Chapter Ten Tarzan Boy #2
“My name’s John Polow, I’m with Fairfield Talent,” he said, producing a brilliant white card out of the air like a magician.
“Your band was stellar tonight. I was trying to tell your frontman. You can do better than the Mango -- frankly, two dogs and a hula hoop can do better than the Mango. But I can help you with that. Why don’t you ring my office when you get a chance?
I think we can help you get the audience you deserve.
” He held the card out to her with the nonchalance of offering a cigarette.
She hesitated before taking it, but only for show.
Secretly, she was chuffed to bits. She’d never thought their cock and ball band would amount to anything.
She only ever agreed to join it to shut her brother the hell up.
She’d only ever kept it up because, while they were booed off the stage practically every performance, it was a nice change to get out of the house and do something other than toking up and watching telly.
She had to admit, though, that over the last few months their performances had really improved, to the point that they’d garnered this not inconsiderable following.
Now there was a talent scout giving them his card, and Mel finally allowed herself to imagine what it might be like to do this band nonsense full-time.
To travel across the country -- maybe even the world -- playing to adoring fans, making big stacks of cash, having their faces plastered over billboards and the kinds of magazines Julian always had his nose buried in.
It sounded nice. More than nice. It sounded just like what Mel deserved.
Mel took the business card and slipped it into the back pocket of her trousers without breaking eye contact with the talent scout.
He shifted from foot to foot under the intensity of her gaze.
Good. The last thing she wanted him to be was complacent.
If she could make him and his company feel as though they were the ones who needed her and her band, then they could negotiate a lower rate for their management services.
“We’ll think about it,” Mel told him unemotionally. He seemed to sag slightly but nodded. “Enjoy yourself while you’re here, John. It’s a party.” She patted him on the back and only started smiling once she was out of his line of sight.
While Julian and Rahul set up shop at the bar, passing out copies of their demo tape and holding court like two decadent young lords, Mel and Kwambe took to the dance floor, indulging in dance moves that were likely too energetic for the downbeat new wave tracks coming through the speakers.
They were soon joined by fans who’d recognized them.
A distractingly handsome young bloke cosied up to Mel.
She let him set the pace and soon they found themselves dancing cheek to cheek.
With a few (or seven) beers in her, she let herself be led out of the main entrance, heart set on another fun and distracting one-night stand.
Kwambe wasn’t far behind them, brow creased in concern.
* * *
Julian was out of this world. That gig had been something else entirely, and it was mostly due to the frontman’s brilliance.
Rahul had matched him as best he could, but it was always Julian at the front and Rahul bringing up the lead.
He had been floored by Julian’s otherworldly magnificence.
The way he’d moved, the way he’d met Rahul bar for bar, note for note, every match a challenge, every sync a triumph.
When they’d battled each other on that stage, he’d lost himself in Julian.
He’d played to his demands, teased his desires, met him beat for beat.
His body had been Julian’s, his every essence at his whim.
He’d been an extension of him, another set of arms, a third leg.
He’d let Julian play him like an instrument and he’d loved every Goddamned second of it.
Now that they were off the stage, he missed it.
He longed to be back there. He wanted Julian to use him all night long, to take from him what he needed, to never stop. God, Julian, don’t stop.
But it was over. The gig had ended. They were on the floor now, mingling with their fans.
Their fans, can you believe it! People who loved them enough to stay after the show and meet them, buy their demo, try and shag them.
Rahul was drunk on it before he’d even gotten wasted on pints courtesy of their admirers.
They usually headed off to the Barber after their gigs to celebrate, but how could they resist the charming, attractive, young people who begged them to stay and who found everything they said fascinating?
Rahul found himself speaking at length about the scat movement in jazz and they were listening.
Not only listening, but they seemed interested, fascinated even.
He caught Julian’s eye from across the bar, where he was sat surrounded by his own posse, all of them clinging just as tightly to his every word.
They couldn’t help giggling at one another.
This was the dream, wasn’t it? This was what musicians, pop stars, aspired to.
This was what could go to their heads and make them believe they were gods instead of nearly homeless layabouts who couldn’t hold down proper jobs.
Somewhere in the upheaval of the evening, Julian and Rahul found themselves exiting the Mango at the same time, both of them clearly escaping their entourages.
In the sobering chill of the February night air, they looked at each other and couldn’t help dissolving into helpless fits of amazed laughter.
Julian produced two cigarettes and divided them between them.
As he lit them with his battered old Zippo lighter, Rahul’s tipsy mind focused unfairly on the dark fan of his lashes over his sharp cheekbones.
He was tatted out more so than usual tonight.
His sequined jumpsuit was new, a different, fresher model than his usual, and over it he wore a flamingo-pink coat of soft ostrich feathers.
He’d clearly been shopping recently, though where he’d gotten the money from was anyone’s guess as he’d been skint since the month began, complaining regularly about being unable to make his rent.
That was the problem with Julian -- if he found a fiver in his pocket, he was bound to spend it on glittery tat before he did anything useful with it.
They hadn’t even finished lighting their cigarettes before they heard a vicious, catcalling whistle. They both turned to see a trio of oiks approaching, their swaying broadcasting their intoxication.
“Oi, lads,” the leader of them slurred, his shorn head glistening with the slow-falling drizzle. “Get a butcher’s of the poofter. Givin’ your AIDS to this Paki then, eh?”
The leader’s gang snickered unkindly as Rahul’s cheeks heated up.
Any one of those words usually sent him into a spiralling panic attack.
Altogether, they made him feel ashamed and dirty.
Especially for Julian, whom he knew their cruel jibes were mostly aimed at.
He burned with impotent rage and, worst of all, embarrassment.
But when he turned to Julian, he found the boy grinning ferally, staring down the hooligans with something akin to madness.
“Yeah I’m a bloody poofter. I fuck men. I fuck women.
I’m full of diseases. I’m an East End pigeon with one foot.
I’m a punk rocker tube rat whose tail got chopped off in a train door.
I eat syphilis for breakfast. I listen to the Buzzcocks, then go round and suck your dad off. ”
Rahul was too busy gaping at Julian to react when the thug got up in Julian’s face, seething and sputtering with red cheeks. “The fuck you just say, you bloody bender?”
Without warning, Julian spat right in the lad’s eye. He recoiled as if poisoned and rubbed furiously at it, his goons surrounding him as if trying to come to his aid.