baby-face like me could be a ponce?’
I waited, then said, ‘If you could see yourself in a mirror now, this very moment, you’d realise you don’t look young at all. Not at all, Wiz, you don’t – you look damn old.’
‘Oh, I do?’ said Wiz. ‘Well, then, let me tell you something else. This is an old, old thing, this whore, and ponce, and client business. Since A. and Eve, there’s always been the woman, and the visitor, and the local male.’
‘Be the visitor, then.’
‘Nobody likes the easy-money boy, there I agree. But the reasons he’s disliked for, kiddo, are all very hypocritical. The client shifts his shame on to the ponce, see, and the ponce is willing to carry it for him – give him a clear, social, respectable alibi. Then, no man likes paying for what the ponce is paid for. And most of all, boy, the world is jealous of the ponce! Well, kid, and rightly!’ And he smiled a great big aren’t-I-clever smile.
‘Fine, fine,’ I cried. ‘We’ll have to get you testifying before those Wolfenden creations.’
‘Oh, them ’ said the Wizard. ‘The last person they’d ever want to ask about the game is anyone who knows about it … a whore, a ponce, even a client. You know what the Wolfenden is for?’ he went on, leaning across and grinning at me. ‘It’s so as to play down the queer thing in our country, and hide it behind the kosher game. It’s so as to confuse the two, and get all the mugs muddled, so that if they call down fire and brimstone, they don’t know on what.’
‘Not so loud, Wiz,’ I cried, because the combo had broken up, and someone hadn’t yet put on the pick-up once again.
So there it was. Already, I was speaking secretly to the Wiz, like I had never done before, becoming a part of his squalid little plot, and, believe me, I was revolted.
‘Christ!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s happening to me? My girl, I’ve lost her to the Spades and queers, and now my friend, I’m losing him to the girls.’
‘Don’t compare me with Spades,’ said Wiz.
‘Now, be intelligent, I wasn’t. I was comparing Suze with you.’
‘Nice! Perhaps it’s you who’s worrying most about all this, little latchkey kid.’
‘Oh, perhaps!’
‘Well,’ said the Wizard, making as if to rise, ‘when the cowboys start to fill me in, I’ll have you buzzed immediately for bail.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that, Wiz, please !’
‘Oh, I know you’ll come running … you adore me!’
This was evidently it, and I reached up and slapped the Wiz real hard. Real hard, I did. He didn’t look all that surprised, and he didn’t retaliate at all. He just rubbed his cheek and walked off over to the bar, so that I realised this was how he wanted it to be. Oh, fuck, I thought.
So I went out of the Dubious to catch the summer evening breeze. The night was glorious, out there. The air was sweet as a cool bath, the stars were peeping nosily beyond the neons, and the citizens of the Queendom,in their jeans and separates, were floating down the Shaftesbury Avenue canals, like gondolas. Everyone had loot to spend, everyone a bath with verbena salts behind them, and nobody had broken hearts, because they all were all ripe for the easy summer evening. The rubber plants in the espressos had been dusted, and the smooth white lights of the new-style Chinese restaurants – not the old Mah Jongg categories, but the latest thing with broad glass fronts, and dacron curtaining, and a beige carpet over the interiors – were shining a dazzle, like some monster telly screens. Even those horrible old Anglo-Saxon public-houses – all potato crisps and flat, stale ale, and puddles on the counter bar, and spittle – looked quite alluring, provided you didn’t push those two-ton doors that pinch your arse, and wander in. In fact, the capital was a night-horse dream. And I thought, ‘My lord, one thing is certain, and that’s that they’ll make musicals one day about the glamour-studded 1950s.’ And I
I waited, then said, ‘If you could see yourself in a mirror now, this very moment, you’d realise you don’t look young at all. Not at all, Wiz, you don’t – you look damn old.’
‘Oh, I do?’ said Wiz. ‘Well, then, let me tell you something else. This is an old, old thing, this whore, and ponce, and client business. Since A. and Eve, there’s always been the woman, and the visitor, and the local male.’
‘Be the visitor, then.’
‘Nobody likes the easy-money boy, there I agree. But the reasons he’s disliked for, kiddo, are all very hypocritical. The client shifts his shame on to the ponce, see, and the ponce is willing to carry it for him – give him a clear, social, respectable alibi. Then, no man likes paying for what the ponce is paid for. And most of all, boy, the world is jealous of the ponce! Well, kid, and rightly!’ And he smiled a great big aren’t-I-clever smile.
‘Fine, fine,’ I cried. ‘We’ll have to get you testifying before those Wolfenden creations.’
‘Oh, them ’ said the Wizard. ‘The last person they’d ever want to ask about the game is anyone who knows about it … a whore, a ponce, even a client. You know what the Wolfenden is for?’ he went on, leaning across and grinning at me. ‘It’s so as to play down the queer thing in our country, and hide it behind the kosher game. It’s so as to confuse the two, and get all the mugs muddled, so that if they call down fire and brimstone, they don’t know on what.’
‘Not so loud, Wiz,’ I cried, because the combo had broken up, and someone hadn’t yet put on the pick-up once again.
So there it was. Already, I was speaking secretly to the Wiz, like I had never done before, becoming a part of his squalid little plot, and, believe me, I was revolted.
‘Christ!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s happening to me? My girl, I’ve lost her to the Spades and queers, and now my friend, I’m losing him to the girls.’
‘Don’t compare me with Spades,’ said Wiz.
‘Now, be intelligent, I wasn’t. I was comparing Suze with you.’
‘Nice! Perhaps it’s you who’s worrying most about all this, little latchkey kid.’
‘Oh, perhaps!’
‘Well,’ said the Wizard, making as if to rise, ‘when the cowboys start to fill me in, I’ll have you buzzed immediately for bail.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that, Wiz, please !’
‘Oh, I know you’ll come running … you adore me!’
This was evidently it, and I reached up and slapped the Wiz real hard. Real hard, I did. He didn’t look all that surprised, and he didn’t retaliate at all. He just rubbed his cheek and walked off over to the bar, so that I realised this was how he wanted it to be. Oh, fuck, I thought.
So I went out of the Dubious to catch the summer evening breeze. The night was glorious, out there. The air was sweet as a cool bath, the stars were peeping nosily beyond the neons, and the citizens of the Queendom,in their jeans and separates, were floating down the Shaftesbury Avenue canals, like gondolas. Everyone had loot to spend, everyone a bath with verbena salts behind them, and nobody had broken hearts, because they all were all ripe for the easy summer evening. The rubber plants in the espressos had been dusted, and the smooth white lights of the new-style Chinese restaurants – not the old Mah Jongg categories, but the latest thing with broad glass fronts, and dacron curtaining, and a beige carpet over the interiors – were shining a dazzle, like some monster telly screens. Even those horrible old Anglo-Saxon public-houses – all potato crisps and flat, stale ale, and puddles on the counter bar, and spittle – looked quite alluring, provided you didn’t push those two-ton doors that pinch your arse, and wander in. In fact, the capital was a night-horse dream. And I thought, ‘My lord, one thing is certain, and that’s that they’ll make musicals one day about the glamour-studded 1950s.’ And I
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