Pisstory Pt. 08: Either/Or

"Alice Cooper?"

"Martin Amis."

Ahead of my audition as the band's singer, I was questioning Louise about the origin of Dead Babies' name. I'd assumed it was the song of that title from Alice C's 1971 album 'Killer', an early exemplar of the school of bad taste shock-rock invented virtually single-handed by Vince Furnier's alter ego (advocates of Joe Meek's earlier 'Jack the Ripper' can argue amongst themselves.)

I was wrong.

"It's a novel by this Amis chap about a bunch of decadent upper-class types spending a weekend getting wasted, shagging each other senseless, and generally trying to out-outrage each other. The phrase 'dead babies' is what they call anything they want to dismiss as sentimental or passé. I think that's the image the twins are going for. God, I wish they'd just fuck each other and get it out of their systems!

"What kind of stuff do they play?"

"Nothing at the moment. They're more an idea than an actual band. That's why they need you. Vaughn plays electric guitar in a screechy, strummy sort of way. Little Moll is actually rather good on the bass -- models herself on Tina Weymouth and is developing that singing bass style Talking Heads use so well. She once admitted to me she had perfect pitch and was quite a talented cellist as a kid. Before puberty descended, of course. And Vaughn. You'll meet Harriet, the girl they've roped in as drummer, tonight, though I've no idea if she can even hold a stick."

"What do they want to sound like?"

Louise shrugged, palms held up to the heavens.

"Who knows, darling? A melodic Fall? The Velvets sans smack? Talking Heads staring into the abyss? Joy Division with jokes? Anyone's guess, knowing those two. Jesus, why don't they get on and shag instead of inflicting their angst on the rest of us?"

Well, that put the kibosh on my intended audition piece. Leaving aside the twin facts that I'd never considered being in a band before, and even if I had it was very unlikely to have been School of Alice Cooper, I was nevertheless intrigued by the way art and music had crossed paths in the last few years, and I wanted to be part of it. I suppose I had the idea I'd be like John Lydon, trying out for the Sex Pistols by snarling Alice's "Eighteen" over the jukebox in Malcolm and Vivienne's shop, but there was my precedent gone. Still, Louise thought Molly played like Tina Weymouth. I could work with Talking Heads. And another idea was vaguely forming itself somewhere in the dingy boxrooms of my mind.

When I'd eventually woken up and convinced my mother it wasn't her fault she'd thought I was dead, I knew beyond doubt that I needed to get away permanently and start my adult life elsewhere. It wasn't her or Dad's fault -- it was just time. My perambulations round France may not have been as geographically expansive as I'd originally intended -- extending them across Europe had been part of the original plan -- but the gradual separation of my self as I was now from the one with which I'd started out was unarguable. There's no doubt I was traumatised by Alana's death, and it haunts me to this day, but everything that had happened before and after had decentred and called into question all my prior assumptions about the world. I'd learned things during my time away that I could never have anticipated. The nature of my sexual interests, obviously, but also a new curiosity about art in all its manifestations, and the kind of people inclined to produce it, bizarre, alien, and downright mad as they might appear.

First thing I did on that fourth day was go out and get a really conventional job, on a six-month temporary contract as a clerical officer with Her Majesty's Collector of Taxes. That would see me through to the beginning of the University year and keep my parents off my back till then. Next thing was to hit the charity shops and reequip my entire wardrobe with vintage clothes. My days of denim and plaid were over. I would become my own artwork. Yes, I was young and arrogant enough to really think that.

I phoned the number Louise had given me. She had one of those newfangled answering machines. "Don't despair, darling" it told me. "I'm probably toiling over a hot provocation at the studio. Try again later, leave a message, or hunt me down with drink and promises of hot sex. Unless you're the Inland Revenue, of course. If you are, I don't owe you anything."

Technically, of course, I was now the Inland Revenue. I wondered how she'd react when she found out. I was also fascinated to discover that she evidently lived somewhere other than the makeshift bedsit in her Camden loft. That made sense. Apart from anything else, the place had no toilet, no kitchen, and no phone.

"You are still coming Saturday?" she asked when I eventually got hold of her late that evening. It sounded like she'd been hunted down by someone with strong drink, or had done the hunting herself.

"I am. The Blitz, isn't it?"

"God no. That place has had it now it's all over the papers. Anyway, it's only on Tuesdays. I've got somewhere far better to show you. And thank God you're coming. Those vampire twins have been around my neck about you all week. They're both completely infatuated. You'd better be able to sing."

"I don't know that I can. I just said I'd try."

"Hmmm. I strongly expect you're going to end up as the filling in a sandwich whatever happens."

I didn't know what she meant. She told me.

"Bloody hell. Are you serious?" I'd have no objection to fucking Molly, strange as she was. But being fucked at the same time by Vaughn?

"Look upon it as an act of charity -- helping them shag each other without actually committing incest."

"I've never had a cock up my arse in my life!" I protested. "And to be honest I don't actually want one. I mean, I wouldn't know what to do."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion." She sniggered at the double-entendre. "If you like I could ask Ozzy to break you in. He'd love to, I'm sure!"

"Fuck, no!" If the size of Ozzy's penis was in proportion to the rest of his body I'd never walk again.

I hoped she was just joking, about Vaughn as much as Ozzy. And I was sure she'd originally said she was taking me to the Blitz.

We met at the studio on Saturday afternoon. She showed me what she described as 'the rushes' of the slideshow we'd recorded the previous week, which I found simultaneously outrageously arousing and profoundly embarrassing. It didn't help that at this stage in the production process she hadn't yet blanked out my face, so my every lascivious grimace, aggressive leer, and near-orgasmic grunt was clearly visible in the shots where I'd been facing the camera. She hadn't done anything about the soundtrack yet which, she explained, was designed to impose an 'alienation effect' and further separate the libidinous response of the viewer from their intellectual apprehension of the scene.

I had a raging hard-on all the time we were watching it. Louise had the sensitivity and decency to unzip my fly after about ten minutes, running her sharp polished fingernails lightly up and down the underside of my freed, formidably stiffened cock before going in for the kill with her mouth.

"Straddle my face, please! I haven't even wanked all week. I need to smell and taste your cunt."

"Happy to oblige." She hauled her skirt up round her waist and reversed herself over my mouth and nose, which I buried in the dampening, hot spiced crotch of her black silk knickers. She pulled my foreskin back, her hand going all the way down to rest gently on my horribly sensitive balls, and slid her hot mouth over my cock.

I pulled the wet knickers aside, the tang of her overwhelming me, and pushed my tongue as deep into her dark, wettening cunt as it would go. She pumped me. I pushed myself into her, cock and tongue. She began to grind her clit against my face as I sucked and licked at her, the overwhelming smell and flavour of her wetness the only thing I wanted. Her cunt tasted like home.

A rush of fluid as she came over me, followed by a hot squirt of bitter piss on my tongue, cascading down my throat. I shot six, seven, eight bursts of spunk into her mouth.

"My God" she said, coming up to mingle our cum and her piss between our tongues. "Those twins had better watch out. You'll drown them. Now, piss on my face."

The Market had closed by the time we left to walk to the Tube, which was a relief because I now knew she wasn't joking about Vaughn and Molly. The prospect was, I admitted to myself, actually quite titillating, but I needed some recovery time after just shooting a week's worth of cum into Louise. It occurred to me that this was the longest I'd gone without sex of any kind in three months.

We loaded up with booze in a pub opposite Camden Town Tube station.

"Buggered if I'm paying club prices" Louise said. "Even if the club owner is a friend."

"So where are we going? All I know is it isn't the Blitz, which I'm sure is what you told me originally."

"If I did, then I'm obviously losing my marbles, darling. New Romantics? Bunch of vapid poseurs with nothing new between them. Since the Daily Mirror and News of the World have been all over their miserable club night it's hardly worth even acknowledging. Oh, no. We're going somewhere much more interesting tonight."

That's all she'd tell me.

'Lavateria' is, apparently, a kind of flowering shrub popular among gardeners with a taste for semi-wild plants. I didn't know this at the time nor would I have cared, since the name had obviously been chosen because of its similarity to 'lavatory,' the club being partly located in a decommissioned set of 19th-century public toilets beneath a neglected traffic island just north of the Holloway Road. There were dusty wooden buckets of the stuff at either side of the staircase leading into the depths below the old 'Public Convenience' sign. A dingy Victorian pub was crumbling away next door, its baleful yellow lighting evoking gas lamps and horsedrawn cabs. Next to that, a three-storey stone building of indeterminate vintage announced its religious intent with an enormous neon cross on its roof.

"Where is there room for a dance floor in a place this size?" I said on the way past the wilting potted shrubs. "It's literally a toilet."

"Dancing isn't really the point" Louise squeezed my elbow. "But there's room. Matilda's a bit of a genius at design. Ah, speak of the Devil..."

At the bottom of the steps a small woman in a long black dress spattered with sequins had her back to us as she addressed three skinheads at least twice her size, one of whom glared over her shoulder at our approach.

"Don't set the girls on us" Louise pronounced loudly "We'll come quietly. Or as quietly as we can, anyway."

Matilda turned round, smiling. Her face was elaborately made up -- rouged, eyebrows painted, mouth a padded scarlet bow. There appeared to be glitter scattered over her hair.

"Louise! If you were a proper dyke I'd give you a job."

"Look at you, dear. No one would be able to tell if you didn't shout it from the rooftops. Anyway, I prefer impropriety."

They embraced. Who were 'the girls' I wondered.

Then I realised the three skins were all female.

At Louise's introduction Matilda kissed me on the cheek.

"Pretty boy" she said, approvingly. I felt myself blush. The crop headed girls sniggered.

"Now, now, you three weird sisters. Show some respect."

"Sorry, boss" the biggest girl mumbled.

"Security" Matilda explained. "They confuse the fuck out of any gatecrashers. Buys just enough time to get in the first punch and close the grille. These three little darlings saw off a couple of dozen Arsenal hooligans last weekend. By the time the rozzers arrived we were locked up and everyone had escaped through the emergency exit into the pub next door."

"She's also a bit of a strategic genius" Louise said. "Anyone interesting in tonight?"

I peered into the low wall-lit space beyond. It was lined with toilet cubicles, some closed, others glinting with white porcelain and polished brass and copper. Some odd panting noises could be heard coming from one of the closed stalls. Away in the subterranean distance there was the motorised thump of electronic dance music. Donna Summer, I thought.

"Marc Almond was fixing his eyeliner in the Ladies' a bit earlier. And someone's opened Derek Jarman's bar tab, so either he's about or one of his naughty boys is scamming him."

I hadn't heard of either of them.

"Gay artist icons" Louise explained, as we walked through another room lined with lavatory stalls, passing a gleaming white urinal wall decorated with hanging baskets.

"So this is a homosexual club?" I said, trying not to sound worried. "Or bisexual?" I added, watching Louise's eyebrows go up.

"Trisexual" she said. I looked back blankly.

"Honestly, darling. David Johansen of the New York Dolls was once asked if he was bisexual. 'Trisexual' he replied. 'I'll try anything.' So the story goes, anyway, and if you ask me it's too good not to be true."

"So what goes on in these cubicles?" I said.

"Do you really have to ask? Hopefully, you'll find out later, if Harriet's here."

A white tile-lined corridor led off toward a more brightly-lit doorway, from which the music -- now Sylvester's "Mighty Real" -- evidently originated.

"Matilda did a deal with the pub landlord" Louise said to my expression of amazement as we stepped into a space which, while not much higher than the repurposed public toilet, was wide open, allowing for more than four paces to be taken in any direction. "She knocked through to his old cellar and pays him a percentage of the take. He's desperate for money and probably makes more from the club than he does his flyblown and decaying regulars supping their halves of Guinness. It's a planning and safety nightmare, of course, but so far the authorities haven't found out and it gives us an emergency exit in case of fire or police."

I wasn't really listening. The interior of the room looked familiar, somehow. At the far end of the room a pair of couples, their gender makeup indeterminate, were throwing energetic moves to the 12" discomix on a tiny mirrored dancefloor. The rest of the area underfoot was paved with tiles the colour of dried blood. The walls were lavender, two pillars holding up the black ceiling a rich gold, the dozen or so little circular tables marble-topped. The backs and seats of the chairs around them, where uninhabited, showed up as covered in leopard- or zebraskin print, across which the random facets of a mirrorball flashed.

"You did this!" I said. "This is Ozzy's bedroom!"

"Bang to rights, guvnor" she said. "Prince Ozzy's boudoir was a bit of a dry run for this. Far better than that featureless shed at Blitz. And there's the lovely Harriet!"

Separating herself from a table at the far side of the room, where three gesticulating men -- one of whom I'd later come to know as avant-garde filmmaker and all-round artistic genius Derek Jarman -- a dark young woman had spotted us and was weaving her way past seated drinkers waving to Louise. She was about the same age as me, Afro-Caribbean, lips and eyes painted black, hair hung in black-beaded plaits. As she drew nearer her deep brown eyes flashed between us, appraising the situation.

"Hi" she said, holding out her hand to me. "I bet you're Joe, who Vaughn can't shut up about." She had a firm handshake. I studied her muscled arms as they curved out of her singlet-style top. It, and her skirt, appeared to be made of black rubber. She smelt lightly of sweat, which I've always found arousing in a girl. Her teeth were very white and even. I didn't want to imagine any more, though I couldn't help starting.

"Now, you two. Plenty of time for that later. Hello, Harriet!"

"Hi, Lou." Harriet put one glorious arm round Louise's shoulder and raised her face to kiss her full on the mouth. She was a good head shorter than Louise, but they obviously knew each other well. My cock stood to attention.

"I'll go get us some drinks" I said, looking round for the bar.

"You will not" Louise came out of her clinch with Harriet. "I will. It's about time Matilda gave me a tab, and if I can't intimidate a barman I shouldn't be here. You two sit down and get to know each other."

"Is she up to something?" Harriet said after we'd parked ourselves on some fake leopardskin chairs at a fake marble table. She had a distinct London accent. West London, I'd later find out.

"Isn't she always?"

We locked eyes and laughed together. It was simultaneously frightening and extremely exciting to feel her looking into my soul. I wanted to tell her how much I fancied her but, after such a short time and having seen her closeness with Louise, to do so would probably have been suicidal.

"Just to get this out of the way while she's fetching the beers, I am bi. And though I imagine I'm going to be going home with Louise tonight, I'm actually quite wet for you. Or perhaps it's this stupid latex dress."

She winked. I twitched slightly, fearing for a moment I might spontaneously explode.

"Look, it'll happen eventually" she said. "Let's talk about something else for a bit. Before I start dripping on the floor."

"Before I do too." She evidently could read my mind.

We talked about music. Far from not being able to hold a drumstick, Harriet was a skilled percussionist.

"That Louise is a cheeky cow. I've been playing pan since I was ten."

"Pan?"

"Steel drum. My dad's from Trinidad. Then I joined a jazz band. Then I got into punk. The Slits asked me to join when Paloma left, but I turned them down. Knew I'd find Ari a bit much. I met Louise at St Martin's. She introduced me to Molly and Vaughn."

"So you know I'm auditioning for them tomorrow?

"Unless you actually go dumb between now and then you'll walk it. You know what Vaughn really wants, don't you, bless him?"

"A surrogate? A go-between? A sandwich?"

"In one. Well, three actually. Lou tells me you're quite good in the sack. And in the toilet. And on the studio floor."

"She fucking what?"

"Says your cuntlicking technique's a bit savage, but nothing we can't cure with a bit of practice." That perfect grin again. Another wink.

"My ears are burning, darlings. Glad you can't go five minutes without gossiping about me. Drinks!"

Louise set down a tin tray with three pints of lager. For the first time since I'd met her I wasn't sure whether to find her outrageously funny or irritatingly egotistical. I suppose she was both, really.

"I'm going for a dance" Harriet announced, swilling back the dregs of her pint as the invisible DJ started Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love.'

"I'm not" Louise said. "I scare people off dancefloors, myself included."

"Please yourself. Joe?"

"I can't dance."

She shrugged and threw herself onto the mirrors.

"One reason to join her, darling, is she won't be wearing any knickers. Don't you fancy looking up her cunt while you pretend to check your foot movements?"

"You'd know more about that than I do." I was quite drunk now and beginning to lose patience.

"Ooh, touché! No, you're right. I just love watching her get all sweaty like that. You must have noticed how hot she smells. Think I'll take her to the toilet after this. I don't suppose you want to come too?"

I certainly did want to cum too, though something I'd not though of before had begun to trouble me.

"Er, where do you go if you actually do need a piss. I mean, that and nothing else?"

"Same place, of course. It's a public lavatory after all. But for God's sake clean up after yourself. Matilda doesn't forgive bad toilet etiquette. She barred Steve Strange for life for not aiming straight."

Harriet had drifted back from the dancefloor, looking and smelling extremely hot.

"Must be the only thing that is straight about this place."