Wednesday 6 June 2012

JFK's (2)

Last week I talked about drinking at rock night in JFK's when I was in my early 20s. Amongst the crowd of black clad misfits, there were a few regulars who stood out. I remember the woman who took our coats as very good looking in a thin and pointy, and nearly old enough to be our mum kind of way. There was another woman who always wore a white petticoat and precious little else. There was a bloke who wore a leather coat so long that it trailed around behind him like some kind of goth wedding dress. My favourite was a man on the dancefloor who played air-guitar as though he was wringing out a wet dishcloth.

I used to go with my girlfriend, we both used to wear our normal clothes, but hers were anything but normal. She used to go about her daily life as "lamb dressed up as mutton", and she would generally go to the rock club wearing a tweed skirt, high collared blouse, twin-set and pearls, or a vintage terylene day-dress which glowed brighter than the sun under the fluorescent lights.

When I was in my early thirties I went to the same club with a different girlfriend who was several years my junior. It turned out that as a teenager she had been going to the same club, lying to the door staff about her age, not going to the bar, and having sex in the toilets. She remembered the woman in the cloak room, the white petticoat, the long black leather coat and the air guitarist. To my horror she also remembered "supergran" with her white dress, and her weird looking boyfriend in his ben sherman shirts and stone washed jeans - in a rock club.

Richard "reminiscence isn't what it used to be" B

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