Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire (12 page)

Within the couple of years since my arrival I had developed in every kind of way, and the crowd loved me for it. I was still nowhere near the level of class or polish of Olivia, Gloria, Petra, or the others, but I was getting there. The sudden surge in popularity for VHS hadn’t diminished our audiences, and thankfully people still seemed to like the physical aspect of live performance.

Bruno used to tell us that he would plan our acts the way one would plan a menu – with complimentary acts followed by contradictory ones. He even went so far as to divide us into two lists – ‘sweet’ and ‘savory’. Petra was top of the ‘sweet’ list while Svetlana was her corresponding opposite number on the ‘savory’. Gloria, because she often varied her routine, could fit into either. Melissa was definitely sweet too, no matter the saucy and downright filthy words that came out of her mouth when she was behind a microphone, and I was ‘the equivalent of a steaming bowl of chili’, so Bruno described me once. I’d never eaten chili in my life so I assumed he meant I was a bit spicy.

So much for the performers – but what about our regulars?

Bruno had simple rules for the customers – look but don’t touch, no exceptions – no private sessions, no soliciting. His bouncers were a pair of ex-policemen, twins in fact, who ran their own security business and kept things in check when need be, which was never very often. Fights rarely happened in the club. I found out much later that Bruno was very well-connected with the local press, so perhaps a certain subtle hint of blackmail was what helped them all to behave so well.

The most distinctive was Blue Collar Korean Import Guy, or BCKIG for short, as we called him. He spent every Friday night in his blue denim overalls staring up at us from the front of the stage, as though we had frozen his features in time. BCKIG only ever drank Pepsi, so we deduced that he was either a teetotal or operated machinery in an environment where being under the influence was either a sackable offence, injurious to health, or both. I didn’t usually feel much for any of our watchers, but BCKIG was one I felt a little sorry for. There weren’t a lot of people of his sort around in Old Berlin at that time and I never saw him speak to anyone else in the Klub other than, I assume, the bar staff to order his one single Pepsi that was likely all he could afford on his weekly wage, once he’d paid his admission fee.

“That guy just freaks me out sometimes,” Petra confided in me early on. “He never seems to react to anything. Just sits and stares. It’s like:
this is my vagina, darling
– and he just sits there!” She mimed a pop-eyed, goldfish-like impersonation of BCKIG, and we fell about the place. “God only knows what the hell’s going through his mind.”

“Thoughts of a very unchristian nature, darling,” Olivia sang as she brushed by. “Or at least, I’d bloody well hope so. We give our all up on that damn stage, so I’d expect at least the odd dirty fantasy to float through these buggers’ heads.”

“I think he’s kind of cute,” I confessed.

Mel crept up behind me and bent her ear close to my mouth. “What is it that does it for ya then, honey? The big glasses? The denim cap? Or the fact he’s probably
really
nifty
with his nimble little fingers?” She scuttled her hand up my neck as though it was a tarantula, and I flinched at the very touch. Mel had managed to switch me from being moderately excited, fantasizing about me giving BCKIG a private dance to see if he displayed any external emotions at all, to being totally creeped out in the space of about two seconds. I’d always hated spiders. And the bigger they were, the more I hated them.

“Never mind, Mel,” I sighed as she went off sniggering, having once more blown my mood apart. (Mel could do that without even trying – it was a feature of her sense of humor, and one which took me quite a while to understand. She sometimes had a manner which could be very curt, even abrasive, but deep down she cared for every one of us and had no difficulty in telling us so after a half-bottle of local hock just
how much
.)

And getting back to our regular voyeurs, there was the group of professors from the local university – or so we had all decided among ourselves, the Gang of Four as we referred to them. No matter what they were in reality, they were distinguished gentlemen who wore tweeds, three-piece suits and sports jackets and looked as though they all lectured for a living. They seemed to drink brandy and wine mainly, and Saturday nights usually saw them in a little cluster either to the right or the left of the stage. A couple of them also had a passion for laughably cheesy jazz, as they could often be seen bopping along (complete with snapping finger gestures) to our more ‘trad’ accompaniments as though it were ‘41 and they were swingin’ with Glenn Miller. Olivia had decided that they all worked in the Social Sciences department and ventured out to the Klub to study the sociological and psychological impact of live erotic entertainment upon themselves, and take back with them many off-color observations and theories, no doubt purposefully designed to upset the radical feminists of the Gender Studies department.

Then there was ‘Heinrich’, whom we named after Himmler, on account of his strict haircut, bucket-shaped head and bull-like neck (and outsize belly to match). He started to turn up not long after I joined, and Petra disliked him at first sight. She surmised that he spent his time wondering how long it would have taken his father to sign us all up to the local Joy Division as he nursed his beer and contemplated world domination. He always wore a black belted overcoat and we deduced that he was also a flasher in his spare time (although only at Aryan women, so Olivia had decided – which ruled Petra out, much to her irritation).

On occasion we mere mortals would be treated to the undivided attention of God’s Own Sex Machine, or so Petra had dubbed him. I’m pretty sure every bar and club, then as well as now, had it’s very own GOSM regular – this one was strictly of his time, with wide open shirt, gold neck chains, sideburns almost as big as Boris, and trousers so tight they would have made the Bee Gees gasp. He’d usually (blatantly) nurse a glass of champagne from his seat near the front, table pushed to the side so we could see his spread legs and central bulge, which according to Mel’s ribald assumptions, was actually a couple of pairs of his granny’s pantyhose. (I had never seen it change size or position, so could never be sure if that was the real deal.) At times I saw him up and dancing in the early evenings, usually to the latest tunes, but he clearly wasn’t a fan of redheads as I never attracted his attention. Olivia, on the other hand, had rebuffed him several times, refusing to believe his overtures involving his own penthouse, Porsche, and recent exotic holiday destinations.

At the other end of the scale were the young couple whom Gloria had christened Hansel and Gretel. They generally sat near the front and before the end of the evening, she would generally have her hand inside his fly zip and his hand would similarly find its way under her skirt. They always shared a couple of bottles of red wine and were the only regulars that I would ever find myself consciously playing up to, knowing for sure that I would be generating a real and positive reaction in them. Once or twice I’d even make eye contact, and get a wink or a smile or even a wave in reply. It was those little moments of human connection which we all aimed at, in our own way, to remind ourselves that we weren’t just animated objects on a stage but real people, having an effect upon other, equally real, people.

And while the Klub continued to flourish, I remained firmly entrenched on Wilhelmsgasse, like the Kaiser’s army on the Western Front. I’d always expected to be out of that apartment within the first few months for whatever reason, or at least once I’d saved up enough to move myself up the housing scale, but when the time came I realized I’d actually become quite used to the old place. It wasn’t so bad, if, as the others had told me, you were careful – and being a couple of years older now, and very much wiser, I knew on which side of the road I stood, so to speak. I even grew to like a few of the regular streetwalkers, with whom I shared the occasional chat, or bar of chocolate, on my way to the Klub; and before too long I had established a little network of whistling, strutting miniskirted allies who had sworn to look out for my safety whenever possible. They were led by the oldest of their gang, a formidable Swedish
Valkyrie
named Christina whose specialty was taking five men at once (“I’ve got three holes and two hands, so why not?” she explained to me with a laugh; “Saves time, and makes more money!”). And despite what some of the others had once thought of me, if Christina thought I was okay, then I officially
was
. I soon learned handy tricks of personal safety, like how to turn a can of hairspray and a cigarette lighter into a blowtorch, and Christina herself went nowhere without a switchblade down one boot and a set of brass knuckles inside her coat. I had never felt the need to go out armed myself, not even in my earliest and poorest days of walking to work, but it was reassuring to know that I had the Old Berlin First Ladies’ Infantry Brigade watching my back. I was making contacts and friends in the dark, dirty underworld of the big city, and my mother would have filled the whole bath with tears (and then drowned herself in it) if she knew even the half of it.

And so it was, so far, so good.

Until we met
Honey
.

Bruno once referred to her as ‘the human equivalent of a hand grenade thrown into a chicken coop’ – a metaphor that was not so far from the truth. Explosive, fiery and devastating were three words that I would certainly have used to describe her.

Among many others, as it turned out.

It must have been sometime in springtime, ‘85 or thereabouts when she arrived one afternoon unannounced, walking straight through the main door as if she owned the place. I knew there was something strange about her from the fact she stood nearly six and a half feet tall in her leather knee-boots. However, the first thing I noticed about her was that every fingernail was painted a different shade of the same color – making me wonder just how much varnish she actually owned. I always seemed to note little details like that, somehow, even at the expense of the bigger, more obvious, picture.

“What can I do for you?” Bruno asked, moving out to meet her from behind the bar while I sat there, sipping Pernod with Petra.

“I think it’s more what I can do for you. Give you the most awesome fucking display this place has ever seen. Interested?”

Bruno chewed on his cigarette, refusing to look skeptical.

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Really. Need a demonstration?”

Bruno shrugged. The look said ‘go ahead’.

She bit her lip as she whipped open her shiny PVC raincoat to show an incredibly-defined naked body, with smallish, perky breasts, a gold ring through her right nipple – and a pair of balls and a cock that would have looked good on a hardcore muscleman.

Petra exploded into her glass as she turned around and clocked this unexpected and completely incongruous sight, spraying drink all over the bar. Her hands shot up to cover her face.

“Jesus fuck me over a barrel,” she snuffled into her palms. “Is that a…”

I just stared, not knowing what to say. I didn’t want to sit there gawking at that big dangling dick, but I couldn’t help myself, and there really wasn’t anywhere else to look: the visitor had made sure of that, filling pretty much the whole space in front of us with her overwhelming presence and personality.

“No, baby,” she soothed, “it’s a
sauerkraut
. Want a taste?”

“Oh. My...” Petra burbled, now blowing bubbles of Pernod down her nose. “...God.” Her eyes bulged out beyond their lids, as if being pushed through their sockets from the back of her head. Bruno’s look had changed from one of quiet apathy to barely-suppressed bewilderment.

“Ah,” he said, trying hard not to look as if he wasn’t struck speechless. Our shameless she-male just stood there, her coat pushed back, smirking up one side of her face as the silence continued to stew.

“So, wanna try me out?” she pressed, pushing her weight on to the other foot. “Or will we just stand and admire each other all night?”

Bruno shrugged deep inside his jacket, as if trying to disappear from view completely.

“Uhh. Well...” He was trying hard, but the sight in front of him seemed to have disabled most of his IQ. His jaw flapped silently, but the words just didn’t come out. He scratched his woolly head, rubbed the back of his collar. I could almost smell the sweat seeping out of him at ten paces, and it was the first time I’d ever seen him look even remotely uncomfortable. “To be honest, I could say that...your...
assets
are perhaps not quite what the Kitty Klub is all about. We’re a traditional kind of establishment here, y’know. Some would even say ‘old-fashioned’, as we don’t do hardcore, live sex, or anything like that which is big these days. But, I’m always saying that we are happy to embrace new and exciting acts. So, uh. Yes. Let’s have an audition some time.”

She belted her coat again and slid a pair of gleaming sunglasses on, as if the sun had just come out inside the half-lit bar-room. “Cool. Let me get my stuff from the car, and I’ll be right back.”

She skipped out of the Klub and Bruno gawked at the pair of us.

“I didn’t actually mean
right now
,” he mumbled, knowing he’d already lost the first round.

“I am
not
going on stage with that,” Petra warned him, waving a finger in the stranger’s wake. “
No
. I have limits, dammit, and that’s just plain wrong. Against all the laws of nature and God’s will, and all that.”

“Don’t worry,” Bruno told her, “unless she’s equally gifted in the performance department, you won’t ever have to. I don’t want to scare the shit out of our regulars, after all.”

“Good. I don’t do freaks and I don’t work in a fucking circus.”

“But maybe she –
he
? - God, what do you call that – might bring in new customers,” I countered. “She’s certainly got...er, balls. In every sense.”

Bruno growled. “I don’t need complications like this. Guys who dress as women, and vice versa, is fine. That’s an honorable tradition going back to the earliest days of this establishment.”