Alim Kheraj

Everyday People

Novel extract

Part One

February 1973

The man in drag was ahead of the others. He was wearing white elbow-length gloves and, peeking out beneath a blue halter neck gown, were pointed high heeled shoes that made a clipped sound on the pavement as he walked. He stopped, huffed, and turned around. ‘Come on girls,’ he shouted. ‘These shoes are like the devil.’

‘Has anyone got a cigarette?’ said one of the men trailing behind. He was broad and dressed like a sailor.

‘You’re always puffing away,’ the drag queen said back. ‘A real puff-ter.’

‘What’s that you called me?’ The sailor raced forward and, amid screams of protest, flung the drag queen over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, spinning around.

Mark had stopped to watch from the other side of the road. He was staring but couldn’t help himself. They were heading to the same place; he was sure of it. He just hadn’t expected people to be so obvious.

Once back on the ground, the man in drag gave the sailor a playful shove and straightened out his dress. When he looked up, he spotted Mark and winked before linking arms with the sailor and another man from their group, who was dressed in a white shirt and a cravat. Together they disappeared around the corner from Queensway and on to Porchester Road.

Mark hung back. Compared to that group he felt underdressed. He hadn’t known what to wear and so had opted for something unassuming: a plain shirt and a brown jumper, which was scratching his neck. He had draped himself in his lumpy beige coat, which he knew Andrew hated but was the only truly warm item of clothing he owned. His mother would have scolded him for looking ‘scruffy’ and would be horrified that he was out in February without a scarf and gloves. Although she might be more distressed if she knew where he was going.

He took a deep breath, the air misting in the late winter chill. In one hand he held a garishly orange shopping bag he had pilfered from his landlady, Ethel, which he suspected she already knew was missing. Bundled into it was Andrew’s outfit for the night: a dress, tights, a pair of women’s shoes and a faux-fur stole, which Mark had placed on top to disguise the contents. Still, on the bus over from Ethel’s house in Ealing, he’d held the bag closely. He felt at great risk being out in the open with such explosive cargo and so to calm his nerves he’d pretended he was John Steed from The Avengers on some secret mission. His mother had always had a thing for Patrick Macnee.

He started walking again and when he turned the corner onto Porchester Road, he spotted his destination. He crossed the road where, under the empty branches of some trees, he could wait so he didn’t appear to be loitering.

He checked his watch. Andrew was late.

Mark stamped his feet to stave off the chill and with his free hand dug about in his coat pocket for a packet of cigarettes and a nearly depleted box of matches. He lit one and watched as the smoke tailed away, where he imagined it would coalesce with the rest of London’s heavy grey smog. A few years earlier, Mark read about an effort to clean up the air in the city, although compared to the provincial crispness he’d grown up with, the city still felt dense with pollution. When he first moved to Ethel’s, he’d been disgusted with the colour of the puddles, the water murky with grime. But while it had rained earlier that night, under the white shafts cast down from the streetlights the lead-coloured streets shimmered invitingly, as if they knew he was headed to a ball, even if it was a drag ball.

The building he was waiting outside certainly lent itself to the occasion. Marking out the entrance were two square pillars, a demonic-looking lion carved in stone on the top of each. Above the ornate wooden doors where guests were coming in, he could make out the words ‘Porchester Hall’ in capital letters. Framing it all were two old fashioned lamp posts, which lit the entryway up as if it were a stage.

Mark was just about to light another cigarette when he spotted the dainty shape of Andrew skipping around the corner. He was always taken by how delicate and pale his friend was, with thin limbs and a bush of tight curly hair, which tonight was hidden beneath an ugly brown golfing cap. He held an auburn wig in his hands.

‘Where have you been?’ Mark said.

‘Nice to see you, too,’ Andrew said.

‘I’ve been waiting.’

‘I can see that.’

Mark scowled. ‘Was the bus late?’

‘If you must know,’ Andrew said, ‘I was fixing my makeup.’

Andrew lifted the cap and Mark took in his friend’s face. Even in the gloaming evening light, he could see the light brush of rouge on Andrew’s cheeks. His hazel eyes were almost indiscernible beneath dense black eyeliner and dusky blue eyeshadow. And his lips had a moist, pearlescent quality to them.

‘That’s bold,’ Mark said.

‘Ergo the hat.’

‘Oh, because the wig in your hand is so subtle,’ Mark said, his voice droll.

‘Bugger off.’

‘I suppose you’re more discreet than some of the people I’ve seen. Andrew, you won’t believe it. The costumes. And in public. Men in dresses. There was even one man dressed as a sailor.’

Andrew lit a cigarette. ‘Are you having second thoughts?’

‘No,’ Mark said. ‘Are you?’

‘Not at all. Did you bring the outfit, by the way?’

Mark lifted the orange bag in confirmation. ‘After the lengths you made me go to buy everything? How could I forget it.’

‘Don’t be boring,’ Andrew said. ‘Anyway, if I could have gone, I would have.’

Guilt coloured Mark’s cheeks. He pointed to the wig in Andrew’s hand. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Picked it up on the way here.’ Andrew stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Are we going in then? Or do you plan on standing outside all night ogling men in dresses like a pervert?’

They waited for a car to pass, crossed the road and made their way through the wooden doors of the Porchester Hall.

Inside was an arched atrium, with stone walls and warm wooden panelling. Straight ahead was a marble staircase with black and gold bannisters that divided at the top towards a mezzanine level. Mark looked over to Andrew and they both grinned at each other. In front of them, milling in a loose queue, were people dressed in fur coats and evening gowns. From behind, Mark wasn’t sure if they were men or women, although he supposed that tonight it didn’t really matter. Once they moved off and away towards the stairs, Mark and Andrew found themselves standing at a rickety looking table where a middle-aged man in a suit with pudgy hands and perfectly clipped nails was fiddling with money in a tin.

‘Have you paid in advance, darlings?’ he said, not looking up.

‘Sorry?’

The man did look up then. He had a pock-marked face and his black hair was greased down in an unfortunate comb over. ‘Tickets, my dears,’ he said. ‘Did you write to me and Jeanie?’

‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘Should we have?’

 ‘It’s one pound seventy-five on the door, I’m afraid. Is it your first time?’

‘It is,’ Mark said, pulling out his wallet. ‘Is it that obvious?’

The man’s earlier sternness fell and he chuckled. ‘You can always tell a newcomer.’

‘Is there somewhere—’ Andrew began.

‘To get changed?’ the man said. ‘You can use the men’s lavatories.’

He took the notes from their hands and put them in his little tin, handing back their change. He then leaned over the table and pointed to the stairs. ‘Go up to the first floor and you’ll see the signs. Cloakroom is down here when you’re done.’ He winked. ‘Have a good night.’

Mark and Andrew thanked him and started towards the stairs. Hot threads of excitement pulsed through Mark. Somewhere out of sight, he could hear a swarm of voices under the rumble of music.

‘Come on,’ said Andrew, grabbing his hand. ‘Help me transform.’

The men’s toilets were revolting. The walls were nicotine-stained, the black and white floor tiles sticky. The smell reminded Mark of alleyways and train carriages, a pungent mix of overripe fruit, chemicals and the stale wooden tang of old cigarettes.

In front of a big mirror opposite the sinks stood men applying lippy and fixing their wigs. One man, with a frog-like face and a beehive wig, was moaning loudly about the traffic on his drive from Nottingham to London to a shorter drag queen wearing a pixie cut and butterfly-sized false eyelashes. ‘And the price of a hotel for the night,’ the frog-faced man added. ‘Bloody robbery.’ Next to them was a man drawing on his eyebrows. He had a strong jaw and thin lips, his muscular arms exposed in a strappy blue dress that had a pink rose pinned to the front. There were others, smoking and chatting or dabbing at their faces with powders and brushes, all joined in the communal effort of becoming women.

Mark had to suppress a laugh as a thin-faced man in a yellow floral nightgown stepped away from the mirror and moved to the urinals, where he hitched up his skirts and pissed, his bare buttocks exposed. There was something so mundane and perfunctory about it that Mark smiled, a stupid sort of happiness tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Andrew’s expression was harder to discern.

‘What is it?’ Mark said.

‘It’s just so—’ Andrew began, before dropping his voice to a whisper ‘–dirty.’

Mark was surprised. Andrew often shared stories from his trysts with men in public lavatories, which were hardly temples of hygiene. It was this grime, Mark insisted, that put him off cottaging, although it was actually the sex that he recoiled at. Andrew called him a prude, but that wasn’t quite it. Mark desired men, wanted to one day shag a man. He’d even wanked off a boy in school once, something he’d written off at the time as schoolboy fumbling. It was more that sex represented a commitment to something that he could never come back from. And if he did ever take the plunge, he didn’t want it to be in the loos at Victoria station.

 He kept all this to himself, though. ‘Just be quiet and put on your frock,’ he said.

Andrew stuck out his tongue and, in a corner near the cubicles, started pulling off his clothes. ‘Pass me those tights, would you?’

‘I just realised I didn’t buy a handbag for you to keep your things in,’ Mark said.

‘That’s what you’re for, dear.’ Andrew grabbed the tights from Mark, who was running the silky nylon through his fingers. He took off his vest and put on a white satin bra with an embroidered edge. ‘Will you get me some loo roll?’

‘Where did you get that from? It looks expensive.’

‘What?’

‘The bra.’ Mark went into the stalls and gathered up two bundles of coarse toilet paper. ‘Will this do?’

‘Perfect.’ Andrew stuffed the toilet tissue and readjusted his makeshift breasts. ‘And I stole it from my mother.’

‘Andrew!’

‘She’s got more like it. Won’t even notice it’s gone.’

Mark’s own mother would be apoplectic if something that expensive went missing. But she also would never have spent a lot of money on anything as functional as underwear.

Andrew tugged hiss dress over his head, the fabric gliding down his narrow frame. Compared to what some of the other men in the lavatory were wearing, it was modern: pink and knee-length, it had a neckline that left Andrew’s sharp and angular collar bones exposed.

‘Will you help me with the buttons?’

‘I don’t see why I couldn’t have just gone to Shepherd’s Bush market to get you a dress,’ Mark said as he struggled with the dainty button holes. ‘They have knock offs there.’

‘But darling, the quality. No. For tonight only something from Biba would do. Are you finished?’

‘Hold on.’ Mark fiddled with the last button until it slipped into the tiny hole. ‘There.’ He turned Andrew around and stepped back to look.

‘What are you gawping at?’ Andrew said.

‘It just looks… You look nice.’

Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Compliment me later,’ he said. ‘I need to sort this wig out. I should have gone for blonde. This colour will look awful.’

‘Stop that. You’ll look like Audrey Hepburn.’

Andrew scoffed, but Mark thought he saw his friend’s cheeks colour, although it could have just been the rouge.

‘What are you going to do about your coat?’ Andrew said.

‘What do you mean?’

Andrew made a face not entirely dissimilar to the one he’d made when he walked into the toilets. ‘We’re not going in with you wearing that.’

‘I like this coat. Come here.’ Mark tucked the stray curls of Andrew’s real hair beneath the wig. ‘Beautiful. Perhaps a little more later-in-life Judy Garland than Audrey Hepburn, but still beautiful.’

‘I said you could compliment me, not eviscerate me,’ Andrew said.

He stalked past Mark and tried to find space among the drag queens at the large pockmarked mirror. An older man in a reddish-brown wig and a laced outfit that looked practically Victorian eventually made space for Andrew. Leaning closer to him, Andrew said something that Mark couldn’t hear but which caused the man to chortle, turn around, and eye Mark hungrily. At this, Mark found something interesting on his shoe to look at.

When Andrew returned, he huffed dramatically. ‘I look dreadful,’ he said. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘What was that all about?’ Mark said.

‘Hmm?’

‘What did you say to that man?’

‘Oh.’ Andrew cracked a sly smile. ‘I just thanked him for making space for me.’

‘Why did he look at me like that?’

‘Focus, Mark. I’m having a crisis.’

‘He looked like he wanted to swallow me whole.’

‘It was nothing. I just said you might find him later for a bit of fun that’s all.’

Mark clenched his fists. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Don’t be so boring. He knew I was joking.’

Mark suppressed his irritation and surreptitiously looked up. The Victorian was looking at them in the reflection of the mirror. ‘Andrew, he’s still staring. How could—’

Andrew held up his hand. ‘I don’t want a lecture, Mark.’ He huffed. ‘Now tell me I look nice.’

Mark looked at his friend for a moment and then sighed with resignation. ‘You’re a vision. Now, can we get out of here?’

‘Fine,’ Andrew said. ‘Let’s go and get rid of your disgusting coat.’

In the queue for the cloakroom, Andrew fidgeted with impatience. Mark was also antsy. He felt drab next to Andrew. He thought back to the drag queen in the blue dress, of the sailor and the man in the cravat, and regret cast over his choice of outfit for the night.

It wasn’t that he wanted to wear a frock and paint his face with makeup; aside from trying on his mother’s clothes once as a child, cross-dressing was not something that particularly interested him. There was also no doubt that he was gay, it was just that committing to the thing with as much certainty as Andrew was a challenge. Instead he retreated into the plain simplicity of his life: a steady and boring job, unassuming men’s clothing, the room at Ethel’s, and the vacancy left by his lack of a sex life.

Should anyone ask, even tonight’s excursion could be written off. It was Mark’s provincial naivety duped by the mucky lubriciousness of city life. Blame the scandalous post-War liberation of the Sixties and how that decade blew everything open. His innocence had been exploited by the homosexual agenda and now he was at a drag ball.

But in a pink dress next to him was Andrew, who would never shrink away with such cowardice. The truth was they both lived incomplete lives, distorting themselves in order to obscure the truth from their families. When together, though, Andrew was able to shake it off with unnerving acuity, whereas Mark was lost trying to figure out the shape of his life. He knew whatever it looked like, it would be different to Andrew. He just hoped discovering it was as simple as wearing a dress.

When they reached the front of the cloakroom queue, Mark handed over his coat. Andrew handed over his clothes.

‘Are you ready darling,’ Andrew asked.

‘We’ll find out,’ Mark said.Andrew grabbed Mark’s hand and dragged him up the stairs and into the main hall.