By Melissa Mann.
The girl scout, the pigtails, the scuffed Start-rite shoes. Back of Keighley Working Men’s Club. Backlit by the light from the fire escape. The Ford Fiesta on bricks, the beads of old rain on a dead rat, the little girl. Pissing behind the bins. Pissing on the Start-rite shoes. Swearing. Swearing at the piss on the Start-rite shoes.
Forty-three years I’ve been a little lass. Practically me whole life. Body stopped growing when I was eight and that was fate telling me how life’d be from then on. S’when I realised, you don’t choose how to live, s’your life what chooses you. So you get on with your life. Make it work for you. And I did, for forty-three years. Made it me work. But I can’t bloody do it anymore. I told Joyce that. Forty-three years with your dick strapped between your legs six nights a week, fifty-two week o’the year; s’too much. Not too much for the wife though. Can’t get enough of it. Born for the stage, Joyce was. Stage, yes: headlining Blackpool Tower Ballroom; supporting Cannon & Ball at Leeds Grand. Not this, though. Not working shit-holes like this for pin money.
The moon like a sudden eye, the Y-reg camper van, the figure framed in a square of light. Side street next to Keighley Working Men’s Club. Side-on getting undressed. The scout leader’s uniform, the fake moustache, the wife. Facing him now. Facing him, hands on hips. Waving. Waving at him to get in the van.
She’s too old for this. Middle-aged spread, saggy breasts – takes her bloody hours to strap it all in. Won’t get undressed in front o’me now. Has me change in the bog. I was sat in there the other day, staring at me costume without me in it, hung on the back o’the door, and it was like I’d found something I didn’t know I’d lost. Looking in the mirror, wrinkles round me eyes, greasepaint hanging in jowls off me skull, it was like seeing a portrait o’meself. A portrait where the artist’s painted on me instead o’me on the canvas. All wrong. I’ve been all wrong for years and years.
The act died a death in ‘96. Princes Theatre, Clacton-on-Sea. The Goody-Goods an afterthought on the bill. Us usual twenty-minute routine like twenty days of night. Shoulda called it a draw then, but Joyce wan’t having any of it. Said the act still had legs. Said all it took was a call from Ricky Gervais and we’d be back in the Big Time. Well sod the Big Time. I’ve had enough cheesy routines and tired catchphrases to last a bloody lifetime. I want that bungalow we said we’d retire to. I want to shag me wife and not some faggot scout leader. I want to shag her, me on top, not face-down with me dick shoved back between me legs. I’m meant to be a man, that’s how it works. I want to grow old like a man.
The girl scout, the fag at the corner of her mouth, the shadows humming in the alleyway. Ale sloshing out the man’s glass as he walks. All sixteen stone of him pushing through his shirt-front. The paint-splattered trainers, the BCFC tattoo on his forearm, the breath like rotting meat. Laughing at the little girl. Laughing till he’s red in the face. Pointing. Pointing at the little girl stubbing out her fag.
“‘ell fire, it’s little Miss Goody-Good ‘avin’ a ciggie!” The man’s bent double, bringing up a laugh. I imagine him hurting me, how good it would feel.
“Fuckin’ classic, tharr’is!” he says, pulling at the waist of his trousers. The smell of alcohol’s in his eyes. “Go on, give us yer catchphrase then, yer little jig,” he says, hopping from foot to foot.
Standing there at his feet, I’m made of sand. Made of sand and I’m running out. I point a finger at him, wanting to make something happen.
“I said, give us yer fuckin’ line!” He’s rummaging in his pockets. “Five quid I paid to see The Goody-Goods ‘ere tonight.” He waves a ripped ticket. “Five quid an’ you was bloody rubbish. Din’t laugh once. So give us yer catchphrase, y’owe us that much.”
The little girl, the bloodied crowbar, the man being turned inside out. Four foot two above him on the seeping stones. Forty feet up now, looking down on the scene. The gutter stars, the cobbles like layers of old footsteps, the moustachioed woman stumbling over them. Looking down on this endless now. Looking down at the distraught wife. Shouting. Shouting words big enough to climb walls.
I feel the last swing o’the crowbar collecting in me hands, then a crack like an egg on the side of a bowl. Me breath’s coming out in clumps like a flogged dog.
“You’ve killed him!” cries Joyce.
A cold space hangs between us. A space where I could say something. I look down. Blood on me hands. For a minute, I can’t work out why.
“You’ve killed him,” Joyce tells the ground.
His wrecked body is leaking life. As I watch it fold round me shoes, something opens inside, like a coffin lid when you’ve been buried alive.
“Ooohh goody-good,” I say, hopping from foot to foot. “Ooohh goody goody good!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Mann is a flickering neon sign outside a derelict transvestite shop on Manningham Lane in Bradford. She acts as a beacon of false-y hope for all those who must now rely on Evans Outsize in the Arndale Centre for their extra large fishnets and foundation garments. Melissa performed this story live at The Recession Session.
