She held me with a straight, honest stare of respect, a look of past grandeur somewhat humbled. And it only occurred to me then that Gloria and I had never really gotten to know each other very well. And now, it seemed we were set to part forever without knowing very much more.
“I’m stubborn that way,” I said, smiling.
“And that’s what made you what you are. The star of this place.”
“Oh, really…”
Her hand grabbed mine, suddenly, unexpectedly. I looked down at the long, thin fingers, the pale veins standing proud of the skin on the back of her hand, the big emerald and sapphire rings flashing. And the wrinkles across the knuckles, the unavoidable, untreatable gnarling which betrayed her real age. Come to think of it, she had been wearing long white cotton gloves on stage for quite some time, components of her high-school costume which never came off.
“
No
. When Sissi left, I didn’t think anybody could ever take her place, or even shine half as bright as the star that she was. Except maybe myself. Yeah, I was an arrogant bitch, and I admit it. Then you came on the scene, so timid and flustered, and I just wanted to laugh – it looked like cruelty to me, the way you got thrown to the wolves back then.
“But you survived. You were the tortoise to my hare. And one day, I woke up and found you kicking my ass all over that stage. That bloody tattoo of yours turned you into something new, something I’d never seen before. Then I knew my time was up, I’d had my fifteen minutes and I was only making up numbers after then. You took my crown, Phoenyx. And you know what? I
loved
you for it.”
Her hand squeezed mine, proving that she meant it, and confirming exactly what Honey had observed all those years before.
“Well,” I gulped, “thanks, Gloria.” I didn’t know what else to say. None of that mattered any more, anyway; except as more evidence that being a Kit was something very special indeed, an experience to be savored and treasured.
Then Olivia came steaming towards us at an alarming rate of knots, where she succeeded in catching Trixie totally by surprise with a huge bear hug from behind.
“I know who that is,” she gasped without looking round. “Olivia...?”
“Just about. Welcome back, Trixie. I was hoping you’d be able to make it.”
I smiled to myself as the reunions continued, and everyone else caught up on lost time. I turned my attention back to the crowd again. There were half a dozen men, and a couple of women, that I wouldn’t have minded dragging upstairs with me later on, yet the notion had now abandoned me completely. Perhaps it was just my libido dwindling with age, or a sign of the advancing, dreaded mid-life period when our hormones gamble everything we possess on the table and hope that we turn up some good cards to get us through the decades ahead. Or perhaps it was a growing acceptance of the fact that it was something more stable, longer-lasting and important – not to mention, mature – that I was seeking now, and would be unlikely to find it in a club devoted to the fetishism of the flesh, where I could probably have had fifty men at my feet at the end of any given performance. But how many would be able to see me for what I was, and be able to accept the rest of me, on a daily, monthly, yearly basis?
I wasn’t liking this ‘maturity’ thing much. And yet the changes were coming, whether I wanted them or not.
I forgot about myself and my selfish needs and turned back into the little circle of warmth and friendship which was currently held in thrall by Trixie, relating some breathlessly funny story. I whispered a request for a Martini in the barman’s ear and pulled my stool in to listen, and get to know this veteran Kit better.
Trixie spent every evening and most days around the Klub, and I quickly grew to like her a lot; she was a delightful character, full of self-effacing humor and possessed of a sharp observational eye but without the hard, hormonal edge of Honey. And when the end of the month came, the time for the big send-off, it seemed like no time at all had passed since that prickly-eyed meeting in the bar when Mel first gave us the shattering news, and decided upon her plan of action to remember Petra, and bring to an end our days at the Klub. We’d all been too engrossed in planning it all out to really notice the time, until the night before when we all sat at the bar and realized that it had sneaked up on us.
“Tomorrow night’s the night, then,” Olivia summed up over her glass of wine. “How are we all feeling?”
Trixie clutched at her bare shoulders as though a cold wind had just blasted past her. “Scared,” she said. “It’s been so long, and feels so funny being back – just in time to leave again for good.”
Gloria hugged her tight. “I know how you feel. But you’re back with us, that’s all that matters. And you know you would have kicked yourself afterwards if you’d missed out on this chance. Wouldn’t you?”
She nodded sadly. “Yes, I would’ve. And I’m so glad I did. But still—”
“No,
no
buts,” Mel objected. “At least, none apart from the bare ones we’ll all be showing off tomorrow night.”
The laughs dissolved any further dissent or objection. At which point Trixie stood up, bent over the bar and flicked her flared skirt up over her back to show off a very fine example of bare butt indeed.
“Oh, you fucking tease,” Gloria sniggered. “Good to see you’re in the spirit, honey.”
Svetlana leaned across and grabbed herself a handful of butt cheek. “Hm, pretty firm. Could sure take a good tanning.”
“No S & M tomorrow night. Good, old-fashioned clean fun only,” Mel reminded her. But Svetlana had thawed with age, and seemed to have finally settled into her place in a Europe which had shrugged off the yoke of totalitarianism, as well as a role at the Klub where she was no longer the alpha female. I couldn’t say what had contributed to curing her anger, but my ego wouldn’t let me ignore the possibility that my public display of booting her ass had something to do with it.
Trixie shook her tail and lowered her skirt again. “My husband will be along to cheer and embarrass me,” she said. “So feel free to throw him out if he gets too obstreperous. I’ve told him to behave, but he’s never seen me perform so I can’t say how he’ll be.”
“We shan’t be throwing anyone out,” Olivia said. “Everyone’s welcome, and the more noise, the better.”
As it was, noise was something we had plenty of.
The final evening began with a bang. I was backstage with everyone else, applying the finishing touches to make-up and hair, when one of the bar staff appeared in the doorway.
“They’ve just opened the doors and started admitting people,” she said, sounding breathless, as if she’d run all the way around the city to tell us that. There was a grey blot of sweat on her tee-shirt, just above the bust line.
“Great,” Gloria said, and applauded. “So we’ll have an audience, after all? How many have we got now – three? Four? Remember, the guide dogs don’t count.”
“Uh, no,” the barmaid went on. “The doormen have just told us that we’re queued twice around the block. I went out to look, ‘cos I didn’t believe him. And they were wrong.
“It’s actually more like
three times
around.”
I think everyone else froze at that moment. We all looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
“What’s up?” Trixie asked, the first to speak when we realized that Petra’s send-off would be even bigger than we could ever have hoped for. “Are you not used to this?” She passed us all with a sassy smile and slapped each one of us on the back in turn. “Cheer up, girls. It’s all paid off. I’m off for a little Dutch courage.”
The barmaid hung around the threshold of the suddenly quiet changing room, looking slightly anxious.
“Just thought you’d want to know,” she said, “‘cos we’re gonna be rushed off our feet.” And with that, she hurried off again.
Everyone else looked at Mel, who’d been responsible for organizing the publicity and getting the word out.
“Well, I’m glad I got plenty of spare tickets printed now,” she said. “And that I’ll be able to exceed the charity’s expectations next week.”
It was Gloria who flung herself off her seat and wrapped herself around Mel’s neck. “You did it,” she sobbed. “
We
did it. For Petra, and for everyone else. I knew they would come.”
Mel replied with her usual salacious smile. “Yep. Now let’s go out there and make ‘em all cum again.”
By nine o’clock the place was packed. Mel told us that she had carried out some calculation based on the average amount of floor space required for a standing individual, divided into the amount of total public floor space in the main club area, threw in a 2% margin for error (i.e., her having failed every mathematics exam she ever took at high school) and ordered up a number of tickets from the local printers based upon the result. The venue was officially declared filled to capacity by the doormen when there were five tickets left unsold.
Mel turned to me with a self-satisfied grin when we heard the news. “Looks like I finally passed a math test,” she laughed.
It wasn’t easy to hear the public while backstage due to the acoustics of the club, and the proximity of the band, but tonight for the first time in years – at least, since the days when Honey was a star attraction – I could hear the bubbling hubbub of conversation over the warm-up music. Josh was fiddling around on the keyboard in his usual manner, swapping from famous classical pieces (in this case Pachelbel’s
Canon in D
) to pop and jazz numbers and back again. When I dashed out through the curtains to pass a note to Odo regarding the start time, Josh clocked me and immediately segued into Stravinsky’s
Firebird
, which I didn’t recognize at the time but Olivia, being far more cultured than me, informed me of when I went backstage again. The sound men had just finished making adjustments to the PA, which necessitated testing half a dozen microphones and shouting random numbers over the top of Josh’s exquisite medleys, but it ensured that Mel and Trixie would be at their best when they opened the formal proceedings.
Mel checked her watch as the music faded to a close and we heard the appreciation from the crowd rumble through. Suddenly, I felt those butterflies again, which I hadn’t experienced since my first stumbling, amateurish days back in ‘79. It was as if everything else had been a dress rehearsal for this moment, the climax to my career.
Not everyone turned up, of course; there was no sign of Empress Sissi, my legendary predecessor; nor Bruno, for that matter, although he was undoubtedly with all of us in spirit. There was no Gang of Four, no Hansel and Gretel, and no GOSM to ogle us that one last time. But those who did make it were guaranteed a night to remember.
Mel put her arms around Trixie and gave her a huge hug.
“Go do your thing, sweetie,” she whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
And so off she went to open the night’s proceedings and bring the curtain down on the Kitty Klub’s seventy-odd years of uninterrupted, non-stop erotic cabaret.
Chapter Thirteen
Last Tango in Berlin
Out in the middle of the stage, Trixie stood alone in the spotlight, looking pensive in her satin dress, long gloves and boa which all echoed the heyday of Petra, and by extension, the old Klub itself for as long as any of us had known it. The lights washed over her in pale pastel shades of blue and yellow. Finally, she spoke.
“I don’t know if many of you will remember me,” she said, but a few yelps and cheers from the floor told us that she had definitely not been forgotten by some older patrons, “but I joined the Kitty Klub in the early 70s. ‘73, in fact, now that I bother to think. Back then, I had a bit of a Joel Gray
Cabaret
thing going, when being a loud and proud camp young man was still a little bit radical – how times have changed. Because I’m now a slightly quieter and much prouder older woman.
“And I may also be the oldest transsexual swinger in town, but I wouldn’t have missed this night for anything. And I want to dedicate this song to our dear departed friend, the warm, funny and damn fucking sexy Miss Petra Maria Liebowitz.”
Josh started up with a tinkling run on the piano with what I recognized to be
Life is a Cabaret,
but in a melancholy minor key. Trixie raised her face back to the audience with a silver sheen in her eye and looked very alone, very distant, and very, very sad.
Then she opened her mouth, and the most raw, moving, near-whisper of a voice joined in with those famous words which suddenly seemed so poignant. I think Josh was playing in free time because he went meandering and experimenting all over the keys while Trixie alternately trilled and sighed, punctuating her lines with
ad lib
scat that was pure Sinatra, pure theatre, and pure
Kitty Klub
, echoing and celebrating the spirit of that old place even into its final hours.
I don’t think there was a dry eye anywhere in the house by the time she reached the end of the first verse.
Then Mel entered, chased by a brash red spotlight, and the rest of the band kicked in to the more familiar upbeat rhythm. Mel took over the boisterous second section, and then the pair of them united for a beautiful finale, Trixie’s huskier tones counterpointing Mel’s mezzo. I’d never heard Mel sing so hard, so beautifully, so passionately – so
professionally
. As if she’d been saving up everything for this one last night. What the hell could she have been if she’d stepped away from the Klub and gotten into music seriously? The woman had power, range, and near-perfect pitch which had never been appreciated in her made-up parody numbers in the past. Sure, she had a raw natural ability – that was always clear. But
this
was almost Broadway. I could barely draw a breath through her whole performance for fear of missing some wonderful, subtle nuance of phrasing or technique. When she hit the final note, she held it – and
held
it – without a single waver or tremble. The guys in the band kept glancing at her, looking for the cue to wrap up, but it looked as though it just wasn’t coming. Mel was having too much fun showing us just what an awe-inspiring pair of lungs she had, as that single syllable dominated the entire hall, like a victory cry, an orgasm and the climax to a religious service, all combined.