Codhead
The number 30 bus from Grimsby heaves over the Humber Bridge as the winter sun falls down by the marshy crackled mud that lines the estuary. The vast pole spokes that support the mile long snaking grey asphalt are brutal, unbending. Looking up is dizzying and the sheer scale of the bridge seems like its from another world. A sense of the world now being beyond flat rural Lincolnshire and the pubs and clubs that smell of beer, lynx and lipstick. The world that I don’t belong to and am happy and disorientated as to why I don’t want to be part of it. I hear a young lad call out to me as I sit at the middle side of the top deck of the bus. My heart sinks as I’m so used to this being a kappa lad, gravel voiced about to give me abuse and signal oral sex in dry Lambert and Butler mouth. Goaded by his mates, they don’t give up “come on then”. Transfixed looking forward, will they really believe I can’t hear them? Hyper focused on a sticker on the back of the seat in front of me, pretending to look at the bus ticket, head forward, close your eyes. Hopefully they’ll think I’m asleep. Living with this almost daily you have lots of measures in place that you have to plan, organise. Where you are going to sit on the bus. At the back or the front they’ll corner you and you have no escape. Downstairs the bus driver will pretend that it isn’t happening, do nothing and this only gives the lads more ammunition, gall and enthusiasm. Upstairs is better and if you have a fag out of the window on the middle left the driver can’t see you from their periscope mirror. Having a fag will also help you escape an attack, they’ll usually ask you for one and then you’re ok. They seem to forget that you look or act like a faggot if you’ve got ten fags in your pocket. I remain transfixed forward and I can hear the lad start walking from the back of the bus towards me. He throws himself down behind me and starts talking to me I’m transfixed. The lad is talking incessantly, can’t get his words out fast enough. I mean this with great warmth that his voice and figures of speech are so reminiscent of the women I loved on Coronation Street, and the ones that had big hair and blue eyeshadow that worked on Louth market on fruit and veg stalls and said things like “you could ride bare arsed to Mablethorpe on that knife Pam, gerrus another”. The lad didn’t even break for breath and didn’t need any kind of conversational exchange, he was happy just talking at me and peppering it with backhanded compliments like “you’d be pretty if you had your hair done, maybe get your eyebrow pierced.” The lad after the most impressive twenty-minute monologue introduced himself as ‘Scuffler’, I asked why and he never told me, just grinned and told me to work it out. I still don’t know. His broad smile revealed the brownest teeth I have ever seen, and it was so strange that the lad which was wearing thick foundation, lip gloss and jet black mascara had such an unkept mouth. He told me so many stories on that hour long bus ride, all totally untrue, I’m sure. His stepdad was a millionaire and had just bought him a convertible, but it hadn’t arrived yet. There was a sadness in his charming maniacal delivery and I’m sure he had a rough deal in Grimsby and living in a fantasy meant things were ok. He asked me for £20 and said he’d pay me pack, “my stepdad gives me five hundred quid whenever I want it.” He started mixing up stepdad and sugar daddy and it became obvious that the rich stepdad was an invention and that he was going to Hull to work the night with a cliental of older paying men. The bus arrived in Hull, traversed the docks and down into the city centre. We spent the last couple of hours while the shops were open in the charity shops. Thick gold banded belts, oversized blouses – Clockhouse from C&A. I can only describe that feeling of spending those random couple of hours in charity shops as some massive relief and act of defiance. It felt like the world and beyond, Scuffler crying out with joy when he’d found some outrageous brooch, huge fake glass gems and he strutted around Sue Ryder like a Slone ranger. We walked back to the bus station and got changed in the bus station toilets, taking it in turns slinging clothes and accessories over the cubicle doors. Silhouette nightclub was the only gay club I had ever heard of, gay nightlife in Lincolnshire was not about friends and dancing and totally about dark parks and alleyways. We walked in the large double fronted Victorian building; it must have been a grand municipal hall or perhaps merchants building previously. The club inside was a huge glittering ballroom, hundreds of queer people dancing to Madonna, I had never seen so much colour, make-up, hair, the lights, steam hanging in the air. Scuffler grabbed me by the hand pulled me onto the dancefloor, flung back his head and danced rhythmically and methodically clicking his fingers from side to side, up and down. Reminiscent of the choreographed dances by performers in ‘Paris is Burning’ (1990) I wonder how this queer heritage through movement and gesture became part of a working class boy from Grimsby’s routine.
He starts talking to three, what I now know to be, drag queens who are each six feet tall and have made matching costumes that look like the ‘B’ movie science fiction costumes of powerful alien woman, Devil Girl From Mars (1954). Latrice, Chandice, Shaunice introduced themselves and we danced and danced and danced. I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor ended the night and I saw a tear roll down Chandice’s cheek bone and she spun on one heel. “We must get to the fucking river” said Shaunice and bundled Scuffler in the long faux fur wrap, she pulled from a disgruntled cloak attendant. I couldn’t imagine why the three queens had wanted to spend the evening with me, a lost and scared kid from the middle of nowhere. I know now we were all lost and scared kids in a violent and binary world, looking beyond the horizon, behind the curtain. Scuffler is growing grey and paler by the minute and I ask what’s wrong. I car screeches by and a Lambert & Butler mouth, Man U shirt and gelled fringe, roars dirrrtty fucking faggots. Latrice in what seems an instant strides across, climbs onto the Vauxhall Nova and sits defiantly on the roof. The Lambert and Butler mouth doesn’t know what to do, he wasn’t expecting this. A crowd circles around the car and he’s outnumbered by queers. He gets out continues to shout and mumble, Shaunice grabs me, Chandice holding Scuffler who is now moaning and breathing heavily, and we get in the car. Latrice slides down into the driving seat and we drive off. Lambert and Butler mouth foaming at the mouth veins bulging alone on the street. We drive along the dual carriage way that follows the steep river bank. The car is parked under a concrete flyover near Toys R Us and we begin to walk along the banks through thick marsh silt. Latrice marching ahead in 4 inch stillettoes that defy gravity and finds a weeping willow tree. The queens lay down Scuffler and I assume he’s taken something, I think he’s dying and in panic I fall to my knees and hold him. “It’s fine, I’m having a baby” I assume he’s delirious and not making sense. Latrice sits behind him and supports his head, Shaunice to the left and Chandice to the right of him. He clutches their hands and long painted nails glisten in the river light as Scuffler clenches and screams. The queens stroke his forehead, belly and sprinkle river water behind his ears to soothe him. A final guttural yet falsetto wail and sigh, a doll faced creature begins to appear from Scufflers glitter shorts, he tears the gusset open of the purple tights underneath and the queens guide the baby out. Scuffler is carried into the river and lies arms stretched like the Lady of Shallot. I’m handed the baby and gently sooth its now gurgling cries and I notice that it is made of the estuary and land. Its mouth a humber hagstone, its skin sandy shingle. Latrice, Chandice and Shaunice form around Scuffler and take the offspring form me and hold it to the sky in exultation. They say in unison “This is of our past, and our future, it is our time”.
