Highway to Hell...

When I was 17, my parents (bless them) bought me a small, slightly beaten up red metro and some driving lessons. I think I got about 4 lessons in before I decided that a) I didn't want to be one of the group of my friends who had passed their driving tests and subsequently took it in turns to stay sober on nights out so that they could drive us all home and b) I didn't really feel at home behind the wheel of a giant hunk of metal with an instructor breathing down my neck. Quite frankly, I don't do anything in public unless I'm fairly assured that I'm already proficient at the task in hand. I hate anything that I'm not imediately brilliant at. When it came down to it, the shame of bunny hopping down the road in front of the driving instructor was just too great to bear... And anyway, I'm from up north. Taxis cost about tuppence there. Whenever I go home now to visit family, I will often take a cab to the end of the road in order to mavel at its cheapness. (I also occasionally go on sunbeds for much the same reason. I can't help it.)
My move to London immediately after I'd finished university put paid to any further attempts to learn how to drive and it must be admitted that I thought I'd probably never bother. I can't imagine myself ever living anywhere but London. I had resigned myself to a life of tube journeys, night buses and overpriced black cabs. And when it isn't tipping with rain, London is a delightful place to stroll around, even if gormless tourists do stop inexplicably in the middle of the pavement without warning (personal bugbear). The only time that a driving license may have come in handy was when my best friend and I were planning a trip to America to drive along the Pacific Coast highway. But I rather liked the idea of being absolved of all driving duty to be honest. I was going to make like the hot one in Thelma and Louise and sit in the passenger seat mainlining whisky...
My former disinterest in aquiring myself a driving license means that it comes as something of a surprize to myself to find that I appear to have spent the best part of two grand on procuring myself a shiny new, sexy-as-fuck vehicle. I have always been ambivalent about cars and driving, but it turns out that I have been chasing the wrong kind of dream. Four wheels bad, two wheels good. Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that I have fallen head over heels for motorbikes.
If vehicles were men, then a car is the solid, safe, dependable gentleman who is going to look after you if something goes wrong. It's an easy ride to your eventual destination. If a car was a man, he would be in it for the long term. The motorbike however would be the 'live fast die young' guitar playin' whisky swillin' dangerous son of a bitch who is only looking for short term thrills and when it ends...it's going to fucking hurt. Clunky analogies aside, I was never down with cars but bikes, it seems, are a whole different story. And quite frankly, it's love.
My first bike was purchased back in November of last year when I had some spare cash floating around. Originally the boy had spotted it on ebay and urged me to buy it. It was a 125cc monkey bike, fixed up to look like a bobber. My only experience of motorbikes thus far had been as a passenger, albeit an enthusiastic one. Our first 'date' (if you can call it that?) basically consisted of him taking me out around north London on the back of his Triumph Bonnerville and us both trying to hold our first sober conversation with each other while roaring around. I love riding on the back of the Bonnerville, it's such a beautiful bike. All boys take note, motorbikes and guitars get you laid.
The monkey bike was closely followed but another ebay purchase, again spotted by the eagle-eyed boy. A 200cc chopper imported from America. The chopper was quickly turned over to the hands of the boy's friend who builds and re-sprays bikes in his spare time. It was finished a couple of days ago and I got to see it on Monday. It appears that I am now in possession of the devil's own method of transport. It looks so fucking mean. I could not love it more. This entire blog was a thinly veiled attempt to post pictures of it. So here you go....

I might not be an artist, but I am definitely ART!

Graffiti Kitty is sprayed around East London and displayed in Cordy House. Image by Dotmasters.
Fur-wearing Kitty was shot by RANKIN as part of his retrospective at The Truman Brewery.

Pipe and smoke it Camden Council. Now who's a stripper? He he....

Lipstick Maturity

It has been a while since I decided to commit my thoughts to cyber space. This lapse has to do with both laziness and a turn of events that I in no way wanted to document. Some things can be put to the back of our minds, and over time you forget the jagged, searing pain of it all. There will always be a dull ache under decisive mental probing, but at least your mind spares you the full technicolour horror. To write down how your feel is to leave it readily accessible to your psyche forever and some things are best left alone. Or at least best not left to a medium where strangers get to read things that you couldn't quite bring yourself to share with a parent or brother...

But that kind of talk is not, quite frankly, what this blog was ever really about. Here my friends, I am principally concerned with showing off, dressing up, playing out, my motorbikes, my friends, occasionally the odd boy, high days, holidays, champagne, mdma, sunshine and any other damn thing I get my rocks off too. I'm more than bored of the media scaremongering about the collapse of civilization as we know it and I suppose I want to put something out there into the world that is optimistic. You see, despite my waspish, sarcstic exterior, I'm actually a 'glass half full' kind of girl. Obviously, if there is any more wine knocking around I would rather be a 'glass brim full' kind of girl. But you can bet your bottom dollar (who says that any more?) that if I only have half a glass of wine then it's about 6am, the bars are all shut and I've cajoled and fluttered my eyelashes to steal the very last of somebody else's alcohol. And therefore a glass that is half full is infinitely preferable to whatever cigarette-butt laden dregs everybody else is supping on.

Currently my showgirl existance is supposed to be under attack from other things than the faltering economy. Camden council have deemed us burlesquers, 'sex workers'. Which leads me to wonder exactly what is going on in their sex lives? The mere removal of a glove seems to have inflamed their gentle sensibilities to the point that they feel it necessary to demand that the venues in which we ply our wicked trade hold licenses for the terrible sex acts performed on their premises. I love it. If only they could see what I get up to during actual 'sex acts'! I wonder if it's like driving? Do you get points for filth? I suspect I might well be on a total ban by now if so. I am also tickled by the possiblity of speeding tickets, then they'd wait until I'm fucking finished...
Some of my contemporaries have been out marching in burlesque's defense. They demand to be regarded as 'artists' and not strippers. I'd join in, if I could manage to drag myself out of bed for anything other than the offer of somebody buying me breakfast at Claridges. But I'd like to break ranks here and say that if I would not be nailing my colours to the mast of the campaign to save burlesque's reputation. It's all semantics to me. I take my clothes off, you can call me a stripper if you want. It makes no difference to the (spot)light in which I see myself. I protest only to save this lifestyle that I have come to love. And no longer for quite the hedonistic reasons that once took presidence. Here I protest against all accusations that I have gone soft. Last weekend saw three shows, a lesbian warehouse party resplendant with lines of ket and mdma all mashed togther, a bottle of gin, a wheelchair, another show, mad dash to Kentish Town, jagermeister doubles with the boy (new and infinitely lovely), cider, more cider, more cider and more jager. But untrammelled excess is no longer the order of each and every day, hence the title of this blog. I have more than once remarked that I have never yet made it to the end of a tube of red lipstick. Other colours, yes. But never in the history of my wearing red lipstick have I ever manged to get to the end of a tube. This is because red is the lipstick that I wear when I'm going out, when I'm onstage, when I damn well want to be noticed and therefore each and every last tube of red lipstick has been lost or smashed or borrowed by some drunk girl in the toilets of Rockbilly Rebels and never given back. Today was that historic day when I opened up my Mac Russian Red and realised that if I wanted the traditional slash of red lippy on my face for tomorrow's show in Soho, then I was going to have to damn well buy some more. This to my curious little mind means maturity of sorts. My showgirl exisitance has opened up all kinds of avenues since I last wrote. I've travelled, made new friends, been able to create in ways I'd never really considered before. If Camden and other other councils see fit to legislate against 'stripping' then so be it. I suspect that it will weed out the fat girls working out their body issues onstage and leave the real performers, of which I suppose I consider I am one (conceited as I realize that must sound). I have big plans for the rest of this year which will not be eroded by the previously omnipresent tides of alcohol. Tomorrow I'm going to buy another tube of Mac Russian Red. I intend to keep hold of that one until it's empty too.

The end is nigh....

Ugh. You know when you're in a relationship and you can just feel it staggering towards its inevitable demise? When the sniping has started but you don't yet feel enough loathing to walk away. I feel that may be where the drummer and I are now. Despite the fact that he and the russian are seemingly on the rocks, I don't think I want him anymore. Contrary biatch that I am. Something somewhere has changed and I can't put my finger on it...

Roxy, I Heart.

Although I obviously spent a lot of my time at burlesque events and urgo, with other burlesque performers. They tend not to make it into my circle of aquaintance outside of work hours. I feel one self-obsessed performer is enough for any group of friends to deal with. Added to this, most performers live their job in a way that I tend not to. Outside of my twilight working hours you're not likely to find me at another burlesque event. I'll be headbanging naked a in a gutter in east London, dancing in some grotty warehouse party or pretending to like some cute boy's frankly appauling band in Camden. I've found that lots of the burlesque girls tend to frequent the the same venues that they perform in, even when they aren't working and while I applaud their dedication to the burlesque cause, I'd rather take my custom elsewhere. Somewhere without naked girls who can't dance and somewhere the drinks won't cost the same as a pair of new shoes.
But recently whilst working within the performer collective The Victor and Vanquished with Roxy Velvet and Ivy Paige, I feel like I've made my first real burlesque friend. The slighly insane but wonderful Roxy Velvet.
The other week my friend Charlotte sent me a text asking what I was up to that evening. It was a Tuesday and I hadn't much planned because the boy was on tour and I didn't have a show, so Charlotte invited me to come out with her. It transpired that 'out' translated into a table at William and Harry's favourite hangout Boujis. Ugh. I am allergic to Kensington. It brings me out in a cheap rash, principally because I am cheap. However, the night out came resplendant with the promise of free booze and I've never been one to turn down a free drink so I asked Roxy to join me as East London back up. I rocked up to the Sloane's venue of choice first, wearing some rather natty spandex leggings, a band t shirt so old you can see the outline of my bra through it (yet curiously not the name of the band), 7" battered heels and a waistcoat I got in Vegas. The look was topped off by my Miss Selfridge fake-mink and waaaaaaay too much red lipstick. When I finally made it into Boujis I was greeted by two guys, both in shirts and a pair of identikit blondes who were drinking water and complaining that the table they were seated at wasn't prominant enough. My friend Charlotte had cried off and not seen fit to mention it. Brilliant. I was on the verge of tottering back East as fast as my massive shoes would carry me, but I recieved a text from Rox saying that she'd already left the house looking like 'Shannon Doherty circa 1985'. That was reason enough to stay. And stay I did, cursing Roxy's lateness. I laboured through a conversation with the blondes who by this time had dismissed me as a nutjob with too much make up on, then turned my attention to the texan half of the be-shirted men on my other side. It turned out that he was 'in oil' and when I asked for a dark rum and diet coke, he returned with a bottle. The evening began. Roxy turned up in an 80's dress complete with shoulder pads and we drank the table dry then started requesting more from our poor beliguered waitress. The blondes saw themselves possibly outclassed and certainly out-drunkened so headed for the hills. I got so pissed that I snogged the none-texan half of the two men, which turned out to be a mistake because he then spent the remainder of the evening trying to lock me in various bathrooms with him in the mistaken belief that he could get me to have sex with him. Shudder.
Boujis closed and so on the promise of omlette and possibly gear, Roxy, the guys and I headed to Balans. We ended the evening raiding the laurent perrier from the texan's mini bar in The Dorchester. What they expected when they got us back there was not what actually happened. Rox and I drank the mini-bar dry and then re-enacted the Eddie Izzard 'Cake or Death' sketch repeatedly whilst cackling like witches. We stumbled out of The Dorchester at about 11am and back to Balans where Roxy had a meeting. She attempted to hold it togther while I drank mimosas and chipped in with innapropriate comments along the lines of 'Cake or death?' (Girl with a one track mind...)
To her credit, Roxy laughed every time.

Better late than never...

Time, it seems, actually flies when you're having fun. Tonnes has happened since I last logged in and I barely know where to start. More accurately, I can barely remember where to start. Damn you short term memory! Damn you blank patches due to over-consumption of alcohol! Damn you... other stuff...

The few days before my new night Head Over Heels were spent in furious preparation. Perhaps 'furious' is too strong a word but Roxy and I did spend very nearly the whole of the Sunday before the big day, tripping around Portobello whilst wearing the previous night's make up and smelling strongly of vodka (Roxy) and cheap cider (me) trying to give people Head Over Heels flyers that we had prettily attached to some amazing fake flowers from the pound shop. Most people smelt the booze and noted our air of general bedragglement and crossed the road to avoid being flyered. Others clearly thought we were gypsies selling our own version of lucky heather and marched past with a swift 'no' and occasional outstretched palm to indicate they really meant business. The odd soul, who had probably been drinking as heavily as we had the night before, took a flyer but I think more out of pity than curiosity. I think we got rid of about 50 flyers in the end, in about 5 hours with various stops for pub and the odd ten minutes where we walked up streets that looked like they might go somewhere interesting with lots of people to flyer but then didn't.
The next couple of days where then taken up with shopping for materials to make my cupid outfit, with money I shouldn't have been spending. My favourite type of shopping. £30 for a pair of tiny feathery wings I can only wear once in completely the wrong colour? Brilliant! I'll take 3. The night before should have been spent in an orgy of sewing and preparation. But what actually happened was that I went to Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes with the drummer and the boys from For Ramona and got rip-roaringly fucked on free sambucca. I still have no idea how I made it home. When I woke up in the morning, it seemed that Roxy had been doing something similar. I still hadn't finished making my costume, cut my music together or walked through my show even once. Ever the professional, I sighed and went to join the warm body of the drummer who was still in my bed for another hour and decided not to think about it too much. When I eventually got out of bed, I decided to finish my costume and spent an enjoyable half an hour spraying things gold. Even things that weren't originally supposed to be gold. Spray paint is fun, but will stain your hands for about a week afterward. Mental note boys and girls.
Upon reaching the venue, the enormity of what we hoped to achieve hit both Roxy and myself and turned me into a hysterical wreck and Rox into a snarling banshee. Putting on an event is rather like throwing a party, in so much as you're terrified that no-one will come. Turn that party into an event in which you have the temerity to ask people to pay to watch you remove your clothing, and the nerves start to jangle. Add to that the fact that Roxy and I would be showcasing acts that we had literally never ever performed, not even in the privacy of our own homes and you will understand why I literally sprinted to the off-license to buy as much cheap booze as I could carry. There is security and strength at the bottom of a bottle my friends. Rox and I were both pissed before the first punter even walked through the door. But walk they did. We fucking packed the place!
Trevor Locke our host was utterly brilliant, the lovely Ruby Blues and Agent Lynch put on fabulous shows to a whooping hollering, wonderful crowd. By the time I made it to the stage, I was properly drunk and don't reeeeeeally remember the finer details of my act. Suffice to say, the crowd yelled their heads off, screamed when I lunged at them with my big knife (having seen the truly insane faces I was pulling in the photos afterwards, I'm not surprised) and cheered when I covered myself with fake blood at the end. It couldn't have gone better if I'd actually rehursed it! I came off-stage to a glass of champagne and a bag of mdma. I remember little of the rest of the evening but my friends informed me the next day that I spent a good two hours running round wearing only the briefest scattering of rose petals, refusing to put my clothes back on and informing everybody that the drummer had a girlfriend in Russia and was therefore a cunt which meant they weren't to talk to him. Luckily everybody, including him had the good sense to ignore me.
The evening ended shortly after a tired and emotional Roxy Velvet and myself were packed off into separate taxis by our nearest and dearest. But not before the pre-requisit drunken 'I love you, no I love YOU' end of evening hugging that left me covered in red fucking glitter.
I woke up at lunchtime the next day desperate for water. Upon crawling out from under the duvet it appeared that I had manged to fall asleep in fake-bloodstained stockings and petals with roses still in my hair. My sheets, the drummer and a bit of the hallway were all covered in petals and glitter. I wanted to take a photo and call it St Valentine's Day Massacre. I wish I had, the mental picture still makes me smile.

What Goes Up, Must Comedown.....

I fucking hate comedowns. One day the world is your powdery white party oyster and three days hence, the complete lack of seratonin in your addled body makes you oh so keenly aware of each and every tiny thing lacking in your miserable empty life. Dammit! And while the logical part of your brain pleads the case that life really isn't that bad, you just overindulged at on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday (delete as applicable, or not...) and it will all wear off soon. There is also another darker part that takes hold of anything that may be niggling at you and turns it into something miserable and malignant.

The week just gone saw me consume rather large quantities of alcohol at various gigs. I had a lovely evening at The End of The World with Miss Polly Rae and her Hurly Burly Girlies. Many thanks to whoever kept replacing the bottle of wine that was on the table in the dressing room. You have my unswerving devotion. Thanks also to Denise at Volupte who took it upon herself to provide the performers with wine during the break at Pete Saunders Jazz night on Wednesday. My performance in the second half was slightly wobbly but ever so much more animated as a result. The drinking continued in various venues around our nation's fair capital throughout the week and reached something of a crescendo on Saturday night.

The boy I've been knocking around with for the past few months is a drummer and his band were playing a venue in Central London. While he has seen me perform on more than one occasion, owing to my apauling time keeping I have never yet managed to make it to see him. I have however seen numerous bands that appeared higher up the bill... Saturday was supposed to be the first time I got to see him onstage but alas alack, it was not meant to be, again. I was performing with another band called For Ramona at another venue in Soho. In my carefully laid plans, I was supposed to be done in time to run back and catch the boy but cider, general back-slapping and a late start all colluded to prevent me getting there in time. Post-gig he was sweaty and sulking slightly. I was drunkenly indignant. So, in order to prevent an actual conversation (and because it's what we do) we procured a tonne of gear, more booze than was strictly necessary and high-tailed it home to get trashed. And trashed we did get. Fast forward to Monday which saw us both in The Hawley drinking cider, sambucca (me and the barman), dancing on tables (just me) and being generally obnoxious (every cunt in there). On Tuesday night as I lay on my friend's sofa watching tv I could feel the start of my comedown prickling at my tearducts. Today it stormed the battlements and took up residence in my head.

I can never sleep when I get in from work. I need an hour or so to wind down before my duvet and I can get really serious, and I tend to wile it away on my laptop. I was idling around on Facebook and clicked on a link for a review the boy wrote about a recent holiday he took in Eygpt. Now, I'm aware that he has a girlfriend - which isn't something I'm at all proud of, I really don't want to part of anything that hurts anyone. I'm also aware she was over here for Christmas. I know they went to Eygpt togther, I've seen the pictures on facebook. But I suppose that in my head over time, I've sort of started to think of him as mine. The review he wrote started out saying that he and his 'girlfriend' went to Eygpt blah blah blah. And I don't know if it's the comedown making me overly sensitive or just some sort of timely wake-up call but seeing him call her 'girlfriend' in print really made me think. And more than that, it fucking hurt which is something I never expected. The boy and I are 'fun'. We take gear, we have sex, we party. But suddenly and almost unconciously, I seem to want to parlay it into something more. Ugh. He's clearly not boyfriend material, I know he cheats and trust is an integral part of a relationship. I hope it's my comedown that seems to want him as a boyfriend and not me. Damn feelings. Must drown them. Pass the vodka....