Art Sex Music Page 12

  We set off back to Hull the next day feeling elated and more determined than ever to expand on our work as COUM. Greg introducing us to Bruce was serendipitous. It brought about a sequence of unexpected events that set us on a path to something we could never have anticipated.

  31 May 1972

  We arrived back home at about midnight to lots of mail, cheque for £100, Gen’s invite to Holland and a door that was only half locked and had ‘Jacko’ and ‘Max’ scratched on it.

  When we arrived back from London, someone had broken into the house while we were away – another repair job to do. It was all becoming quite depressing. But at least we’d received our first Arts Council grant of £100. We could start looking for a second-hand van to make COUM more readily mobile.

  Bruce had given us the idea of getting an old Post Office van, as they were pretty cheap, robust and large enough for all our props. It wasn’t long before we got a red two-and-a-half-ton ex-GPO (General Post Office) van for £65. We managed to find a place to garage it for £1.50 a week … Well, it wasn’t actually a garage; it was a tannery. A vast space full of tanks that stank to high heaven of rotting animal hides undergoing the various stages of processing to become leather. The skins had to be scraped free of any residual animal flesh or fat and the smell was so foul and acrid I dread to think what chemicals were being used. The men there told us it was piss and other solutions, and I could well believe them. We were given a corner to park the van, as far away from the tanks as possible, and a key to the padlocked door so we could come and go as we needed. We named the van Doris. Having her stored there meant we could paint her up and deck her out while we were waiting for the insurance and tax to come through.

  12 July 1972

  We went to Pam’s with a cut-lipped dazed Shanti. Gen threw her across the room for shitting and she crashed into the door. She was shocked like Moony and I rushed to the vets with her but it was shut. Luckily she was OK.

  I think it’s fair to say that Gen wasn’t as fond of animals as I was and to some extent I can understand why, with his borderline cat allergy, and particularly as Moony would sometimes shit in Gen’s shoes instead of using the cat-litter tray.

  One day Moony did it again and Gen snapped. He grabbed Moony by the scruff of his neck and threw him out the bedroom door with such force he went flying across the landing and down the stairs. I shot after him. He’d landed on the second flight down, where he lay silent and still. I thought he was dead and gently picked him up. He stirred a little, so I grabbed my coat and put him inside against my chest to keep him warm and safe and ran off to the Blue Cross vet. Halfway there I realised he was probably in shock when I got a hot, wet feeling – he’d peed and shat on me. I didn’t care; he was coming round and I hoped he’d escaped serious injury. I’d left Gen at the house, looking worried. Moony was thankfully OK. Not long after, Gen had another cat-throwing episode when we looked after my sister’s kitten, Shanti.

  7 July 1972

  Bought ‘Curious’ which had Bobby on the front (he’s really pretty) unfortunately he’d had trouble with his tits and had to have them off.

  My short time at Colville Terrace in London, and the friendship with Nicholas and Lindsay, sparked a curiosity and urge to explore beyond my present sexual indulgences. I aligned myself more with Gay Liberation than Women’s Liberation. It spoke to me more. Whatever other people took it to mean, I liked that Gay Lib wasn’t gender-specific: we are people first and foremost and our sexuality is our individual free choice. The Gay Liberation Front (formed in 1970) blazed the trail for breaking down the social stigma attached to being gay, lesbian or bisexual. I took some of their slogans – ‘Gaylib supports Womenslib’ and ‘There are as many sexes as there are people’ – as promoting sexual liberation and inclusiveness, unlike the radical feminists of that time, who seemed more divisive and prescriptive. Freedom ‘to be’ was my thing. I didn’t want another set of rules imposed on me by having to be ‘a feminist’.

  It was in Colville Terrace that I had a chance meeting with the first transsexual I’d seen, the lovely Bobby MacKenzie. Such a brief encounter, in conjunction with other factors and meeting up with Greg, turned out to be highly significant in relation to my future sex-magazine work. Greg, being a photographer, helped me out a lot with useful advice. I’d acquired a 35mm single-lens reflex camera for documenting COUM and saved up some money from my bookkeeping course for a flash unit.

  As well as being into photography I was an avid filmgoer. One of our Sunday routines was to go to the local Tower and Regent cinemas, which had a double bill of A- and B-movies. The B-movies were always a source of amusement and surprise. On one trip to see Hitchcock’s Frenzy the accompanying B-movie was a documentary on nude modelling.

  4 July 1972

  Went to see ‘Frenzy’ but the film on with it was much better. It was a documentary on nude posey girls. Quite quite interesting.

  That really caught my attention and came just a few weeks before Greg visited us again with the idea of taking nude photos of me.

  He’d already taken some head-portrait photos of Harriet’s friend Christine and entered them into a photo competition. Then he saw an ad for a Men Only sexy photo competition. That joint venture was what instigated the start of my nude modelling project. This all fitted in with me using more and more sex-magazine images in my collages and diaries. As I sat cutting around the naked bodies, the idea of cutting around my own body and collaging myself as a nude model from a sex magazine struck me as having an honesty and potency that I felt could be the embodiment of a consummate artwork. I would have created the very image that I then used to create a work of art. That approach and process seemed to epitomise what I wanted from my work – ‘My Life Is My Art. My Art Is My Life’ – and I’d get to enter a world that intrigued me and was (at that time) shrouded in mystery.

  20 July 1972

  Nudie rude photos feel very nice.

  Greg had arrived for the Men Only photo shoot. I was excited about the possibility of acquiring my first printed nude image. We discussed what kind of nude photos of me to submit and decided on something unusual – some of me naked or in stockings and a garter belt, laid across our old dentist’s chair in the drum room. That was a bit different but more or less OK. But we didn’t leave it at that: we added Fizzy as a clown and Elizabeth as a nurse but in a strange, doll-like face mask, then Fizzy again but this time as a mad scientist.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t quite what they were looking for and they returned all the slides with no covering letter. Never mind. But, having seen Bobby in Curious magazine, which promoted itself as a sex-education magazine with more ‘open’ articles on transsexuals, Beefheart and Bowie, I wrote in enquiring about posing for them. I enclosed one of Greg’s photos of me naked on a bed of ribbons of gold cellophane, with glitter over my breasts. I was thrilled when I got a more encouraging letter back saying, ‘The nude work is in London; contact us when you’re here.’

  That invitation, and later meeting Roger Shaw’s nude-model girlfriend Nanny (Jacquie) Rigby when we stayed with Robin Klassnik at Martello Street, gave me a great starting point to begin my sex-modelling work. We were forming new and exciting alliances outside of Hull. Everything seemed to be pointing us towards living in London. But that would have to wait, as our plans to move there and share a flat with Nanny fell through.

  *

  Doris soon came into her own when me, Gen, Fizzy, Greg and Biggles went on a trip to Gorleston-on-Sea to visit Nicholas and see his exhibition of wax figures at the Rumbelow Gallery. Biggles drove Doris up and down kerbs and through red traffic lights. He was tired and not used to her hulking size; with her double-declutching gearbox and no power-assisted steering, she was unwieldy, so he wasn’t best pleased at getting a caution from the police. Neither did he like me nagging him about not peeling an orange or rolling up a fag whilst driving. He seemed to think it proved how good a driver he was but it scared me shitless and the veering off up the kerbs was proof i
t wasn’t a good demonstration of his ability to multitask.

  When we finally arrived safe and sound at one in the morning, we were given a downstairs room for us all to sleep in but were immediately distracted by the sounds of excited voices and breathy moans of ecstasy drifting down from the bedrooms. I went upstairs, where one of the doors was open wide to reveal a bevy of naked beauties all writhing and romping in one big bed. Reclining at the head of the bed was a raven-haired, red-lipped, goddess-like woman called Luciana Martinez de la Rosa, who we were told was an Italian countess. She seemed fully in command of the whole situation, the centre of all attentions and surrounded by gay and straight men: Duggie Fields (Syd Barrett’s ex-flatmate), Andrew Logan (known for his Alternative Miss World events), Stuart ‘Feather Boa’, and of course Nicholas. It was an unforgettable image of luxurious decadence, with a very tangible atmosphere of utter joyous sexual abandonment.

  Fizzy didn’t know what to make of it, tutting in mock disgust at ‘all those bare arses and bits flapping about’, and what he called their slithering nakedness. ‘They’re like snakes,’ he said, and disappeared back downstairs.

  Having seen and taken a fancy to the blonde long-haired, silver-jacketed Greg, a message was sent from the chamber of passions for him to join them, but he was too scared and took himself to bed. The orgiastic feast continued for some hours and was pretty full-on, with cries of triumph from one of the guys that he’d just had sex with a woman (Luciana) for the first time in his gay life and that he loved it.

  The morning after the night before was a time of reflection for us all. I was feeling a little deflated that I hadn’t been invited to join in the orgy but got the feeling it was Luciana’s domain, so fair enough. Then it was a long drive back to Hull in Doris.

  Our two-day sunny summer seaside trip to Gorleston-on-Sea had been memorable and wonderful in the most unexpected ways. I never saw Luciana again but her sensual presence and the shared happiness of that night of mutual, enjoyable group sex had made a long-lasting impression on me. Luciana later worked with Derek Jarman on his films Sebastiane, Jubilee and, interestingly, In the Shadow of the Sun, which years later TG recorded a soundtrack for.

  *

  The added cost of running Doris meant I needed to get another job. Luckily the brother-in-law of my friend Stephen had a chess factory called Griffin Studios, which was not far from Prince Street. I went for an interview and got a job finishing off resin chess sets.

  During our breaks we’d head for some fresh air to give our lungs a rest from the fumes. Me, Steve and Baz and some of the other workers frequented a quaint Dickensian house just around the corner. It was dark and in a very dilapidated state, with a most distinctive odour of damp, and was run as a type of food takeaway by a stern, overbearing woman called Vera. You couldn’t call it a cafe as it had no tables or dining area, no signage and the windows were shuttered. In fact, if you hadn’t been told, you wouldn’t know anyone even lived in it, let alone that you could buy food there. We’d have to knock for admittance, then we’d hear Vera’s trusty manservant’s footsteps as he scuttled to the door. Len was like Frankenstein’s assistant, Igor, slightly hunched over, giving him an air of subservience and of being downtrodden, but he always had a smile for us.

  ‘Who is it?’ he’d say behind the closed door.

  ‘It’s only us, Len. We’ve come for our tea and toast.’

  We’d hear the bolt slide over and he’d open the door and hold it till we were all in, then shut the door and slide the bolt back. We were only ever allowed in the downstairs front room, where four chairs were arranged around a roaring fire. That fire burned all year round, no matter what the weather, for the simple reason that it was used as a toaster and sometimes for boiling water. Len would take our order and scoot along the hall to Vera, who was always in a room way at the back of the house, and where I presume there was some kind of kitchen, seeing as she also did egg and bacon sandwiches. Len would bring us mugs of dark-brown tea with a stack of thick slices of white bread, and we’d grab a toasting fork each to make our own toast, sitting at the old fireplace, chatting away and comparing degrees of singed bread. Len would often stay and join in with us for a while, until he got summoned by Vera or had to answer the frequent knocks on the front door, vetting and letting people in on Vera’s say-so. But no one ever came into our room and we only caught glimpses of the other people coming and going as they passed by the half-closed door or if we happened to be passing on our way in or out. Going to Vera’s was a ritual we all looked forward to, all the more because it felt so very odd, rather unfriendly apart from Len, with its strange, furtive comings and goings. I had the impression we were tolerated as a necessary cover, along with the food service, such as it was, for other more financially rewarding activities that took place there. I suspected there was a lot of fencing of acquired goods going on.

  25 November 1972

  CID came to see us today. Les has been taken into Central. I hope he’s OK.

  Tiger Jack Pepper was a charismatic local antique and second-hand-goods dealer, and very distinctive in his Union Jack trousers and knee-high boots. He’d travel around selling things he’d obtained or won at auctions, like the wonderful Victorian dentist’s chair we bought off him and used for the nude photos. He gave us a backstory to it, that it had belonged to a dentist who was struck off for sexually interfering with women patients while they were under knockout gas.

  Jack would come round to see us quite often and Les knew him well, doing business with him occasionally. The friendship all turned a little nasty when Les got arrested for theft and Jack was investigated for possible involvement in fencing stolen goods. It was a frightening time, with accusations flying about as some people grassed each other up to keep themselves out of it all, and some diverting attention away from themselves and on to me and Gen. You certainly learn who your friends are when the shit hits the fan. There was a lot of hasty dumping of suspect items before the police searched various premises.

  It all coincided with thefts from the chess factory stockroom. Someone had been nicking and selling chess sets and boards, so when the police came to search Prince Street they enquired about that as well as Les’s activities with COUM and any items we may have had in connection with the thefts. All my chess sets were legit – I had permission to take rejects or could buy pieces really cheap – but the heavy-handedness and accusatory tone of the police made me feel guilty as hell. As far as the charges against Les were concerned, he ended up taking the lion’s share of the blame. It wasn’t looking good for him. I couldn’t bear to think of lovely Les locked up in prison. The thought of what might happen to him in there scared me witless, what with all the first-hand nightmare stories of violence and rape that we’d heard.

  So me, Gen and Les all decided to have tattoos done as a way of marking our bond and commitment to each other. They weren’t the traditional anchors, names or heart tattoo designs, but were based on our magic numbers. We wanted them to act as a comforting reminder for Les while he was away from us. We all went together to the well-known King Arthur tattooist down Anlaby Road – ‘Tattooing since 1948’, it proudly boasted on his business card. Our tattoos were meant to be discreet, on the backs of our wrists and small enough to fit under a watch or bracelet. Arthur was taken aback when I walked in to have mine done. It wasn’t the done thing then for women to have tattoos. My tattoo of the number 4 turned out just as I’d wanted but Gen and Les drew their designs large enough for the tattooist to see the detail. Good idea, but King Arthur tattooed literally what he saw on the paper they gave him, indelibly inking them with the designs at the scale they’d drawn them. Our tattoos were still healing when Les was charged to appear in court.

  28 November 1972

  We went to the solicitor with Les. It’s all very frightening … We did, however, manage to design the Ministry of Antisocial Insecurity between us. After much confusion. We had stamps made too. ‘NO ART’ and ‘NOTHING’.

  It seems bizar
re that at the same time as all this we were exhibiting our mail art at the Midland Group Gallery, preparing for the ‘Ministry of Antisocial Insecurity’ project, and Les was playing in his band, Bullneck – the name being a cynical reference to the big tough guys built like bulls, with no definitive necks, just solid muscle.

  I’d also been given the title ‘Miss Gateway to Europe’ by Michael Scott in readiness for the Fanfare for Europe Festival in January, and was having official photos done by a local photographer we nicknamed ‘Figleaf’ – that name referred to the fig leaf Adam wore to hide his hard-on, as Figleaf kept getting hard-ons while taking my ‘sexy’ photos. It took me two visits to get the photos anything like what I wanted, some in my COUM costumes and some half-naked, for when I got to London to start modelling. They weren’t very good or suitable, really; they had too much of a family-portraits vibe about them. That was Figleaf’s speciality, after all.

  We carried on with COUM but all the while knowing full well the time of reckoning for Les would come and could devastate us all. I’d turned twenty-one three weeks prior to the day that Les was arrested. Twenty-one was traditionally a coming-of-age milestone celebrated by being given ‘the key to the door’. That was lost on me. I’d already had the key to my own door for three years. Still, Mum gave me all the usual token presents associated with the big event and I truly appreciated it – a cake with a ‘21’ key on it, £21, an engraved silver bracelet and all. How sad for her to want so much to enjoy that time with me and having to hide it from Dad.