sweet tuesday

Ah, sweet tuesday! What a day!
I dress in my pre-conceived lady’s costume – a dark-patterned shift dress, shock-whore primark tights, high heels with glue coming off the soles, a boyfriend (ha!) cardigan and some knock-off shades from the lloyds pharmacy. And a bra. Of course. My lady costume, my woman-in-drag.

I mean to visit the dentist down the road, who I leap about with on Monday nights at the open mic, and who used to be in Queen, to sort out me railings, but a forty wanksworth, strums and cursors later and I’m having to get a shifty on for my one o’clock.

Yes. My one o’clock.

Glory be, I am a writer! Poor, destitute and misunderstood. A writer.

Colvich calls for a ladies’ coffee. I decline. I have a one o’clock. Then my one o’clock calls and leaves a message. It’s going to be a one-thirty o’clock. Far less fucking catchy I think you’ll agree.

And though I’ve sacked off the rock star dentist I will not let time defy my new-found persona, so I jig my mental diary and decide to pay a visit to that well-famed establishment: le primarche. To buy tights. Without holes in the crotch.
I have light-grey ribbed numbers in mind, a bit convent-girl-cum-sensible-Kensington type tights.

I walk in. The security guard looks at me - I don’t belong. Thank god, (did I mention I’m religious?) I head upstairs to find that the hosiery section is actually by the ‘customer serving area’ downstairs. Still undefeated by this moroccan abattoir of a place, I join the long queue. Last time I did this I got sandwiched between an ex-client of mine, (no, not one of THOSE), and an ex flat-mate; physically challenged, mentally deranged, and a downright pain in the non-proverbial arse.

Not this time.

Instead, a deaf girl straddles the queue like a deranged donkey, and stands at my left shoulder, hyperactively yabbering at me that her mum will be home soon so she must get to London Road, and will this god-awful plastic-wrapped polyester travel bag fit in the overhead lockers on a non-existent american plane?

‘Should be fine’: I desperately attempt to dampen and thwart.

But she doesn’t stop. Obviously a regular bearded lady at this festival of freaks, she harasses everyone in the queue whilst I desperately search for my holy grail. The schoolgirl tights. Of which there are none, of course. Disturbed and breathless, I grab a two quid pair of 80 deniers. They are hideous, but hide they will in the cupboard for a couple of years, a decade or so.

Shaken but not stirred by my bystander’s ordeal, I get to the checkout. I receive a text. From the Neanderthal.

‘hello x’.

For frigs sake, what IS this? My ex-flatmate who knocked up the next girl who moved in, that’s who. The one that I let not enter me, but massage me with mango stones we had slurped upon. The one who now lives in nowheresville with the girl who moved in, with two offspring.

The one who facebooked me, and I simply replied, ‘that’ll teach you to wear condoms’.

I laugh, and the lady at the till looks at me enquiringly.

‘It never rains, does it?’ I say curtly, hoping she’ll mechanically digest my comment, sedated by her besludged primarched brain cells.

‘Oh dear love, hope your day gets better’.

‘No, no’, I quip. ‘I’m just not sure what these people WANT from me, you know?’ *wink* She shrieks. It appears I appeal to a wider audience these days.

As I turn to haughtily scarper someone calls my name. It’s only bloody colvich in the queue! And I’ve got half an hour…….

I wait outside. I text the Neanderthal back saying I’m busy. Colvich and I bribe the bootmakers into giving us a cheap deal, then plonk ourselves down for a cheap filter coffee and shared sarnie (what a rank word).

We talk about universal vibrations - not of the purple pulsating kind - how the vibrations you transmit to the ethos will attract back the very same.

Hence the ex men jumping out at me from all frigging corners. Hence the creative bursts, like economy sausages splitting when fried . Wonderful.

My one-thirty arrives. He calls me whilst I’m in the chapel of slump and asks if I am doing a dump. I say I am. He tells me my hair is so dry it’s going to catch fucking fire if I don’t do something about it. I tell him he smells of milk. He does.

All the best men do (used to think it was too many cups of tea).

We have a brief but mystifying literal exchange, shake on some deadlines, then he has to leave to visit someone who’s dying of cancer.

We trot up the street together arm in arm. He asks me if it still feels like walking through soho with my dad. I say no. I say it feels like, it feels like walking in the world: two super human-beings.

I head to mr fish’s studio to ask for his help in knifing a portrait, but it’s shut. What now? The library, of course, you arrogant writing tit. You blogging bastard. I look for pahalniuk. They only have a copy of Lullaby that looks like someone’s wiped a years-worth of bogeys, done a massive guff on, wiped up their spunk with, and hurled under an Indian bus, and I decide there’s enough stains on my carpet as it is.

I like this new lady godiva, artist-in-residence, nonsense.

It all started with a drunken tarot reading – the fool in the past, the creator in the present, and the woman with one tit out in the future. Yes. The queen of wands. Or godiva, if you think about it.

My wife explains its witchety meaning: apparently it’s the choice between acting like a cheap tart or becoming a lady. Lady godiva.

And to the world’s wonderment, I’m headin straight t’wards that second option.

I test out the theory formed after my ‘focussing session’ with mistress white the tai chi guru. I say that although we dress all blokey so we can squirm about in the mud, people still stare at us because we’re those people nutters love.

I ruse how perhaps they stare at my tracksuit bottoms because actually, it’s more normal to wear a skirt. I say how maybe if we dress like ladies we’ll be ignored. (They actually stare at me in my tracksuit bottoms because my greedy buttocks keep peeping out).

Well………..the slack/skirt theory remains unproven, I’m afraid.

Several men wobble off their bikes at the sheer sight of me in my get-up.

A strapping american basketball player stands with his mouth open, gawping at me strutting along the promenade in the sun.

He speaks:

‘Now, THERE goes a pretty lady’.

What is this, fucking Oklahoma?

‘You’ve made my day’.

‘Thanks’, I smirk back.

Suddenly he turns desperado:

‘Actually, have you got a minute’.

‘No. Sorry’, I say.

And I haven’t: I have to read the erotic review, have a wank, then beat the shit out of a room full of testosterone-fuelled animals. Sorry!

Shortly after this I have to cross the road to avoid two moustachioed men blocking my path.

I’m wondering if they know I’ve got peacock’s leopard-print pants on under my frock, and that the tights I’m wearing have a hole so big in the crotch another tiny rip would bring me to my knees…

And as I’m thinking this – (it’s not the first time - I remember walking down zombie alley in some short-shorts once, thinking the punters were getting an eyeful, when in fact I had all my clothes on inside out, labels and all), someone has the generosity to lean out of their car window and shouts,

‘nice tights’.

Oh fuck. It’s the hole in the tights, isn’t it? What the hell do I look like from behind in the glaring sunlight?

Oh bloody hell, has my crotch-hole wormed it’s way into view?

This ain’t no lady! It’s a walking advert for incontinence pads.

I rush into my spaceship. I clamber onto the side of the bath, the only way to see below the waist in a mirror.

And it’s fine.

There is no hole. (There was no blanket).

Nada. Hola. (ever the linguist) Nada. Blanket. (cit. derek and clive)

Yes. Ever the cunnilinguist….

And ever a lady who knows how to work a good pair of pantyhose..…….Gx