by Jon Bounds
But Brighton isn't just a favourite of hen dos and stag nights. The hosts of the party are the gay community. The first recorded gayness associated with the city was in 1822 when a George Wilson, a servant and prude from Newcastle, was outraged to be offered 'a sovereign and two shillings' to go down to the beach and commit 'an unnatural act'. Whether it was the act itself he objected to or the price he was offered (in today's money it would be worth around £25), we will probably never know.
Less than a year later Brighton's first pier would be built.
* * *
Adam is excited now, too. In preparation he's taken a day off work tomorrow and looks like he's about to break into a huge grin. 'Yes', I say as I hand him a tin and explain again the plan. His teeth shine through his thatchy beard.
'Yes, we're going to write about you.'
A chuckle.
He disappears, reappearing in a brown jacket and jiggling his keys. We're off to find where the action is. Where the faces are.
* * *
Men getting ready to go out give off the scent of caged animals. They pace, swig from cans and spritz themselves with the same deodorant for the thirteenth time in a row, finally spraying down their crotch 'just in case'. It is obvious to all involved that me and Jon intend to paint the town rainbow tonight. Adam is along for the ride, but Midge is firmly miffed. Having been driving for a few days I think he imagined a night in with a cup of cocoa and maybe a slow wank by the fire.
'It's not going to be a big one tonight, is it?'
I open a can of cider one-handed while finishing the last one with the other.
'Eat me – it's booze o'clock, mate,' I say as I stifle a burp.
'I've been driving and I'm knackered, so not too late.' The losing battle is clearly getting to him.
'Sure, just till a quarter past booze o'clock and we'll get some kip,' I say as I apply eyeliner and a sprinkle of glitter.
'But it's always booze o'clock to you,' he says as he trails out of the room.
Luckily, with Midge I've learnt there is a certain amount of brooding time before he really gets cross, so the mission is simple: get Midge out of the flat and enjoying himself before he actively starts getting angry about getting out of the flat and enjoying himself.
'Did I tell you a friend of mine is meeting us? She's single…'
* * *
Brighton is the film Quadrophenia. Mods and escape from the city, from the grind. At the seaside, hiding from the nine-to-five and the truth. And I can't think of a much better pub to hide from them in than the Lion and Lobster. Like some vertical shanty town, it's hard to define a path to any part of it. Nook becomes bar becomes rooftop decking becomes overheadheated, densely packed smoking terrace. I'm drinking two-to-one and my head is spinning down the same old tracks. I want to explain to people why I'm not quite 'right'. But Danny knows and it doesn't seem fair to break his spell. He's expansive and loud, glorying in his headgear, calling up an old friend and inviting her to join our rolling revue. Midge is quiet, so I want time to talk to my old mate.
* * *
I did my degree with Bobs. She lived in a shared house of girls that would feed, pet and take care of me when the house full of girls I lived in couldn't or wouldn't. She has long blonde hair, 14 types of smile, and despite the cut-glass RP accent is, in many other universes, the daughter of a governess turned ruthless pirate queen. We arrange to meet in a pub near Adam's house and, despite appearances, she is the type of girl more than willing to meet a friend and three strangers on any curious adventure.
The Lion and Lobster is a plush, red wonderland. It's the sort of pub I love: independent, eclectic and with booze in it (I'm willing to compromise on the first two). The walls are filled with every type of picture in the manner of how the National Gallery used to be. If you follow some stairs you come to a room without a roof; follow them further and you can look down and see the room below.
It's busy but we manage to find a large table. The four of us are crowded together at one corner of it:
'No room! No room!' we cry out when we see Bobs coming.
'There's PLENTY of room!' says Bobs indignantly, and she sits down on a large stool at one end of the table.
'Have some wine,' Jon says in an encouraging tone. Bobs looks all round the table, but there is nothing on it but beer or cider.
'I don't see any wine,' she remarks.
'There isn't any,' says Jon.
'Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' says Bobs angrily.
'I'll get them in,' grins Adam as he disappears to the bar.
'I love this pub. How mad is it?' I say to keep the conversation going, mainly to stop Midge the grumpy little mouse from getting the chance to complain.
'All the pubs are mad here,' Bobs says primly. 'Here's mad, the pier's mad, everybody in the city is mad.'
'I'm not mad,' I say.
'Of course you are,' replies Bobs, 'otherwise you wouldn't be here.'
Then it goes a bit hazy. I remember falling down a rabbit-hole of a staircase on the way back from a toilet and a big white dog looking at me with resigned acceptance as the fifteenth drunk person that night to fall in love with it.
* * *
I'm clinging to what I know and want to talk, jabber really, get everything straight in my increasingly muddy brain. The drinking isn't really helping; it's not strong enough to cut through the fog. Let's go somewhere else.
The pavements are damp with expectation. The people move with staggering purpose, to join tribes, to drink, to eat. I strive to be part of whatever will have me. There are no longer two tribes to go to war, but diaspora of every fashion from the twentieth century all on top of one another, intermingling and crosspollinating. I spot a guy that looks like he might be homeless, were it not for the well-tended and expensively coiffured Rod Stewart haircut. A sort of grunge-mod. Unsure whether I'll remember this, this vision in feathered hair, I get Adam to text me. 'Rod Stewart tramp to you.'
I'm trying hard to lose myself in the group, instigating conversations as wide as I can make them. Talking loudly and pointlessly about the nature of art and friendship. I'm buying drinks on a debit card I've long since stopped having a firm idea about, ordering more than I need. A double gin to wash down the premium lager. Extra trips to the toilet to punctuate the consumption. Desperately searching for a grand gesture. Making statements I can't back up and phone calls I don't want to make.
We hit bar after promised bar, each offering nothing but the dark. We buy cans on the way back.
* * *
One of the survival traits that I picked up early in my drinking career is falling asleep in the recovery position. If Hendrix had had a friend to roll him onto his side, he'd be married to Joplin right now, about to release an acid-inspired, guitar dubstep album that would permanently open our collective third eye and finally usher in the golden age of Aquarius. Somehow I make it to the airbed stuffed next to a coffee table but not into the covers far less my pyjamas.
And I know Jon has passed out where he sits, because he's fully dressed and leaning on his arm, frozen in mid proclamation of some thought.
* * *
I wake with a burningly dry mouth and a dull and fuzzy sensation where cogent thought once lived. Midge closes the flat door as he comes in, not carefully to protect the sleeping dead but loudly to wake them. He's moved the car:
'Down on to the front. I put three hours on the ticket – that should be enough, shouldn't it?'
I'm filling a scuffed pint glass with tap water, throat biting at the smell of stale lager from the cans and bottles that litter the worktop. Danny stirs, bare chest flecked with downy hair, from his sleeping bag. His head misses the TV stand by inches as he hoists himself up, puffy with excess.
'Sleep well in that… bed,' the word spat out, but with comedy venom, 'Midge?'
'Aye, yeah. Three hours. God, you two were pissed last night.'
'Drunk ourselves sober, I think.'
Danny crashes towards
the bathroom, crashes himself clean. Crashes out and dresses.
I guzzle liquid and spray deodorant.
'I've got to go to Primark.'
Primark is where you go to get clothes in a hurry, clothes that you don't want to have to think too much about. Clothes that are cheap and you won't be bothered if you lose them – which seems likely, the way things are going.
Clothes shops, Danny informs me, put the women's stuff downstairs at the front, as women won't bother to go in to look unless something catches their eye as they browse past. Men, our behavioural expert says, know what they want and will hunt – looking to the horizon for the boxers or briefs, stalking their underpant prey. I'm not sure if all that cave-conditioning really impacts so much on our modern lives. I normally actively like clothes shopping, consider myself both a browser and a connoisseur of design, waiting for the right jacket or shirt to come along. Today, I'm on instinctual autopilot. I've got to get four or five T-shirts: I select the plainest and most fitted on offer, almost vests, except one. A stark yellow top, printed – ironically, one would assume – with a coloured-pencil sketch of a Labrador. The dog is stuck mid pant in the facial expression that we can anthropomorphise as smiling. It makes me feel safe and warm, so I buy it to feel better and don it as soon as we leave the shop. Exposing my torso the high street.
I also pick up a present for Midge, a cheap, rubber watchband to replace the one he destroyed showering a few days ago, and a pair of the most Audrey Hepburn sunglasses the shop has for under three quid. I've forgotten to bring any sunglasses and I need to hide my eyes.
I look up after putting my jacket back on. The day looks darker, there's a mean movement to the crowds on the high street. I call out to the guys and pick up the pace towards the seafront. Waves of people brush in all directions, like they're being manipulated. A van streaks across a side road and effectively blocks the flow of people. Crushes look possible and confusion reigns. The forces are intent on stopping us. There is chanting and pushing, as Adam and I duck down an alley laughing and head into a coffee shop. The brew is urgent and refreshing. We sit outside and wait for the others to catch us up.
I sort of apologise for how messy I was the night before, for unburdening myself on to him.
'I'll be all right,' I lie to myself and him.
He changes the subject, and is happy when Danny and Midge reach us. We've a pilgrimage to make and Adam prods at his iPhone to find Mecca.
* * *
While recovering from the awful headaches Midge is smugly not having, we take tea at the Tic Toc Cafe, an overtly 'kooky' French-owned restaurant. It's replete with earnest young men working from MacBooks, Lego cutlery holders and a mosaic of newspaper clippings. The toilet is a stall that I trip over the mismatching furniture to get to.
Somebody hasn't flushed, leaving behind wadded toilet paper and presumably other things. In my hung-over state I decide not to flush before using it so just go ahead and unleash a stream of near neon-yellow piss over the existing mess. I finish and it won't flush. I rattle the handle a couple of times and it remains unflushed. Now I have two choices. I can tell them, say the toilet won't flush, and they can come and try and fix it while dangling their faces over the effluence. Or I can leave it and the next person that uses it can deal with the problem. Thirty seconds later I'm back at the table telling Midge, Adam, and Jon:
'Drink up, guys – lots to see today, lots of things to do.'
* * *
In this case it's not the pier I'm worried about. We could see the pier as we drove into town in the drizzle yesterday evening. It's big, pier-shaped and echoes the famous pavilion. We drove past the second, ruined and burnt, pier too. We'll go there, but I think we've sort of made the ticks to the list anyway. We're heading instead to an alleyway, what I've been ungallantly referring to as the Leslie Ash Memorial Alleyway. In Quadrophenia, our hero Jimmy eventually gets what he wants from the young Steph (Leslie Ash), not that it turns out to be the solution he needs. Instead, it was fitful and disappointing, as all success proves to be. And it was filmed on location right here.
So we pose for photos next to some large bins. I'm red-faced and slouched, and I'll delete them when I get the chance. We step back to admire the sheer number of pilgrims that have made the journey before us. The wall is doused in the signatures of groups and tribes: 'Walsall Mods', 'Jason + Marie 2011 Crewe'. I try to add our mark but all I have is my pencil. We're through without trace.
* * *
Brighton Pier is okay, a bit commercial, but still essentially a fancy shell over faded wooden boards. The arcade is massive and the funfair still closed at the early hour we get there. I know from previous trips that it is actually possible to go right to the back railing and look out to a surprisingly blue sea. Facing out from this point it's easy to forget the lights, litter, and litany of machines calling out for coins. You can actually hear, see and smell the sea.
BRIGHTON Palace
Opened: 1899 (Architect: R. St George Moore)
Length at start: 1,760 ft (536 m)
Length now: 1,719 ft (524 m)
Burn baby burn? Hit by a barge in 1973, which wrecked the theatre and the landing stage. A small fire in 2003, but they opened again the next day.
Properly called Brighton Marine Palace and Pier, it features in Carry on at Your Convenience, when the warring management and unions put on hold a strike to go on the annual works outing. It's also been in The Persuaders, Doctor Who, and The Who's film version of Quadrophenia.
Palace Pier is a novel by Billy Liar author Keith Waterhouse, set in Brighton and featuring a writer throwing a manuscript off the end of the pier. The pier also famously features in Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock.
The Royal Suspension Chain Pier pre-dated the Palace Pier in Brighton by decades, but it doesn't exist anymore and therefore isn't on The List, but it does appear in a couple of famous paintings (a Turner and a Constable). It politely fell down in a storm in 1896 to save the people building the Palace Pier the bother of pulling it down. Palace Pier is prone to bits of luck like that, including the 2003 fire that stopped the rebuilding of the (also not on The List) West Pier shortly after the Palace Pier had raised objections to the Heritage Fund about the unfair competition it would present. The shore end of the old West Pier is now the i360, a Jetsons-style observation tower.
The pier itself is one of the best-kept we've seen. It's obviously working for the different personalities that Brighton simultaneously cultivates: gay, boho London-by-the-Sea, stag-and-hen town, party-conference venue, day-tripper's paradise. Here you can get married, gay-married, equal-married. You can play the slots and eat candyfloss. You can turn the irony dial any way you wish. It's all in your head. We get Midge to snap us with our heads through the obvious holes – I wonder just how many times we've done this now. I always go for the mermaid, or the bathing beauty. Danny is happy with a harpoon in his hands.
We planned only three things when we decided to undertake the trip: jump off a pier, get a tattoo and have a fight on Brighton beach. I'm a mod, Dan's a rocker – we should ruck. We should fight in Brighton.
But it didn't stay so simple. The idea of a fight is too easy. Not enough references, too straight. It probably says something about our minds that the only fight scene we felt we wanted to recreate was the Alan Bates, Ollie Reed one from Women in Love. Where they wrestle naked in front of the fire. The one we're told that they had to get halfway through a bottle of scotch to perform. We really couldn't think of a more resonant fight, because we don't hate each other, and we're no longer teenagers within the push and pull of gangs. And so, once on the beach, we leap over a wooden groyne and whip off our tops – our tops only, mind, thereby preserving some modesty – and stride unsteadily into the pebbles.
I've never had a proper fight: I've been hit and I've been angry, but never a sustained bout. I'm not sure how a fight ends.