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Clown and Pout in Perishing London #1

EPCOT photos here. More to come.

Fit the First: In which I journey from the World’s End to Mornington Crescent.

Don’t haul my luggage off the train, old lady! Stop, let me explain! Look, there’s your bag, no need to whine (please note it looks fuck all like mine).

The World’s End in Camden is “probably the biggest pub in the world”. I would like to play Laser Quest here, I am thinking. I would like a Guinness, I am thinking. My period has just started, I am thinking. It’s definitely not indigestion. I leave my precious things in a corner and nip to the lavatory. Sure enough, Aunt Flow has arrived and is trampling the geraniums agane.

Johny Brown is very busy with his play and his screenplay and his radio show, but he comes to fetch me. He lives just past Mornington Crescent, my favourite parlour game. I wonder if I win just by walking past it? Johny’s 5th floor flat is paved with lacquered maps of North England. Prone before the modest French window, blowing Drum smoke over the gardens below, I realise my right nipple is in Scarborough (doubtless haggling over a “Boob Inspector” hat), and my tummy button is You Are Here-ing my home town. This makes me Smile.

There’s a T.V. but it feels like there isn’t, and so my internal Eastenders alarm does not go off. I leaf through a big book on Witkiewicz, and fall in love with him. I inscribe “Anais NIN” and “Dorothy Parka” on my strait jacket with a Barbie biro. Johny asks me to write on his shirt, so I write “Nil Desperandum” over the breast pocket. I bathe in lovely blue water in the shiny white bath. The water back home is yellowish, even before I pee in it. Years ago, I would put new rats in the empty bath to pet and tame them. Johny is certainly a taming influence, but he is still as bright-eyed, inquisitive and skittish as either Ariadne or Lucy (may they rest in peace).

The light in the main room doesn’t work, and so as dusk falls the hall light drags across the room and the semi-darkness makes a feature of the strip-lit balconies on the building opposite. I apply red lipgloss in this gently elegant Hopper ambience. Johny doesn’t drink, so I mix my vodka with warm water and sugar, and listen to Resonance FM and Ween (The Mollusk) while he has a bath.

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Fit the Second: In which I find myself in a Castle full of exotic birds.
I do not like thee, M.Glamorre.
You have a voice which I abhor.
The CK models on the door
Don’t like my trousers! What a bore!

During my last few visits to London I’ve been Red Queened around the tubes and Clark Griswalded through the streets, and felt rather intimidated; but after a few minutes route-planning I am stoutened to realise that I find navigation absolutely no problem. Johny has coached me on blagging my way into Kash Point. I’m to name-drop Matthew Glamorre and say I’m helping him out with a project the next day. On reflection, I rather think I would have been struck down by pink lightning for taking his name in vain. The Gaultier sailor-boy charges me to get in - perhaps I should have taken off my Miss Sixty (O horror!) jeans and flashed my poor Colgate coloured pins. I don’t bother pressing the matter, having watched the cabaret act argue for five minutes before they were allowed in. I offer Euros (as specified on the flyer with engaging facetiousness), and he becomes satisfyingly flustered and almost apologetic.

A sympathetic and statuesque lady named Sarah has taken me under her black, lacy wing. Her ringlets brush the ceiling as she buys me a vodka and orange. She points out Dickon, whom I recognise from Tom’s Friendster, but it’s hard to introduce oneself so tenuously, squeezed in front of a speaker, even to such a gracious and patient creature. Sarah recognises several more people, and when they don’t (or won’t) recognise her, she tosses her hair like an embarrassed cat. I meet Rob, the skater-goth "Tommy" from 3rd Rock from the Sun, whose pretty girlfriend has yellow contact lenses. I meet an hourglass blonde in a black corset and top hat, with black glittery flowers on her nipples. Again, it’s too noisy to speak but she flashes me reassuring glances rather than snooty ones. Matthew Glamorre wriggles across the crowded dancefloor, bound up to his neck in a sleeping bag and covered in greasepaint. My brother and I were doing that twenty years ago, for chrissakes, but we didn’t call ourselves superstars, we called ourselves caterpillars. Sarah dances desperately until her rings fling from her fingers. She retrieves them with the help of a pen-torch, which she keeps in her handbag along with a tape measure and a magnifying glass. I present her with a packet of toilet seat covers to add to her equipment. We see a stocky man wearing nothing at all but a Cockney cap, boots and Ray-Ban shades. She points at him, then gestures to her lap, blurting with regret and resolution: “I’ve had the full op and I haven’t had sex with a man for six years”.

I dance with Sarah to Zongamin, The Normal, and Right Said Fred (this last mixed perfectly with Kraftwerk). The in-house cameraman, wearing a white stetson, waves his camera at me. Glamorre squeals and bitches into the mike like a tuppenny rent boy. I’m sitting on the back of my seat but I can’t see past the Glamoramas. I’m delighted by the spectacle but dismayed by the general attitude. I pop to the ladies’ and get a warm welcome from the cabaret act: a handful of beaming Ugly Sisters and Casey Spooners (Spacey Cooners, LOL). They have me pose with them for a photo, and I help one of them adjust his inflatable breasts.

A charming Mario face beams up at me, sticking out like a sore thumb. He’s not on the pull or on the catwalk - he’s not even drinking - he’s videoing the crowd for a personal project. His name is Tony and we have a normal, friendly conversation and a big hug.

They perch next to me like exotic birds. If I smile at them, they sneer and leave. If I ignore them, they ask for a light. If I make sure I hand over the lighter without making eye-contact, they offer lazy cat-blink acknowledgements in passing later on. I manage to ignore one of them with such success that he begins to soporifically chat me up: this is my signal to leave. On the way home, I am accosted by a young French guy. I can never resist speaking French to a native, but of course not all Frenchmen are Kevin Kline: some of them are Ned cunts saying “Come to my flat to smoke hash and listen to hard house. I will please you and you will please me.” I reply, “Listen to yourself, you’re ridiculous”, and send him packing. It’s a lot easier to be assertive in a foreign language.

When I wake up in Johny’s futon after a night of fitful rarebit dreams and cruel period pains, he is wearing nothing but tattoos and I feel like a groupie.

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Posted by rosy at août 7, 2004 08:54 PM | TrackBack