by John Maley
The womyn leaned forward across the table, an incredulous look on her face.
‘Happy hours? In this dump? This ghetto?’ She sat back and picked up her rum and coke. Bobbie drained her glass and got up.
‘Same again?’ she asked the womyn, who nodded. Bobbie made her way down to the bar. The alcohol was taking effect. She felt half-cut and decided to get a half-pint this time. The bar was busy and Bobbie fumbled for money in the pocket of her jeans. Now that she had physically moved away from the womyn, she found her perspective changing. It crossed her mind that she might stay at the bar and leave the womyn to her own dour-faced devices. She had put up with enough crap for one night. But then she thought of the womyn’s strong, lean body; the passionate and purposeful way the womyn moved the length and breadth of Bobbie’s tingling frame, stretched out on the womyn’s bed. She thought of the leaping flames of the candles and the womyn’s tongue searching her. Bobbie decided she would walk across hot coals to get to that feeling.
‘Who’s she?’ said a voice from behind the bar. It was Joanie, with a quick nod towards the womyn.
‘Ma girlfriend,’ said Bobbie, forcefully.
‘Who rattled her cage?’ asked Joanie.
‘She didn’t have enough money,’ said Bobbie, hoping that would explain it.
Joanie took the order and poured the drinks.
‘She looked at me as if ah wis somethin’ she’d found oan her shoe,’ he said.
He gave Bobbie her change. Bobbie gave him a grateful smile and went back to play poker faces with the womyn.
Bobbie tried to make small talk with her but she shrugged each question or statement off with a grunt or a groan. The womyn seemed to loosen up a bit more after the rum went to her head. She became more voluble and even less charitable. She began to pick off Delilah’s punters like a sniper.
‘Look at that old queen dressed like a teenager,’ she said. ‘Look at him, mincing up and down. Sad old fuck.’ She spotted two young women with their arms around each other. They were singing along to a song Bobbie liked.
‘Check those two,’ sniped the womyn. ‘They should be at home reading a book. Not pissing about in this shithole pretending to be one of the boys. I suppose that’s the only way to get anywhere in here. Kid on you’re as stupid as the men.’
Bobbie imagined she was on her own, enjoying the beer, listening to the music.
‘Look at him,’ said the womyn, pointing at a guy who was dancing beside one of the booths near the door. ‘God save us from disco divas.’
Bobbie looked at the womyn, and something in her face must have betrayed her feelings. The womyn retreated in her seat, defensive all of a sudden.
‘I’m only being cruel to be kind,’ said the womyn, with great conviction. ‘Someone ought to tell these guys there’s more to life than buggery and bad music.’
Bobbie sat on the lavatory pan and tried to stop herself from crying. She couldn’t understand why the womyn was being so nasty about everything. She decided she could never go to Delilah’s with her again. The womyn was non-scene. She obviously hated it and that was all there was to it.
Fuck it, thought Bobbie, sometimes she hated the scene too. It could be snide, bitchy, lonely; the same old faces and the same old crap. Here was a womyn who was intelligent and passionate. Who was above all that crap. You couldn’t spend forever in a queer bar. Here was somebody who could open up new horizons to her. She recalled the womyn kneeling naked on top of her bed, reading from a dog-eared book to her. Bobbie couldn’t remember the words now, just the hunched figure of the womyn in the candlelight, babbling.
At first Bobbie thought they were fighting. The womyn’s hands were buried in Joyce’s big hair, pulling. It looked as if they were biting each other. As she got closer their mouths seemed to connect and stick together. They didn’t even see Bobbie pick up her jacket. She headed back down to the bar, unsure whether to stay or go. Joanie came over to her and handed her a half-pint of lager.
‘On the house,’ he said. Over Bobbie’s shoulder he could see the womyn and Joyce locked together like battling insects. ‘You win some, ye lose some,’ he said. ‘You’re well shot ay the torn-faced cunt.’
Bobbie nodded, as if in agreement, but a salty tear made its way down her face and curled over her top lip till she could taste it.
The Other World
I had a dream last week about a man I hadn’t seen for eight years. I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. So I suppose I do believe in ghosts.
Last night I went to Delilah’s. There was nothing on TV, I’d just got paid and I felt horny. Maybe horny’s not the right word; more depressed and anxious and in need of some kind of release. As soon as I’d stepped into Delilah’s I felt it was a mistake. The punters seemed to be getting younger every day. I swear I saw a twelve-year-old sniffing poppers at the bar. A bunch of teenage girls were taking over the karaoke session in the backroom. They said they were the real Spice Girls. They introduced themselves as Fanny Spice, Spunky Spice, Bad Hair Spice, Lager Lout Spice and Finger-Fucking Spice. Then they proceeded to murder If You Wanna Be My Lover.
It was a Thursday night so maybe that explained it. It usually attracted the younger crowd. There were some students in, sporting spiky, dyed hair and stinking old men’s jackets. One had his lips, nostril and eyebrows pierced.
I had a day off flexitime today so I knew I could get as drunk as I wanted. I duly did so. While I was hard at it a guy came over and asked me for a light. He wore lime green Lycra shorts and had a big, long, orange face. As he leaned over to catch the flame his face turned a ghastly yellow in the light.
‘Like the tan?’ he asked, waving his cigarette in his hand. ‘Gran Canaria.’
I nodded dumbly.
‘See ye, pet.’ He gave me a suggestive wink and wandered off. I noticed a hole like a fag burn in the back of his shorts.
Delilah’s got smokier and noisier. I could’ve sworn to God that I heard Cher at one point belting out It’s In His Kiss. I craned my neck to see through to the backroom; the singer was a boy of about nineteen (stone, that is). It was mobbed in the back now, but that suited me fine. The front bar was quieter and you could breathe again, move your elbows, stretch your legs, get served at the bar. I was feeling pissed but I wasn’t feeling any better. I hate Delilah’s and I hate karaoke and I hate the gay scene and I hate not being young anymore.
It was then I saw a heavily built man in a suit giving me the eye from the bar. He had a square, handsome face, dark eyes and eyebrows. He raised his eyebrows quizzically when he caught my eye. I nodded to him and he came over. He said his name was Ralph and he was a taxi driver. We made small talk for a few minutes – name, rank and serial number stuff – then he said that he knew me from before.
‘Before?’ I asked.
‘In another life,’ he said casually.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘I was Antony and you were Cleopatra.’
He grinned.
‘You’re no far wrong,’ he said. He told me that he had psychic powers and that he knew a number of people who were now ‘in spirit’.
‘You mean like they’re pickled?’ I asked mockingly.
‘In spirit,’ he said carefully. ‘They’ve passed over to the other side.’
‘I don’t really go for all that,’ I assured him. I read my stars in the papers but I know it’s a load of crap. I looked at Ralph and decided I liked what I saw. Psychic-psychobabble aside.
‘I received a message from Princess Diana last week,’ he whispered reverentially. ‘She’s at peace now.’
I nodded respectfully. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said.
‘She married Dodi in Heaven,’ he added, somewhat labouring the point. He lifted his glass to his lips and I caught a twinkle in his eye. I wondered if he was taking the piss. I steered things back to the material world. He told me some stories about his work. He said he used to pick up a straight couple, drive them out into the countryside, and sit on the grass while th
ey shagged in the back of his cab. They were both married, though not to each other, and it was a fifty quid fare.
‘How did it end?’ I asked.
‘They rented a flat,’ replied Ralph, drolly.
‘Sounds more comfortable,’ I reasoned.
‘Have you ever had it off in the back of a taxi?’ Ralph asked me. I told him I hadn’t, that I wasn’t an exhibitionist. He looked disappointed and I understood it was a loaded question. I looked at his hands resting on the table beside his empty glass. I decided then that I would go back with him. I wanted those hands on me. He looked at me and smiled mischievously.
‘You’ve made up your mind,’ he said.
‘About what?’ I asked, coyly.
‘You know,’ he said. ‘What’re you drinking?’
Ralph bought me another pint, my fifth. I was feeling it now. He was drinking soda water and lime.
‘Do you have your taxi outside?’ I asked him.
He shook his head.
‘But I am driving,’ he said, ‘if you’d like a lift.’
‘That would be nice,’ I replied.
Ralph took a couple of the ice cubes out of his drink and plopped them into the ashtray.
‘I told them no ice,’ he explained. ‘Where to?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Where would you like the lift to?’
‘Your place,’ I said, too quickly.
Ralph talked to me about the next world as he drove. He was a slow and careful driver. I didn’t mind, except it meant I had to hear more about the other side than I really wanted to. Ralph said he’d been having visions, premonitions and receiving messages, from the other world since he was five years old. He’d looked into his mother’s crystal ball and saw a man lying shot in a big car.
‘JFK?’ I enquired, nonchalantly.
‘My Uncle Billy,’ retorted Ralph. ‘He was a gangster in London. He made the Krays look like the Krankies. A rival put a contract out on him. Of course I saw the vision the day before he was shot.’
‘That’s scary,’ I said. I was so pissed by now I almost believed him.
‘Sometimes it can seem like a curse,’ sighed Ralph, as we trundled along at a snail’s pace. He talked some more about his mysterious powers. He said he had psychic antennae and could tune into people’s thoughts. He said it was just like radio waves. He could drive along in his taxi and be contacted by the controller about a fare and nobody thinks that’s weird. But in olden days people would’ve thought it was magic. He said his psychic powers were like this, that there was such a thing as thought transference, telepathy. He said he knew what I was thinking right there. But if he had known what I was thinking he would have shut up and driven faster. He kept on talking about things psychic. He said he could astrally project and that one time he left his body while he was being fucked, floated up above the bed, looked down, and watched himself getting it up the arse.
Ralph’s house smelled of cat pish. We were hardly in the door when he wrestled me to the floor. We took off each other’s clothes, me nearly blacking out with the smell of the carpet. Ralph rolled on top of me. He had the mother of all bellies and that took me by surprise. He had worn his shirt hanging out over his trousers. Like a maternity smock. I’d been through this before with another guy. It seemed that this was the fashion for the bulkier boy. It was probably a dress code they picked up in The Fat Poof’s Guide To Getting Your Hole. Ralph had a nice face so I concentrated on that. I struggled for breath beneath him and he apologised about his weight. He said he’d broken his leg, was in plaster for two months, and couldn’t get to the gym. We wrestled around on the pishy carpet. I never saw the cats but he said he had three.
In bed we rested in the darkness, lying on our backs. Ralph told me cats were our psychic channels to the other world, can sense ghosts long before we do, and could teach us a thing or two about telepathy. His voice was soft and deep, like he was a big fat cat purring beside me. He said cats had their own language, that a woman had written a book about it, and that he was in the process of learning it. He was quiet for a while and I tried to doze but I felt queasy, and knew my hangover was beginning to take over.
Ralph asked me if I had the second sight. I told him I’d had double vision a few times. He said that I was psychic but that I needed time to get used to my powers. I thought that was a joke. Just before we slipped into sleep Ralph told me that he knew when someone was going to die because he saw ‘the death mask,’ a skeletal-like face, appear on them. He’d seen it on a lot of people, but he never told them. You should never halt someone’s spiritual destiny. ‘It can be a curse,’ he sighed again and dozed off.
Ralph was one of those frisky characters in the morning. He bounced and wanked all over me. All I could think about was tea and toast. Eventually he came, then got up to put the kettle on. I heard him singing in the kitchen, his voice rich, deep and strong. I felt guilty, smirking at his beliefs. The big pussycat popped his head round the bedroom door and asked if I wanted tea in bed. I said I’d get up.
In the living-room I sat on the sofa eating my toast and sipping at the boiling hot tea. Ralph told me he sang at weddings and other functions. Old folks’ homes. He said he loved performing and his favourite song was Feelings. He’d adapted the song; had created a new, more up-tempo arrangement. He felt that with the current vogue for more dance-type music he could reach a wider audience by speeding up some of the standards. He asked me if I liked musicals and I nodded, stupidly. I must be the only gay man I know who hates cats and show songs. Ralph drained his cup of tea, went over to the CD player and pressed a few buttons. He picked up a radio mike and I heard what sounded like an electro-version of Feelings. He danced from side to side and swayed his head at an imaginary audience. His big sweet face shone with sincerity as I bit into my lip.
With the threat of another song looming, I decided to stall him by asking if I could meet his cats. They were out on the veranda and he said I could meet them some other time. He came over and sat beside me on the sofa. He asked what I thought of his arrangement of Feelings. I said he ought to release it as a single. He was doing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the King’s this autumn. He’d get me a ticket to see him.
I decided to make a move before my hangover paralysed me completely. Ralph said he could give me a lift. He made another pot of tea and we sat and listened to his show songs collection. I noticed my watch was missing and Ralph said it was in the bedroom; went to get it for me. He came back with my watch in his hand. Instead of giving it to me, he sat with it in his palm. He closed his other hand over the watch and shut his eyes firmly.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked. He was silent, concentrating. After what seemed like minutes, he opened his eyes and looked at me with an unnerving intensity.
‘Psychometry,’ he explained. He told me he could glean things from objects, stuff about their owners. He said it was one of his gifts.
‘That’s a new strap I got put on it,’ I said, concerned that might have affected his psychometric reading.
‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘I got a good reading. You’re on the threshold of something. Some kinda turning point. A new romance.’
I put my hand out for the watch. He put the watch on my wrist, trembling as he did so, like a nervous groom with a wedding ring. I looked at the watch.
‘God is that the time?’ I exclaimed, pretending I had somewhere else to be. Ralph fixed me with a steely stare.
‘So when do I get to see you again?’
I began to haver. I said I was busy, that I’d really enjoyed the time we’d spent together, but I couldn’t say anything for definite. I even added, ridiculously, that I was in love with someone else. Ralph’s face hardened.
‘You certainly know how to make someone feel cheap,’ he said, coldly. I got up, slightly startled, and walked through to the bedroom to get my jacket. I think he kept talking to me from the other room. I heard notes of his rich, velvety voice sliding between a histrionic version of Don’t
Cry For Me Argentina. I stood at the living-room door with my jacket over my arm. I gathered that a lift was now out of the question.
‘It was nice to meet ye,’ I said in a croaky, cowardly voice.
Ralph got up and took a few steps towards me. He seemed as if he was about to cry. Then he stared at me, a strange, crazed look in his eye and I felt my heart jump.
‘The death mask!’ he gasped, and staggered back.
‘Oh fuck off,’ I said and made for the door.
I felt sick on the bus. I vowed never to go back with another man. I was too long in the tooth for this hassle. It was never, ever worth it. People, men, were too weird. I felt scared, thinking maybe I was going to die, that Ralph did have mysterious powers, and had foretold my imminent doom. In my heart I knew he’d just tried to freak me out because he never got a date.
I filled my flat with sighs of relief. After a shower, I arsed around in my dressinggown. I dismissed all thoughts of the other world and things supernatural. I felt my face with my hands. It felt fine. It was still warm, at least. I decided to look at it in the mirror – the full-length wardrobe mirror in my bedroom. I crept up on myself. I looked at my face. I’m nearly forty and I look it, but I looked okay. A bit tired, but evidently alive. I thought about my mortality. I understood that if not today then one day I would face my death. I knew I was right not to see Ralph again, it wasn’t right. I studied my face and wondered if anybody could love it. I’ve only ever loved two men in my life. One betrayed me and the other one died. I’d like to see both of them again. I don’t know if I believe in love anymore, never mind telepathic cats or the other world. I moved closer to the mirror, close enough for my breath to cloud the image.
A Coat of Arms
Jimmy and Alec were just about to leave when Lawrie came in. Jimmy and Lawrie knew each other well, but not as well as Jimmy would’ve liked. He introduced Lawrie to Alec and, before he could be dissuaded, Lawrie was at the bar buying a round.
Lawrie was beautiful. He had big brown eyes like Maltesers, was into opera in a big way, and red wine. He was a doctor. Jimmy had met him in Delilah’s last winter. It had been snowing and Lawrie had come in out of the snow. He had never been in Delilah’s before. There was snow in his hair. There was something different about Lawrie. That was obvious. He was sophisticated. Debonair.