Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (22 page)

Biddie and Eve and the ferrets got invited to everything that was going on in London. I tagged along. Mad drunken escapades dominated this period of my life. Many’s the morning we would roll home with the sun coming up, singing and screeching at the top of our lungs. On one particularly memorable occasion Biddie misplaced his keys. While he fumbled, Eve continued belting out her version of Connie Francis’s
fifties hit “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Suddenly the upstairs window flew open.

Whooooooosh!

A deluge of lukewarm liquid brought Eve’s singing to a screeching halt.

“Blimey! I can’t believe he threw water all over us. Me ferrets are drenched!” said Eve, whose red bouffant was now caving in.

“My dear, let me assure you,” said the always gracious upstairs window dresser, “this is
not
water.”

The upstairs window dresser was smiling down. In his right hand he held an exquisite Victorian chamber pot.

Nothing was ever quite what it seemed at number 230 Edna Street.

*  *  *

One muggy summer evening there was a knock at the door. Biddie and I exchanged startled glances. Who, or what, would have the audacity to arrive unannounced at our sequined sanctum?

We never had impromptu visitors. Even the upstairs window dresser and his handsome boyfriend would phone before dropping in.

I was in the middle of a sewing job. In my relentless quest for cash, I had rashly taken on the project of sewing the seat cushions, about two hundred in all, for a large West End hair salon. I was in the middle of inserting my ninetieth zipper.

Biddie, turbaned and moist, had just climbed into the tub in the Astroturf bathroom. His face was covered in makeup. He had read somewhere that Bianca Jagger applied her makeup before soaking in the tub in order to allow her foundation
to “sink in.” He had become a devotee of this practice.

Anxiously I got up from the sewing machine and went toward the door. Through the mottled glass I discerned a short, amorphous, gray-clad figure. What manner of man or beast was attempting to penetrate our overdecorated inertia? I opened the door. I gasped. I pretended my gasp was a cough.

Here on my doorstep was one of the strangest apparitions I have ever seen.

It spoke.

“Hello. I’m-Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London-and-I’ve-come-in-response-to-your-ad,” said the person in a flat, halfhearted kind of way.

I was too stunned to take in the content of what had been said. I was completely and hopelessly sidetracked by this person’s appearance.

If clothing is a form of nonverbal communication, before me stood a whole new language.

Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London was male. He was no longer in the first flush of youth. The contemporary celebrity look-alike who most readily springs to mind would have to be Newt Gingrich. Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London was a pedestrian, portly, gray-haired, middle-aged man, and true to his name, Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London was wearing gray flannel shorts and kneesocks. A boys’ prep school uniform.

I had seen grown people wearing school uniforms before. Many punk rockers on the Kings Road favored torn, stained school ties and blazers. But this was something new.

First, there was a frightening authenticity and attention to
detail. The kneesocks had small tabbed garters, which protruded from under the sock folds. The tie was knotted with the angry, sartorially oblivious nonchalance typical of Brit schoolboys.

Then there were the shorts: a little too long, but short enough to reveal authentically scraped and scabbed knees. Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London was giving
schoolboy realness.

Then I noticed it, the most exquisitely evocative detail of all. Under his left arm, Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London carried a small bundle of exercise books, from which protruded a twelve-inch ruler. He had homework!

Running his ink-stained, pudgy fingers through his gray mop of hair, the mysterious visitor repeated himself. “Hello. I’m Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London-and-I’ve-come-in-response-to-your-ad.” He sounded like an exhausted novelty-telegram delivery person.

As he spoke I realized that Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London was suffering from a mild speech impediment. What he had actually said was “Hello. I’m gway flannel shorts and kneesocks of Nowth London and I’ve come in wesponse to youw ad.”

He breathed a sigh of petulant, boyish frustration.

“I’m twying to find someone called James. Are you James?”

My blood ran cold.

Oh! My God! Biddie’s name was James!

Suddenly I saw it all. Jimmy Biddlecombe, my childhood friend (fwend), had unbeknownst to me, developed a really disturbing proclivity.

I was shocked.

I scoured my brain for any telltale signs.

Maybe it was Paddy! When we were young schoolboys, and wearing gray flannel shorts of our own, there was one particular bus conductor, an Irishman, who used to make a point of pinching and fondling our knees. He was called Paddy, a nickname commonly doled out to Irish folk, and he was absolutely incapable of keeping his horrid little hands off our porky legs. Paddy’s unwanted attentions had obviously turned Biddie into a big screaming pervert!

I had always thought there was such a strong bond between us. We always told each other everything. And now this!

“Daughter, it’s for you, I think,” I said, as I tried not to think about the possibility that Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London might one day move into our flat and become Mr. Biddie.

My turbaned roommate, complaining bitterly, emerged from the tub and stuck his head round the door. The foundation had sunk in nicely.

“I’m Gway-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks. Are you James?”

“Good evening!” ejaculated Biddie, who had become quite good at handling rowdies and assorted lunatics but now seemed lost for a snappy comeback.

“Oh, luv! I think you might have the wrong house,” suggested Biddie, much to my relief.

Gray-flannel-shorts let out another depressed sigh. He looked quite forlorn, like a child with a broken toy.

“Oh. I’ve had such a tewible wunawound,” he said, nibbling on his ruler and leaning on the doorframe. He relaxed
with the air of one who sensed he was among like-minded folk. Our new friend then told us of his long and embarrassing trek from North London, and of various encounters gone awry.

“I’ve been all over Bwixton and out as far as Wichmond.”

The poignancy of his story enrobed us with feelings of fascinated discomfort. We wanted to know everything, and yet nothing.

“A man in a Cortina took one look at me and dwove off!”

“Oh, men! Well, if it’s any comfort to you, we’ve all been there, daughter!” chimed Biddie in a tone of comforting complicity.

Relaxing more and sweating profusely, Gray-flannel-shorts began to paint a picture of his life. He lived with his mother. She was always mad at him because he never went out to work and always wore a school uniform. In desperation to find love, he had corresponded with someone in South London via a P.O. box. All he knew about this person was that he shared Kneesocks’s proclivities and that he lived somewhere in Brixton. Kneesocks had been directed to us—somewhat vindictively—after randomly banging on a neighbor’s door.

Biddie and I felt a simultaneous surge of empathy. We knew what it was like to feel spurned and reviled. Either one of us could so easily have ended up like Gray-flannel-shorts-and-kneesocks-of-North-London. There but for the grace of God went Biddie and Simon.

“If I’d known it was going to be like this,” he continued, looking down at his own strange little costume as if it were something that someone had forced him to wear, “I would have bought myself one of those new Wed Wover bus passes.”

Biddie and I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. How could anyone survive without one?

As I contemplated our strange moist visitor on that warm August night, I was overwhelmed by the unfairness and precariousness of life. One false move and you could find yourself wandering round South London in scratchy school uniform with no Red Rover bus pass.

As much as we were fascinated and touched by our new friend, we had no desire to prolong his presence on our front doorstep. One never knew when the upstairs window dresser might get the urge to empty his chamber pot again.

I reached in my pocket and handed Gray-flannel-shorts my nearly expired Red Rover and directed him toward the Number 19 to Finsburg Park. He shoved it into his pocket without saying thanks, which was endearingly schoolboyish.

“I’ve got a gift for you too,” said Biddie, retreating to his kasbah and reemerging with Happy Harry.

“Take good care of him. Not too many sweeties. Now run home and do all your homework like a good boy!” said Biddie, who had by now thoroughly entered into the spirit of things, as had I.

“Hurry along!” I said, waving good-bye to the poignant misfit from North London. “And don’t talk to any strangers!”

T
he second time I was arrested, I was living in Los Angeles and wearing a skirt.

The garment in question was a detachable mini-kilt and was designed to be worn, by both girls and boys, over matching red plaid pants. These were adorned with buckles and zips. Dubbed “plaid bondage trousers,” they were the brainchild of the rebel fashion visionary Vivienne Westwood. It was all very 1977 and very punk.

The most striking aspect of this getup was not the detachable
kilt. It was the bondage strap, comprising a loose adjustable belt, which connected the legs at knee level.

This leg strap was less constricting than it appeared. Normal activities—walking, climbing stairs, ice skating (noncompetitive), running for the bus, disco dancing, and even driving, which is what I was doing when I was arrested—could be performed while wearing these bondage pants.

I was twenty-seven years old, newly emigrated to America, high on Life and also on something called tequila. Ensconced at the wheel of my hearse-size, white ’65 Dodge station wagon, I felt like a million bucks.

This useful, trusty vehicle played a key role in my window-dressing career. It was invariably crammed with tools, paint pots, and a wide assortment of props. At the time of my arrest, I was transporting, among other things, a small taxidermied spider monkey, strings of plastic frankfurters, an oversize fake Oscar made of chicken wire and papier-mâché, a bag of fluorescent-hued go-go dancer wigs, and a huge stack of unused vintage colostomy bags. These had been given to me by a nurse friend who had purloined them for me from her place of employ, thinking they might form the basis of an amusing window display. Unable to find a suitable context for such medical oddities, I had driven them around for weeks.

Me and my colostomy bags were headed south on Alvarado Street, through the much-sung-about MacArthur Park. It was after midnight, and I was weaving. My nonconformist maneuverings were not the result of a tangled bondage strap. I would have loved to have blamed my poor driving on my
outfit—“Your Honor, it was my punk couture . . . ” But it wasn’t the strap. It was the hooch.

Two motorcycle cops with flashing lights appeared in my rearview mirror. I pulled over and pressed the button which read
Park.
My Dodge was the futuristic push-button model.

The two strapping policemen dismounted and swaggered toward me. Handsome, chiseled, and bursting out of their skintight uniforms, these two intimidating specimens were straight out of a Tom of Finland homoerotic drawing.

One officer eyed the stuffed monkey lounging on the red vinyl seat next to me. The other politely asked me to step out of my “vehicle.” Whenever the word
vehicle
is used, it is safe to assume that things are about to become a great deal less fabulous.

There was no time to detach my kilt or undo my strap. Affecting an upbeat, cooperative, breezy demeanor, I simply swung my legs out of the car as daintily as possible and hoped for the best.

Both cops were about one foot taller than me. They looked me up and down. And up and down. And down and up.