Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (19 page)

B
iddie and the oversize floor pillow and Happy Harry and I eventually got sick of sharing one room.

We moved to a larger pad in a cheaper neighborhood. The kitchen and bathroom were still down the hall, but at least we could go about our daily business without having to kick the floor pillow out of the way.

Our pad was drearily unmemorable, with the exception of a startlingly white vinyl floor, which ran throughout. Though disastrous from an acoustic point of view—especially when
Biddie was rehearsing his new cabaret act—this spanking new floor covering gave the place a crisp, optimistic look and provided a contrasting background which showed off the floor pillow to full advantage. This white floor plays a significant role in the incident which I am about to relate.

Our street was called Leamington Gardens, which sounds very E. M. Forster but wasn’t. Admittedly there were no tarts in our building. But there was definitely one across the street.

She was a large, attractive, very lazy, very unusual Jamaican lady. She did not trudge the streets braving the elements like a regular tart. Nor did she make any effort to adorn herself in a profession-appropriate manner, with the usual sequined frocks or spangled eyelids. She was never to be seen flaunting herself at closing time under the lamplight outside the neighboring pubs.

Jamaican Lady preferred to solicit her clients from the comfort of her front porch. Here she stood for hours at a time, looking detached and vacant and slightly haunting. This was unusual behavior for a British tart. London streetwalkers in particular have always been known for their cheeky verbosity, enticing potential clients by calling out phrases such as “How about a night of fun, dearie?” or the simpler “How about it?”

Not Jamaican Lady. She was mute and uninviting. Her torpid body language seemed to say, “How about a night of unrelieved tedium?”

When it came time to advertise her services, she did so with one simple gesture. She lifted her skirt.

Jamaican Lady rarely even blinked or coughed. She seemed very focused on conserving her energy, limiting her actions
strictly to the aforementioned lifting of the aforementioned skirt. She did not even bother to lower her skirt manually. She would simply release it and allow gravity to do the work. It was as if she thought that any physical exertion would burn calories, which in turn would diminish her figure, which even to a homosexual window dresser, seemed to be remarkably voluptuous.

The neighborhood was not entirely without its classy interludes. Two young professional classical singers lived on the third floor of our house. They were boyfriends. One was a gifted countertenor who specialized in ancient castrati choral numbers. He sang, much to our undisguised fascination, in a staggeringly impressive prepubescent choirboy trill. His singing was miraculously effortless, a pair of lightly flushed cheeks being the only sign of exertion.

His speaking voice, when he came down to borrow a cup of sugar or ask us to stop screeching, was quite normal. But whenever he sang, out would pour this high-pitched river of gorgeous Renaissance song. We would ply him with cheap wine and then beg him to perform and then gawk at him as if he was some kind of freak, which of course he was, in a high culture kind of way.

His chum, by contrast, was a booming bass with an improbably deep Paul Robeson voice. When he sang, he frowned continuously and made intimidating gestures with his large, murderous hands while his adoring husband looked on.

These talented young songbirds—we nicknamed them Boris and Doris—would practice individually for hours. More often than not they would punctuate their rehearsals with a
corny duet. To the passersby, even Jamaican Lady, their singing must have conjured up a cliché romantic coupling. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. Nobody on the block had any idea that they were listening to two blokes.

Boris and Doris were at opposite ends of the scale, yin and yang. It was tempting to make hasty assumptions about their private lives. “It’s easy to see who wears the pants and who wears the earrings,” cackled Biddie as soon as they were out of earshot, whereupon we winked and nudged each other like two smug fishwives.

Biddie’s observations turned out to be an oversimplification. Just when we thought we had them figured out, they moved the gay goal posts. One day I caught the manly bass having a girlie hissy fit in the communal kitchen. He was waging war with an uncooperative cheese soufflé while wearing a plaid, lace-ruffled apron. Meanwhile the castrato was upstairs drilling big holes in the wall above their living room window in preparation for the hanging of some fancy pouf draperies, which to add to the confusion, the bass had been sewing and ruching that very morning. It was not long before we were forced to admit that we had no idea who was Boris and who was Doris.

Poofs, homos, queers, friends of Dorothy, call them what you will, this strange club, of which Biddie and I were now members, was turning out to be far more nuanced than we had ever envisaged. We were having a hard time finding a niche, let alone a date. Our mockery of Boris and Doris concealed a tinge of envy. Despite their little anomalies, Boris and Doris had found happiness: they were content with themselves and with each other.

We, by contrast, were immature, inexperienced, and fairly dreadful at conducting relationships. I had recently been dating another window dresser. It did not last long. He invited me over one night and announced that he had decided to “set me free.” I was so naïve that I actually said, “Good heavens, how considerate!” and left his apartment feeling fluffy and light-headed and grateful. It took me months to figure out I had been dumped.

Biddie was even more inexperienced than I was. Not long after we moved to London, an attractive man had approached him on the Underground and invited him to “come back for coffee.” Biddie had immediately blown it.

“I’m afraid I don’t drink coffee” was his doltish reply.

I tried to persuade him that “come back for coffee” was a common euphemism. “Daughter! It’s just a polite way of inviting you back for a bit of slap and tickle, that’s all.”

“But, daughter! As you yourself know, I don’t
drink
coffee! Don’t you get it! I prefer tea,” he kept saying.

Biddie refused to acknowledge that this person had any intention other than to force gallons of ghastly unwanted coffee down his throat.

The problem was that my roommate and I both had very 1950s ideas about dating: we were wildly out of step with the burgeoning 1970s gay culture. Our concept of romance was based on Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster embracing on the beach in
From Here to Eternity,
or Liz Taylor and Monty Clift in
A Place in the Sun.
We were conventional. Not so the people we met. Most gay men seemed to have
proclivities.

One evening while strolling home up Portobello Road, I
was approached by a uniformed policeman. Instead of arresting me, he asked me to come home for a glass of sherry. He was handsome and charming, so I accepted. Imagine Biddie’s face when I tell him about this, I thought as we sped into the night in his panda car with me in the back looking like a rather unmenacing felon.

We drove to a very chic house in toney W 8. I noted with surprise that the decor was quite fancy.

Drinks were proffered, after which the police uniform was discarded, only to be replaced by another uniform, this time from Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards. I began to suspect that the whole police thing, including the panda car, was some elaborate, well-financed fetish. A closet full of uniforms was unfurled, confirming my suspicions. I fled.

On another occasion, Biddie and I decided to check out the late-night cruising scene on Hampstead Heath. We had heard about the naughty goings-on from friends. Nothing could have prepared us for the kinky spectacle we encountered.

We clutched on to each other and giggled our way through the nocturnal autumn mists. Suddenly Biddie dug his fingers into my arm. “Look up,” he whispered, “and try not to scream.”

I followed his instructions. Then I saw it. There, glistening in the moonlight, was a chubby man encased head to foot in a black rubber cat suit sitting on a not very sturdy branch.

Biddie waved. The rubber person chose not to wave back. He just sat there like a horrid, shiny tree fungus.

Though we were greatly amused, the whole experience left us feeling rather ordinary. Instead of thinking, What’s wrong
with all these deranged perverts? we thought, What is wrong with us?

How come we weren’t riddled with kinky inclinations? How come we weren’t sitting in a tree on Hampstead Heath encased in latex? Were we somehow retarded in our development?

With our mid-century ideas of romance, we felt somewhat alienated.

At least we had each other.

Despite the occasional bout of sisterly bickering, Biddie and I got along well. From the perspective of Jamaican Lady across the street, we must have seemed like such a happy duo, or trio if you count Biddie’s alter ego.

I was the busy, dynamic window dresser, the shorter of the three, who trudged home from work each night, frequently carrying strange props—ostrich feathers, Pierrot masks, and Chinese fans, all “borrowed” from the display studio at my place of employ.

Biddie was, from Jamaican Lady’s perspective, probably my femmy partner. He wore tightly cinched paramilitary jumpsuits, pink plastic sandals, and a vintage poodle sweater. He came and went at odd hours, a bit like Jamaican Lady herself.

Then, last but not least, there was Biddie’s sophisticated twin sister. She stayed at home all day and emerged every evening sporting chiffon and vintage satin gowns with long, trailing flyaway panels. These gossamer wings frequently got caught in the front door when she strode out on her nightly sorties. The short window dresser always seemed to derive an
enormous amount of amusement from the subsequent whiplash.

This nocturnal, angular glamour-puss was sometimes accompanied by the short window dresser but was never, for some strange reason, seen in the company of her slightly shorter twin. I’m sure this was quite perplexing to Jamaican Lady.

The truth of the matter was that, in less than a year, Biddie had become a successful and much-sought-after drag cabaret performer. While Jamaican Lady was flashing pedestrians, motorists, and the occasional bloke in a wheelchair, Biddie was over on the swanky side of town beguiling audiences in trendy clubs and restaurants.

London was, at this particular time, bursting at the seams with drag queens. They were mostly bawdy types, with names like Dockyard Doris and Bertha Venation, who lip-synched to cassette tapes of Shirley Bassey and brayed obscenities at the audience: “The owner of this pub is an Irish count—at least I think that’s what they called him! Mwaaah!”

Biddie might have been born in a council flat, but he wasn’t common like the other London drag queens. His chic, sophisticated stage persona set him apart from the bawdy pub trannies. He never lip-synched: he sang all his songs himself. And he had a gimmick: he changed hats for every song.

“When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” was performed with a giant flock of blue glitter swallows circling his head attached by wires. For “Shakin’ the Blues Away” he wore a three-foot-wide Erté-esque number, which was festooned with cascades of blue bugle beads. The actual changing of the
hats was accomplished while distracting the audience with a welter of chatty badinage: “Ladies! I find the best way to get over a man is to get under another one. Don’t you?” Biddie’s themed chapeaux were designed and constructed by Biddie himself, using glue, spit, and stolen display paraphernalia. Word spread. Young trendies flocked from all over London to see Biddie and His Amazing Hats.

In tandem with his growing fan base, Biddie was developing a scary addiction. It was causing me considerable concern. If we had had such things as interventions back then, I would have undoubtedly called Doreen and Cyril Biddlecombe up to London and staged one.

It wasn’t Biddie’s fault. He was only human. He was young and susceptible and totally caught up in the magical, decadent whirl of
cabaret.

Like so many addictions, it started innocently enough.

Every time he performed, admirers would ply Biddie with booze. Who doesn’t love a free drink, especially when it is accompanied by an avalanche of postperformance praise? Biddie liked any tipple as long as it was brightly colored. His faves were sugary showgirl drinks like Parfait Amour (purple) and Chartreuse (yellow-green). These evil pushers would wait until he was well-lubricated, and then they would pounce. No, I’m not talking about pills or smack or cocaine. It was something far more pernicious.

They would offer him their unwanted upright pianos.

Before TV and hi-fi, every home in England had an upright piano in the parlor. During wartime the beleaguered Brits had steadied their nerves by pounding out uplifting ditties like
“Hang Out Your Washing on the Siegfried Line” and “Roll Out the Barrel.” In the 1960s these instruments acquired a certain nostalgia chic: trendy people tore the fronts off, painted them white, and stuck daisies and geraniums on them or in them.

Now all these trendy types, none of whom could even play the piano, had started to begrudge the space. But what to do? Nobody had the heart to throw Granny’s old piano out onto the street. Here was the perfect solution: unload your upright piano onto your local transvestite cabaret entertainer.

When the first one arrived chez nous, Biddie was delirious. No more expensive rehearsal rooms! He immediately set about honing his routines and learning tons of new songs. Everything was rosy and peachy. We even found room for the now displaced floor pillow. We wedged it on top of the piano, where it provided additional soundproofing.

I was quite taken aback when, unannounced, a second piano arrived on our doorstep. I began to suspect that he might be hooked. He was. When it came to upright pianos, Biddie was a sitting duck. These evil manipulators only had to wait until he was in convivial après show mode. Once he had a couple of crème de menthes (green) inside of him, they knew he was too weak to resist.