And the face: the face at the window has got me unsettled.
I’m vulnerable. I see that now. It’s like my body just needs to be started off, and it stays pumped full of adrenaline. Anxiety. Panic.
Sheila’s right, I have a panic-shaped hole in the middle. Fill it full of anything.
Q
Quim
THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE to go. What’s Q?
I wish there was something else to say. What is there?
There’s only one thing.
Becca, on her big birthday weekend up in Mal’s northern stomping ground, her arms flung out, ten-to-two, standing in her bra and nothing else. No pants. Specifically, particularly, explicitly no pants.
‘I’m Queen Quim!’
I look at her, and I look away. I look again and I can’t even quite get what it is I’m looking at. It doesn’t register.
There it is, all things considered. The most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen.
I look at Mal, who’s looking at us with this expression of fixed amusement. Laura’s screaming and laughing, standing there in her black catsuit and cats’ ears.
Sometimes, you know, when you see the worst of everything lined up before you, you’ve just got to go for it. See how badly you can crash it.
Push your body to the limit. Sometimes, sometimes.
So I stand here shivering in the stairwell of a nightclub somewhere — I’ve no fucking idea where, or how to get back to the hotel — in some strange northern town. And I’m tripping. Tripping it out. Tripping you, tripping my health, tripping my future out of my system. Give up, give up. And it’s been nice and easy to surrender responsibility to Mal and Laura and Becca. If I shouldn’t be doing this, it’s up to them to tell me.
And anyway, one trip’s not going to kill me. It’s the general pattern that has to improve. And that can start tomorrow. If I want it to.
Becca strikes the pose just long enough to register for an eternity, her beaming white teeth in a Hollywood smile.
‘My knickers didn’t match my bra,’ she proclaims, ‘and it’s my best bra.’
I can’t look at it. It’s like the sun. A dark sun. Much hair, note. I don’t want to have seen it. I want to be a gentleman. And now she’s away, her buttocks revolving through the curtain and into the club beyond, followed by Laura.
What the fuck? I say to Mal.
‘It’s a fetish night,’ he says to me, and I’m focusing on his mouth by my eye. ‘They didn’t want to let us in, because it’s fetish gear only. So I struck a deal with them. We can go in if we wear one item of clothing only.’
Tonight’s been weird, I say.
‘You heard Becca,’ he says. ‘We’ve come here to find action, so let’s dive in.’
Ah yes, that’s why I’m here. Becca. You wouldn’t want to disappoint a girl on her birthday, would you? I haven’t seen any action for months, so let’s have some fun!
Becca the persuader.
Persuasive enough that me and Mal are now in a small side room with a wall of coathooks, and he’s throwing triangles as he wrenches his legs out of his trousers. He’s hopping, and talking.
‘Come on, man, it’s down to one item of clothing or less.’ He looks closely at me. ‘Are you with me, fella?’
Mm? Myeah.
‘We’re the lucky ones,’ he’s saying, pointing at my over-skinny legs. ‘One item of clothing, so we can go in there in our pants. Not like Becca, eh? Hats off to Becca, man.’
Pants off to Queen Quim.
‘Ha! Yeah. Pants off.’
The cool air shifts around me and tingles, my skin unused to expanse and exposure. I mean, it feels kind of — good. Feels a little bit magical. We descend the short flight of stairs into the colour-flushed club. A comfortable enshrouding darkness is flushed with primary colour lights in sequence, slow and simple. Sub-bass hip-hop throbs through, mellow, just nice. But, Jesus, what is this place? My eyes skip from one zone to the next, not wanting to rest, wanting to take in the general effect, follow the light pulse, illuminating now this group of people, now that group, now this. There are clusters upon clusters of squashy bodies, one or two completely nude, great folds of flesh, ruched up on the vertical from bumcrack to cranium, pleats of flab hanging down and out.
‘Make yourself at home, fella,’ says Mal, disappearing off. ‘I’m going to see a few people.’
He has that look. He’s on dealer duty tonight. That must be why they let us in. Got to keep the clients happy.
I wander around, my brain sloshing in my head. I take in the scene of merry carnage in front of me, pasty arses juddering as they rearrange themselves. The baldness, the red pates, now green pates, and the veins in their temples wriggling and throbbing, unembarrassed. I’ve got to steer myself away from this grimness, Britishness. Ugh. I don’t want to be here.
Eyes on alert to seek a familiar face, a family face, Laura: Laura’s there. There in her catsuit and cat ears. Almost familiar, switching deep red now green, her shiny stretched skin.
How did you know to wear a catsuit? I say.
She tips a wink at me. ‘I may have had a tip-off,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it brilliant? Look at everyone! It’s amazing.’
And I’m looking around, and when I look back at her she’s still talking and — how long have we been talking? And her lipstick lips are all in my face, and she’s talking and talking hard, her voice riding in and out of the bass beat.
And now I’m talking too, and all the words I’m saying are about you. I can feel myself talking fast, pouring out my problems, but the weight of them isn’t getting any less. Laura now, and Mal now, they’re hearing the sounds that I’m making, but my words aren’t conjuring the shapes on their faces. Maybe they’re not coming out right. Maybe I’m here just speaking in tongues.
‘She’s led you on,’ says Laura, ‘I know women like that, they try to control you. Make you into something you’re not. They’re all over you, they want to take over your life.’
No, no, it’s not like that at all.
Laura’s head nods rhythmically before me, butting in her version of the truth, like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it’s not true, it’s not true.
‘You want to watch women like that,’ says Mal. ‘They shit you up, and then they nail you down.’
And here’s Becca, chilled Becca, swimming up in the dark.
An arm slips easily around my waist. It’s her arm.
‘Are you good?’
Yeah, yeah.
She looks deeply into me and her smile grows calmer, her eyes kinder. I can feel the dizziness rising.
‘Come here,’ she says, ‘come and give the birthday girl a dance.’ And she backs away and takes up my hands again, and we slowly dance, there, at arm’s length in the middle of the room, as the bass pulses around us, through the air, through the floor, through everyone in this place.
‘You miss her,’ she says.
Yeah.
And my throat is closed. And the tears — there are tears.
Becca places her forearm casually high up on my shoulder, and rests her fingertips against my neck and ear, and we dance, close.
That was the thing, the Becca thing: I’m Queen Quim!
I’m aware, I’m so aware of what’s going on down below in the blue light. I have it about me now to stand discreetly clear. Wish not to scrunch up against the Queen’s quim. But the Queen’s not ashamed. She holds me close, gently close, unabashed.