Chapter 24: ‘Flickering lights and torn dirty tights.’
My heart beat like a tom tom drum being played by a heat crazed native. This sister was all hips and feline curves but it was way past the time all good kitties should be outdoors and the only milk I had in the broken office fridge was well past curdled and the SPAR had long since closed.
“Listen cute face” I rashly said as the index finger on my right hand flicked the safety off my British made Webley revolver I keep taped under the desk whilst my left hand deftly poured us both a stiff drink, neat, on the rocks. The triple Malt hit those icebergs with all the drama of the Titanic. The tension in the room was palpable.
“I don’t play cat sitter for no one and you couldn’t afford me if I did.”
I sat back down in my leatherette armchair with the aplomb of a dirty Tammany politician who’d just talked his way out of a sleaze racket at a press conference and made mother Teresa look like a penny sweet paid whore in the process. The chair squeaked in protest, I overruled.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you just said but I think I like it.”
She murmured as she slid across the cheap wood board desk her bargain basement boob job knocking off the novelty snow globe my Aunt had brought back from Coney Island. She grabbed my neck tie and playfully throttled me with it, “I haven’t been this close to a man since my days in the convent but that was several lifetimes away and I’m all grown up now. This kitty has grown claws and knows how to scratch!” with that she nicked my eyelid with her single dirty nail which was held onto her finger more by prayer than anything else.
I couldn’t help but think that the cat thing was had run it’s course now she’d joined in with the theme.
“Maybe you are all grown up!” I snapped flinging her off the desk and into the faux leather chaise lounge I keep for emergencies, “But that don’t mean a damn thing in this cruel city, this city of the night, this cesspool of sleaze and corruption hanging onto the rocks of the Northern coast like some sort of parasitic bug on the malnourished caucus of a stray dog!” I sipped the bitter almond taste of my cheap dime store whiskey and sicked up a bit in my mouth, I covered the noise with a cough.
“All this city cares about is eating up the good and pooping out what’s left and then making you wade through that poop to get the bus back to the one road town you call home. This ain’t no city of love it’s a Venus fly-trap made concrete and steel and I won’t let it make a meal out of us baby blue eyes! I just won’t dammit!”
She stood up, adjusted her huge bosom and grabbing me by the shoulders with the delicate touch of a blacksmith cried-
“But I like it here in Blackpool! It’s the Vegas of the North darling we can be it’s Rat Pack if only you’d get that through your thick skull or did the shrapnel you took in Korea kill what brains you had rattling around there to begin with?” She slapped me, it felt good, it felt real. Reality had been something I’d missed since I moved in across the road from the ‘Dame Miley Cyrus Arms Bar Floor Show Revue’ and the ‘Bulldog Café greasy spoon and B&B’ over a month ago.
You don’t come to Blackpool seeking reality.
The sting of her touch lingered on my face like a heatwave across the sunburnt ass of a mule.
Damn, Korea, I’d forgotten about Korea. Sure it had been hell but what could you expect from a cheap package flight and no knowledge of the lingo or the country, I’d been a fool to book my holiday there. The shrapnel was a constant reminder to me that the next time I travelled it was to be strictly first class and all the way to a luxury pad.
She shifted her D cups and made a move for the door, less a bee line than a hornets angered waltz. Stopping to gulp back the last of the bottle of Jacks I’d tried to hide behind the near empty filing cases she paused and looked at me with her one good eye, the other one looked directly at the crack in the yellowing celling.
“You know Johnny” she said “We could have made it you an I yet you chose to keep it business not pleasure.”
“If it’s pleasure you want you oughta try the theme park” I blithely uttered as I casually fingered yesterday’s Metro.
“Goodbye Johnny, maybe not goodbye but maybe lets just call it a farewell?”
She paused for effect her hand on the lead doorknob that was masquerading as brass.
“Well” I said, “Those are pretty much the same thing.”
She sighed, her boobs deflated marginally, “Don’t lets blame Blackpool, it’s just too easy.” and with that she had squeezed her plus size frame out of my doorway and into the neon lit night. Somewhere out there I heard a cat let out a distressed howl.
She’d be okay I thought, she was home on the mean streets of her beloved Blackpool…
and the day return ticket I’d slipped into her brassiere was valid until 12am.
I’m Drew a former roadie for both Punk and Psychobilly bands, a large part of my teenage years and my twenties being almost entirely devoted to the promotion of gigs locally and attempting to form a band myself. As it stands today the band I started aged 18 (which is yet again in hiatus) has had around 40 plus members over its eleven year history and still has never managed to play a single gig, which I think you can agree is a bold strategy for any band and I’m oddly proud of that achievement. I think the last genre ‘mash up’ we had settled on was a uniquely local take on the whole Folk-Punk thing which was quite a leap from the terrible shouty, red faced anger we attempted to convey by being a total rip off of the Exploited.
I’ve lots of interests in all manner of somewhat interesting things that I’m sure will crop up and feed some posts in the future. History, the works of M. R. James, H. P Lovecraft, wasting time with my illustrations, doodling and artsy stuff in general (I even briefly “studied” art), Science & Fantasy Fiction, Art Deco, Comix & comic strips their history and the art itself, wandering around old ruins, cathedrals and historic places of interest and muttering rather loudly because I want the place to myself and there are other tourists about, the Diesel Punk and CyberPunk genres, I’m an obsessive collector and reader of books, I can spend hours telling you about the detailed history of the kilt, I love so called ‘Cult’ TV’ things like The Avengers, The Persuaders, Adam Adamant, Kolchak etc. all the classics as well as the newer things like the X Files, Dark Skies, Warehouse 13 (list is pretty long) …and of course a host of other rather nerdy crap that isn’t really as cool as the whole ‘Geek-Chic’ shtick would have you first think but you get the basic idea.
usic and music history which means anything from ‘classic’ US Hardcore punk to the Ramones inspired Punk Rock (DO check out Scottish band The Murderburgers, they’re the future of UK punk in my opinion). Anyhow, here’s a short list of a few favs for you to digest: Dan Vapid, The Lillingtons, Screeching Weasel, Teenage Bottlerocket, The Ergs, Circle Jerks, Enemy You, Teen Idols, Masked Intruder, The Descendents, Minor Threat, Murderburgers, Bad Brains, The Riverdales, The Queers, The Unlovables, The Methadones, Squirtgun… et al.