Girl: Gay Bar (exit stage left)
Marc Almond:
“You want me to stand at the top of the stairs and do what?”
So, to recap, it’s 1986, and the seventeen year old Misssy M and similarly fresh-faced and clinically naive room-mate are being sent unwittingly to a gay club in deepest Glasgow by said room mate’s evil sister. (Read my last post now if you haven’t already or else I’ll come off as being even more stupid than this post already implies).
Armed with directions to “Glasgow’s best club”, excited about promises of “loads of fit blokes” and smelling winningly of Cacharel’s premier seller, Anaiis, Anaiis ( since scientifically proven to be Kryptonite to the homosexual male) we set off.
We were already apprehensive about “going into town”, anyway. Up until this point, we’ve been drinking Cider and Black in the University Union, comforted by the fact that every other person in there was a young idiot, just like us. Town- actual town- is a different matter. Both of us are still underage. Both of us are from the kind of towns where the highlight of the month is the Friday night they turn over the local hotel’s function suite into a “Rugby Club disco”. And, crucially, both of us look about thirteen years old.
Off we head to Bennett’s Night Club excitedly. When I look back now, there were signs that two overly Be-Elnetted lassies with badly applied eyeliner and a Michael Hutchence fixation were going to be disappointed. Notice I said disappointed, not unwelcome. For we were never unwelcome at Bennett’s. After all, we weren’t the only ones there with badly applied eyeliner, too much Elnette hairspray and a Michael Hutchence fixation. We just didn’t have that certain je ne sais quoi…..that certain…that…erm, ….a penis.
So, as we walked up the stairs, we noticed a bizarre amount of Coronation Street stars have been there before us and left framed autographed portraits on the walls. Weird….
“Thanks to all at Bennett’s…lots of love Liz Dawn*”
And there’s photos from quite few Hi -Energy popstrels, like the late Divine, Hazel Dean, and Sinitta (“So Macho” anyone? Jeez, how many more bloody clues do these two kids need? Marc Almond standing at the top of the stairs in leather chaps and nipple clamps shouting, “There’s nothing for you two here!!” whilst quaffing the pint of legend??**)
But up the stairs we went into the club and I tell you, there’s nothing I’d like more than to see a video of us over the next sixty minutes as we get drinks, practically high five each other on not getting ID’d, and slowly suss out that there are no other women there. No other women, and crucially, the blokes DON’T SEEM BOTHERED about that fact.
And what makes me laugh most is that had there at least been a token few lesbians in the club that night then we wouldn’t have twigged for the whole night (The girls must have had Fridays,or something, that’s my guess; it was purely gay men on the Saturday Night that we went). We would have just thought we’d lost whatever little pulling Mojo we had, and been a little miffed. Unless of course we’d pulled and that would be a whole other Sapphic brand can of worms.
But there weren’t any reality-cloaking lesbians there that night. Just two wee lassies with the realisation dawning VERY SLOWLY on us that, whilst Abba is fine to dance to in your living room when no-one else is in, it’s a bloody long time since you’ve heard it play in a nightclub. And seen it so enthusiastically received
And then, just as two little girls are getting a little bit into Taylor Dayne’s “Searchin (Lookin’ for Love)” than is normal for a seventeen year old with Cure records in her collection, one of them spots something that she has never seen before. And a penny is falling with such an enormous vigour, that all the other pennies are leaping off the cliff like lemmings trying to catch up with their fallen friend.
And worst of all, we’re such a couple of gayblivious (yes, I’m using the word again because I invented it two days ago and it’s now my favourite word ever) muppets that we don’t/can’t hide the utter shock we feel at the very sight of moustache on moustache and our jaws drop to the deck. My memory on this is hazy, but we may even have pointed. The shame of it. Don’t judge me; all I’m saying is that shock can do weird things to a person.
At this point, looking back, we now know that a group of blokes have been watching us from the bar, sniggering and probably laying bets on how long it will take before we suss out that we are IN THE WRONG PLACE.
And we’re in such catatonic shock, that we’re probably open mouthed for a good five minutes before this very nice man comes over and says,
“Girls, have a drink on us and we’ll tell you where you’d probably have a better night. Bennets maybe isn’t for you.”
Aaah, the kindness of strangers.
I have NEVER been so embarrassed in my entire life. And for the record, if a silly wee girl with crimped hair and oversized earrings sniggered and pointed at you whilst you were making your move, in Bennett’s Nightclub one Saturday, I am truly sorry and can report that I have since grown up.
A bit.
*Liz Dawn: Along with fellow cast mate, Lynne Perrie (Ivy Tilsley), Liz Dawn (Vera Duckworth), formerly of top rating British Soap, Coronation Street, was well known for her cabaret act a particular draw in gay clubs up and down the country.
** If you don’t know the Marc Almond urban myth then click here, but if you are repelled or offended easily, then DO NOT (and then ask yourselves why you are reading the Misssives.)
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Girl, I’m gonna take you to A Gay Bar!
My student ID.
All this talk of Freshers week has dredged up a few things in my head. Mainly my thoughts have turned to just how ridiculously young I was when I left home. I was seventeen. Not that young you think? No? Well, I was younger than today’s seventeen year olds precisely because of these two facts:
Fact One: I was seventeen in the Eighties,
Fact Two: I was seventeen in a small country village.
I knew nothing of the world. I particularly did not know gay. Gay wasn’t a thing. Not in my little corner of existence. Or if it was it was John Inman or Larry Grayson. Or maybe that bloke out of Give Us a Clue. I dunno, I never, in all honesty, ever really thought about it. Except to defend the honour of Nick Rhodes, keyboard player of Duran Duran, when my brother would bait me by questioning his sexual orientation. For Nick and I were to be married and I would not hear malicious gossip about my intended.
I was one of those folk who thought that Boy George was a girl for a good few weeks before someone had to tell me.* And although the eighties was all about that whole gender bending thing, I never really sat down and thought it had much to do with bottoms. Yes, we had Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but that theatrical gay stuff all seemed so far removed from my life. Yes, I knew what gay was, but it all seemed to happen somewhere else. In leather. And with make-up. In Liverpool mostly. (Girl gayness didn’t really occur until there was a storyline in Brookside. Again, Liverpool: None of my business).
Goings on in Liverpool: none of my business**
I was not and never have been homophobic. But I was homo-clueless. I was gayblivious.
If I did know anyone who was gay, it wasn’t apparent. Turns out quite a few folk I knew at school are gay. In fact, one lad I actually kind of went out with once or twice is now gay. He maybe turned after going out with me. Who knows? Gay men, think of him as my gift to you. He was quite the looker. Ah isn’t it always the way? Not that I would have known that then.
So, off I went to Uni with my twee country ways and my lack of knowledge of anything other than German verb conjugation and the history of the chart positions of Depeche Mode. I roomed with a similarly clueless country lass, who is still my buddy (and who appeared on the Misssives, much to my delight, to comment on the last post). This fellow country wench relied on her older sister, who was two years ahead of us in Uni, to give us the heads up on what was cool and what was not. A mistake, as it turned out. For she was evil.
Two weeks into our time together, we asked the aforementioned sister for advice on where to go in Glasgow of an evening for a night out. Our first trip out of University-land into actual Glasgow. The unsaid, but quite apparent, undertone to our request was that there must be a chance of meeting fit blokes. For although clueless, we were, after all, still seventeen.
And did the besom not send us directly to Glasgow’s Premier Gay Nightclub?
Yes she did.
And did she mention that her recommendation was in fact, Glasgow’s Premier Gay Nightclub?
No, she flippin’ well didn’t.
*****
Next part in the story here.
*Right, hands up the blokes who saw George on telly that first time and thought he was a bit of alright? C’mon, every lad did. You all thought he was a girlie! Fess up!
**Yes, that’s Anna Friel. She’s dead famous now.
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