk them out of it. ‘Who is she?’ they kept asking. ‘What agency is she working for?’ et cetera, et cetera. Boring me with their questions. I told them she doesn’t have one and I’ve never seen her since—which is the truth, is it not? As far as the agencies are concerned, they all want her and yet she doesn’t exist. That’s the best one yet, don’t you think?”
Warden could hear Andreo chuckling over his own joke.
In July, Wheel of Fire headlined for an anti-racism benefit. Thirty-thousand showed up at the outdoor arena to support the event that spanned an entire afternoon and evening. Wheel of Fire played second last. The crowd was restless by then, having sat through more than six hours of speakers and performers when the emcee came out to announce their appearance.
“We’ve got to show the world we won’t put up with it any longer, that there is a political conscience and it has a voice!” his voice boomed in the evening air. “For that reason, it’s my great pleasure this evening to introduce to you a group that has become synonymous with its support for social causes and its ability to speak for those who have no voice of their own!”
There was a polite response to his words, but the applause grew steadily as the band made its way onto the make-shift stage. At Joshua’s appearance the crowd took on the sound of one mouth cheering. Lights snapped on like thunder as fingers shaped a pulsing rhythm. Warden watched Joshua exhorting the sea of faces, his body straining with effort, his voice soft one moment then furious
the next.
A ring of young boys sat in the front row, their heads keeping time to the music. They wore the same hard stares, Chanel T-shirts and red bandannas as the figure cavorting on-stage. They were intent on Joshua, crooning and snarling the words to the songs along with him.
The band had saved their hit for last and the crowd was on its feet dancing to the waves of sound. The song ended suddenly as a hand mike flew into the air and lights blinked out like discarded crystal. The band slipped away in the darkness to the solid cheering of the crowd.
Backstage they were met by a waiting group of journalists. The band’s members shuffled past, declining to comment. Joshua had consented to speak on behalf of the benefit, but the majority of their questions were directed at him. When pressed about the band’s future, he merely acknowledged that they were considering an extensive tour. A woman with a shrill voice who seemed to have no idea whom she was addressing asked Joshua to what he attributed the band’s “popularity and phenomenally successful career.”
“I didn’t know we had one,” he said with a wry grin as the other reporters laughed. “But whatever success we’ve had has come through following our own mandate instead of seeking to satisfy public desire.”
“How do you see the role of the artist in society?” an earnest-looking young man asked as microphones extended toward Joshua’s face.
“First of all, I don’t think artists can detach themselves from the social or political issues of the times. The purpose of Wheel of Fire and groups like ours is to stimulate action and provoke change. Given a consistent show of conscience like the one exhibited here tonight, I think we’re doing just that.”
“You’ve got a new look, Josh,” someone yelled.
Joshua grinned and ran a hand through his hair, which had grown longer since Warden met him.
“Yeah—sleek and vicious. That’s me. But don’t worry, I’m still the same simple boy I used to be.”
A Cage of Bones Page 18