Lust Or No Harm Done

months.'

Being bitchy was such a simple, innocent game really. Why had he been so scared of it? Bottles laughed and gripped his arm. 'All right then, but at least I bought us a bottle.' She was suddenly the gauche loud girl of years before. 'And, just to complete the image of sophistication, I bought us… a couple of straws.'

And that made Michael laugh.

They sat down at the kitchen table and Michael expertly turned the bottle around the cork and not the other way around so it didn't gush. This impressed Bottles beyond all reason. 'Tch. I usually get it down my front. Here you go.' In went the straws. They had accordion bendy bits, which Bottles adjusted to face each of them.

'Honestly, it's like we're at an American soda fountain or something.'

She nodded and laughed, yes, yes, that was the joke.

Something about Bottles changed who Michael was. Around her, he was able to tell jokes. 'Do you want to put ice cream in it? I mean, really come on like an urban sophisticate.'

Bottles mimed laughter silently. Silence was her way of controlling what she knew could be an ungodly squawk. Silence did indeed give her a certain lacquering of dignity. She wobbled her eyebrows, stuck the straw in, looked him dead in the eye, and began to blow into the champagne, frothing it up. Bottles doubled up with laughter, and let rip a horrible, piercing screech of a laugh. Michael looked at her, maintaining a stone face. That set her off again. Just as she was recovering, he leaned forward as if in sympathy, to pat her arm.

'Suck, dear. Blow is just an expression.'

Bottles had probably arrived stoned, which might account for the callisthenic effect the next laugh had on her; she looked like she was doing some kind of warm-up exercise. Conversation took a back seat to the recovery of composure.

Bottles wiped her face. 'Oh, man, if you had done that back in 1977, you'd have been in a band.'

'Now then. You will recall, we were discussing who I should fuck next.'

'Indeed. And I have just the gel for you.' She was imitating some kind of school-ma'am. 'That American singer you like so much. No, not Julie Andrews.'

It was Michael's turn to laugh.

'The other one.' Her voice returned to normal, perfectly serious. 'The good one.'

Why are men satisfied with whores?

There were some pretty weird radio stations in Southern California in the 1970s. They were meant to lose money. Tax-loss radio, it was called. Tax-loss radio broadcast from trailers or the basements of disused churches. The DJs played whatever they liked: Black Flag next to Tony Bennett next to Miles Davis next to Magazine.

Next to Billie Holiday.

At fourteen, Michael didn't really know who Billie Holiday was, except that maybe she was something to do with Motown. Lost in the doldrums of knowing no one in California, being a teenager, being gay, Michael suddenly heard a voice that sounded like he felt.

Jazz was supper-club music for people who wore slightly transparent socks and liked it when Frank Sinatra sang 'hot damn'. It was in old movies. And in this old movie-music style was someone singing about a lynching. The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, drawled a slow, sad, horrified voice.

There was something relentlessly modern about it, like someone singing Brecht or a song about a serial murder. It was perfect, just perfect. It was cool. Michael could see himself coming back from California with that kind of music and being cool.

He reckoned that the stores in the camp would be good on jazz, so he went there and asked by name for Billie Holiday. They stocked a lot of her product. By luck alone, he landed on the fifties album, Lady Sings the Blues. He read the song titles, which for the last time, would mean nothing to him: 'God Bless the Child', 'Lady Sings the Blues', 'Strange Fruit', 'I Thought About You'. Walking back to the bus stop, he met someone who was almost a friend, a Marine's son on the baseball team. With him was the coolest guy of them all, the son of a black officer. His name was Hendricks, Rousseau Hendricks, and he claimed to be Jimi Hendrix's cousin.

By now Michael's taste in records was a reliable source of scoring social points for the children of Marines. Nobody, but nobody, bought Julie Andrews records except Michael. So when the white kid said, with a hooded smile, 'What have you got now?' Michael had a sudden surging stab of pride. I'll show you.

Out came the blue album. 'Oh, man,' said the white kid in real embarrassment. The record looked old.

But Rousseau Hendricks looked up, his eyes widening. 'You bought this?'

'Yeah, it's got all her best stuff on it.' At least, that's what the guy in the record department said.

'And that's the best there is,' said Rousseau. The white kid scowled. Michael had scored cool points plus. Michael knew then that his instinct had been right; Billie was what he needed.

Michael returned to Britain and scored cool points all through his brief period of glamour. He played Billie Holiday for Bottles in the long magic afternoons before parents came back from work. It was like listening to the Bible.

'Oh, that is the story of my life,' Bottles had declared. It wasn't then, but it was soon to become so, for a while.

Later, Michael read the biographies. Her voice had not always been sandpaper; she had not always sung in a heightened style. The recordings from the thirties were smooth, dapper, even merry.

It was that Billie he called up. She arrived direct from 1938, having left the Artie Shaw band.

Billie arrived unfussed, plump and pretty in a blue dress with white polka dots. She sat down on the sofa, lit a cigarette, looked at Michael and crumpled forward. She leaned back, smiling, narrow-eyed and took one long draught of her cigarette as if it were a cooling drink.

'Oh, baby,' Billie muttered to herself. ' Man. ' She shook her head.

'What?' asked Michael nervously. 'What?'

Billie blasted smoke out of both nostrils. 'You don't even know what you want, do you?' Somewhere there were nerves; she suddenly reached up to tug on her hair. 'You going to offer the Lady a drink or not?'

'Sure. Um. Whiskey? Gin?' Michael tried to remember what he had in stock.

'A Grand Slam,' she said confidently.

'What's that?'

'Oh, man,' she groaned again. She strode into his tiny kitchen. 'Where do you keep the hooch around here?' She started to mix the drinks. It was Michael who was fussed. Michael fussed around the cabinet and the ice-cube tray.

'So. You don't know why you called me here.'

'I… uh… a friend suggested it.'

'Um,' she said, sounding completely unflattered. 'Maybe I ought to meet your friend instead.'

'I… I'm supposed to be exploring sex or something, and I guess I'm trying to do justice to women.'

'Justice to women. My, my. You reckon that's possible?' Billie unobtrusively took down another glass and started making him a drink too. 'Looky here. This is how you fix a Grand Slam.' She showed him, and passed him the glass. 'Here. You look like you need it.'

'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' She said it because it was good form to do so, and comportment was important. 'So. What do I get out of this?'

'Well, some people think it's neat being alive.'

'I never did think that life was neat particularly. Death's part of the deal. Why should I be happy to be resurrected as a whore? Hmm? When I spent all my whole waking life trying to make myself a Lady?'

Michael coughed, with unease. 'Yeah. I… uh… I'm a bit English and to us a Lady is some old bat whose great great grandfather was good at railways or killing people and who lives in a stately home.'

Lady Day suppressed a prejudice of her own, visibly swallowed it. Who were more ofay than the English? Then something like sympathy swam into her eyes.

'A Lady is somebody with dignity. And nobody can take that dignity away.'

Sympathy swam up in Michael as well. 'Did you get there?'

'Yes,' she said in a determined voice. 'Yes, I did.'