Out of the Blue

by Blue Blake

  All the staff was certainly colorful though. There was Babs, a fifty-something who taught voice and elocution. She was like some fabulous school madam who always wore tweed skirts, pearls and cameo brooches. She took us for vocal warm-up every morning. We would stagger into the 9 a.m. class, covered in last night’s makeup (and that was just the guys). We were drunk every night but Babs never seemed to notice.

  Dougie taught voice and acting. It was 1981, but Dougie wore skin-tight bell-bottom pants, flowered shirts and a purple paper-boy cap made of crushed velvet. He was very gay. The gayest person I’d ever met. He had never met a color he didn’t like. He was also in his fifties and as bald as a coot. He wore clogs and platform shoes. I had wanted platform shoes when I was ten years old. My mother bought me a pair one Christmas. They were tan and orange. I could hardly walk in them. That didn’t matter; I was ecstatic. They looked slightly girlish. My mother was always trying to cross-dress me. She once bought me a cheesecloth blouse and tried to convince me it was a boy’s shirt. For years I had a pageboy haircut. Only girls have pageboy haircuts. I bet Dougie had a pageboy haircut growing up. He certainly still had the fucking shoes. I really liked Dougie.

  But I really fancied Alan, our movement teacher. He was a hunk in his late thirties who wore a mustache and rode a motorbike. He was an unorthodox teacher. Once while demonstrating his non-skills in chiropractics, he cracked a student’s neck, rendering him immobile for five weeks. The student had to walk with a cane for months. Alan wore tights and a white t-shirt and he had really beefy legs and a meaty arse. I wanted him to fuck me so badly, but he only had eyes for my roommate Sam. She flirted with him constantly. Sometimes the teachers had flings with the students. I know this for a fact because I had a fling with one of the acting coaches, Terry. He was married to a woman, so of course he was like catnip to a Siamese to me. Thinking back, he wasn’t physically my type at all: skinny, in his fifties, going bald. He wore thick bifocals that blew his eyes up. We would meet at my apartment and I would cook spaghetti Bolognese for us after classes. I couldn’t afford wine because my student grant meant I was living on 15 pounds a week. He would bring cheap wine and we would drink by candlelight and then we would fall into bed.

  Jill Megiddo taught jazz dance. She taught me to dance and I loved her. She always wore her thin blonde hair scraped back and she was five feet tall. She had the body of a stocky boy and was married to a choreographer named Ivor Megiddo. Sadly she died of cancer at a young age.

  I had natural rhythm but I was a club dancer. I had entered the World Disco Dancing championships in Nottingham and I came in last. They wanted us to dance to “Born to Be Alive,” by Patrick Hernandez and I was so nervous and drunk on rum and blackcurrant that I fell off the stage while doing a cartwheel. I was wearing black rubber pants and a tiger skin shirt. I was a FREAK.

  So Jill taught me to dance. I wasn’t great. I was good. Good enough to get a job in any musical in London’s West End if only I could have carried a tune. I couldn’t sing a note. Nevertheless after Marat/Sade we mounted the musical Grease and I got the highly coveted role of Kenickie, the rough tough who knocks up the school slut Rizzo. I had a big number, “Greased Lightning,” and I had barely begun to learn the song when the casting director realized what a mistake he had made. They took it off me and gave it to one of the chorus but let me stay in the role. “You can’t have everything,” said Keith, one of my best friends. That was rich coming from Keith, who did have everything and went on to star in Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Cats, and Blood Brothers.

  Despite my lack of vocal ability Grease was a hit, and the thrill of performing in front of a live audience made it very difficult to go back to school and start rehearsals for a play that was less entertaining . . . Troilus and Cressida. I played Troilus and Jax played Cressida. Pregnant. Every time I had to kiss her I could feel her ballooning stomach. She had to wear a long white nightgown that covered her blossoming figure throughout the production. Worse than feeling Jax’s baby kick was that every night I had to break down and cry on stage. Another student asked me how the tears came so freely. I had no idea; perhaps it was just that the entire situation was very, very depressing.

  I was broke. I had spent my grant too quickly on unnecessary luxuries . . . like soap. I was stuck doing the lousy Troilus and Cressida and kissing the face off of my pregnant friend on stage. I needed a job badly. All I had in my pantry was a bag of sugar and a potato. Everybody was in the same boat at drama school. I was down to my last 20p when the phone rang in my flat.

  “Hello . . . ” I said flatly.

  “Darling, are you still looking for work?” It was Tricia, a girlfriend of mine.

  “Yep.”

  “I’ve gotten you a job!” she squealed. “Doing stripping telegrams! Dressed as Tarzan!” I could have passed out on the floor of my apartment either from shock or lack of vital nutrients.

  I fell right into the work and all of a sudden I was loaded. I spent the summer break running all over London dressed in nylon leopard skin leg warmers and a leopard skin headband with matching loincloth. My body was a toothpick, but I had no shame. I would run into offices and scream and beat my flat bony chest. I would throw women onto tables and French kiss them to celebrate their birthdays, anniversaries and weddings with my arse hanging out the whole time. I got 30 pounds a booking, half of which I gave to my agency. I was ecstatic to make that much money. However, I still wasn’t about to give up my acting hopes for singing happy birthday in a loincloth.

  One day, while Keith and I were browsing through the jobs-offered section of The Stage Newspaper, the entertainment bible of every theatre person in England, I saw an advert for professional dancers to join the Olivier Briac Ballet. They performed all over the world. This was show dancing: topless girls with huge feathers strapped on their backs, sequins, g-strings and two pairs of false eyelashes.

  “Let’s audition for a laugh,” I said. We did. The audition was held at the dance center in London’s Covent Garden. Keith and I were the only two guys with forty girls, all over six feet tall and impossibly beautiful. They all wore high heels and had hair down to their waists. The showgirls taught us a routine that seemed to include every bone-breaking contortion known to man. It was difficult, very difficult. The routine ended in the box splits, which I couldn’t do, so instead I did a cartwheel. For some reason they liked it. I got the job. Keith didn’t.

  I was in a dilemma. I was six months away from graduating from Mountview, but I was ready to leave and see the world. My third year was just a succession of rehearsals and performances, so what did it matter if I left and began performing professionally? I had been offered a three-month contract in Damascus with two weeks rehearsal in Paris. I had never lived outside of England so I was thrilled. I also loved Arabic men (this could have been the deciding factor). I went to see Terry Meech, my sometimes lover/acting coach. I told him I wanted to leave Mountview and perform with the Olivier Briac Ballet in the Middle East. He didn’t try to dissuade me. He told me he thought I was ready to start my professional career and wished me luck. I left Mountview that day, never to return. Two days later I arrived in Paris to begin rehearsals.

  My fantasies about romantic Paris were quickly dispelled. The place we were put up in was a fucking dump. We were staying in a small town outside of Paris called Barbais in a huge fortress. The dance troupe was held prisoner while we learned one ridiculous dance routine after another. We were two boys and twelve girls. In no time we were taught “the song.” It had no name but had been composed as a joke by some former disgruntled dancer and passed down from one generation of Barbais dancers to the next. It described the atrocious living conditions we endured in Barbais and it went like this:Welcome to Barbais

  It’s a holiday . . .

  If your life is too much fun

  There’s no telephone

  No way to get home

  You will never see the sun

  Coffee takes an hour

  Dare I take a
shower?

  Have some vinegar

  Freeze in bed

  There’s a great big key

  That can set you free

  But you’ll lost your mind

  Instead

  Eating shitty pâté

  Everybody’s ratty.

  The first verse is self-explanatory. We had no telephone to contact the outside world. Our parents didn’t know if we were alive or dead or sold into white slavery. We were never allowed outside because of the hectic rehearsal schedule and so our bodies grew pale and pallid from lack of sunlight. We had to boil water in saucepans for coffee but the gas ring threw off only enough heat to boil the water after an hour. The showers were filthy: full of old dancer hair and tampons. If you didn’t drink coffee the only other alternative was horrible red wine that tasted exactly like vinegar. So after a hard day’s rehearsal you had the choice of waiting an hour for hot coffee or a quenching glass of warm red wine. The dancers had constant headaches and dehydration. The blankets on the beds were threadbare and every night we shivered in our little cots. We were given a blanket and a sheet each. There was no heat. If this sounds like Hell, it was!

  Every day, the choreographer, Guy Etrange, would arrive to bring us wine and pâté. We would hear the outside gate being unlocked by a giant key that hung on his belt. We ate the pâté from the fridge until one day we noticed an unusual sticker on the delicacy: a panting dog. Surely, we reasoned, they didn’t make pâté for dogs. The pâté couldn’t have been made out of dogs. So . . . OH MY GOD . . . we had been eating dog food that was meant for Guy’s stringy looking cocker spaniels. We were ill for days.

  I liked the fact that I was working with twelve girls and only one other guy. Kevin was red-haired . . . speaking of stringy spaniels! We didn’t get on. I thought he was older than dust. I was twenty and he said he was thirty, but he was forty if he was a day. He had a French boyfriend who came to stay for a few days. We heard them fucking through the paper-thin walls. If Kevin had-n’t been so skinny, it would have been sexy.

  On the other hand, I loved the dozen girls. They were all incredibly pretty and fun to be with. They had trained since birth to be dancers, whereas I had just auditioned for a laugh and had been thrown into the deep end. I cried a lot because I couldn’t learn the difficult routines. They all had a theme and a costume to go with them. Of course the costumes were topless; it was that sort of show. We started with “The Parisienne.” In it I wore a yellow crimpolene jacket and pumpkin crimpolene trousers. The jacket was covered with sequins and it matched the girls g-strings. We had to mime to a French song called “Ce Soir a Casino (Gala Night).” I never had a clue what the song meant as I never learned the words. One of the girls told me to just sing “Mickey Mickey Mickey Mouse” over and over again onstage, because at least my lips would be moving. I did until the assistant choreographer noticed and asked me if I’d gone insane.

  The second number was called “L’Africaine.” We wore—incredibly enough—monkey skins and nylon afro wigs. I refused to wear my wig after the first dress rehearsal.

  The girls had a number called “Le Panthere (The Panther),” and all they wore were cat’s tails, ears, and claws. They would sit on the stage and claw the air. I would run behind the stage, and as a prank, reach through the curtain and grip their tails so they couldn’t stand up. I was reprimanded severely. We did the Can-Can, but most bizarre of all we would lip synch to “I Love Paris in the Spring Time,” while we escorted the girls around the stage. I wore a Victorian suit, top hat, and tails in powder blue; the girls had on powder blue hoop skirts and carried lace umbrellas. Topless!

  Eventually, I learned all the routines and we received our first dance contract abroad in Damascus. At the time Damascus was at war, so we arrived in a war zone with every male under thirty mobilized and in uniform. I was in heaven!

  The girls told me that all Arabs were bisexual and liked nothing more than to buy pretty girls (and boys) jewelry. I had no qualms about collecting some expensive baubles for myself. I liked older guys too, and Damascus seemed full of wealthy, older Arab men. The two girls who were the best at getting diamonds were Bouty and Kate. Bouty was very upper class and all big red lips, processed platinum blonde hair and cleavage. When she strutted down the staircase with the cutout of the Eiffel Tower twinkling with fairy lights behind her, grown men swooned. Kate resembled Barbra Streisand, but at show time wearing three pairs of false eyelashes, her hair in a ponytail down to her waist and 36DD breasts, she looked magnificent.

  I hung out with these two and so was invited out for dinner after the show every night. The girls wouldn’t sleep with the guys on the first night . . . but I would. I was given rings, bracelets, necklaces, suits, and I had a great time eating at the best restaurants in Damascus.

  One time we were out with a guy who owned a huge clothing chain, Mohammed Massid. After dinner, Bouty and Kate went to freshen up their makeup.

  “Glenn, do you know what wealthy men would do after eating a good meal, hundreds of years ago?”

  “No, Mohammed, what would they do?”

  “They would call for a hubbly bubbly and a young boy.”

  “Why the young boy?” I asked.

  “The boy would crawl under the table and pleasure the gentleman with his mouth.” Mohammed was married with children and the combination of him telling me this dirty story and him having a wife made my dick rock hard. He placed my hand on his penis and I could feel through his robes how huge it was.

  “Would you like to pleasure me with your mouth, Glenn?”

  Did he need to even ask? YES! YES! YES! My little mind screamed.

  “Do you have anywhere we can go?” I mumbled. He smiled a big broad grin. Later I received the most beautiful suit, shirt, tie and shoes.

  The contract in Damascus was for three months. After eight weeks I was becoming restless. I was sick of cavorting around in a monkey skin loincloth. The girls were sick of the Arab men, but I wasn’t.

  The laws in Damascus were strict about what you could or couldn’t show of your body in public. No arms, no legs. This was difficult for the troupe to abide by as we were all young dancers and we were used to wearing minimal clothing both on and off the stage. The poverty outside the five star hotel where we performed was horrendous. The streets smelled terrible. Parents would leave children with no arms or legs on blankets to beg. The more glaring the deformity, the more money would be given; I suppose was the logic. On our day off we would wander around the gold stalls in the market. The most desirable currency in Damascus, husbands would buy their wives all the gold their hearts’ desired because it was considered a great financial investment, a strategy to ward off the bleak poverty around them.

  But more than gold was for sale. We were stared at wherever we went and men would constantly try to buy whichever girl I was with that day. We were blonde and blue-eyed in a country where that was exotic.

  Meanwhile the work was stressful. The troupe’s dance captain, Sharon Wagstaff, and I didn’t like each other. She wasn’t talented so everyone was convinced she had shagged her way to the top. The first time I met her was in Barbais. She was shorter than the other girls and had carrot-red hair and a runny nose.

  “’Scuse me, I’ve got a sodding cold,” she honked. “Fucking hell!” she said, eying me up and down. “You’re skinny! Are you going to be able to lift me?”

  “Not in this lifetime,” I thought.

  “And the other girls told me you’re queer. Why do we never get any straight guys?” Sharon hated me. I had no idea how to do all the dramatic lifts that were demanded for a routine called “Les Musketeres,” so she had to do the routine with Kevin. He was built like a stick insect and so she was constantly being dropped. He would spin her into scenery, banging her head on backdrops, all the while dressed in a velvet musketeer’s outfit with feathered hat. She was topless, except for a lace collar around her neck.

  I thought we looked ridiculous. The costumes seen close up were shabby and thre
adbare from being danced and sweated in for so many shows, ranging from Katmandu to Nepal. The audience loved us nonetheless, and we were sold out every night. The show was called “Paris à Sham” and it was situated in a huge brand new theater in a hotel called the El Sham Palace, the most expensive hotel in Damascus.

  I started having an affair with one of the bartenders, Karim. He was a very handsome twenty-five-year-old with jet-black hair—very hairy, almost like a monkey. I would watch him pour cocktails before the show started. He had the fattest, hairiest arse and he wore Jockey underwear in straight-man colors like moss green and maroon. All the time we were dating he treated me like a star . . . he was sadly misguided. He fell in love. I didn’t. I can still see his face and the look of shock the night I told him I’d been fired.

  What happened was this. The show was divided into two acts. The second act opened with all the dancers doing a number called “Carnivalle,” in which we were all dressed in carnival attire. I wore an enormous red sombrero covered with mirrors, a yellow satin shirt tied under my nonexistent chest, red chaps and a g-string. As we waited for the curtain to go up, we noticed that Sharon, Kevin and one of the other dancers were missing.

  “Sharon says they’re having a cigarette, hold the curtain,” shouted Michelle, a northern girl with thick ankles and a bad perm. I loved her. I had to throw her over my head in the Can-Can. I always thought she fancied me, and if I had been straight I would have shagged her. If I had been straight I would have shagged all of them.

  “How long are we supposed to wait?” asked my roommate Karen. “I’ve got a date after with Shireef.”

  “Shall I tell them to start the show?” I said.