Jai Clare

Mad Angels

I’m hoping it’s finally all over when he yells once more. “Don’t think you’ll get by without me.”

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Looking at me, his face all stretched by adrenaline, eyes excited like rippling water – he makes me sick; maybe I’ll tell him to go fuck himself.

He stops quickly as if grabbing my thoughts into his head, then turns away, to stroll, his legs kicking out, long and elegant, back out the door with Spade, before stopping to shout, “Fucking lazy cunt.”

Out I go then, running out the door tripping after their imprints have vanished. Big gig that night. I’m on the guest list. I’m thought of. I’m expected. Even if I wasn’t I’d push in. I push through crowds, as if they were layers of marshmallow.

Crazy Pete hands me the amyl bottle. He watches as I lift it to my nose and inhale quickly, and he laughs at me as my eyes bulge, and I feel dizzy as if I’ve swallowed too quickly, bubbles shooting up my nose. They say, “What you gonna do, Gail, what you gonna do?” I’ve told Michelle—she of the sexy rubber clothes and the death-black hair—about Phil’s threats, about the way he hits me, making sure no one sees the bruises on my belly—chest—legs—ears. About how he fucks me with hatred, about how just two hours before that godforsaken evening he had raped me. Of course they don’t believe me. They don’t believe he could do such a thing, nor believe how he needs to control me, to keep me in check, to punish me for my imperfections, to make himself feel good.

Annie, standing next to her, just looks at me, her mascara smudged in the corner of her wonky eye, and smiles that fucking crescent-smirk grin of hers that tells me she thinks I’m an arse. I may well be. But it ain’t for her to say. I want to wipe that smile off her face. Her make up is plastered like pebble-dashing on her face. She’s small and wears a Dusty Springfield fake fur coat. In fact, looking at her eyes, her hair, it’s so Dusty – it’s uncanny.

The band strolls to the stage, begins playing jerkily, and we mosh together, shoulders leaning into each other, stomping on toes, singing, shouting, screaming for more, hands in the air hands round bodies everyone moving like primitives, feet bruising and noses bursting with air. At one point Crazy Pete loses his hat in the crowd and dives in and brings it out like some prize. Fucking awful prize. It’s squashed, torn and looks like a leftover chip wrapper. He looks funny without his hat. Not so handsome. How bald he’s going, how patty, shiny, glistening like an oiled seal. Danny the van man grabs my top and tries to pull it down, not really being lewd, just overcome. I’m taking a breather and standing by the speakers when all of a sudden the guitarist—who kinda fancies himself as Keith Richards, I mean Keith fucking Richards, disgusting all bad teeth and attitude—comes charging across the stage clanging his guitar like it’s some falling off part of his clapped-out old banger, and kisses me right on my mouth! I’m too shocked to move. The guitarist does this to another girl who wilts against the speakers, and I’m left motionless, a wet patch spreading across my lips like the trail of an octopus.

I wipe it off and grin wildly at Pete who is jumping up and down completely out of sync as the band goes crazy and the lights strobe as everything blurs as my head, rockets and jets into nothing. Here I’m smiling, I’m smiling!

Later at the club Pete is half asleep, clutching the amyl nitrate bottle, mouth lolling open—someone shoves in a joint like a lollipop but it just hovers there—half-in, half-out his mouth for ages—until someone filches it. He is bound to die of an overdose one day. As inevitable as air.

Phil turns up while I’m turned away from the door. Michelle alerts me by nodding her head, but I already knew he was there; intuition or something, the smell of his arrogance, crashing into the room, arrogance tinged with fear. At the gig I was safe. I could breathe, be me, what’s that fucking song?—I feel free? Now Annie is repeating words I can barely make out but I have heard them before. “You two were made for each other. Don’t you think, Michelle, Gail and Phil? Gail and Phil?” she giggles, and it’s such a palpably ridiculous statement and such a pathetic inept smile, I just stare back at her blankly. They think he’s charming, which sometimes he can be. How I need more poppers, how I need to be spaced out of away from here. How the fuck can we be made for each other? His eyes on me.

When I see a man with brown dreadlocks, and blue jean jacket, long legs stuffed in tight denims I freeze; in the high street, in a club, the supermarket wheeling between the fruit aisles and the confectionary, there I stop, dead in my tracks, life is paused, frozen like yoghurt. I barely breathe. I shake. They say that black men are worse on their women than white; how true this is, who can say? Girlfriends say it is. Go out with a black man at your peril; they got no respect for white women; any white woman who goes with them must be trash. Sometimes I remember their words. And black women—black women hate us and tell us all the time that black men only like to fuck us to get their own back on white men. Any guy can fuck with you—no matter their colour.

I must get rid of the fucker. When he raped me I cried almost dry tears, as dry as my cunt. It was punishment, that’s what he said. Punishment for going against him all the time. He is so good that Phil, so fucking good. Never did anything wrong his entire fucking life. Blonde Danny, all badly-bleached floppy hair and wide boy smile—like that prat from the Moody Blues—all whiter shade of fucking pale crap—pinches my arm and drags me out to dance. Phil watches from the side, I can feel him chewing down the end of his joint like it is his baby blanket. At night, he likes to line up his joints, ready and waiting for the morning, like virgins on his fucking bedside table. He rolls them up and places them in a line. Most nights he does this. No one would believe a man like that would be so precise. I have felt his precision, that maniacal deftness.

I dance with Danny. Spade comes up, whispers something in his ear and Danny bows to me like a Japanese geisha girl—shit that man fancies himself! And goes with Spade to the bar. I am left in the middle of the dance floor gyrating to Black Uhuru. At Glastonbury last year in the rain and the mud the blues tent playing dub reggae all night was the only thing that kept me from hypothermia. Fucking Phil had forgotten to bring a fucking tent! Sly and Robbie, bass and drums bass and drums swaying. I will pay later for Danny dancing with me. Phil looks at me, he knows I will pay.

Dawnette walks past me then. I want to ask her about black men, black women but she has her red lips pursed. She’s small, determined, beautiful, always moving like a piston in some tiny locomotive engine, always coming in from some strange part of town that I can’t fathom how to reach. I can’t get to her in time and she’s gone. I watch who she moves up to. Some big guy. Italian, sharp grey suit— typical. I recognize him from somewhere else. She reaches up to him— he’s so much taller than her—and slaps his unexpectant face and walks away quickly. I want to laugh. Someone does laugh. Everyone watches Dawnette stride out. God, that girl has balls. Wish I had more balls more often.

I don’t speak to Phil at the club. He never dances, he just stands in a corner gassing. He could gas for England. Sometimes I have to talk to myself, otherwise I’d go nuts for good conversation.

There’s a fight on one of the staircases. Everyone goes up to the roof. Heavy feet clanking on metal stairs. Phil looks at me, all excited and yet fearful. A crowd follows onto the flat roof, high over the warehouse part of town. From where you watch the buses squeal into the city centre with its pigeons, men carrying libations in brown paper bags, and the gaudy shops full of tosh that no one really wants to buy, yet they make themselves. Phil goes up too. I bugger off. Head for the chippy before it shuts and grab a taxi home.

I’m told later someone is pushed off the top. Or did they jump? Hell’s Angels came at them and thrashed this guy till his jaw broke, until his pal jumped off the roof to get away from the shafts of steel, shiny, swinging. Just mad Angels out for the night bashing up trendies. They close the place down after that. Friday nights after the pub will never be the same again.

I’m dancing at a salsa live event at the art house club: I get everywhere, me: down with the Blues, over the warehouse with the ravers, and out here in the arthouse-trendy world where everyone looks clean and healthy and full of middle-class angst in their turtle neck black jumpers and fat coats that are big enough to steal the whole of Woolworth’s in. I dunno who I’m with best, really. I’ve even been known to posh it up for the slick and mean scene down at the canal clubs where drinks cost you double they do elsewhere. I am happier at home in the part-time whorehouse I reckon, reclining on velveteen, note that—not velvet but fake velvet—boudoir chairs whose once golden tassels have been cut or ripped off and covered in ancient spunk. But I’m dancing here and Phil never normally dances but here he is with his arms around my waist, with his arms above his head, with his hands on my arse. He is smiling. I am uneasy. What does he want? I dance with him, feeling the relief of his easy smile. Everything is going well. Today could be a good moment between us.

Someone pushes past me. A girl with red lips and white white dress, from Vivienne Westwood. I recognize it. Phil looks at her. She looks at Phil. He stops shifting his hips from side to side. He looks at her legs as she vanishes into the parting swaying movements of people falling over, tumbledown heads, unsyncopated legs. She throws back her big hair and smiles at me. And then her blonde hair is surrounded by many brown heads of lesser sophistication. Only occasionally do we get a glimpse of her star-like brilliance in the gloom, picked out by foxy radiant lights, as she stops and starts heading through the dancers like a gorgeous bulldozer. Phil’s hands rest on my hips less passionately than before.

But he has claimed me for the night. I try to evade him by leaving by the backdoor after a quick bog sortie, reaching home before him.

Two hours later he breaks into the flat. I can’t control how he enters my home but he doesn’t really live here, not any more. I try blocking him out but he always comes back. I wake hearing the noise of him coming through my barricades, pushing down my inept attempt to stop him from getting in. I get up and find him in the living room brushing down his shirt. He smiles at me. Says nothing, motions me back into my room. I climb back into bed. He takes up residence in the chair opposite the bed. I sit up and watch him light up, watch him taking a long slow drag and staring at me deliberately. He’s wearing the leather jacket I bought for him for his birthday. Even in this light I can tell how good he looks in it. I clutch the duvet around my naked torso and kick the bottom end down into place to cover my legs. His cigarette makes smoke. A van with a dodgy fan belt passes outside. Lights from the pub across the road finally go out. I can hear wind. He says nothing. I say nothing. I prepare for rapid movement. My flesh tenses for violence.

Eventually after hours of silence at shop-opening time he asks me to fetch him fags. I smile warily and leave the flat to return shaking with a fresh packet of 20 B&H, which I pass to him. He tucks it inside his coat pocket, says thanks quietly and leaves. Smile or scream? I shake as I patch up my barricades before collapsing into bed.

It’s so fucking cold I could turn into a sparkling Christmas representation of an icicle. The ground outside yet another club glistens like Phil’s oil, the stuff that I have to comb gently into his afro. Gently, otherwise he shouts at me for being a clumsy cow. A tender scalp he has, like a baby’s. We stand stomping our feet and clapping our hands like circus seals. Waiting. We’re always waiting. Always waiting on someone, probably Annie—yes Annie, there she is, blowing kisses to the bursting body guards like some drag queen. “Fucking get a move on will ya, tight-arsed git!” Spade shouts and Danny laughs and stubs out his fag. Pete, staggering and almost blind in the dark, passes us, shouts, “Night, Gail!” Someone comes up to Danny and they head away into the corner laughing and huddling close— two heads into dark nit candidates. The road is shiny like a skating rink. Out there away from me nothing moves. The road is reflective like god’s mirror, like the star’s looking glass. I pull my fingers crack my joints and sigh. I daren’t yell but I want to yell. I want to yell like I want to drown out every bit of noise that ever existed—every shout, every bell, car engine, every dog bark, every loud voice shouting at me in anger. Instead I watch the non-movement on the steps. I head out into the dark. I stand in the centre of the road and begin my walk as if the centre of the road is a tightrope. Step slightly 2 AM crazy pissed stepping one foot carefully here I giggle my boots crunch against the glass-like ice that has descended onto the tarmac like a pearl fishermen’s net. I know they’ll follow me haphazard not careful like me they will crack the glass make noise. I step carefully I twist my foot to walk like a cat I would crouch down but they’d laugh one foot in front stretch out my leg like a poxy ballerina. Ballerina dancing on ice I throw my head up and I feel I am crunching the stars stars at my head glass ice cubes ice pinches my skin I need more Danny pops his arm around my waist. A practised movement that. He does that to hundreds of waists all over the country. Arm around waist comforting we pass shops he’s dancing with my movements as if we’re tangoing but he’s behind me. I can feel his cock pressing against me as he follows my prissy legs movement Spade laughs behind him. We’re glad Phil ain’t here. Arm around waist he thinks about arm around my breasts but doesn’t we move on into the blackness the sodium blackness and the sky has been punched out orange orange glowing a garage someone out for Rizlas and fags laughter a car we move to the side now shops with glassed windows and balti houses spilling out revellers with breath like blocked cisterns and there is Phil standing smoking looking round him like a fucking weasel his ringlets bob up and down. He’s so fucking prissy before he sees us Danny backs away takes away his warming hot glowing arm from my waist. Phil ain’t seen us my feet stop dancing my feet become like bits of chucked concrete I almost want to back away, move into reverse motion and leave before my presence becomes real to him. Two guys leave the balti house. One is cocksure, a leather jacket white man. Big white man. He says something to Phil. Phil looks shocked, startled, shifted out of orbit, and backs away for a minute, his feet dancing, moving delicately arching like a foot-bound girl. But the man pulls at Phil’s white shirt at the point where the buttons begin, pulls it away from Phil who moves backwards. Tension between them finds release through the shirt. A loud rip. Phil is cowardly, trying to back down, trying to look subservient like a dog, the glare of his eyes hooded, the whine of his mouth prominent like a sculptured freeze. Where is his bluff sanctimonious fucking exterior now, that fucking face he shoves at me with bravado and self-fucking-justification? I’d like to spit on him. Cover him in my disgust. Just as he did to me when he raped me and spat all over my body, his spit falling on my belly and thighs and breasts, a mockery of coming. Spade runs forward and says, “Hey hey what’s the problem? Come on!” Phil’s hands are up but the guy has decided he hates his poncy face and punches out at him his mate tries to grab him but an effluence of words he unleashes and his mate backs away he swings at Phil I propel myself forward—why the fuck do I do that? Suddenly I feel hot in the freezing after midnight morning. Danny clenches my side with his hands like pliers, pulls me back says, “Don’t,” quietly but with profundity but I don’t trust the look I see on his face. I could burn under the force of his excitement. Phil’s brown hairless chest is exposed and the guy begins to hit him. The first punch shocks me with its strength, and I stop myself from screaming out. Spade rushes forward again but Danny stops him. The guy’s mate has stepped back into the shadows. It’s just Phil and this leather white guy. The leather guy is winning. A second punch finds his left cheek and Phil sways backwards, falls against the wall with a great crack. I am fascinated as I see Phil’s body crash against the wall, his head force down an already ripped poster of an elephant hovering over the tears of a clown’s face, his make up seemingly smudged by the rip, his mouth contorted into a smirk, advertising Cottle’s Circus from three months back. A slight vengeance of blood runs down Phil’s cheek, spoiling the sharp contours of his beauty. The leather man—jacket off, his body twisted into a S shape—muscle tone breaking through his skimpy white transparent t shirt—bends down to Phil, up thrusts his fists two fists so fast they’re blurring Phil’s legs convulse splay out like a cripple—Danny crushes my belly with his hands, pulls me further away to the side of the shop into a darkened alley, and holding me close to him —Phil’s face lopsided, nose a bloody mess—lifts up my skirt—Phil’s arms spread away from him—yanks down my knickers—Phil’s lips droop open - Danny shoves his cock into me— I watch Phil I peer from the side my head peeking round the wall I just see fists feel violence inside me—Danny fucks me we’re standing there I judder up and down but static inside myself—Phil’s almost naked shirt torn and hanging from him I imagine them turning him over and raping him—Danny’s watching him too—Phil is kicked leather man fed up with the inefficacy or the boredom of using his fists. He stomps on Phil’s legs and I’m smiling—I hear them crack—he kicks out again aiming for his chest a hairless beetle’s chest easily ruptured—I’m smiling horrified coming smiling.