Delilah's Read online

  Delilah’s

  John Maley

  Acknowledgements

  The author would like to thank Andrew Lindsay, Gerry Loose, Willy Maley, Dave Manderson, Donny O’Rourke, Liz Small, Hamish Whyte.

  The author acknowledges receipt of a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary in 1999.

  Rory’s Kitchen Drawer, Papa and Mama and Bridging The Atlantic previously appeared in New Writing Scotland. Jeannie and Joanie and Going Back first appeared in Nerve. Keep The Claws first appeared in Nomad.

  Contents

  Glasgow is Full of Invisible Lovers

  An Inspector Calls

  Going Back

  Bridging the Atlantic

  Papa and Mama

  Advantage Navratilova

  Jeannie and Joanie

  Queen of People’s Hearts

  Judy

  Catwoman

  Straight-acting, Self-hating

  Papa and the Golden Shower

  Ellen’s Degenerates

  Strangers in the Night

  Here Comes the Bride

  Smoking a Joint: When Harry Met Gary

  Heavy Losses

  Rory’s Kitchen Drawer

  Keep the Claws

  And I Love You So

  The Threesome Real

  Yerma’s Yearning

  Play Dusty for Me

  The Driving Seat

  Struck by Lightning

  A Lousy Lay

  Queer John

  German Shepherd

  Joanie and the Dutch Master

  Bobbie and the Womyn

  The Other World

  A Coat of Arms

  The Duet

  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

  Mama’s Papa

  Joanie and the Three Bears

  Bobbie Dazzler

  And So They Came to Delilah’s

  Glasgow is Full of Invisible Lovers

  Glasgow is full of invisible lovers. They don't hold hands in the street or walk arm-in-arm in the park. They don't kiss in public places. These invisible Glasgow lovers could pass for friends or strangers. Their unions aren't blessed. They fade into family backgrounds, feign eccentricity, their lips and fates sealed by countless small dangers. Glasgow's invisible lovers are jealous of their reputations, want to keep their jobs.

  Some of them vanish without trace, unable to bear their own reflections. Some of them materialise in each other's beds, where they have great or guilty sex. Some of them disappear for years, then reappear in a marriage of convenience or a public convenience, dropping their trousers and their guard. Some of them stop caring what happens to them; some of them stop speaking to their mothers. Some of them enjoy making mischief while invisible. Some invisible lovers fall so deeply in love they don't give a fuck what the world thinks. Some invisible lovers are so glad when they find each other they feel like they're walking on the moon. Some of them feel they could breathe more easily and be more at home on the moon. Some of Glasgow's invisible lovers go to a place called Delilah's, sweet, ugly, glorious Delilah's, where they can meet like-minds and mouths and escape from the madness of being invisible. Glasgow is full of invisible lovers who don't want to be invisible any more.

  An Inspector Calls

  Joanie added his final touches of lipstick and pouted into his dressingtable mirror. He felt sick after a night of debauchery. Something had rattled his cage, he wasn’t sure what, and he had ended up getting pissed and getting a stupid idea in his head that he must find love. He’d ended up with a giant brute of a man escorting him home. Joanie suspected the cad had spiked his drink, the tenth one had tasted a bit funny. He remembered they had a wrestling match in his bedroom before he hit his amorous assailant over the head with a slingback to prevent himself being spiked. The man had toppled like a skittle and Joanie had gasped ‘See you in court’ before fainting onto the bed. Two hours later he awoke to find the ogre on bended knee asking for his hand in marriage. Joanie had graciously accepted the proposal, backing a hunch that this would get rid of his beau quicker. Even so, Joanie had to half-push, half-drag the guy down the hall and out the front door, all the while his new fiancé pecking at him like a giant bird and murmuring terms of endearment.

  Even a good vomit hadn’t made Joanie feel any better. It had been awhile since he’d had a blow-out like this one and he hoped there hadn’t been too many witnesses. He still wasn’t sure what had got into him. Sometimes it was just the stress of work creeping up on you; sometimes it was loneliness springing at you like a mugger from an alley.

  Joanie took a few deep breaths and adjusted his wig. He decided a guy was entitled to let his pants down once in a while. The only trouble was, today he couldn’t sleep it off. The brewery chain that had recently bought Delilah’s had some young rep coming up from London on what they called a ‘fact-finding mission’. Joanie had a rendezvous at two with the guy. They were meeting at Delilah’s which at that stage didn’t open till five on a Sunday. This was one of the things that were going to change. Joanie sighed and wrote Never Again on the mirror with his lipstick. Then he phoned a taxi.

  By five to two Joanie was rattling his keys at the doors of Delilah’s. He switched off the alarm, put on the lights and gave the premises a brisk inspection. Everything looked neat. The cleaners had done a great job. He knew he could trust Jeannie, the regular, to keep the place shipshape. Joanie flicked through the till receipts, the accounts, gave the bar another quick wipe, then sat on a stool waiting for the rep to arrive. He wondered what the brewery’s plans were. They could close the joint, sell it on, turn it straight, turn it into something else, a restaurant or a gym. Joanie had decided not to worry. Delilah’s made good money. He’d counted many a pink pound in and out of those tills.

  Eventually the bell rang and Joanie adjusted his wig, cleared his throat and hurried to the door. He opened it on Toby, who looked like a wee tailor’s dummy in a three-piece grey suit. They introduced themselves and Toby sat in a booth while Joanie got them a couple of Cokes. Then Joanie sat down opposite, and they smiled at each other. Toby had a black leather briefcase in his lap. He noticed Joanie looking at it and shoved it under the table. They chatted about the weather and Toby’s journey from London (he’d flown). When they’d finished their Cokes Joanie showed Toby around the place. They inspected the long bar, the booths, the backroom, the loos, the staffroom/cloakroom, Toby never saying a word or asking any questions – just making an ‘mm’ sound. When they found themselves back at the bar he finally said ‘Fine’. Joanie made them coffees and they perched in a booth again.

  ‘Tell me about a typical week in Delilah’s,’ said Toby. Joanie felt his headache coming back.

  ‘I don’t know whether there is a typical week,’ began Joanie, ‘but here goes. We have karaoke a couple of nights a week – currently a Sunday and a Wednesday. Friday and Saturday are pre-club nights so we usually blast out the music. Mondays we’ve been having the odd quiz. Thursdays we sometimes have entertainment – a singer or a comic. Jist now and then. The joint is jumping because the people that come in here want to have a ball or two. Come tonight.’

  Toby gave Joanie a sceptical look. ‘I hate karaoke,’ he said.

  ‘Check the accounts,’ shrugged Joanie. ‘Business is booming.’

  Toby looked as sick as Joanie felt.

  ‘What about you John?’ he asked.

  ‘Joanie.’

  ‘Joanie. What’s with the get-up?’

  ‘The get-up?’ asked Joanie.

  ‘The drag business. The cock-in-a-frock number,’ said Toby.

  ‘What about it?’ asked Joanie, defensively.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit Blackpool 1970s?’ asked Toby.

  ‘You’re not old enough to have been born in the 1970s,’ replied Joanie.

  ‘I’m jus
t saying it’s a bit old hat,’ said Toby.

  ‘I’ve turned this place around,’ retorted Joanie. ‘As for ma appearance, glamour is always in fashion.’

  Toby smiled, softened a little. Joanie decided he wasn’t going to let him away with anything. In between pointless fumbles in his briefcase Toby told Joanie something about the brewery’s operations which spanned the length and breadth of the UK and encompassed gay and straight venues including two strip clubs.

  ‘I can’t understand how you get the business up here,’ said Toby. ‘I mean are there any queers in Glasgow?’

  ‘Seeing is believing,’ said Joanie.

  ‘When I think of this town,’ continued Toby, ‘I think of junkies, alcoholics, terrible accents and people who want to rearrange your face just for the hell of it.’

  ‘You’re thinking of Hollywood,’ said Joanie. ‘Glasgow’s got a wee bit more class than that.’ He felt like rearranging Toby’s face. The boy had a lot of nerve.

  Toby changed the subject, as if he was picking up how much he’d pissed Joanie off. He asked Joanie if there had been any problems with drugs in Delilah’s. One of the London bars had recently got busted.

  ‘I only know what I see,’ said Joanie. ‘If people are doing drugs they’re doing them discreetly. We sell a lot of booze in here.’

  Toby nodded, satisfied with the answer. He asked Joanie for a pint. Joanie got him a beer and a mineral water for himself. He thought it was unprofessional for Toby to drink on duty but reckoned a few pints might loosen the pompous little prick up a bit. Toby asked Joanie for the accounts and Joanie brought them over to the table. Toby took out a laptop from his briefcase and punched some details into the machine. Joanie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He wished he could go back to bed.

  ‘We get so many fly-by-night staff in here,’ remarked Joanie. ‘I’m the only person holding this joint thegither.’

  Toby was too engrossed in his laptop to respond.

  ‘We’ve had students, actors, singers, jugglers – looking for a lumber or a few extra quid to pay their way through college or keep up the mortgage payments. Some are good, some are hopeless, but none of them last. Shitty hours and shitty pay don’t help.’

  Toby made an ‘mm’ sound and closed his laptop. He put it back in his briefcase, which he tucked under the table. He drained his glass and asked for another pint. Joanie obliged, but wondered when he was going to get rid of the wee runt so he could get psyched up for work.

  The two of them sat in the booth, Joanie on the wagon and Toby slowly falling off it. Toby looked like a wee boy trying to be a grown-up. He made Joanie think of the Divine classic You Think You’re A Man (But You’re Only A Boy). Several pints later he even treated Joanie to the low-down on his love life. He didn’t actually have one, only snide things to say about the scene.

  ‘One night stands and time wasters and prick teasers and drag queens,’ said Toby. ‘I’m fed up with all that crap. I’m looking for love.’

  Joanie smiled ruefully.

  ‘Never look for love,’ he said, with quiet authority. ‘I went lookin’ for love last night and ended up with spunk in ma best wig and ma reputation in tatters. Now I’m engaged to a maniac. He’ll probably sue me for breach of promise.’

  ‘That’s what I hate about you,’ replied Toby, petulantly. ‘You’re all so cynical.’

  ‘Cynical? Haud yer horses, hen. You’ve jist sat and trashed everybody and his fucking mother!’

  Toby burped and slurped at his pint like a big baby.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ he said, in a conciliatory tone, ‘all I’m saying is we shouldn’t have a ghetto. Why should we have separate pubs? Why can’t we all booze in the same boozer?’

  Joanie shrugged.

  ‘I’d like tae see everyone getting along as wan big happy family wan day,’ he reasoned. ‘But until that day comes I think Anne Frank’s going tae need her attic. Anyway you get all different types of pubs. Show bars, disco bars, Irish bars, Country and Western bars, vodka bars, lap dancing bars, wine bars, snooker bars. Why not a fabulous fairy bar?’

  ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ said Toby.

  ‘Look in the mirror, sweetheart,’ said Joanie.

  Toby surprised him with a smile and asked for another drink, then went upstairs to the loo while Joanie poured the pint. Joanie sat in the booth with another coffee and waited for Toby to come back and attack his drink.

  ‘I don’t want tae play mother or anything,’ said Joanie. ‘But are you okay? I mean yer not driving or anything?’

  Toby shook his head like a wee boy denying mischief.

  ‘I’m staying overnight at the Hilton,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll get a cab. D’you mind?’

  ‘It’s up tae you. But don’t ye want tae come and see the place in action?’ asked Joanie.

  Toby sighed.

  ‘I’m going to get pissed and go to the hotel and crash out. This is the only way I can sleep in hotels.’

  He picked up his pint and gulped. Joanie was used to watching people get pissed. It was his job. He thought it was funny how it affected different people in different ways. People got horny, morbid, violent, high, bitchy, or sparkled like diamonds and found a joie de vivre they never thought they had. Night after night he saw them in Delilah’s: Dr Jekyll turning into Ms Hyde, prudes turning into sluts, mice into lions, roaring at their own dirty jokes. Most touching of all was the way strangers turned into friends and lovers. But he also saw people turning into alcoholics. Joanie always tried to let people know when they had enough. But he was running a bar and booze was the name of the game. He knew he was never going to get on the AA’s Christmas card list. Toby finished his drink.

  ‘Pint please,’ he said, smiling. Joanie fetched the pint.

  Toby began to rattle on about his background as if he was being interviewed. His parents split when he was ten, then his mother remarried. His step-dad was a publican and his mother helped tend the bar.

  ‘They were like Den and Angie in Eastenders … Except they fought more,’ said Toby.

  ‘Didn’t it put ye off the business?’ asked Joanie.

  ‘I’m going to Uni,’ said Toby. ‘I’m going to be an accountant.’

  Joanie could see it. He looked the part. The quicker he got out of the brewery business the better. The more pissed Toby became the more talkative he was. He pestered Joanie about what made his ideal man.

  ‘A pulse and a penis,’ quipped Joanie. Toby went on to describe his ideal man. All Joanie could picture from his description was some blandly beautiful magazine model.

  ‘Mm,’ he said, and watched Toby demolish the beer.

  After another toilet stop it was evident that the beer had gone to his bittersweet little head. Joanie looked at his watch. It was half four.

  ‘We open up in half an hour. Are ye sticking around?’ he asked.

  Toby shook his head and started fumbling in his pockets for his mobile phone. Joanie had to help him get out the phone and he called the taxi. Toby picked up his briefcase and Joanie ushered him to the doors of Delilah’s. When the taxi arrived they walked to it together. Toby looked at Joanie with sad, bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Do you like being gay?’ he asked, in a voice that suggested nobody ever could.

  ‘Love it,’ said Joanie and bundled Toby into the cab.

  Going Back

  George liked trains. His earliest memories of trains were happy family seaside trip scenarios. Saltcoats. Ardrossan. Ayr. He hadn’t been back to Glasgow for years. People said you could see the difference in the landscape as you passed from England to Scotland. George couldn’t. But it didn’t matter this time as it was winter and dark by the time they crossed the border. He liked the sound of the train. He liked the scalding hot tea in a plastic cup. He’d drunk four cups and was up and down to the toilet like a yoyo. He’d eaten some sandwiches earlier on but still felt a bit hungry. He’d bought a caramel biscuit with his last cup of tea and could feel toffee stuck in a cavity in a back tooth.


  The wages of sin.

  He was going back.

  George’s mother sat at the kitchen table filling George in on all the family news. Auntie Rose had died. Cancer. A cousin was in Barlinnie for bank robbery. Most important of all, George’s sister Leanne had just had a baby. She was engaged to a soldier who wanted her to come to Germany and live with him. George was forced to look at some photos of the happy couple. The boyfriend looked like a bullet-headed bastard but George’s mother had assured him he was A DEAD NICE GUY. His mother had changed. She looked older. And finer. Fragile, as if she had lost a lot of her strength. During the three days George stayed she fluctuated between hyper-hostess and being tired and irritable.

  George had left Glasgow ten years before and had known he was HIV positive for the last five. His visits back to Glasgow had been sporadic at best but this was the longest he had left it. He phoned now and again, and wrote less so, but he hadn’t shown his face for more than two years. He liked the expression: showing your face. Like you were really showing something, a part of yourself. Maybe that was why he hadn’t come to Glasgow for so long. Afraid of showing his face.

  Glasgow seemed to have changed. It wasn’t the buildings or new shops or shopping centres. It was something imperceptible. Or maybe it was just a strangeness George felt in a place he called home, but could no longer connect with. He had severed most of his ties with Glasgow. He partly regretted this, not feeling he belonged anywhere now. Not in his mother’s house at any rate. But his mother and sister adapted to his presence. It was like some kind of hollow compromise. Three days of small talk and lazy nostalgia. It was like coming back as a ghost: he had a weird sense of being disembodied, of not really being there.

  They did things together. Old things. Glasgow things. They went to the Barras and looked around the market stalls. His mother bought a manky old coat that hung like a tent on her and stank of cat pish. George tried to dissuade her but she was adamant the coat would save her life this winter. So George offered to buy her a new coat, but his mother refused, seeking instead to perpetuate the bogus myth of her as some kind of bargain-hunter extraordinaire.