4. HARRY


Once more into the breach, my friends! If you’re buying the drinks, of course. My spazz money has run out, I’ve spent it all on hash, and I’ll have to rely on your considerable charity. I’ll meet you at the Chandos in Trafalgar Square. We’ll get drunk together and then take in a show, maybe some opera if we’re feeling flash, and end it all in a gay bar. I recommend Halfway To Heaven, if only for the pun. Not enough punning in this dry drab world. Bring back the puns, I say! The Sixties was a great time for punning. The London streets were alive with Shakespearean actors. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a Shakespearean actor. I was hit repeatedly by angry young men both with stones and other critical objects, although that was probably more to do with the make-up and frockery than my acting skills. I hope so. There’s nothing more destructive than a bad review, no matter in what form it arrives.

Before you mark me down as some awful relic of the past, some shuffling nostalgia - bore, I should declare that I am still able to dance. My toes do not just twinkle – no, no, no – they are on fire, they explode, when I hear good music. Not that there’s much of it about lately, especially not in Soho where the drab thrump of dance music rules the roost. If it wasn’t for all the pretty boys with their rock hard bodies, I wouldn’t even bother with Soho. You certainly wouldn’t come here for theatre, not unless you want to see minor tv stars attempt light farce.

So, to the real story: I have the cancer. I got the red letter two months ago. One of the classier models too, cancer of the oesophagus, cancer of the drunk. According to the internet, the survival rates are, to say the least, unfortunate. Not much research has gone into that particular disease, presumably because there’s not a lot of sympathy for people who’ve partied themselves to death. I can understand that. I feel the same way towards smokers with lung cancer or lawyers who suffer decapitation or dreary lesbians with political pamphlets. We all need someone to piss on from a great height.

I haven’t opened another letter since, or talked again to that doctor. My fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve! I shall not go gently! If my body wishes to see me off, then so be it, but I won’t spend the last scraps of time I have left on this planet in sanitized rooms with weeping family members. Apart from anything else, I have no idea where my family members are, or whether they would weep at the appropriate times with the appropriate force. Queers might be fashionable in the heart of the city, but they remain a hard sell in Swindon. If I had some cash, the entire family might flock to my doors, but I have but a rented room and my art, which is slight and possibly non-existent. History may well judge me more kindly. I may get a page! A full page! I must take solace from the fact that Van Gogh didn’t sell much during his lifetime. I must wink at the camera for all I am worth. I’m sure immortality will eventually get around to giving me a once over.

O, Fortune! I have fucked my way through London’s finest, so I can have no regrets. I enjoyed it, the perilous ride. Not many people can say they properly enjoyed their lives. Is that an erection, sir, or are you just pleased to see me? I was handsome once. But only once. We all have our peak times and mine was probably the Summer of 1972. I was starring as The Porter in the Scottish play, a Proper Speaking Part, two weeks in Stratford Upon Avon until they noticed that I was bringing too much authenticity to the role. I warned Macduff about the dangers of booze prior to him chopping off poor Macbeth’s head. It is not clear from my reading of the play whether Macduff had a few jars prior to the fatal assault, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Poor Macbeth. Dying over and over in such an inglorious way. Much safer to be a Porter. All you have to do is open the gate and close the gate and open the gate and then wait for a second rate modernist to write a play about your comings and goings. I can wait. I am waiting. I shall dance a jig on my own grave. I will bring high camp to the afterlife.

I do not believe that my rendition, my extraordinary rendition, of The Porter will ever be bettered. I dare anyone to try.

Yes, my glory year was forty years ago. What of it? At least I HAD a glory year. I had my cock sucked every night by a different lad, each one more glorious and fey than the last. Ah, the theatre! I made the sign of the cross each time they bobbed for apples. I smiled at the face of God, that dissolute old ham. So much alcohol, so many drugs, so much sweetness. My head went pop as a result, I’m sure of it. My memory never really recovered, which is just as well, I suppose. It’s all downhill from minor celebrity to non-celebrity. I accept that the world is not yet prepared for my style of acting; more specifically and most vociferously, the Grove Theatre in Dunstable was not prepared last Tuesday. It was the first time in forty five years of acting I have ever had a piece of fruit thrown at me. A plum, no less, entering left. Who on an earth brings a plum to a theatrical performance? It was clearly a plant, one of my many enemies in the business seeking to knock me out of character. A plum that was a plant! I did not flinch, no, I did not. I even sought to bring it into my performance.

What’s that you say? Retire, sir? I will never retire, never! That is the fate of mere mortals. When the acting jobs dry up, as they have in the last twenty years, you will see the true measure of the man. Lawrence Olivier never had to suffer a dry patch, never had his mettle tested, but I have met the ultimate foe, the indifference of the general public, and vanquished it! If you have the theatre in your blood, it is your duty to take your roles home, like a boy marching off the football field because he has not been given sufficient respect, taking his football with him. Make no mistake: you have a duty to bring joy and complexity to the world. Better to play out the role of a madman or a Faust or a Falstaff than the role of father, or businessman, or teacher, or soldier. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

Yes, that’s it. We should be ashamed of the bland, sullen fare that we serve up our children as life lessons. They are infinite and we teach them to be as finical and narrow as we are. But they are not! They are pure genius! They are absolute successes and absolute failures. They are saints and criminals. They are doctors and murderers. We’re so scared that they might go wrong that we turn them into bureaucrats. Our kindness is killing the poor little bastards. Send them to me to sort them out. We want the best for our children, I hear you say, possibly in a cut-glass accent. Well, the best for your child is to throw them to the wolves early or accept that they will spend the rest of their lives fearing and hiding from wolves. Wolves in offices, wolves in restaurants, wolves on holiday, wolves at bus stops, wolves sitting in the first class compartment on trains without tickets, wolves in the gay scene, wolves in the booking office, wolves at concerts, wolves wolf-whistling, wolves sitting in your house eating your food wolfing it down!

In my day, I was not above a swift thrust or two. Fie, wrangling queen! There’s nothing like ripping a young thing to pieces for the pure pleasure of it, to see the look of surprise in their eyes when they discover the world’s not quite as kindly as dear mama led them to believe. Even the agitators of this era are big scaredy cats. Stand up but don’t be counted. They remind me of my upbringing, when kids would punch me on the shoulder and then run away, but if you ever punched them they would whine and cry like little babies. Fight the Power! But if it fights back, we’ll report you! I would have made an excellent revolutionary. I’m working class, more or less, prone to wild statements, and look lovely in a uniform. I don’t believe in anything, though, but I doubt that’ll be much of a hurdle. We’re all actors anyway. Viva La Revolution!

I suppose I should contact my family. They might care. They might even like me now. I don’t feel angry towards them anymore. O, wait, I DON’T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT. They all died. I forget. They forgot. O, but they became comedy characters in my head long before they exited left. They were asking for it, obviously, as am I. We all are. Take a long breath and you’re asking for death. Take a step outside your house nowadays and you’re asking for it. What does it matter when I die anywhere? I’ll race you.

It would have been nice if someone had taken me seriously for five whole minutes, but it was clearly not to be. I started my autobiography but I only got to page 4. It was too exciting. What kind of a person writes at such length about themselves? It’s a thin line between self-congratulation and egomania and I’d like to think that I’ve never strayed over that line. If I did, I apologise, but not sincerely. O fortuna, the velvet moon!

One young whelp said to me yesterday, “the tweedy gay look went out fifty years ago, Dad” and rather than thump him, I camped it up and told him that “fashion never goes out of fashion, Son”. I can’t even be serious when I’m being mortally wounded, like with the plum. I could have been the next Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward, but no-one bloody asked me, so you can understand why I’m angry. I’m the light entertainment before the two pretty young things come on for the main scene, moping around in search of a connection. I resent it, I do. It takes all the joy out of my work knowing that callous youth gets a free pass to stardom while I have to slog my way around the regions. This is my big death speech and I’ve barely even mentioned my accomplishments in the poetry world or the big love of my life, not told you about my job as a butler in a stately home, or my dog Patch, or my trip to Australia, or my season of cream cakes, or the time I threw myself out of the upper floor of a Naples whorehouse in a splendid fit of pique.

Apparently I am not worth the paper.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless.

Raise a glass of whisky to oesophageal cancer! Old Harry must go to meet Old Harry!

You couldn’t make it up. You really couldn’t.