Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (8 page)

I visit my boyfriend Mark a couple of times over the next few weeks. One morning I wake up at home feeling really sexy. I stretch out in my bed, feel my warm body touch the cool sheets and think,
I’m going to go to the phone box and call Mark and say I want to come over for him to draw me. I just want to lie on his bed naked, and have him look at me – not touch me – and study me and draw me. That will be so sexy
. I get dressed and go to the phone box on the corner and call him, but Mark doesn’t sound very friendly or pleased to hear from me, which is odd because he loves me. I tell him my plan but he cuts me off mid-sentence and says, ‘I’ve got crabs. You better go to the clinic. I got them from you.’ Oh shit. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could pass them on to Mark. I thought once I was on the medication, I was all right. Now he knows what I’ve been up to too.

Zaza makes it back home. It isn’t until I see her in the corridor at school that I realise how scared I was about her not coming back. We go to the dining hall and she tells me that at the airport in Turkey, as she went through customs with her false-bottomed suitcase stuffed full of hash, the customs official pulled her over and said he believed she was carrying drugs and he was going to tear her suitcase apart.
She talked her way out of it
. Can you believe that?
She talked and joked her way out of going to prison in Turkey
. In the end, the official let her go and said, ‘Good luck at the other end.’ She has the nerve of the devil. She says she has to go to a bar in Piccadilly Circus tonight to meet Kieran and give him his share of the money. I tell her to keep it, she deserves it, but she’s scared he’ll come after her for it, he’s got lots of dodgy mates. She asks me to go with her. We turn up, it’s some sort of seedy fake cowboy bar with half swing doors onto the street. We hang around outside for ages before Kieran shows up. Zaza gets talking to a sweet Geordie boy called Steve. When he leaves she turns to me and says, ‘I’m going to marry him.’

Somehow Zaza finds out where Steve lives in Sunderland and we hitch-hike up there one weekend. We go to his address, his mum answers the door and says Steve’s not in town, but invites us in for a cup of tea. Zaza nips into Steve’s bedroom and rifles through his drawers to see if there’s any evidence of a girlfriend but she doesn’t find anything interesting. We wander the streets until we see a nice-looking boy with long hair and ask him if he knows anywhere we can stay, just like we did in Amsterdam. He takes us to a house, where we meet some lovely people, stay a couple of nights then hitch-hike home. Zaza tracks Steve down again in Piccadilly Circus: he doesn’t stand a chance.

Reader, she married him.

17 ART SCHOOL

1972

Hornsey School of Art must be what heaven looks like. It’s full of good-looking, interesting people saying unexpected things, dressed in paint-splattered jumble-sale clothes. I’m still following in the footsteps of the Kinks, who went to Hornsey, and of my heroes John Lennon and David Bowie, who also went to art school. It’s just what you do if you’re into music, you go to art school. There’s no thought of making money or a career out of art, it’s a rite of passage.

I have to concentrate to keep up with the other students. Most of them are better educated and more articulate than me. I’m a very small fish in a big pond. I thought I was good at art when I was at school, but not compared to this lot. I’m shit compared to them. I don’t finish things properly, have no discipline and don’t follow ideas through. I’m embarrassed by my lack of ability in every area, technically, intellectually and creatively. It’s OK to be poor here though, as long as you act confident. I stay quiet and observe a lot, especially the girls.

Nina Canal is in my year (
she later formed the experimental New York band Ut
). She’s tall and willowy with olive skin, short black hair, and moves like a gazelle; she’s languid and self-assured, the most elegant girl I’ve ever seen. Nina hangs out with an equally stunning girl called Perry – such a cool name – who has long messy blonde hair, is outspoken and interesting; she lights up any room she’s in. (
She was the great love of Ben Barson, the Greek god from Woodcraft Folk. And worth it
.) Nina and Perry don’t wear makeup, their hands and clothes are covered in splodges of paint, their fingers rough and gnarled, ringed with plasters covering cuts from scalpels and Stanley knives. Working hands, creative hands, the hands of girls who do stuff, who have ideas. Sexy hands. They smoke roll-ups. These two girls eclipse Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Suzi Quatro and June Child (not Yoko though) as role models for me – they’re real girls, my age, that I can copy. Although they come from a more privileged background than me, which gives them a confidence I don’t have, I think if I watch them and listen to them for a couple of months, I can get there. This is the kind of girl I want to be: natural, passionate about work, articulate, intelligent, equal.

The boys at Hornsey aren’t as interesting as the girls. They’re fun and a good laugh to hang out with, but it’s the girls I’m looking to for the first time in my life. There are a couple of interesting guys, like ‘Groovy Graham’, the social sec (
Graham Lewis, who later formed the band Wire
). He puts on loads of bands, Dr Feelgood, Kilburn and the High Roads, Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts … he tried to get Pink Floyd once but it fell through. Graham wears very tight trousers that show every bump – we call him ‘The Bulge’ – and he dances like Mick Jagger, strutting around the hall jabbing his finger in the air with the other hand on his skinny hip, he’s full of life and enthusiasm. There’s a sweet shy guy called Stuart in the year below me (
Stuart Goddard, he will later transform himself into Adam of Adam and the Ants
), he’s pretty and serious, works hard, doesn’t say much.

My favourite tutor is Peter Webb. Once a week he gives a lecture on erotic art in the main hall. He’s so passionate and captivating about his subject that he sparks an interest in sex and erotica in me that never goes away. He wears a purple suit and is convinced he’s Theo, the reincarnated brother of Vincent van Gogh. He’s so clever and charismatic that we all believe it too.

One lunchtime, as I’m walking down a corridor to Peter Webb’s lecture, I hear very accomplished, live improvised jazz piano music floating out of a room. I slip in and watch the back of the person playing. She has shoulder-length, poker-straight, silky light brown hair and moves sensuously as she plays. Her back muscles ripple as she moves, emphasised by her tight blue-and-white striped T-shirt. I’m entranced, but I have to leave before she stops playing to go to the lecture. Later in the day I see her in the canteen, from the back. I watch her, I want to know what her face is like. She turns. She’s a boy. His name is Jan, Jan Hart. Wow. I go after him even though I find out he has a girlfriend, Sue, who is at art school in Bournemouth. I don’t usually do that. (
She’s forgiven me, she’s very cool, I still know her
.) He introduces me to jazz – Mingus, Coltrane, and also Loudon Wainwright III. He lives in a shared house with a bunch of older, bearded guys. They’re middle-class, very political and earnest, no sense of humour. They think I’m stupid because I’m not very confident or articulate.

Jan, who turned out to be a boy

One weekend Jan takes me to Bournemouth, his hometown, to meet his family and friends. We visit Robert Fripp, the guitarist from King Crimson. I’m excited to meet him because I have seen him live and have his record
In the Court of the Crimson King
, and this will be the first time I’ve met a real musician in his home, as someone’s friend. Jan and I walk into the front room, to find Fripp surrounded by a group of young people. He looks up and, without smiling, asks Jan, ‘Where’s Sue?’ Then he looks straight at me and says, ‘You shouldn’t have broken up with Sue, Sue was great, much better.’ He doesn’t speak to me, or look at me again.

I’m broke, so to supplement my grant I get a job working behind the bar at the Sundown, a massive music venue in Edmonton. During the week there are underage discos, the kids fuck on the floor with a huge crowd around them egging them on. It’s animalistic. At the weekend, live bands play. All the bar staff are excited because Rod Stewart and the Faces are playing next week.

We’re not allowed to serve people from the side of the bar, that bit’s for the glass collectors to put the empty glasses on. Whilst the Faces are playing, this sleazy-looking older guy keeps calling out to me and bugging me to serve him from there, so he can push ahead of the queue. I tell him I can’t serve him from there, and he says, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ ‘I don’t give a fuck who you are,’ I answer. He storms off and gets the manager of the Sundown. Turns out he is a big cheese from the Faces’ entourage. Wants me sacked. The Sundown manager suggests I make myself scarce for the rest of the evening. ‘Go and watch the show and come back tomorrow night,’ he says. So I hang out backstage with my friend Mac who does the lighting. Mac says I can stay in his little lighting room with his friend, a guy called Liam, whilst he sorts something out. The minute Mac leaves, Liam starts trying to touch me. He pushes himself up against me, he knows I can’t leave the room, he’s heard the whole story. I’m always being touched by boys, in the street, in clubs and pubs, even though I haven’t invited them to touch me or hardly know them, that’s just the way it is, but this time I feel trapped, no one will hear me if it gets out of hand when I tell him to fuck off. I know it’s a bit risky but I reckon it’s the lesser of two evils, so I open the door and run off.

I walk up a few flights of stone stairs and open a door. I poke my head into the room, looking around for Mac. It’s the green room, full of people drinking and talking. The Faces’ Big Cheese turns round, whisky in hand, and clocks me. ‘Get her!’ He charges at me with a couple of bouncers in his wake. I slam the door shut. I have a split second to decide what to do; I can either run upstairs or run downstairs. I think,
The most obvious thing to do is run downstairs, that’s what everyone would do
, so I run upstairs. I hear the Big Cheese and the bouncers go thundering down the stairs as I hotfoot it up. I feel quite clever until the stairs run out and I’m facing the door to the roof. I rattle the door handle, it’s locked. I hear a man shout, ‘She must have gone up!’ They’re baying for blood now, excited by the chase. I hear them charging up the stairs puffing and snorting like a herd of buffalo. There’s nowhere for me to go. I stand quivering in the corner, a trapped wildebeest awaiting my fate. They’re rough, they grab hold of me and pull and push me down the stairs. I’ve not been handled like this before, I’m frightened. I think they’re probably going to beat me up. Something wet is running down my legs. I’ve pissed myself. Now I know you can piss yourself with fear. Another life experience clocked up.

The men, their hands all over me, drag me to the back door of the venue, they’ll probably beat me up outside. One of them pushes down the safety bar and I’m ejected with force, into the yard. A gaggle of waiting Faces fans lift up their autograph books hopefully, then freeze, pens in mid-air as I’m tossed into their midst. The door slams shut behind me. Well, at least they didn’t kill me. It’s Christmas Eve by the way. I’m on the streets of Edmonton, no money, no coat, piss dripping down my legs, on Christmas Eve. I start to walk. I start to cry. Then I hear shouting and cursing in the distance, a gang of skinheads is bearing down on me.
Oh no. I’m dead. Raped and then dead
. The skinheads catch sight of me and start whooping with delight. Bait! I stand still and let them come. The two at the front of the posse lunge forwards and push their faces into mine. ‘Hang on a minute,’ says one of them. He flaps his hand to shush the rest of them. ‘She’s crying.’

The gang go quiet and gather round me. They want to know what’s happened. I tell them. They say they’re going to go to the Sundown and kill the Big Cheese. I dissuade them from doing that. Then one of them suggests taking me to the nearby police station. I’m escorted by a gang of skinheads to the police station. The policeman on duty looks at them suspiciously. ‘Are they bothering you, love?’ ‘No, no, they’ve been very helpful.’ I thank them and they swagger off, shouting, ‘Merry Christmas, darlin’!’ The policeman drives me home.

I often dress in flares or platform boots, the glam-rock style of dressing, as a bit of a joke at Hornsey. Glam rock is much more knowing and ironic now. I also wear clothes that reference the skinhead movement, which is the opposite of what art school is about. I like to provoke a reaction. Some days I’ll wear a two-tone mohair tonic coat and opaque white tights, black patent brogues and a grey mini skirt because everyone else is dressed hippyish. I wouldn’t ever wear the mullety hairstyle that girl skinheads have though; I still like to have pretty hair.

I finish my foundation course, then I do a year of a graphic design degree, then I drop out. I didn’t have the courage to apply for the fine art course, which is what I really wanted to do. I chose graphic design because I thought it would suit my style of drawing – quite cartoony and stylised – but the course is all about typesetting, not creasing the paper and not getting smudges on anything. It’s the worst place in the world for a messy person like me. I ask the college if I can take a sabbatical year, get my portfolio together and then reapply for a different course. They agree and assign me a mentor, a nice bloke who works in admin at the college. I get a bar job at Dingwalls in Camden Town to see me through the year: I want to immerse myself in music and it’s the best small venue in London.