Low life
Dirty
Jeffrey Bernard
There seems to me to be a touch of spring in the air. Yesterday, the 1981 Barclaycard arrived in thpost and in the afternoon I escorted a lady to a sex shop. The Barclaycard gives me the most ridiculous and unrealistic feelings of security, and, as to the sex shop, I found it encouraging and comforting to know that it isn't only young and middle-aged men whose fancy lightly turns, to thoughts of the next victim at arouhd this time of year. Sadly, this particular lady, an old flame barely flickering, intends to fly solo. I bumped into her. for the first time in an age, in the Yorkminster and she told me the story that we Soho lay-analysts are only too used to hearing. It seems she got married about three years ago and that her old man's passion has cooled somewhat since then. Would I, she asked me, accompany her to a sex shop where she intended to buy a vibrator, because she was too embarrassed to go in alone?
As we entered the shop in Old Compton Street; she gave a nervous giggle which was reciprocated by the Chinaman behind the counter and then we began to inspect the incredible implements. A sudden melancholy descended on me caused, I think, by an acute feeling of redundancy. I wandered off into another corner of the shop to browse through a vast tray of women's knickers and the cobwebbed vaults of my memory bank while the lady made her choice. It turned out to be a fairly modest choice made, I should guess, with the thought in the back of her mind that she should learn to walk before trying to run. That was somehow sad too. She clutched her wrapped up implement to her bosom, gave another embarrassed giggle, and I took her up to the Colony Room for a medicinal drink, It's quite extraordinary how women seem to go down the drain when they leave me, although I'm fully aware of the fact that it's unlikely any of them will ever see a vibrator stagger drunkenly through the front door at midnight. But last weekend I had a happier experience with an old flame burning, I fear, still a little too strongly for comfort (These things should be finished cleanly, but I'm besotted.) Anyway, we went to Brighton for a couple of days — your oldfashioned English hotel ritual — and it's amazing how well you can get on with someone once you've stopped speaking tc each other. But unlike the lady. Brighton has lost most of its charms, and why oh why did they kill off the Brighton Belle?
I liked Brighton better when it was a suburb of the East End populated largely by members of the underworld, racing spivs and assorted refugees from the law. It's odd to think that at one time criminals on the run went to Brighton to hide and not to Brazil. Now, it's rip-off antique shops and More homosexuals than I've seen at one gathering since I was 17 years old. One of then), a rather gross man called Rex who Played Soho some 20 years ago. I saw helping a blind man across the road. The sea air must make for tranquillity because the Rex I knew spent more time duffing people Up than he did helping them across anything bigger than a brandy.And the tranquillity Was infectious. The lady and I gazed warmly at each other over the American Disaster hamburgers, held hands over the plaice and Chips and offered each other no recriminations across the sweet and sour.
Only two things marred the idyll. A booklet called What's On and Where In and itround Brighton which recommends every restaurant willy nilly and has the critical faculty of a compulsive first nighter and the fact that somewhere in Ireland — they l'adn't caught him at that time — there arked a mad Paddy of a Delilah who'd cut (1ff the mane and tail of Storm Bird. Of Course, there was one more thing. Presented with the hotel bill I suddenly realised whY they're called 'dirty' weekends. One ,ckan Only hope the cost of playing will keep 'fie tourists away in their clroves next stimtrier.
tr In two or three weeks' time we're going to ehY aweekend in France, It's got to be eo"eaPet But wherever it is, I hope it's in the b,,,n1Pany of the old flame. It's harder to srl Your fingers that way. Meanwhile, I turn once again to Valium because the gr,I.ghtmares concerning vibrators and Storm nira are becoming unbearable.
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