Seven weeks later Bobby opened the laptop he was borrowing off of Billy Fish-Head and wrote an assessment of a night out at a “Torture Garden” event. The assessment was for his friend and one-time band member Slithey Tove. The write-up was a piece for a web site that Slithey Tove had constructed when he and his associates were driven out of Kensington Market. Slithey had worked as a tattooist and piercer in a shop in the market right up until their forced eviction at the hands of wealthy residents in the area. Now Slithey was getting hundreds of hits on his and his associate’s site every day. You just can’t keep a good thing down.
Bobby’s analysis of the night out that he and Shiva enjoyed with Slithey and his Italian Goth partner Electra went something like this....
“THE TORTURE GARDEN. FRIDAY 13th APRIL 2001.”
“It was just before midnight and static images of freaks, fetishists and femme fatals flicked frantically across a screen. On another one black and white moving film ran from scenes of sadomasochism to images of weird performance art. Another screen showing static slides slid from a clown’s face to an image of a sixteenth century dominatrix. We had only just arrived in the first of two dance-floors and like many in this magick theatre we were taking in our environment before letting amphetamines, marijuana and alcoholic beverages heighten our senses to fever pitch. Already the sounds of hard industrial Techno were inspiring gyrating movements in those around us as this boiling pot of cultural extremism started warming up.
Next it was time to hit the cloakroom queue as its coiling excesses had diminished by now. When we reached the counter we shed our leather trench-coats and our over-coats and revealed our contributions towards the impending rubber, leather and PVC flesh-fest that was a typical night at a Torture Garden function.
The theme this evening was “The Circus”.
I’d never dressed overtly like a clown before. White face, huge black circles around the eyes and around the mouth, a bulbous, black nose which squeaked if you gave it a squeeze and one black silk glove and one white silk glove. All this coupled with a black bowler hat, short, black leather jacket, PVC drainpipes, Docs, studded belt and handcuffs made me look like a right evil little bastard except when I grinned. Then it made me look like a maniac. Although this is how I felt about it every time I looked in a mirror, when I was loose amongst the general public this whole appearance seemed to make people smile more than anything. Maybe a clown is a clown is a clown. This seemed to be the process that Slithey Tove was experiencing too. He had a large red ring around his mouth and white face-paint around his eyes and down over his nose, cheekbones and around his chin. This had a thick, black border around it and resembled a heart shape over his whole face. Now this, coupled with his bald head and nose and bottom lip piercings made him look like a right evil bastard too. Regardless of this I couldn’t help grinning every time I looked at him. Seeing as I seemed to have a similar effect on him we both chuckled away for most of the evening. In effect we had become clowns. Slithey was also wearing a rubber dress with straps down either side of his chest. It was a bit like Hellraiser meets Ronald Macdonald. Its like Ronald gets murdered by a demonic agent and therefore returns from one of the dimensions of Hell as a demon himself.... a kind of Anti-Ronald. Made me chuckle.
Our partners were a great source of mirth and social support as we traversed the mean streets of London as the Uncle Yuk Yuk brothers. It has to be said that two clowns feels a bit more comfortable than one clown. The thing is that any communication between us, be it verbal or body language, seemed to create some sort of humorous narrative all of its own.
Anyway, on to our partners. Electra, Slithey’s partner, is, to my mind, one of the most boundary breaking clothes designers I know. Her sense of individual style makes those super famous fashion houses look like a load of clichéd rubbish. Having been responsible for such delights as Elizabethan gowns made from rubber she kept to this trend of taking period dress and using contemporary materials. Tonight she wore a purple PVC pleated skirt with boots to match. She also wore a black PVC top with white hems and pleated cuffs. Her hair was tied back in bright purple dread-locks with a white bow. She had a spider’s web design over her face. To me she seemed to be a fusion between a 19th century American circus belle and a mad sorceress from an eastern European faery tale. Groooovy.
Shiva wore a black PVC mini-dress and black plastic knee-high boots with strangely subtle space-age platform soles. She wore elbow-length black lace gloves and had a black and silver silken shawl around her shoulders. Her shoulder-length, black hair was held back by a hair band with silver teeth. She had a strip of silver face paint across her eyes and this was contained within a thick, black border. Red Indian fortune teller meets Asian warrior dominatrix in a fifties science fiction
B-movie. Blimey I feel a chubby coming on.
We walked into the second dance-floor which, for all intents and purposes, was a performance area. Fifties Swing and Be-Bop provided an unusual aural tapestry that drove its energy between rubber cat-suits, plastic nurses, bald men in nappies and ringmasters and mistresses. Two stages sat at one end and to one side of the dance-floor. A couple in twenties dress jived as a frantic string bass riff rushed up and down an array of notes. Be Bop then shifted seamlessly to Punk Rock. This seems totally logical in the early 21st century in the light of the 20th century’s eclectic legacy. Another couple dressed in tight leathers also started jiving. Any dance goes with any music. I looked at the dudes in twenties duds again. Fred and Ginger twirl to Jilted John! Amazing. I looked at the other couple in leathers and noticed one of them had a long pointed beard.
A dwarf, stripped to the waist, wearing rubber trousers stared at my crutch as I rotated my PVC hips. He looked up and grinned and I grinned back.
A ring mistress took to a mic. on the larger of the two stages. She had the audience in the palm of her gloved hand. After a mellifluous monologue mixing management and mayhem she introduced a magician and his assistant. He was dressed with your usual top hat and tails and did tricks with string. I laughed my kuckers off. His assistant seemed to be the brains of the operation although traditionally dressed a la Magic Circle chic. Their inflatable leg was art terrorism.
The riotous ring mistress of chaos and stupefaction returned and with the poetry of a paragon of Post-Punk persuasion she introduced a bearded lady. With tattoos and a big bushy black beard she stripped off and poured red wine all over her naked body. She then covered herself in treacle and finally cut open a pillow and emptied feathers all over her writhing body. As she went through this transition which culminated in balletic flying movements the up-beat choral wash of “Jesus Christ Super-Star” could be heard through the speakers. This was an act of subversive genius. Especially since we were kicking off the Easter weekend.
The ring mistress of rubber rebellion returned with a naked bald man on a lead. She swallowed a sword, removed it and then held it aloft. There was much merriment and yowls of glee.
Back in the first dance-floor area hoards of rushing miscreants mingled in a mash-up of monstrous proportions.
Two clowns walked past. One had used black, red and white face paint to give the impression that he was grinning with one half of his mouth revealing rows of sharp pointed teeth. He had red eyeliner and long red eyelashes around one eye. Around the other he had a black cross. Long, arching black and purple eyebrows were painted over his variegated eyes. The second clown had long straight black and purple lines for eyebrows. He had long, yellow eyelashes and black rims under his eyes. He had red, upturned lips and both clowns wore white boiler suits and black bowler hats.
A dominatrix DJ of delight mixed her fusion of Acid Techno and break-beats in the DJ booth. At one point she cut the rhythm back to a single roaring bass line. As we wove in and out of this groaning reverberation everybody’s sense of anticipation was courted brilliantly when a charging four to the floor kick-drum and snare pattern punched in. All the hairs on the back of my neck seemed to develop a set of dance moves all of their own.
A woman walked past with extra long metal spikes sticking out from her neck. So large were they that there was only room for four around her whole collar. She had purple and black eyeliner, eyelashes and lipstick. Long metal spikes stuck symmetrically out from her metal brassier. She wore black, rubber, elbow-length gloves with long spikes on the wrists and carried a spiked ball and chain.
The split-level arena of twisted derangement that this dance room had now become was kicking in that full-on way that rewarded everyone for the efforts they had made in constructing this fabulous feast for the eyes. You can play music as hard as you like but it’s only with an audience as receptive and as individualistic as this that you can truly scale the heights of mass transcendence. You can send a bunch of chart-following saps into a frenzy in an over-priced stadium but that’s just people following the herd. That’s just people doing what’s expected of them. Their subsequent lack of originality means that an audience like that are about as close to transcendence as I am to a Prime Minister! No.... true frenzied behaviour comes from those who don’t run with the herd and types like that are always out in force at a Torture Garden event.
A girl walked by on all fours and hissed like a cat. On closer inspection she had inhumanely long fingernails, a fifties B-movie trail of long, black hair and a black furry bikini. Black lines in body paint made it look as though she was growing more hair than is usual for the human metabolism.
Back in the performance room the seal boy mounted the smaller stage. One time drummer with “The Grateful Dub” and latterly a media spokes-person on issues surrounding special needs this performance art poet and practitioner of prose and paradiddle introduced himself as originating from a family that had a weird association with fish. We were informed that the length and shape of his arms and hands originated because his family had historically had this obsession with eating fish. He had therefore been born with flippers instead of human arms and hands. He was dressed in a “carnie” style green silk shirt and red braces and sent the crowd into waves of gleeful rapture with tales of house-hold responsibilities in the “seal” family. This evening he was a Victorian curiosity reminding us of how narrow minded and easily shocked the reactionary components of that society were. Good stuff in view of our need to protect ourselves from humourless arse-holes in positions of authority and the exploitation they cause. With his diminished arms and long, flat hands he informed us of his uses concerning house-hold items and, in one instance, slid a saw through some wood on stage cruelly sending up anyone who would dare patronise him in his ability to complete “able-bodied” tasks.
My most recent memory of “the seal boy” was as a dealer of intoxicants in that excellent TV drama “Metrosexuality”. I must say at this point that it is extreeeemly rare for me to like a TV program but there you have it. If you get cutting edge artists like this to act you get good art. There really aren’t many good artists on TV. They’re fucking everywhere in other areas of society. The seal boy, for example, is one mighty fine purveyor of his ability to entertain, inform and elucidate.
Self parody and a critique of human ignorance all rolled into one. Absolute genius!
After this frank fishy friend of freakish fun the tunes in the performance area became even more eclectic. The turned on and tuned in DJ played “The Dead Kennedy’s”, “Pigbag”, “The Cramps”, “AC/DC”, “Chubby Checker” and even “Johnny Kidd and the Pirates” to name but a few.
For some deeply uncool reason The Mass initially charged £3.60 for a bottle of beer or a breezer. A few hours after the club opened the price went down to £3. I gather complaints and the Torture Garden crew taking exception to over-pricing must have had a part to play in the drop in the cost. Regardless of how that little issue was resolved there was no need to over-charge because the place was rammed and the vibe amongst the punters was as cool as fuck.
A woman walked past with silver, metal whiskers!
A guy walked past wearing a gas mask that seemed to exude a luminous green light. It sent out an electric glow from the windows over his eyes.
A stilt-walker writhed and twisted to the beat as her long long long PVC legs reared up above the heads of the crowd.
I turned around and saw a woman with large, psychedelic butterfly wings disappear in the crowd amongst a gathering of gyrating bodies.
Back in the dance room they continued with hard, pumping Techno with a slice of live M.C. action at one point. As we wandered around each punter seemed as interesting as each piece of film or each piece of music. Dance moves were exacerbated by costume and a sense that you really were in like-minded company helped to scatter inhibitions like a load of cops running away from a riot. Age ranges went from sixteen to sixty and it’s with a mix like this that the most individualistic parties can be had.
A woman who looked like a hybrid between a pagan warrior and a tigress slid past me. Such was the artistry of her make-up that it looked like she had altered the bone structure of her face to meld the feline with the homo-sapien.
Siamese twins dressed in red Edwardian frocks with red bows in their hair walked past. A couple followed them. The fella’ was dressed in a black, rubber body suit that covered his whole body apart from nostrils, eyes and mouth. His partner had the same type of body suit but had rubber tassels hanging from a point on the back of the head.
Back upstairs in the performance area two blokes and a girl started fire eating, breathing and juggling. The blokes were dressed in leather trousers and the girl had a short, pleated rubber dress on. As they twirled and spun they left trails of fiery brilliance and as they blew intermittent plumes of flame the audience roared their approval.
My partner and I gave up smoking neat tobacco just before the club shut at 6 in the morning. The last two tunes we heard as we sucked in the last few lungfulls of smoke were “Lucky Number” by Lene Luvitch and “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us” by “Sparks”. I just love synchronicity!
We left our last cigarette buts in an ashtray in the club and Shiva left her stockings in a waste-paper bin in the toilets. Our work here was finished.”
Bobby closed the lid of the laptop and rolled a spliff with some of Rasputeeen’s Plumstead Pollen.