Upload
luke-james
View
18
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
The things you get up to when you're in between bands!
Citation preview
THE ODD GIG
London 1984
I'd done the barely legal, eighteen year-old-girlfriend thing, she had
her fun playing at screwing Dad for a while, and then dumped me. So
it was that I moped off to Burlingtons Hair Salon in the West End.
They’d done her hair once for an Italian Vogue photo shoot and they
did mine for free because I used to be sort-of-almost famous once for
a bit. Besides, I let them set their most experimental stylists loose on
my hair. I well remember the night I’d crawled back to Simon and
Helen’s gaff at 2 AM. I was crashing on their settee and had been
gone a couple of days. Julian at Burlington’s had shaved the sides of
my head to a fuzz and dyed zebra stripes into it, then built a platinum
peroxide Mohawk atop my head capable of picking up Radio
Luxembourg if I faced the right direction. Simon was a bit of a
freelance professional karate fighter, a well-paid, if usually short-lived
and entirely illegal career. So when he saw some unidentified seven
foot punk stumbling down his girlfriend’s front hallway he did what
any semi-drunken martial arts nutcase would do and attacked me. I
managed to identify myself just short of a set of broken ribs.
Anyway, I was sitting sulking at my magnificent reflection in one of
Burlingtons salon mirrors while some busty young thing massaged
both my scalp and her breasts against my shoulder. Surly semi-
erections rose and fell like the pound sterling in my strides. Julian
flitted over.
“Luke, ducky, have you ever considered being a statue?”
“What? No, not as such. Although I fully anticipate that one day they
have that one armed prat down off his pedestal in Trafalgar Square
and replace it with a decent rendition in marble of the Lukeness.”
“I mean, have you ever considered playing the part of a statue?”
“Why, you’re not suggesting I audition for Depeche Mode are you? Or
one of those fucking miserable northern synth bands – Orchestral
Manoeuvers Up Your Arse?”
“No, no dear boy, nothing like that. We’re taking part in a leukemia
fundraiser at The Palladium. We’d like you to be a sort of prop. It
would mean you wearing a loin cloth and being painted grey.”
“You what?”
“Oh and we would be binding one of the model girls to you with
swathes of colored silk.”
“Well alright, go on then, twist my arm.”
A couple of weeks later I was in my loin cloth, crammed into a
dressing room directly under the Palladium stage, with over a dozen
young model girls in various stages of undress. I was having to think
very hard about Margaret Thatcher in her underwear to try and keep
the front of the loin cloth getting all unnecessary. Some apprentice
pouf from the salon was having altogether too much of a good time
painting the Luke slowly grey all over. Julian swanned up dragging a
pouting, elfin beauty whose eyes were somehow almost as big as her
face.
“This is Desiree.”
“Of course it is,” I said, taking her hand and just before I planted my
lips on it, turning her hand over and kissing the back of my own
hand. She almost giggled but caught herself.
“She’s the smallest and the lightest girl so she’s the one we’re going
to tie to your back.”
“Jolly good. But, er, from an artistic point of view don’t you think it
would look altogether more effective if you were to tie her to my
front.”
And to his credit the old queen actually pursed his lips and pressed a
thoughtful digit to his kissing gear.
“Hmmm. No, I think I see what you mean, but we want the audience
to get the full splendor of your front as you come up through the
stage trap door.”
“Yes. Of course you do.”
So poor Desiree was bound to my back with swathes of gaudy colored
silk, back to back, and once affixed I lumbered over and stood on the
trapdoor riser. The plan was that once the ponce up on the stage had
got through telling all those gathered at a hundred and fifty quid a
head how grateful all those poor fuckers dying of leukemia were
going to be that we were all here tonight, swanning about seeing and
being seen, snorting blizzards of coke and drowning in buckets of
Moet Chandon, then the show would start with me and Desiree being
lifted up through center stage. The Burlingrtons model girls would
then swank out and do a bit of a pagan dance round Luke’s totem
pole. And who could blame them? Most of their hairstyles looked like
something from that old pagan god Herne’s nightmares, great multi-
colored explosions of hair with bits of leafy twigs, circuit board and
antlers woven in. I kid you not.
So, this prat up on the stage was making a right meal of his intro and
I’d started sweating, and the lovely Desiree felt as if she’d put on
about 100 pounds in the last five minutes and it wasn’t like I could sit
down or anything could I, not with her strapped to my arse. I was
panting for all the wrong reasons and in danger of becoming a very
streaky statue, again for all the wrong reason.
Finally there was a bray of trumpets not unlike a bunch of donkeys
with bad head colds and the platform started to lurch upwards. I
fumbled in my loin cloth and slipped three fake blood capsules into
my mouth.
Bit of dramatic license for you Julian, sweetie!