Chapter Ten Tarzan Boy
They were on fire. Not literally, obviously. They were on stage at the Mango Club, just like they were every Saturday night. But tonight… oh boy, tonight they were on fire.
Mel couldn’t remember them ever having played like this before.
They’d been brilliant that night when Julian had introduced them to Michael.
But that was nothing compared to how they were playing now.
That night, they’d been following Julian’s lead, but tonight Rahul and Julian were together at the head of the pack, keeping pace with one another, daring each other forwards.
The electricity between them infected Mel and Kwambe, got in their veins and made their blood vibrate to the rhythm of the music.
Julian, looking exceptionally camp tonight, sparkled and shone as he belted and hollered, the light reflecting off his sequined getup becoming a living, writhing thing on stage, just as much a member of the band as the rest of them.
Rahul soared deftly from one instrument to the next.
One moment he was making the metal strings of his guitar scream and the next he was swinging it onto his back and hammering away on the keyboard.
Sweat streamed down his face, making him glisten just as much as Julian.
In the middle of a verse their eyes would meet and they would break into maniacal grins as though lost in their own private joke.
When Rahul was on keyboards, Julian would lean over the keys to sing into Rahul’s microphone alongside him.
When on guitar, Rahul would round the keyboard stand and strum at Julian as if beckoning him.
Beckoned, Julian would approach on his towering platform boots and lewdly hump Rahul’s Stratocaster.
The music swelled, it took on a life of its own and fled, soaring over the heads of the feverish crowd.
Mel and Kwambe exchanged looks. Kwambe’s smile was blinding white in the shadows behind the drums, his forehead shiny with perspiration.
The drumsticks blurred in his hands as they swept through the air.
His infinite dark eyes, crow’s feet already forming in their corners from his constant, easy smiles, told her he understood as well as she did that the moment they occupied, as fleeting and ephemeral as it was, was one of the most important moments of their lives.
They had to find a way to hold onto this speeding train and enjoy as much as they possibly could before it fizzled like a match.
Mel’s pulse sped a mile a minute, an odd fear in her chest that this would all pass by too fast.
She looked at her brother and Rahul, backlit by the alien red, blue, and purple lights that swept the stage dizzyingly.
Julian was screaming some lyrics about teenage melancholia and Rahul was screaming the words right back.
They seemed to Mel to be screaming in time with her speeding pulse.
She could feel the reverberation of the guitar’s heavy distortion deep in her gut, the throb of the bass she played in her bones, the crash of cymbals in her temples.
Under it all was Julian’s voice, mutable as the sun: rising high before falling low and repeating it all over again.
His movements were at odds with his voice -- kicking high when he sang low, collapsing to the stage when he cried high -- yet somehow were perfectly in sync.
Rahul had once said that his body was an instrument just as much as the guitar or bass, and that was clear to Mel tonight as she watched her brother.
There was a trick of the light that made the motions of his limbs seem impossible, almost sinister, like some sort of insect or monster from a child’s nightmare.
Arms bending in directions they shouldn’t be able to, legs extending beyond physical reason.
He seemed to twitch convulsively before transitioning fluidly into a hypnotic dance.
And hypnotic he was. There wasn’t a person in that club who could take their eyes off him.
The music was resplendent, consuming, haunting, but Julian… was beautiful.
Mel was overcome with love for her brother in a way she hadn’t been since they were children.
She was proud, she realised. Under the pounding of her adrenaline-fueled heart, her chest tightened with the knowledge that this was why this moment was perfect.
And with the hope that it wouldn’t be the last.
They left the stage with the most deafening applause and cheers they had ever received.
They were giddy as they stumbled through the backstage, up the stairwell into the greenroom.
Mel was high on the night, the aftershocks of the music still thrumming through her insides and the cheers of the audience still echoing through her ears.
They could hardly formulate coherent words through their effusive laughter.
They’d all felt it, they’d all understood how special the moment had been. The moment that was over now.
Mel sobered slightly. The moment which she had clung to so fiercely had slipped away from her all the same.
Time was funny like that. Rather, time was a bitch like that.
As she was not usually prone to flights of fancy, she gathered up her fracturing self and forced a customary sardonic smile.
She slapped Julian hard on his sequined back and said, “That was all right, eh?”
“You kidding?” Kwambe gushed, grin splitting his handsome face. “That was epic! That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen -- no, that was the greatest thing period.”
“Did you see us?” Rahul said, hopping from one foot to the other like his body was too full of energy to contain, or like he needed a wee. “We were electric. We were magnetic. We were pulling shapes, laying down licks, painting angels. We were on fire!”
“Rahul, you bloody genius!” Julian cried, squishing Rahul’s face between his palms. “You were throwing in chords left and right and I was batting ‘em down like it was bloody Wimbledon! You were coming at me hard and fast and I was taking it loose and sexy, and they were bloody loving it out there!”
“That’s the best gig Smoking Nuns has ever had!” Kwambe agreed.
“What’s Smoking Nuns?” Julian asked, bemused.
“Uh, our band?”
“I thought we were the Non-Committal Sparrow,” Rahul interjected.
“Wait, we were supposed to be Menstrual Equality,” Mel spoke up. “We had a vote and everything.”
“Uh, I think you’ll find we’re Fish Attack,” Julian added, rather put out.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Rahul laughed, squeezing the place between Julian’s shoulder and his neck. Julian’s body seemed to sway in his direction. “Can we just come up with a name for this Goddamn thing and be done with it?”
Everyone began speaking at once, each giving their two cents and suggesting the name they’d set their minds on.
Someone had just shouted “Penis Monkey” when the door banged open and silenced them all.
Jugs, the club owner, stood there, his husky frame and excessive chest hair squeezed into a blue boiler suit.
He tipped down his tinted glasses, either in greeting or interest, gnawing on a toothpick as he did so.
“All right, Jugs,” Julian welcomed insouciantly.
“You kids ought to get down there,” he told them in his gruff American accent. “Got quite the crowd waiting for you.”
“Cheers,” Julian also said.
Before the club owner turned to leave, he threw out, “Hey. I been meanin’ to ask, what should I call your outfit? Gotta put something up on that marquee now that you’re drawing in a crowd.”
“Call us…” Julian began confidently before he hesitated, looking round at his fellow bandmates. His eyes rested on Rahul’s. A moment passed between them, charged and meaningful.
“Electric Blue,” Rahul said. The smile Julian offered him wasn’t his usual, cheeky grin, but something small, almost shy. Mel could only hazard a guess at what was happening here, but she quickly decided she wasn’t interested. She’d had enough of her brother’s love life for one lifetime.
“All right. Electric Blue it is.” Jugs disappeared down the hallway and left the door open behind him like an invitation.
“I hear there’s people waiting for us down there,” Julian told them.
His makeup was already smeared, fringe clinging to his damp forehead, but his grin was as fresh and invigorated as if they’d only just arrived.
The others could only nod and grin back, as spellbound by him as their audience had been.
Mel was grateful they’d made him the lead.
If Julian was at the front, he could lead armies into the middle of the ocean with the power of his smile alone.
Down on the floor of the club, they were almost immediately mobbed by a throng of fans.
Fans. Imagine that. Just a few months ago they would’ve been lucky to have a crowd stay until the end of their set, and now they were drawing repeat viewers and die-hard aficionados.
Shoreditch teens and Dalston trendies swarmed them, one glossy dark head after another.
They mostly swarmed Julian, who took them on with the grace of a queen bee welcoming back her drones.
Rahul was never far behind him, with his own small flock of adoring followers but never with eyes for anyone but Julian.
They hadn’t been greeting their fans long before a man approached them who stood out from the eager youths.
He was older, for one thing, and wore anachronistic aviator sunglasses and a broad-shouldered suit.
He tried to engage Julian in conversation but the latter merely signalled he couldn’t hear him and herded Rahul towards the bar.
Mel, her instincts piqued, sidled up to the man.
He jumped when he noticed her suddenly at his elbow.
“You’re that bass player, aren’t you?” he yelled over the din of the club when he gathered himself. His smile was very straight and white in his tanned face.
“I’m a lot of things,” Mel said enigmatically. “What can I do you for?”