Still Standing: The Savage Years (5 page)

‘I don’t know what sort of dirty bitches must work here,’ Hush said, and as if on cue a wiry little woman with short, badly dyed blonde hair swung the curtain back and hurried into the room. Quick as a flash Hush spun round from the mirror to face her. ‘Hello,’ he gushed. ‘Can we help you?’

She looked at Hush with his gloss-white eyebrows for a moment and then, shaking her head in disbelief, she plonked the carrier bag she was holding on the sofa next to me.

‘Well, I’m getting changed in here, love,’ she said, taking her denim jacket off. ‘I don’t know what your excuse is.’

Folding her jacket neatly and putting it on the floor, she stood up and looked around the room.

‘Since when did they ’ave drag on in ’ere?’ she asked, looking at the various costumes spread about the place. ‘They’ve never had drag on here, never.’ She couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d walked in and found the English National Ballet warming up for
The Nutcracker
.

‘It was a misunderstanding over the phone, we’re called the Playgirls and the governor took us for strippers,’ I explained.

‘Well you would with a name like that,’ she said, kicking her trainers off. ‘What’s your real names then?’

‘I’m Paul and this is David.’ It always sounded odd calling Hush by his real name.

‘I’m Kath.’

‘Oh, the one who does the lesbian act with Brenda?’

‘How do you know that?’ she asked, suddenly on the defensive.

‘It’s written on that sign over there.’

‘Oh I see,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘We only do that if there’s a lock-in. We pass the hat round first, make sure that they pay up and then writhe about a bit on the floor squeezing each other’s tits and sticking our tongues out pretending to go down each other, daft stuff like that. It’s a right laugh really, that lot out there think they’re watching the real thing, but then what would men know?’

She emptied the carrier bag out on to the sofa. It contained a brush, lipstick, a pair of red patent-leather high heels and a jar of Brylcreem.

‘I don’t give blow jobs to the punters though, like some of the other girls,’ she continued, pulling her T-shirt over her head, ‘or let them touch me fanny. A bit of fake lezzy is as far as I’ll go.’

From behind me I heard Hush let out a throaty exclamation, the type that Lady Bracknell would employ to register horror at a faux pas made by a socially unsuitable dinner guest.

‘I only work this place because it’s local, it’s right rough,’ she said, attacking her hair with the brush with such violence I winced. ‘It’s only fifteen minutes on the bus and the girl next door minds the kids for me.’ She was bending over now, viciously dragging the brush over the back of her head as if
her brittle little tufts of hair were a luxurious waist-length mane. ‘I can’t feed three kids with what I get off the social, y’know, and this is great because the money’s not bad and the hours suit.’

‘What do you wear?’ I asked as there was no obvious sign of a costume in her carrier bag. Where was the evening gown with a zip up the side for easy removal? And the elbow-length white satin gloves that she could slowly peel off? The tassles?

‘What I’ve got on,’ she said, scooping out a blob of Brylcreem and running it through her hair.

Hush turned around from the mirror to take a good look at Kath. Her tiny breasts were encased in a cheap black lace bra, and a faded denim miniskirt revealing mottled bare legs and the red patent-leather shoes were the sum total of her ensemble. Hush, who believed everything should have a sequin on it, was far from impressed.

‘You haven’t given yourself much to take off, have you?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘That’s just it,’ she explained, slapping a bit more Brylcreem on. ‘There’s no point wearing a lovely dress like yours. I’d love to, like, but it’d be a waste of time. The aim of the game is to get your kit off as soon as poss. They only want to see tit and minge.’

Hush made the Lady Bracknell noise again.

Phil, entering with a tray of drinks and complaining of the time it took to get served, felt obliged to ask Kath if she wanted a drink. To his relief Kath said she didn’t drink at work as she had to pick her eldest up from school later on and didn’t want any of the other mothers smelling booze on her breath. They had a low enough opinion of her as it was.

This image of poverty-stricken domesticity was clashing with the idea of a stripper’s life that I had fixed in my
consciousness, thanks to their portrayal in the various Hollywood movies I’d watched on the television. If Kath was an example of the modern stripteaser then real life was something very different indeed.

The second stripper arrived, dragging a shopping basket on wheels behind her and asking, just as Kath had done, ‘What the hell is drag doing on in here?’

She wasn’t as friendly as Kath, glaring at us suspiciously, obviously resenting our presence in the room.

‘D’ya mind if I go on first?’ she asked Kath ignoring us completely. ‘I’ve got another job at Panama Joe’s and I’m a bit pushed for time.’

Her name turned out to be Holly. She was younger than Kath, probably in her late twenties, with long blue-black hair. Her face, which seemed to be set in a permanent scowl, was slathered in bright orange foundation and her wary little eyes were rimmed with thick black eyeliner.

‘D’ya want me to move some of our stuff?’ I asked her, trying to be friendly.

‘Don’t bother,’ she grunted, ‘I won’t be in here that long.’

Hush turned from the mirror, took a long drag from his Consulate and hissed as he expelled the plume of smoke. He didn’t like her. Neither did I for that matter.

From the shopping trolley she unpacked a pair of thigh-length PVC boots, some dubious PVC underwear and a black plastic mac. Quickly removing her street clothes, she put it all on. Hush and I discreetly busied ourselves with wigs, trying to avert our eyes as she bent over and stepped into the PVC drawers, the tight elasticated waist digging into her flesh and enhancing her plump little belly.

The landlord came in to collect our cassette tapes of music and sort out the running order.

‘Here’s my tape,’ Holly said, producing a cassette from the pocket of her mac. ‘It’s AC/DC’s “Soul Stripper”; you can’t get it in the UK,’ she added grandly. ‘It was only released in Australia. I got a copy when I was working over there last year.’

‘Right, I’d best get it played then,’ the landlord said, totally uninterested, vanishing behind the curtain and back to the bar to start the show.

After a blast of deafening feedback from the sophisticated sound arrangement and the obligatory two taps with the fingers on the head of the microphone, we heard him introduce Holly.

‘One two, one two, testing. Right, shut the fuck up and get your hands together for the first of our strippers today. Let’s hear it for a right little cock-stiffener … the fabulous Holly!’

A couple of half-hearted cheers and a few wolf whistles were followed by an expectant silence.

‘Put the fuckin’ tape on,’ Holly shouted from behind the curtain, causing Hush to make the Lady B noise for the third time that afternoon.

The music started and Holly stomped out on to the stage in her boots and plastic mac like a stormtrooper, to no audible reaction from her audience.

I watched through the curtain as she went through her routine. Within seconds the mac was off and she was down on all fours, grinding her backside furiously at the men gathered close to the stage. They were staring transfixed by Holly’s gyrating posterior as if they’d never seen one before.

After a bout of this bum-grinding she stood up, deftly whipping her bra off to reveal a pair of pendulous breasts that she started to squeeze and play with. It looked a bit painful to
me, especially when she pushed them together, but the men leaned forward like dogs on heat to get a better look. You could smell as well as feel the tension in the room.

‘She thinks she’s somethin’, that one,’ Kath sniffed, scratching her thigh. ‘She might have big tits but have you seen the way they hang? They’re like bloodhounds’ ears. Mine might be little but they’re still as pert as a fifteen-year-old’s. Feel them,’ she said to Hush, ‘they’re like little grapefruits.’

Lady B was working overtime today.

Out on stage Holly was on all fours again waving the arse in the air, only this time she was minus her knickers. The men’s faces were masks of intense concentration as they focused on Holly’s private parts. Absently they took the occasional swig from their pints, seemingly unaware of doing so as their eyes hungrily devoured what they wanted but couldn’t have. This wasn’t what I considered stripping, this was a grubby sex show in a dirty little pub for the benefit of a gang of sex-hungry men, and I began to regret persuading the landlord to let us go on.

Holly’s ‘act’ lasted no more than twenty minutes, after which she gathered up her discarded bits of costume and strode casually back into the dressing room.

‘How did that go?’ I asked, trying to show a bit of the supportive camaraderie I imagined should exist among performers flung together in a dressing room.

‘I couldn’t give a fuck,’ she snapped with her back to me, unzipping her boots and slipping into her jeans. ‘Why would I?’

Within minutes she was dressed, the shopping trolley packed and out of the dressing room, and at the bar collecting her money.

‘She’s a miserable cow, that one,’ Kath said, watching her
leave. ‘Now let me get in that mirror for a sec so I can put a bit of lippy on.’

I didn’t watch Kath’s act, I felt I’d got to know her and it didn’t seem right to watch her out there without any clothes on. Instead I went through the elaborate process of putting on my opening outfit.

Our opening number was a recording of ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ sung by an act called the Barry Sisters to an oriental arrangement. Hush had decided that this would be a good excuse to get dragged up as geishas and spent a couple of days on his Singer running up two kimonos complete with a roll of sponge on the back covered in satin to represent the obi. To complete this look, he said, we just had to have the traditional heavily ornamented rolled black wigs. These he’d had made by a company who produced wigs for shop window mannequins; they were rock hard, huge and uncomfortable to wear. Mine was too big for me and kept slipping down my face, and the glittery knitting needles hung with strands of sequins to represent jewelled ornaments constantly fell out. They also stank of powerful fumes from where Hush kept touching them up with spray paint to retain their black lacquered gloss, and after a particularly heavy session with the spray can you’d take the damn thing off and find a black line across your forehead. Under these kimonos we wore cheongsams, tight satin dresses with mandarin collars and splits up either side made popular by Suzie Wong. I did point out to Hush as he was making them that the cheongsam was Chinese, not Japanese, and that we were confusing our cultures somewhat but he said that no one would notice and if they did then tough titty.

My cheongsam was designed as a strip dress and held together with Velcro. Underneath I wore an oversized
G-string that I had to pin to my tights to stop them falling down and a matching blue-sequinned padded bra trimmed with a length of white fringing that was also attached by Velcro. The fringing stuck like flies to flypaper until after a while it became frayed and tatty and hung from the bra like the trim on a junk-shop lampshade. Underneath this bra I had two curtain tassels stuck to my nipples with double-sided Sellotape which I would attempt to twirl. Occasionally, much to my amazement, I would actually succeed.

Once I managed to disentangle myself from the mess of Velcro as I stripped to the strains of ‘Fan-Tan Fanny’, I’d stand there in just the tassels and G-string with no shame at all. I’m grateful that no photographs of me in this tasteful creation exist.

Kath came off stage clutching her skirt and bra to her naked body in an attempt at modesty and gawped at the two six-foot-six geisha girls standing in front of her and taking a slug from their pint pots.

‘You look fabulous,’ she gasped. ‘I’m going to stay and watch you.’

When the landlord announced that there was going to be a drag act on next a groan went up and some of the men began to finish their drinks and drift out. Those that remained were simply not interested and, as predicted, the act died on its proverbial arse. Bored with this pair of nancy boys poncing around when they should be salivating over naked female flesh, a group of lads at a table in the back started to send us up, their heckles neither good-natured nor encouraging.

It was during the ‘Saved’ number that the normally placid Hush finally cracked. Leaving the stage, he strode purposefully across the pub in full Salvation Army drag, lifted the table they were sat around, which was littered with pint pots
both full and empty, and dropped it on them. One of the men, an angry-looking skinhead, lunged at him, his face contorted with rage. Hush stood his ground and quite calmly and with little effort gave the skinhead a punch that sent him crashing into the fruit machine.

‘Who’s next then, lads?’ he asked, rounding on the rest of the group.

Laughing nervously, they escaped from the rubble of broken glass and bar table and slid out through the door muttering threats as they left.

‘Right, you,’ Hush bellowed, turning his attention to the landlord. ‘You can turn that tape off this instant. We won’t be going back on and if we don’t get paid in full I’m going to put every one of your fucking windows in. Savage, get in there and pack the bags, wench!’

Phil and I hastily packed everything up while Hush continued to tell the landlord in no uncertain terms what would happen if he didn’t hand over the fee. Sensible man, having probably never encountered a psychotic six-foot-nine Salvationist hell-bent on ripping his bar apart, he handed over the thirty-quid fee without complaint.

Due to our having to beat such a hasty retreat we travelled home in our Sally Army outfits, stopping at a garage for some much-needed petrol and, as we were in the money again, a late lunch of a cold jumbo sausage roll and a bag of crisps washed down with a can of Coke.