Delilah's

by John Maley

  Fuelled by lager, Jimmy had steamed towards him and chatted him up. They had become something after that. Not lovers; Lawrie and Jimmy occupied that grey area between friends and acquaintances. There was nothing really definite about their connection. They would call each other up to see a film, a play; sometimes just go to the pub.

  Things had dragged on with Jimmy and Lawrie for a few months. It was obvious this was going to be a romance-free zone. Obvious to everybody, that is, except Jimmy. He grew fond of Lawrie, that fondness where you like the way a person walks, even if they’re hentoed, or like the warm honeyed tones of their voice, even if they’re talking crap. He had decided Lawrie was simply a slow-burner. It was a matter of biding his time. Wasn’t it better to wait, to let things grow and develop? After all, Jimmy was tired of the yo-yo knickers, the one-night stand scene. How much better to make love. So he waited for something that never came. Jimmy was never very intuitive. He needed things spelled out.

  It was spelled out one night at Lawrie’s house. Lawrie had invited Jimmy over for dinner and as usual, Jimmy saw Cupid hovering in the wings, drawing back his bow. Dinner was steak served up with roast potatoes and veg. Jimmy was almost vegetarian by this point but would have eaten a live lamb if Lawrie had served it. He would have bitten Bambi’s balls for a taste of that man. They ate in candlelight. Lawrie had put on a classical CD, Jimmy couldn’t remember what – he was strictly a pop man. Dessert was ice cream, followed by coffee and chocolates. Then the wine flowed like some unstoppable, tempestuous river. Red, red wine. It was a Friday night so they didn’t have to worry about work the next day – this was a time for play and Jimmy was hoping to sample his host’s bedside manner.

  He had never actually seen Lawrie’s bedroom, although he’d been in his house half a dozen times. Jimmy knew where it was, down the hall to the left. He had seen Lawrie going in there to pick up a jacket or do something else, get something, always closing the door behind him. In retrospect he saw that this thing about the bedroom being out of bounds was a sign of where their relationship was going. No fuckin where. But love, as they say, is visually impaired. Looking into Lawrie’s big, brown eyes, once or twice, he thought he saw love.

  They sat on a sofa in the living-room and drank and talked. Jimmy decided, in collaboration with the wine that tonight was the night he got into Lawrie’s bedroom and into his beautiful arms. Lawrie had lovely skin. Olive skin. Whatever olive skin was, this was it … his soft wavy hair in the lamplight, his Malteser eyes and his olive skin.

  ‘I’ve been thinking. About us.’

  ‘What about us?’

  Lawrie’s tone was abrupt, not to say indignant.

  ‘We’ve – we’ve known each other a few months now and I was wonderin’ – wonderin’ where we were goin’.’

  Lawrie looked quizzically at Jimmy.

  ‘Where we’re going? We’re not going anywhere? Are you …?’

  ‘Naw, it’s just, are we friends or what?’

  Jimmy’s hand was in the flame.

  ‘We’re friends.’

  ‘It’s just – I really like you. I’m attracted to you. I’d like us to go further.’

  Lawrie seemed to soften a little. He looked surprised.

  ‘I hope we can be friends. I hope we can be good friends. But I never really thought of you that way.’

  Jimmy back-pedalled. Over a cliff.

  ‘I just wanted to clear that up. I mean it’s important to know where you stand…’

  Lawrie touched his arm momentarily.

  ‘You’re a friend.’

  Jimmy spent the rest of the evening trying to hide how crestfallen he was. He felt he succeeded. Lawrie didn’t seem particularly aware of the effect he had on him. Maybe he had treated Jimmy’s enquiry as simply idle curiosity. But the wine made them feel warm towards each other.

  At the close of the evening Lawrie offered to call a taxi or fold down the sofa bed. Jimmy said he’d get one in the street, the main street nearest Lawrie.

  It was next morning that Jimmy felt the first pangs of shame and regret. It was so obviously not going to happen. Why couldn’t he see that? But Lawrie was such a kindly guy; it was easy to misinterpret, put a different slant on things. Lawrie had merely extended a hand in friendship to him and the rest of his anatomy was, like his bedroom, out of bounds. The slow burn had fizzled out.

  The guys still called each other up after that. But it was never the same after the Monte Carlo-or-bust night when Jimmy got to know where he stood. On his own, as usual.

  Jimmy hadn’t seen Lawrie for a couple of months when he walked into Delilah’s that night. It was good to see him again. What wasn’t so good was the interest he took in Alec. But Jimmy felt more amused than jealous. After several drinks the guys decided to get a taxi up the road to the West End, where they all lived. Then Lawrie invited them back to his for a nightcap. Alec seemed to think that this was a great idea and so the three of them landed back in Lawrie’s flat.

  ‘Can I put this on? I love Motown.’

  Alec had taken over and hired himself as DJ.

  ‘Aye. On ye go.’

  Alec shoved on the Motown compilation CD. Even the Motown was wrong tonight. It wasn’t Misstra Know It All Stevie Wonder. It was I Just Called To Say I Love You Stevie Wonder. To go with the matured music, Lawrie opened a bottle of malt whisky. Jimmy had turned down the offer of a whisky and settled for coffee. The Motowners huddled on the sofa with their whiskies. Jimmy eyed them from an armchair. It was that funny feeling you got when you saw two people meeting for the first time. The curiosity, the playfulness, the fucking flirtation. Jimmy was sure nothing would come of it. Alec had recently acquired a new boyfriend. And, anyway, surely he wasn’t Lawrie’s type?

  The music was okay. Bad Motown was still better than most of the other shite that got played. Somehow he felt himself become detached from the rest of the company. It was late; fatigue and inebriation were setting in. There was no novelty or mystery in his relationship with Lawrie: that had been resolved. Then there was something in the way Alec and Lawrie were positioned on the sofa. It looked like something was going to happen; like something had been implicitly agreed. Alec would be staying and Jimmy would be going. Lawrie’s generosity with the whisky was unbounded. Jimmy watched the two guys on the couch. He didn’t feel jealous or pissed off, just surplus to requirements. He had to go home.

  Jimmy stood up and announced he was going to the toilet. He did what he regarded as the longest pish in recorded history. It was a big one. He felt drunk now. He didn’t want to conk out in a chair and snore in front of the guys. He knew he was a snorer. Guys had told him so. It was time to go. When he washed his hands and face in the bathroom sink, the mirror echoed his sentiments.

  He went back into the living-room. The music had stopped and Lawrie hadn’t bothered to put anything else on. Jimmy didn’t know where Lawrie had left his jacket.

  ‘I think I’ll be headin’ home.’

  Alec didn’t say anything, just took a sip of his whisky. Lawrie sprang up eagerly.

  ‘I’ll get your jacket, Jim.’

  He brushed by Jimmy and went down the hall. This seemed so ungentlemanly, his haste. Jimmy looked at Alec, who avoided eye contact. Lawrie came up behind Jimmy and mumbled something. Jimmy said cheerio to Alec, who was rummaging amongst a pile of CDs. He stepped into the hall and Lawrie began shoving a jacket on him, like an over-zealous waiter, which was fine, except the jacket wasn’t Jimmy’s. It was Alec’s. Lawrie adjusted the collar on the jacket and guided Jimmy towards the front door at breakneck speed.

  ‘This isnae my jacket.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The jacket. It’s Alec’s.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Lawrie gave an embarrassed laugh. He helped Jimmy out of the jacket and went back down the hall. He returned in two shakes of a rent boy’s tail with Jimmy’s jacket. Jimmy smiled and took the jacket.

  ‘That’s the one. See ye, Lawrie.’

  Lawrie
smiled. ‘See you.’

  He closed the door behind Jimmy.

  It was a summer night and it was humid. There was a fine drizzle. Jimmy started heading in the direction of home. It was a twenty-minute walk. He’d only gone a hundred yards when he saw a taxi. Spontaneously, he hailed it and got in. The sooner he was home the better. Once home, he made himself another coffee. He was going to take it to bed with him but knew he’d flake out and never drink it if he did that. He sat in the kitchen and drank the coffee and flicked through yesterday’s paper. He decided not to think about Lawrie and Alec, not now.

  In the morning he thought it over. He sat on the edge of his bed in his boxer shorts. He remembered Lawrie trying to get him into Alec’s jacket, in his hurry to get rid of him. He wondered if Lawrie and Alec had slept together. Or maybe they had just had a grope on the sofa. Would they see each other again? He cursed Alec. He was a fucking rat. He was never going to speak to him again. Not for a couple of days anyway. He smiled at Lawrie’s mistake. There was something clumsy about him. He’d watched him once in Delilah’s struggling with the zip on his jacket. Jimmy wanted to take him in his arms and steady him.

  The Duet

  The support band was okay but Joanie wished they’d fuck off stage and leave the coast clear for Kylie. It was Kylie he’d paid to see and only Kylie would do. He felt sorry for support bands. He knew it must be hard for them, knowing the bored, inattentive audience awaited the main attraction and had other things on their mind – like getting another drink in the bar or another piss in the toilet. Joanie knew what it felt like to be the support act. Most of the guys he’d dated seemed to spend a lot of time looking over his shoulder, waiting for the main event, the younger, prettier one who’d bend over forwards to please them. He politely clapped the support band then looked at his watch. He had arranged to meet Bobbie at the bar at seven but she hadn’t shown. She had her own ticket so Joanie had made his way into the auditorium.

  The band finally packed it in and Joanie went to the toilet. He hadn’t dragged up tonight. He hadn’t wanted to upstage Kylie and the last time he’d come to a concert in full fagalia he’d been frisked and the sexy security guard thought he was packing heat when he grabbed his hard-on. Joanie was frightened he’d go off in his hand.

  When Joanie got back to his seat there was Bobbie, clutching a programme and shouting for Kylie, like a wean shouting for her mammy.

  ‘What took you so long?’ asked Joanie. Bobbie said she’d fallen asleep on the couch and dreamt that Kylie had broken her ankle and she’d been asked to step in at the last minute.

  ‘See what happens when ye watch Popstars?’ Joanie retorted.

  It was then that the curtains rose revealing an enchanting love boat set. Joanie counted eight prancing dancers. The prettiest pixie in pop was lowered down from the gods on a big silver anchor and launched into Loveboat from her Light Years album. Joanie gasped with delight.

  ‘It’s a fuckin’ Broadway show,’ he swooned. What followed was a hopping, skipping, jumping, and clapping, bumping, grinding extravaganza that amounted to the poofiest party in town. Kylie was in fine fettle and so were the Glasgow audience.

  ‘I thought there’d be more queers here,’ mused Bobbie. She was wearing more than her usual minimal make-up and Joanie thought Bobbie looked strong and beautiful, like Garbo or Dietrich.

  ‘Kylie’s church is broad,’ observed Joanie. ‘Her gospel is love.’ And how they loved her. They stepped back in time with Kylie, they spun around with Kylie, they turned it into love with Kylie, and they put themselves in Kylie’s place.

  The heady highlight for Bobbie was Kylie’s cover of Olivia Newton John’s Physical. It was kind of kinky borderline bondage stuff with the nubile nymphet doing some pole dancing with the boy dancers. She had thought Kylie would come on with some tired old crappy backing band and half-tweet, half-mime to her back catalogue. But the show was snazzy and slick and Kylie’s voice was strong, clear and true. It went straight to the heart.

  It went straight to Joanie’s heart. Joanie and Kylie went back a long way. Like that other hardy perennial, Madonna, she seemed to have been there forever, for all those crazy disco nights with boyfriends and girlfriends and fair-weather friends. She had provided the soundtrack to the crazy 18-Certificate movie that was Joanie’s life. Light Years, she had called the new album. Light years – light as a balloon and sweet as bubble gum, light as in so far away and out of reach. Joanie knew those feelings well. Hearing Kylie now made him recall how he’d skipped through the eighties, dazzled by the big hair and bright lights of that momentous decade. The first time with a man, sniffing poppers and falling in a faint, crying on the late night bus because of the loneliness and the lovelessness, being queer-bashed on a train and no one coming to help him, waking up in strange beds with stranger men. He’d been called everything from a dog to a disease. But he’d survived those years with a mixture of war paint and wit when the only constants in his life were divas and disappointments.

  On stage Kylie was standing on top of a wee white piano in top hat and tails doing an old showbiz rendition of Better The Devil You Know.

  ‘Fuck,’ gasped Joanie in admiration, ‘the ghost of Ginger Rogers.’ So the night went on, song after sweet song, Kylie taking staircases Busby-Berkeley style, being held aloft by dancers’ palms like a Hollywood heroine. Bobbie and Joanie were on their feet clapping and dancing and yelling and loving it. Joanie wanted to throw flowers on the stage. He wanted to throw himself on the stage. Then she was gone, like a vision, a dream, gone.

  They were in a booth in Delilah’s with beers. They both felt high after their sail on Kylie’s loveboat. Bobbie was looking at her programme and sighing like she had a big schoolgirl crush. Bobbie loved girls and girl groups from the Ronettes to Atomic Kitten. She was pissed off with cadaverous rock dinosaurs and catatonic art students with their pompous dirges that passed for hip and happening music. She wanted three minutes of joy from a pop princess. Bobbie hadn’t minded being a girl. She loved singing songs with other girls, daft old Glasgow songs as they played hopscotch or skipping ropes. They used to tie rubber bands together across the fences at either side of the close and jump over them, flashing smiles and knickers. It was only when they’d got into their teens and started obsessing about hackett-looking captains of the school football team with their boners and their b.o. that girls started being hard work for Bobbie, when they stopped singing and started simpering about boys.

  Joanie was light years away. He thought about all those years ago, dancing in Bennets to Kylie. Some of the men he had danced with were gone now. They’d died or fled or he’d forgotten them, forgotten their names. He’d go on a Tuesday night, billed as an alternative night, and there’d be guys dressed like Boy George or Robert Smith or Divine or Adam Ant. That’s when he’d started dressing up. One night he wore Nancy Sinatra boots and a fanny pelmet minidress he’d found in the Briggait amongst the pish and the trash in the lanes, the Glen Daly LPs and blow football sets, Agatha Christie paperbacks and suede gloves. Those markets and stalls and jumble sales were treasure troves for Joanie then; a mint-green crimplene suit that made him feel like Audrey Hepburn; a black velvet backless dress was another he remembered. A sexy big clone had run his tongue up and down Joanie’s bare back till he thought he’d cream his pants.

  There was a time when Joanie could count the number of men he’d slept with. But then he gave up that game. All he knew was there had been nights when he was drunk and alone and it seemed the only thing that could keep him from Hell was the heat of a man in his arms. Light years later, working in Delilah’s, sometimes it was like watching the movie of your life, hearing your diary being read in public, all those lovers and losers playing those old tunes, making those old moves.

  He looked at Bobbie, who was looking across the bar. Bobbie did look good. Her hair was slicked back, like Bowie in his Low days. She was wearing grey woollen trousers and a black velvet jacket. She looked one dandy dyke. Bobbie faced hi
m and smiled.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was miles away.’ Joanie said he’d get more drink in.

  There was a wee skinny barman covering Joanie’s Sunday night shift. Joanie thought he was cute, so skinny he could fall down a stank and climb back out again. But Joanie wasn’t one of those older guys who chased boys half their age and wanked over Westlife. The noise and narcissism of the teenyboppers held little charm for him. But it was hard being young. He knew how hard it had been being young, the world against you and your back against the wall. Fuck knows it didn’t get much better.

  Bobbie sipped her pint. She started telling Joanie about an old girlfriend. This girl had a crazy mullet hairstyle and was a total fashion disaster. They were in their early twenties and used to have snogging sessions in Bobbie’s bedsit off Byres Road.

  ‘We would sing in my room, my wee fuckin’ room with its cold water tap and black fungus on the ceiling. I had a telly and I remember watching Top Of The Pops with this girl, Shirley her name was. We loved that one, Especially For You. Kylie and Jason. We used tae sing it tae each other.’

  It was then that a scary ex of Bobbie’s came in. Bobbie hid her face with the Kylie programme.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Joanie.

  ‘X file,’ replied Bobbie, from behind the programme. The ex was a married woman who claimed she was bisexual. She’d threatened Bobbie once with a knife. Joanie thought they’d better leave. Delilah’s was work so he didn’t always want to drink there.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Joanie. He got up and Bobbie followed, covering her face with the programme and banging into tables on her way out.

  They ended up in an old bar that smelled of beer and sweat and pish and pipe smoke. There was a dartboard in one corner and a medallion man DJ who Bobbie said looked like Des O’Connor, stationed in another corner. He had one of those orange tans Bobbie said her big sister Fiona used to get out of a bottle when she was going out on the randan. It was really an old-timers pub, half-empty, and some of the punters were up dancing.