I'm posting this in the hour or so before finishing work and heading out to meet TSB and Mel at the Soho Theatre for Justin Bond's Lustre. The plan then is to grab Gareth and scoot across town to the smuttily-named KUNST for an evening of "neo-Weimar cabaret for the fabulous generation" (I'm wearing one of my more dubious Stasiesque coats especially) - hopefully in time to catch the very lovely Our Lady J, who'll also be hot-footing it there from the Soho Theatre, having been invited (by DawnRightNasty) to headline the cabaret.
Keeping up? Now read on...
Okay, I'm playing up the social butterfly thing but it is an unusually hectic week for us in terms of going out - credit crunch be damned! Luckily, I've just discovered that I'd booked a week's leave from work next week then promptly forgotten about it (don't ask) so I'm very much in the mood for celebration.
Last night was the final Vauxhallville, the very last one ever. I felt surprisingly sad, considering I only really discovered it in the last month or two (it's been running for two years). If anything, that makes me feel all the more regretful at not having made more of an effort to check it out. Must try harder.
The last run of Vauxhallville has focused on the history of Vauxhall itself, from the Pleasure Gardens to modern day - or, rather, the 1990s. Why the '90s? Because 1995 is when Duckie started up in the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and Duckie's what made all the difference.
In Morrissey-circa-Vauxhall And I mode, Nathaniel DeVille reminisced with sexybeardy bar manager Jason...
... then performed his puppet show musical based on the songs of The Smiths. We'd seen this before, at the Duckie Morrissey Special, a few years back, but it was good seeing it again. Sweet in a vaguely x-rated way:
Timberlina glowed in a rather lovely robe...
... and Gareth trounced Yanni (it's Swedish for Johnny) in a nailbiting Duckie quiz as well as scoring a prize for the cardboard Crack House he designed for the model Vauxhall Village. He was made of WYN!
We watched a very entertaining piece of film, in which David Hoyle (dragged up in the manner of his former incarnation, The Divine David) wandered around a sunny Sunday Vauxhall, teasing builders and chatting to assorted blingy passers-by, cannabis-wreathed moxen on the Grassy Knoll and - in a surprisingly touching segment - mottled porkers and precociously angelic kiddies in Vauxhall City Farm. David Hoyle came onstage afterwards, sans drag, and seemed mellower and, well, happier than I've seen him before.
Nathaniel got his kit off (I've always liked his William Morris tattoos).
Finally (well, penultimately), the stalwarts of Vauxhallville got together onstage for a glass of champagne (we quibbled over the source of the quote "champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends") and what seemed like a genuinely moving mass goodbye. Even DawnRightNasty left her box. Briefly.
Then the lovely lovely lovely boys from Bearlesque (and, more recently, side project The Dream Bears) did their thang, to the thundering strains of Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero - possible the perfect way to go out with a bang.
Bearlesque have been a consistent high point, and one of the main reasons I wish I'd made it along on more Thursday nights. Ah well.
Dreams that gliiitter.
I've got something in my eye and I want to bathe it.
Vauxhallville again last night, this time dragging TSB along with me. I say "dragging" but he didn't need much convincing, despite the odd sense of taboo that comes with drinking alcohol in the Vauxhall Tavern on a School Night. Bought a bottle of wine between us this time and, predictably enough, found ourselves buying a second after guzzling the first in record time. Back to the three pints of lager limit next time, I think.
A different crowd from last time, rowdier and, frankly, better looking: a particularly sexy group of bears (what's the collective noun? a woof? a hirsute?) at the back, all attractively gussied up in braces and flat caps. Our own rather pitiful gesture toward the dress code (1863-1945) was to wear vaguely 1940sish jumpers. Garethwyn had obviously had the same idea and, sitting on three stools by the side of the stage, we doubtless resembled some sort of unholy Val Doonican threesome.
Timberlina seemed ripped to the tits, delightfully so. She and Polly Vinyl meandered off into a sick-but-very-funny riff about Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins. Volunteers from the audience equally inebriated:
Underbling & Vow provided the bulk of the cabaret, basically a Cockney singalong with comedy character stuff between the songs. I'd seen them before, at Duckie, but here they had time and space to expand their schtick. Almost despite myself, I got drawn into the whole knees-up-Mother-Brown thing - they were impossible to dislike - and found myself heartily singing along. There's something very warm and inclusive about Underbling & Vow's routine.
Not sure if this was a joke but they're apparently planning, when the Olympics come to London, to organise the world's biggest gathering of Londoners simultaneously singing Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner. Sounded like quite a good idea. I was reminded that I now think of myself as a Londoner in a way that I've never really thought of myself as "British" or even as "Scottish". National identity's a strange and complex thing...
Bearlesque finished the night, as seems to be the custom at Vauxhallville. The very lovely Simon Bear did his Singing In The Rain striptease. I'd seen it fairly recently but one can never have too much wet-shirted Simon Bear.
The only time me and TSB ventured out to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern on a Thursday before, we'd just finished work and were due to fly abroad on holiday next day - so there was a Schoooool's Out feeling and we drank accordingly. Since then, I suppose I've always associated Vauxhallville, like Duckie, with unable-to-work-the-next-day hangoverness. Which, as I was able to establish tonight, isn't really what the evening's about.
It helped that Garethwyn was there. I've been to clubs on my own and certainly wouldn't have minded sitting through Vauxhallville's acts alone; I like being able to chat between cabaret turns, though, and appreciated his company. He pointed out Adele Anderson sat in the audience. Tonight's theme was a sort of historical celebration of Vauxhall (introduced by Nathaniel deVille reading a passage from Thackeray's Vanity Fair), including people blowing up and decorating balloons (as a nod to the Pleasure Gardens entertainment of yore). Now, I'm mildly balloon-phobic (don't ask) so didn't take part, but this led onto a very interesting discussion of phobias and (what with Nathaniel's co-host Timberlina mentioning the - for me - traumatic beginning of Enduring Love) nightmares. More on that some other time.
Anyway, I was on a three pint limit and it wasn't too difficult to stick to this - unlike Duckie, where the five, six hours of music mean alcohol's consumed at varying rates and we drink as fast as the fastest drinker ("another?") in the party. No, this evening felt positively civilised by comparison with Duckie's bacchanalia. Although I succumbed to the Pavlovian walk-in-the-door-and-buy-a-Stella impulse, I noticed several people drinking wine and thought, "ooh, that might be nice in future".
Timing it well, I arrived just as the acts were starting. Nathaniel introduced Fivesome, a five-piece woodwind group, impeccably dressed with a bit of a red shoe theme (which garned its own little mini-applause). They played Entrance Of The Queen Of Sheba, then some Gershwin backing for the dulcet Gill Manly:
Highlight of the night (and I took my cue from Garethwyn's eager readying of the camera in anticipation of his turn) was Ari the Aerialist, who hung, draped and spun himself around a hoop suspended from the ceiling, improvising to Nathaniel's (non-pink) oboe accompaniment from the stage. The juxtaposition of a beautiful, classically muscled male form within a circle made me think of Mapplethorpe, although obviously Ari's performance was dynamic rather than stylised/static.
Exchanged a few words with Luke Bear, who was looking attractive as ever, with his beard looking slightly longer and more defined than usual. He and Bearlesque did their can-can. I've seen it before but the live backing added an extra element. Nice pants, too:
And here they are exposing their mimsies:
Really appreciated Dawn Right Nasty's DJing this time, too. I noticed it before, at our previous pre-holiday, drunken Vauxhallville but more so this time. An eclectic, intuitive music selection, less obtrusive and more... sedate? (not the correct word, but in keeping with a pub/cabaret as opposed to dance/club setting) than the Readers Wifes, but quite Readers Wifesish in the sense that it suited the night and hit my choonspot. Was too shy to go say hello - and she was trapped in her illuminated hermitage.
Saturday's Duckie was, I think, our third in the month - August's (very loose) theme having been Duckie Goes Dykey. Me and TSB got there 9.30ish, a little earlier than usual and took up our customary position between the activity island and the stage. Chatted with Robin for a bit, as the place began to fill up.
And boy did it fill up fast! Not sure if it's just me but Duckie seems much busier much earlier these days. It's always been packed but the last couple of times, it's become unpleasantly full, especially during the cabaret spots, when all the outdoor smokers pile in to see the acts. First act was Jessica Delfino, a New York comedian who's apparently been damned to Hell by the US Catholic League for singing about vaginas. I liked her winsome little ditty Don't Rape Me, played on a rape whistle. Here it is, with charmingly homespun video:
Afterwards, she spent a minute or so chucking freebie CDs and t-shirts into the audience as part of a plug for her show - which seemed, I dunno, oddly unDuckie somehow.
Second up was Bearlesque, who are always good value. The crowd seemed a bit unwieldy, though, talking through the acts (especially the trio of shouty lesbians in front of me, one of whom could barely stand) and not really joining in on the audience participationy bits. I felt a bit sorry for Fred Bear, having to hold the fort while (the very sexy) Simon and Neil Bear (I'd not seen him before - an addition to the original five) changed costume. Bear Necessities, a strip to Singing In The Rain (complete with real sprinklywater lamppost) and Mein Bear. I love 'em.
Brief snippet of Simon Bear's Gene Kelly homage in this compilation:
So two above-average acts, all six of the original Duckie team there (which isn't so common these days, what with Amy off trolley dollying) and I still felt oddly lacklustre, like the music was taking a longer-than-usual time to warm me up to singalong level. I think it was La Moz's The More You Ignore Me that finally got me going.
What was truly out of the ordinary about Saturday, though, was TSB and then me getting involved in a spat which seemed to escalate dizzyingly fast into something that looked for a moment like a potential punch-up. That's never happened to me before, in Duckie or, I think, in any other gay bar or club I've been to. I've certainly got pissed off with people in bars and they've got pissed off with me but this felt somehow different.
Basically, we were standing at the central island with our drinks on the table. A group of maybe five or six guys took up residence behind TSB, the one nearest him being quite dancey and expansive. We shuffled our drinks along the table a little bit, as you do, and he expanded to fill the space. TSB started to get that pained look in his eyes: Dancey Expansive Bloke was apparently knocking into him repeatedly and we were running out of tabletop to shift along. This went on, and TSB was eventually growling with irritation. Both of us were essentially standing still at that point, so no wild and exuberant arse-bumping coming from us.
Or so we thought. Dancey Expansive Bloke turned around and started shouting something in TSB's ear. TSB looked hangdog but said nothing and I had to ask him what had been said: apparently DEB reckoned TSB was repeatedly banging into him and wasn't too pleased about it. TSB was obviously a bit taken aback. I offered to swap places.
And, sure enough, DEB (you keeping up with the acronyms?) seemed to be moving backwards into me. I had one arm on the table and he repeatedly brushed against it. I decided not to bump back against him but to stand my ground. As I say, I wasn't dancing myself at this point.
DEB turns around again and I see, with a sudden shock, that he's really furious. Not just look-I'm-a-bit-pissed-off-with-this angry but outside-for-a-fight-NOW angry. Angry enough that I wonder whether he's coked up or something. He screams something about me (or maybe TSB) being very rude and if we knock him again, he'll have us - DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! Like a twat, I start to explain that, look, we've shunted our drinks a good couple of feet along the table so, actually, it's us that's moved to accommodate him. His response is to shout DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! at me again. And again. I should just say yes but instead I start to mutter something stupidly provocative along the lines of "I can understand that that's how you see it". TSB tries to say something but has SHUT UP! screamed repeatedly in his face until he shuts up. I can actually see the flecks of spit flying out of DEB's mouth as he leans closer. I keep my back half-turned, reckoning that's less confrontational. I raise my hand, though, putting it between DEB and TSB in what I hope is a caaalm down gesture (and is shielding my partner's face from spittle). DEB really seems to want a fight. Repeatedly, he asks us if we'd like to go outside and fight him. Er, no.
I see a couple of friends of ours, including lovely Man Mountain Neil, materialise behind TSB's shoulder, having pushed through from the raised gallery bit. They said later they'd moved because they thought there'd be more space down the front (ha bloody ha) but I wondered whether they'd seen the situation escalating and decided to be at hand. Whatever, I was grateful for their presence - particularly as the moment of tension seemed suddenly to pass, DEB turned back to his mates and Bearlesque took to the stage. I was incredibly careful not to budge an inch towards DEB during the act. He and his friends (who hadn't got involved in the fracas) disappeared fairly quickly once the cabaret was over.
It sounds a bit pathetic but the incident really did shake me and TSB both and cast something of a shadow over the rest of the night. The following day I couldn't stop thinking about it, I'm not sure why. Possibly because, since living in London the vast majority of my outside-work socialising has taken place in gay bars and clubs; I've forgotten that sudden mix of adrenaline and nausea when one realises one has said or done the wrong thing and a minor skirmish threatens to spin off into physical violence. For a few seconds, I really did think DEB was going to punch me or my partner. I was half-planning what I'd do if he did. That alcohol plus fight-or-flight combination is a feeling I associate with the straight pubs of yesteryear, a consequence of accidental pint-spilling, looking at someone a bit funny, dressing, walking or talking a bit poofy in a built-up area. I've never really felt it in a gay bar, and certainly not in Duckie.
Now, with the benefit of half a week's hindsight, I think, well why DIDN'T we just move further away? Okay, the club was rammed to the gills but the few inches of tabletop/dancefloor territory wasn't worth risking a broken nose (actually, at the time, I found myself thinking, not the teeth - they're expensive to fix). There was an element of stupid, booze-fuelled machismo on my part too, in standing firm and refusing to keep surrendering space to DEB's exuberant arse. Oh well. Maybe I just need to get out more.
The politics of dancing The politics of ooo feeling good The politics of moving Is this message understood...?
