A Real Man in My Life Ch. 02

"Let's start to jam some songs shall we? There's enough of us that still play to get things going," he strummed his guitar, the same Fender Stratocaster he'd used all those years ago. He started a simple slow twelve bar blues, "In E guys!" he shouted over the sound of his amp.

He was soon joined by a slow patter from Marty, adding to the atmos. Then there was a familiar bad tempered modulated thump from Gray the bass player and 'The Boyz' started to pull it together.

Gray stood up from where he'd been sat on his amp and walked to one of the mikes,

"Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself... Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself... You say I'm spendin' my money on other women, While you're getting' your money from someone else..."

It was a great slow start and Tom came in with some lead breaks, and before I knew it Elaine, Deedee and I were stood up around our two mikes and moving to the rhythm in complete syncopation just as we had all those years ago, only we were now more woman with more interesting moves. We giggled and laughed and in Deedee's words, 'shook what our Mothers' gave us'.

Tom looked across to us and gave a thumbs up; he leaned across to Gray and the tone and pace changed, the bass slid into a well-known riff, albeit one we never sang in the old days, and Tom sang the first line of the chorus and we responded in time, tone and pitch perfect, as if those years were days.

"All you wanna do it ride around Sally,"

"RIDE SALLY RI-IDE!"

And away we went with Tom reaching up to the rafters with "One o'these lonely mornin's... you gonna be... wipin' those weepin eeeeyees!"

It was fantastic and we all got back into the buzz of making music with other people again.

We did some of our favourites from the time, with the promise we'd be joined after lunch by some of the guys from the brass and string sections who'd been in another room.

"Darlings!" came a voice. We all smiled, it was going to get much better.

We all stared up on the main stage and at the keyboards. Stood behind the thing was everyone's favourite band member, another Trade School boy Colin Raymond, or as he was known 'Ray' and latterly as his sexuality became apparent 'Gay Ray'. Like the other guys Ray had improved with age and he stood behind his beloved keyboard and raised his hands.

"Hello darlings!" he called from his podium that his old mate Mark had put him on, "Girlies!" he shouted in delight, adding, "and the gorgeous Deedee! Looking hotter than ever sweetie." Diane was the only girl we ever knew that had made out with Ray; it hadn't got past the snogging at the back of the stage point, but she was the one and the only. He grinned and looked across the stage, "And there, who would believe it, the coffee making expert himself, Gray-ham!"

"Raymondo," Gray called to him, "about bloody time you old queen."

"Gray-ham, you tease, some of us work for a living big boy," Ray beamed, and then played some tinkling intro's on the piano and, as Mark has set him up a microphone as well, he started to sing,

"It's a God awful small affair, for the girl with the mousy hair..." and before we knew it we were all singing about sailors fighting in the dance hall, and looking them at cavemen go. It was great.

We stopped for another break and Tom started to write songs on the white board. We all threw in the songs we'd liked doing, or fancied doing now.

'Caroline' had to be first, and Mark said that he'd arranged for Caroline's eight year old son to be involved. Parents all, there was a long 'awwwwwwwww' at that announcement. Next was 'the boys are back in town', some Beach Boys, 'one step beyond' and 'Baggy trousers' of course. We were from the south of England technically 'south' we supposed so 'Sweet home Alabama' was the nearest we got to country music, and AC/DC, 'you shook me all night long' -- another song we were banned from playing all those years ago. We started shouting songs across the room, part serious part humorous, but now of course we had the music that had happened since we stopped playing and 'sex on fire' made the list, as did 'Don't look back in anger'.

"Oi Ray!" shouted Gray, "we so nearly forgot mate!"

He started a thumping rhythm that was instantly recognisable as soon as Ray joined in on the keyboard as the intro to 'Waterloo' by Abba and Elaine and I stepped and shouted, as we had all those years before,

"My My! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender..."

We were still 'long blonde' and 'shoulder length brunette' with nice bums, and we both did the dance we stole from watching the original Eurovision performance on video all those years ago, but our voices had changed a bit so Ray and Tom worked out a different key and Abba joined the play list.

We tried a few more before settling on 'Waterloo', 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' and either 'Does your mother know' or 'Super Trooper' before 'thank you for the music'. We took a break for coffee and we chatted about what to sing next. It had been so brilliant so far.

Gray looked across the hall straight at me, "Let's have some Fleetwood Mac," he said, "hang on, how's this..."

With that he played the long drawn out music best remembered as the theme to 'Formula one' on the BBC, the mid-section of Fleetwood Mac's the Chain. Before we knew it the guys were playing along.

"Come on Nats," he said using my old nickname, "you'll piss it!" His smile was infectious. I stepped up to the mike and closed my eyes; the words came back to me without even thinking...

"Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise, Running in the shadow, damn your love, damn your lies, And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain..."

When it got to the bass solo Gray came forward, as he had all those years before. He had a huge grin on his face and his fingers flew up and down the neck of his shiny black guitar. At last Tom and his squealy guitar joined in and we were drummed to the crescendo,

"RUNNIN' IN THE SHADOWS!!"

The girls and guys harmonised,

"Chaaaaains keep us together..."

As the rock took us Gray and I were face to face again, as if the last twenty two years had never happened. He mouthed the words to me as I sang them, even though I knew them by heart despite not having sung them in that long.

The music slowed and the band gradually stopped playing leaving me the final line, "Ruuuuunnin' in the shaadooooooooowsssssss..."

The cameraman held the camera on me and I stopped red faced. "Shit," said Tom forgetting the camera, "That song is IN!!"

We did a few more songs; my solo had suggested that Deedee and Elaine do the same. Deedee sang her best one, Bruce Springsteen's 'Because the night' the way Patti Smith had done it. But in the intervening years, her voice had mellowed and matured, added to this was her dynamite figure, her bottom half wrapped in denim, her top shaped and cleavage by a stringy halter top. She positively growled into her microphone like Patti, then belted out far more melodiously depending on what the line was saying. She looked really sexy.

"Take me now baby here as I am, Pull me close try and understand Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is the banquet on which we feed"

We joined in where necessary and ran through a couple of times for the boys to get the music in their heads.

"Because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to us..."

It was great, and joined 'the chain' on the whiteboard.

Elaine sang her rendition of 'Will you' by Hazel O'Connor, and she was pitch perfect, just enough to bring us down from the last two rock and raunch numbers, and allowed the brass players to stretch their lungs a bit.

While we were stopped for coffee, Tom and Ray were playing around with sounds on the piano, when Ray shouted a quite effeminate 'Ooooooooh yes' and played an intro we all knew.

"Each morning I get up I cry a little, can barely stand on my feet,"

We girls come in next

"Take a look at yourself,"

Ray beamed across at us, "I look in the mirror and I cry lord what you doin' to meeee, I get down on my knees and begin to pray, til the tears they run down from my eyes, Oh somebody (somebody) somebody (somebody) Can anybody find meeeee, somebody to love."

We were all pretty speechless after that one and we all knew the gig was going to be fucking good.

The coffee machine had been filled up and as we all partook, Deedee walked over to the muscular bass player and laid an arm on his.

Diane had become a late teenage party animal that once freed of her Catholic school upbringing became a heavy metal/Goth chic and drank too much and smoked some strange things. Through economic necessity she changed her job and was no longer hanging around with her death metal mates and met a really nice guy that worked at the same place. They lived together for a while and got married after a few years together. All was well until she fell in with her old group of mates initially for a one off get together that became every Friday.

After a few pissed up, extra-marital dalliances, the last of which had her and an anonymous partner in court for indecency, her husband divorced her.

She slipped off of our radar and into a bit of a downward spiral and during one of her drunken shags she fell pregnant. She couldn't remember the man's name but later confessed it was the best thing to happen to her and she stopped drinking, and became an almost model single mum to her daughter, named Natalie Elaine 'after the two nicest girls I ever knew'; sober she may now have been but she still had a look in her eye that said she would throw the big man to the floor and fuck his brains out given half a chance and a sniff of the barmaids apron.

"Gray-Gray?" she purred, "Seeing as you're all here, I suppose 'The Boyz' will be doing Duran Duran won't you?" They used to play a funk rock version of 'Girls on film' and ALL the girls, whichever school we were from, would scream our way through it!

"We're not all here though Dee," he said grinning down into her face, "Parks is missing."

Fuck; Parker hadn't been one of 'The Boyz' as such, and he was nowhere near as good musically as the other guys but looked sexy (to us fifteen and sixteen year olds). Parker would sing the Simon Le Bon part extremely well; his impression of Suggs, the lead singer of Madness, was also uncanny and along with our brass section and one of his mates on vocals we did many of their songs too.

Deedee looked across at me; she'd been a Bridesmaid at our wedding and had noticed I wasn't wearing a ring and had asked about it.

"Sorry Darling," she said to me, "forgot."

Just in time the school caretaker appeared and said that we needed to start packing away, as he needed to lock up for five. We did that loaded the various pieces of equipment into cars and cupboards as necessary. Graham was driving a Land Rover Discovery!

Deedee, Elaine and I swapped glances, especially when he lifted huge amplifiers and speakers like he had in the old days, not seeming to break into a sweat or anything.

Finally Elaine could take it no more, "So are you still in the security business Gray?" she grinned, "Working out like that I guess you wouldn't have trouble getting money from people!"

"Oh, don't hang around doors any longer Elaine, honest. Don't even own a Crombie anymore." The full length black wool Crombie coat was, and probably still is, the winter must-have for doormen in the UK. He pushed the large under-stage doors closed with his legs. "I must confess I do recover people's money on odd occasions, it does involve court orders but it doesn't have me door-stepping people any longer that's for sure."

From the stage where he sat talking proper music with Tom, Ray shouted, "Don't listen girlies, he makes coffee for people, nowhere classy like Starbucks or Café Nero or Costa, but he gets around."

We laughed, Gray looked up at Ray with a smirk, "one day Raymondo, you'll be pleased I 'make coffee'."

Most of us were parents with families that needed feeding, so most headed off. For me, I was able to stand nattering with the few left.

I saw that Gray was chatting with Ray again, and Tom and Mark were joining in with the laughter. I just felt drawn to them, to one with the sweetest smile and the fittest body...

"You boys just don't change do you!" I said moving close to them, putting my arms through Graham's and Ray's.

"What you don't know honey is we get together four of five times a year," said Ray.

"Really?" I said.

"Yes," said Gray, "We've been pub gigging every year since we left school."

"I thought so," I said squeezing both of their arms and leaning against Gray, "You guys sounded too good to have just started jamming all of a sudden."

"We always sound good darling, I mean just look at us, we're gorgeous."

I leaned over and kissed his cheek, "Always said you were, Ray-Ray."

Mark laughed, until a fortnight Saturday fella's?"

"No worries Mark," said Gray, "You want dropping off Tom?"

"No thanks mate, Kay is shopping in town, meeting her in Costa in fifteen minutes."

"Costa?" grinned Ray, "you can get him some with employee discount Gray-ham."

"Yeeeeeees Ray," sighed Graham with a grin, "and I suppose you want me to buy you a skinny latte so you don't get fat don't you, you bent bastard."

"Gray-ham, you romantic old fool you. OK, seeing as you're offering, coming darling?" he squeezed my arm.

I looked at Ray and Graham, and then Tom, I had nothing else to do after all. "Seeing as it's you honey," I said. We arranged to all head over there so Mark could lock the school gates. Tom went with Gray while Ray came in my car and we chatted about what we were doing now.

Ray had gotten into The Trade School through a similar process as his best mate Graham and he left it with lots of qualifications aged eighteen apparently with no desire to do anything but play his piano.

He drove his mother mad but with nothing more than a large brandy glass for tips on his piano he had a dozen hotels, bars and restaurants that he could drop into when he liked, happy that he'd be fed, given drinks and could walk away with never less than £100 for his trouble, and that was for each gig, afternoon, evening or night.

After two years of this and a significant lump sum in the bank, he upped and moved to Bournemouth, reappearing three years later with a degree in Paramedic Science and could now be seen dashing across town in a yellow BMW estate car or Motorbike with blue lights and sirens going on his way to save lives.

We had both tried to settle down; he had no one long term in his life, while I explained about Parker getting older not wiser or nicer, and Ray asked how he could possibly have become more obnoxious that he was before. I laughed; Parker had tried to bully Ray a bit but was never successful because Ray was so quick and clever - besides which, Graham was his best mate and built like a brick shit house and wouldn't have anyone bad mouth or threaten his mates, any of them.

As 'matter of factly' as I could I asked about Graham and what had happened in his life. "He was married, but then they separated and then she died a while back, very sad," he looked at me with a huge grin, "Yes Darling Natalia, he's single if that's what you want to know!"

I blushed and made to bash him with my spare hand.

We parked, paid and displayed in the car park and walked into town, and we walked to the coffee shop arm in arm and we both remarked that it was just like the old days, a few of us heading into town after a practice session. Twenty years ago it was to McDonald's, this time it was for coffee and cakes. We didn't know what a latte was in those days or a cappuccino for that matter but today we did and a merry bunch we were, and Graham (true to what Ray had said) did indeed go up to the counter and get our order. The coffees were excellent, improved only by the cake and the company.

We chatted about the songs we wanted to sing and play, songs we'd sung and played in the old days and swapped memories of good shows, good music and great times.

Tom's wife appeared with two young children, and I was pleased to see it was another old friend from our school days and we chatted about the show.

"I'll be there," said his wife Katie with a beaming grin; like her husband she had gone through a similar transformation and the dumpy, curly-haired, spotty, bespectacled girl had become a curvy, ravishing yummy-mummy, with an arm lovingly around her husband, "I was hoping to come this afternoon but our babysitter let us down at the last minute."

Katie was a saxophone player, by far the best one in the band. Both she and Tom had been 'quite quiet' and I asked how they ended up together.

"What?" she said incredulously, "Tom? Quiet?"

Little did we know it, but they had been an item since year nine ostensibly as homework buddies which then moved on to a first date when most of us were still talking about first dates. She would later confess to me that they lost their virginity to each other after one of our final gigs after the exams and sixteenth birthdays, at least a year or more before most of us 'popular' kids did! They married once they'd finished University but had struggled to have children, their twins courtesy of in vitro fertilisation.

We finished our coffee and said our goodbyes, Graham asked Ray if he would be seeing Terry this week and Ray said he was. I could only guess that Terry was some mutual friend they both knew. It went quiet for a moment.

"For Christ's sake Gray-ham," said Ray, "Are you going to ask this gorgeous woman out on a date or what? She is a single girlie and making it extreeeeeeeemely obvious that she's a little bit into you, while you haven't been able to take your eyes off of her all day; so pull your finger out you straight knobber." He sighed as if this was the most important thing in his life.

"Thank you, you gay tosser," growled Graham; I wasn't sure how this was going to go down. Ray beamed, as if he lived for this kind of mischief, "Go visit the bro' you gay frickin' hooligan," beamed Graham back at him. Ray kissed my cheek, patted Graham on his vast shoulder, nodded towards me then skipped off, content that he created enough mayhem for one day leaving just Graham and I in the car park and our parking tickets running out of time as we stood there.

"He's quite right you know," said Graham looking a bit embarrassed, "I would very much like to take you out to dinner -- if you've nothing else on," he stopped, "and no one else you'd rather go with of course?"

"Why Graham," I said sounding way calmer than I felt, "I'd love to." I told him of my childcare issues, and he said he had similar.

"I'm sorry to hear about you breaking up with Parks," he said, "he was..."

"Yeah," I said with a smile, "he was; but it was a long time ago."

"Sorry to hear of your... loss Gray."

"Yeah, shit happens doesn't it!" he grinned

We agreed that we'd go out to dinner on the Saturday night after our next rehearsal. I asked what his preference was and what I should wear.

"I'll book a nice restaurant in the country," he said, "it's been a long time since I've taken a beautiful woman out to dinner, shall we go posh?"

I giggled, I didn't actually mean to, it just sort of slipped out in a teenage nervous throwback.

"Please," I said, already thinking of what to wear, and instantly of how hot I was going to look in my little black dress with my new undies. He gave me his mobile number and email address and said he'd 'friend' me on Facebook. "Would you like to meet for lunch one day this week?" I asked.

"Can't this week," he said looking really disappointed into the bargain which made me realise this wasn't an excuse not to see me, "working in London, might have a day to spare the week after. I'll text you." He grinned. We finished with what was meant to be one of those kisses where you touch cheeks, but for some reason our lips met and it was really nice.