I walk away. I use what money I’ve made to scour vintage clothing shops for clothes that might gain me admission to this club. I remember reading about the army surplus store where the Beatles found the costumes for the cover ofSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Laurence Corner Army Surplus, near the Warren Street station.
I sing a song from that album at the Warren Street Tube station for good luck.Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?An elderly couple in ratty coats dances as I play. Their dance is precisely choreographed. I imagine it’s their wedding dance. Perhaps they return to those steps when they need to be reminded of what young love felt like.
They tip me generously. Enough that when I enter Laurence Corner, I go straight to one of the more expensive items on display, a centuries-old red British Army jacket. I throw it on. It’s too snug and has holes in it. It’s perfect. I buy it. I ask if they have a pair of scissors. I use them to cut the holes into hearts. I turn a symbol of war into a symbol of love.
I search the streets for the one thing I’ll need most. I finally find it on a mannequin in a shop called R. Soles. A Venetian masquerade mask. White, red, and gold. I enter and ask how much it is.
“The mask isn’t for sale,” the shopgirl says. “Sorry.”
“I need it,” I plead. “How much to make you change your mind?”
She glances behind her, no doubt checking for a manager. “A fiver should do.”
I count the coins I have left. Fifty-pence coins, ten-pence coins. I can see she regrets our deal. She expected a crisp bill, not this pile of tips received for playing in Tube stations. “That’s five,” I say.
She looks behind her again. Then she pulls the masquerade mask off the display mannequin and hands it to me. “It’s papier-mâché. Be careful with it. You going to a ball?”
“Sort of,” I say. Then, “Thanks.”
I sleep on the Tube. Lay my head on the bag that contains my few belongings in it. My synthesizer. My new poetry book. My just-purchased clothes. On Tuesday evening, I buy a pass to a gymnasium. I need a shower and a place to change. The muscle men in the locker room eye me suspiciously as I put on the red military coat with heart-shaped holes in it.
I don’t put the mask on until I reach the lineup outside the Blitz. I stand waiting for what feels like an eternity. Eventually, I see them arrive. Bram and the woman he lives with, along with the handsome man who was with them in their home. Bram is dressed like some kind of post-punk priest in a white ecclesiastical robe that he pairs with platform boots and a leather biker cap. He looks ridiculous. Then again, so do I. But perhaps not ridiculous enough. The closer I get to the front of the line, the more rejections I hear. One person after another is denied entry. I make a spontaneous decision. I tear off my old pants and throw them in my bag. They’re beige. Boring. The jacket is long enough to cover my underwear. And bare legs are anything but dull.
The guy at the door, who’s dressed in some modern version of Tudor royal, eyes me up and down. “Just you?” he asks.
“Just me,” I say.
“Funny to think the British Army once wore bright red,” hesays. “Suppose they didn’t need camouflage before weapons could shoot their targets down with horrifying precision.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I say.
“No camouflage needed at the Blitz neither. You can be your real self here. The one you keep hidden under that mask.” He waves me inside.
My real self.Who is he anyway? I wonder as I enter the smoky club.
Music fills the space. Something metallic. Germanic. The voice isn’t a voice, exactly. It’s humanity as filtered by modern technology.We’re functioning automatic. And we are dancing mechanic. We are the robots.Among the most fascinating things of traveling across borders of time and place is the changing of sounds. From country to country. From era to era. Pianos replaced by synths. Microphones swapped out for talk boxes that make the singer sound like an alien being. Acoustic turned electric. Cultural traditions blending together to create something fresh.
I search the tiny space for Bram. It’s really more hallway than club. Long and cramped and strangely old-fashioned for a place that feels like the future. Portraits of Churchill everywhere. A poster of Marilyn Monroe, who wasn’t born and hadn’t died when Bram and I last saw each other. Ornately gilded mirrors that reveal reflections of the brazenly dressed crowd laughing, dancing, smoking. It’s hard to see over all the hats. So many hats. Tall vertical hats that reach up to the ceiling. A tower of flowers on a beautiful woman’s head. A metallic spiral sculpture attached to a man’s skull cap. A golden eagle seemingly flying out of someone’s hair.
I push my way through the smoke. In a booth, the DJ uses adrum machine to add carefully placed percussion to the music he spins. The robot song gives way to something far more romantic. Something Italian and sweeping. The dancers sway slowly. They look more like waves than dancers. No one seems to be dancingwithanyone.
I take my backpack off and pull out a pair of sunglasses. I throw them on. Between these and the mask, my face is completely invisible.
I hand my bag to the coat check boy stationed near the DJ booth. “I would remove any valuables if I were you,” a teasing voice says. It’s Bram. He’s walking our way in his post-punk priest getup. Now I notice the slashes of makeup on his face. Smoke around his eyes. A hint of scarlet on his cheeks, just like how we used to rouge our faces back in the Harvard dorms. “George is a famous thief,” he says, unaware it’s me he’s speaking to behind the mask and sunglasses.
The coat check boy unzips my bag. He pulls out my synthesizer and exclaims, “Yamaha PS-3! Oh, I would most certainly steal it. You’re a musician, then?”
I freeze. I need another vocal disguise. I put on a Southern American accent. Turn myself into a Tennessee Williams character. “I play a little,” I drawl.
“You in a band yet?” George asks.
“No.” I keep my eyes on Bram. I can feel them glowing orange behind the black lenses of my sunglasses. Bram has no idea it’s me. “I’m all alone.”
“A solo artist, good for you. Oh, and look at this,” George says, pulling out my recently purchased poetry book. “Claude McKay. I love his poem ‘December, 1919.’?”
I see Bram flinch a little when he hears the year 1919 spoken aloud. Is he traveling back to that first version of us in his mind?
George flips through the book until he finds the poem. He sings the words aloud, like he’s trying to find a melody in the words. “?’Tis ten years since you died, mother. Just ten dark years of pain. And oh, I only wish that I could weep just once again.” George closes the book. Takes a deep breath. “That’s enough of that now. I can’t bear to think of my mother dying. Best woman in the world.”
