Don't You Want Me Baby?

So, the week before last, my dear Big Sis flew in from Califor-ni-gay, for the first time since she done broke my heart and left these shores for good over two years ago. To say I was looking forward to seeing her is an understatement. I have known Big Sis, since I was the very ripe and tender age of 16, when, in a bid to be able to feed and clothe myself, I got a job in a restaurant by embellishing I was in fact 18. Mercifully, the place itself, an American Bar & Diner in the city, was about as law abiding, upright and reputable as Osama Bin Laden, so they didn’t bother to check out my references or my age, and before I knew it, I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true…..

Now, the only other job I’d had, believe it or not, was working on a flower stall at the side of the motorway on Saturday & Sunday which I started doing at 14, (my father was a raging and abusive alcoholic, and well, someone had to go out and earn a wage to buy his booze for him as he was in no fit state to do it) so I was incredibly nervous about starting, as I had no experience of work really and I had a total lack of confidence. I was living in a homeless hostel (having been thrown onto the streets at 15) and felt completely inadequate, useless and a waste of perfectly good oxygen. I didn’t have the best start in life, and by that point I just assumed that nobody liked, or would ever like me, I had no self worth or respect and essentially considered myself a third rate citizen.

Because of my many misgivings about myself I was convinced that I’d get there for my first shift, and the manager along everyone in the restaurant would look at me, burst out laughing and say ‘Do you really think we would give a peasant like you a chance- get out and don’t come back’ or they would make me humiliate myself in a number of ways by passing initiations like cleaning the toilet floor with my tongue or making me run around in my underwear. But then I thought to my little gay self ‘This isn’t like at school, where the teachers were nuns who would make you do those things…..’

I was so scared, that I actually paced outside in the manor of an escaped lunatic for about an hour before plucking up the courage to finally go in. Straight away, a divine red haired American lady with chunky shoes, a passion for fashion and a very friendly face introduced herself, and told me she would be showing me the ropes. This was Big Sis, and immediately I knew I had someone who would take this poor defenceless queerling under her wing, and I felt at ease. And take me under her wing she did. We quickly established a rapport and we had a lot of fun. She was the only person there who was nice to me, and the only one to give me a share of her tips (I was only a bus boy after all). The other waiters, chefs, and bar staff paid me very little attention, and if Big Sis wasn’t around, they would completely ignore me and I felt like even more of an outsider. But when it was us together on a shift, even though it is still the most physically demanding job I have ever done, it was great fun, and I always looked forward to working with her. Looking back, and now knowing her situation back then, I realise we were actually both outsiders; her a veritible nubile from America who'd married a English Business man, that plucked her from her home in California for a new life in England, who truth be told once he got her here she rarely saw and when she did had to adopt the role of doting wife in front of his clients, all the while terrified of one of his aggressive outbursts once the evening was over, and me, a penniless 16 year old boy who was gayer that a neon pink alligator, living in a Christian Homeless hostel, with holes in his shoes that weren’t meant to be there and holes in his jeans that were. We were destined to be friends.

It was a very peculiar set up, and I was so naive back in those days, I genuinely believed that prayer was the best form of contraceptive. Before long, my eyes were open to the absolute underbelly of London, and I realised that the restaurant was actually a front for drugs, money laundering and all sorts of criminal activity. I really needed the job to support me, at that time I had nobody, so when I was asked to go the Jewellers ‘up the road’ and collect a package, I asked no questions. When I was asked to take the restaurant owners dog for a walk while he did afterhours ‘business’ in the office, I simply got my poop a scoop and headed off to the green, and when I was told to go and clean up the blood stained toilet floor one morning, what could I do but comply? Even when one of the managers slapped me around the face for dropping a bottle of wine I just got on with it. It was a very unsavoury environment, but I would do it all over again, because it gave me Big Sis.

Our friendship has lasted over 15 years, through countless failed relationships, a divorce, two stints of her going back to the states, two rhinoplasties (on yours truly), dramatic weight gain, dramatic weight loss, bereavements, and more cocaine and wine than you can shake a stick at. Big Sis is a friend for every season, and even though she insists that this time, she is staying in America for good we have kept in contact, and I know that we will always be in each others lives. I couldn’t wait to see her, and catch up on old times, and also, to meet the new man in her life, Jimmy.

We met in Balans, both being 30 minutes late, and quickly ordered in some Cocktails. A Kir Royale for moi, Big Sis and Jimmy opting for Vodka Martinis. I raised a toast, and simply said ‘Welcome Homo’ told her she’d proved her point, asked when was she moving back, and generally refused to accept that she could live anywhere, but in London. Three cocktails in, and I had decided that Jimmy was so delicious that I was gaining weight just by sitting with him, and that my darling Big Sis looked happier than I have seen her in a very long time, which obviously made me ecstatic, even though it dawned on me that in light of her happiness and her delicious man, the likelihood of her moving back was slim.

We then went for some Tapas at a place I can’t remember (I’d had a few cocktails by that point on an empty stomach) but I do know that we devoured cold cuts of ham and some lovely prawns with lashings of Alioli while reminiscing about the good old days, my bad taste in music, how Big Sis used to berate me for liking Mariah Carey by insisting she had missed her calling as a pest control expert as she could just walk into a building, sing, and the roaches would leave of their own accord, to the time I virtually emptied the restaurant and patrons fled in terror when I broke the valve on a cylinder of Helium I was using to fill up balloons and it almost exploded, to the fact that I had not fallen off the Columbian Bandwagon in three years and how great I felt about it. There was I, perched above all on my self righteous high chair claiming that I ‘didn’t miss it at all’ and that I would ‘never touch the stuff again’.

‘Oh, well, we’ve got loads of gear at our place, we thought you’d……’ before she even finished the sentence I was screaming ‘Taxi’ like I was a doorman at The Dorchester and we were heading back to North London, stopping in at the local off licence for Champagne and other much needed essentials for a night of some Columbian.

After a three year hiatus, I gave in to temptation and fell off the bandwagon. The thing I always say is that I don’t actually enjoy cocaine; I just love the smell of it. In order to smell it, you’ve got to snort it. So I did, and we stayed up to the wee small hours, snorting, drinking, talking, and snorting some more. After we decided to turn it in and call it a night- I got a cab home, during which the cab driver made a pass at me and started fondling himself when we were at a set of traffic lights, after having asked me about my sexuality and what bars I went to. What is it about cab drivers? Are they all perverts? And more importantly, are they all unattractive perverts? It was very uncomfortable and owing to the fact that I’d just put half a rain forest up my nose, I was feeling just a bit anxious. All I wanted to do was get in and drink the bottle of vodka I had in the fridge and listen to music and have myself a little party. Which is exactly what I did when I got in. I passed out at about 9am. Thankfully I’d booked the day off. In hindsight, maybe I knew just how badly behaved me and Big Sis would be once we got together, hence the fact I’d booked the day’s leave.

I awoke at about 7pm that evening looking like Amy Winehouse and probably smelling like her too. I walked into my living room to find every single Prince CD I own strewn across the floor, his Sign O The Times DVD still in the player, a few empty bottles of booze were on the coffee table (I finished off everything I had in the fridge) and I knew that not only had Big Sis come Homo, but I had flung myself off the wagon like a lemming, and thrown caution to the wind. I can’t say I’ll be doing it again in a hurry, but I do know that in my coked up state, I may or may not have stopped pestering Big Sis about coming back Homo, and agreed to give up my job, sell my flat, ditch everyone and move to Laguna Beach.

Whilst I would love nothing more, I just don’t know if London is ready to see the back of me yet. And more importantly, I’m just not sure that America would get me. Or let me in. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.