dog-eat-dog world. Everyone wants to buy their drinks and get back to their seats or viewing point before the loony busker appears. I can smell other people’s perfume and aftershave only just masking the more raw smell of sweat produced by their sense of urgency. My hair starts to curl in the heat, betraying my faux sophistication. The last time I wore my hair curly was on my wedding day when I noticed approx one hundred of my two hundred guests wore theirs straight – the guys were mostly bald.
Just as I pick up our double gins and tonic, the crowd lets out a cheer. I start to inch my way back through thethrong. Elvis is in the building. Suddenly, the room is awash with the uptempo beat of ‘Return to Sender’. A good opening number, I suppose, and I know the words – doesn’t everybody? Certainly everybody in The Bell and Long Wheat seems to. The pub is a mass of swaying hips and wide grins, people are singing along, clicking their fingers, tapping their feet. The old grannies smile, showing their dentures, and the girls twirl, showing neat waists and high bums. It’s depressingly familiar.
Slowly, I shuffle forwards. Laura is beaming inanely at the stage. She’s swaying and nodding with more enthusiasm than I was expecting to see for the first track. On the rare occasion that we go to a club Laura forgets she’s an up-for-it Aussie girl. She follows etiquette dictated by British shyness and shuffles on the spot for ten tracks before dancing. But tonight she has rediscovered her roots and is refusing to be intimidated. Amelie is right, the girl has got it bad. I turn towards the direction of her stare, to see for myself this object of her adoration. My world screeches to a dangerous halt and I’m viciously whiplashed by bad karma, spiteful fate or simply sod’s rotten law.
Elvis is Stevie Jones.
10. His Latest Flame
Laura
Bella missed the first song as she was at the bar. Which is a total bummer. Stevie Jones is even better than I remembered him. Who would have thought it possible?
Although my fantasies over the last twelve days have been elaborate, I had not considered what he would be wearing at this gig (in most of my fantasies he is naked or on the way). My overwhelming image of him is as a slightly grubby figure, standing on Hammersmith platform. Tonight he is groomed to within an inch of his life and looks even sexier than I remembered. He is wearing high-waisted trousers and a ruffled dress shirt; the style Elvis favoured in his early years. His wide shoulders and trim bum are displayed for optimum impact. His shaggy surfer hair is greased into a quiff and somehow he looks cooler than anyone with a quiff deserves to look. I hadn’t noticed his broad forearms before.
The room is buzzing and yet at the same time everyone is transfixed. All hearts and minds are paying homage to Stevie. He sang and danced his opening number, ‘Return to Sender’, with perfection. In witty, flawless imitation of Elvis, he faithfully mimicked the suggestive hand gestures, the boxer’s shuffle, the self-deprecating shoulder shrugs.
I am in love. The lusty type of love, not the real type.Besides, so is every other woman in the room and some of the boys too. Bella makes it back to the table. She looks anxious.
‘Pisser about the crowds,’ I comment sympathetically, ‘but you can understand it, can’t you? He’s mesmerizing.’
‘I can’t stay here,’ yells Bella.
‘What?’ I am not sure I’ve heard her properly. ‘He’s bloody good, isn’t he?’ It is a rhetorical question although it would give me untold satisfaction if Bella agreed. My man is sex on legs and talented. Women are clambering on to the stage to have their photos taken with him. When I say stage I mean the slightly raised area, about a metre and a half long by a metre wide and thirty centimetres off the ground. Still, some of the fans stumble, or at least pretend to, requiring Stevie to catch them. I glare my hostility.
‘You’ve got
Just as I pick up our double gins and tonic, the crowd lets out a cheer. I start to inch my way back through thethrong. Elvis is in the building. Suddenly, the room is awash with the uptempo beat of ‘Return to Sender’. A good opening number, I suppose, and I know the words – doesn’t everybody? Certainly everybody in The Bell and Long Wheat seems to. The pub is a mass of swaying hips and wide grins, people are singing along, clicking their fingers, tapping their feet. The old grannies smile, showing their dentures, and the girls twirl, showing neat waists and high bums. It’s depressingly familiar.
Slowly, I shuffle forwards. Laura is beaming inanely at the stage. She’s swaying and nodding with more enthusiasm than I was expecting to see for the first track. On the rare occasion that we go to a club Laura forgets she’s an up-for-it Aussie girl. She follows etiquette dictated by British shyness and shuffles on the spot for ten tracks before dancing. But tonight she has rediscovered her roots and is refusing to be intimidated. Amelie is right, the girl has got it bad. I turn towards the direction of her stare, to see for myself this object of her adoration. My world screeches to a dangerous halt and I’m viciously whiplashed by bad karma, spiteful fate or simply sod’s rotten law.
Elvis is Stevie Jones.
10. His Latest Flame
Laura
Bella missed the first song as she was at the bar. Which is a total bummer. Stevie Jones is even better than I remembered him. Who would have thought it possible?
Although my fantasies over the last twelve days have been elaborate, I had not considered what he would be wearing at this gig (in most of my fantasies he is naked or on the way). My overwhelming image of him is as a slightly grubby figure, standing on Hammersmith platform. Tonight he is groomed to within an inch of his life and looks even sexier than I remembered. He is wearing high-waisted trousers and a ruffled dress shirt; the style Elvis favoured in his early years. His wide shoulders and trim bum are displayed for optimum impact. His shaggy surfer hair is greased into a quiff and somehow he looks cooler than anyone with a quiff deserves to look. I hadn’t noticed his broad forearms before.
The room is buzzing and yet at the same time everyone is transfixed. All hearts and minds are paying homage to Stevie. He sang and danced his opening number, ‘Return to Sender’, with perfection. In witty, flawless imitation of Elvis, he faithfully mimicked the suggestive hand gestures, the boxer’s shuffle, the self-deprecating shoulder shrugs.
I am in love. The lusty type of love, not the real type.Besides, so is every other woman in the room and some of the boys too. Bella makes it back to the table. She looks anxious.
‘Pisser about the crowds,’ I comment sympathetically, ‘but you can understand it, can’t you? He’s mesmerizing.’
‘I can’t stay here,’ yells Bella.
‘What?’ I am not sure I’ve heard her properly. ‘He’s bloody good, isn’t he?’ It is a rhetorical question although it would give me untold satisfaction if Bella agreed. My man is sex on legs and talented. Women are clambering on to the stage to have their photos taken with him. When I say stage I mean the slightly raised area, about a metre and a half long by a metre wide and thirty centimetres off the ground. Still, some of the fans stumble, or at least pretend to, requiring Stevie to catch them. I glare my hostility.
‘You’ve got
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