P Darts ch 14

Chapter 14

We were at my house, all of us, and The Poet was talking. In fact, he
had been talking for quite some time. It was going something like
this:

"Imagine. Ptolemy the third. Ancient Egypt. Alexandria. Christ yet to
be born. A great procession is taking place. Imagine. Animals. Saiga
antelopes. White Oryx. Peacocks &; parrots &; pheasants. More.
The animals keep coming, on and on, whole phalanxes of them. Leopards,
panthers, lynxes, giraffes, rhinoceros, lions, tigers and white bears.
White bears! For Osiris's sake! White bears!

"Then. Alone, at the end of the procession, a single Negro dwarf sits
astride a massive grey elephant. Ptolemy holds up his Egyptian Pharaoh
hand heavy under the weight of multitudinous rings. The elephant stops.
The massed audience is hushed. On the left and on the right. All is
quiet, expectant. The seated dwarf raises himself to his full height.
He clears his throat. He unrolls his papyrus scroll and reads:

The Goat and Boot Won 9 Drawn 0 Lost 1 Points 27

The Frog and Toad Won 8 Drawn 2 Lost 0 Points 26

Hoofers Won 7 Drawn 2 Lost 0 Points 22

The Royal William Won 3 Drawn 3 Lost 4 Points 12

Secrets and Lies Won 2 Drawn 5 Lost 3 Points 11

Freddie's Bar Won 0 Drawn 3 Lost 7 Points 3

"OK," I said to The Poet, cutting short his oration, not caring what
Ptolemy might do next and caring even less what he might say, "we get
the picture, we know the score. There's no need to go all poetical on
us."

"That wasn't poetry," said The Poet, "that was truth. Believe
me."

"At least," said 16, perhaps sensing a potential storm, perhaps trying
to calm it, "at least we're above Freddie's Bar."

I shook my head and wondered how it had come to this. "We are
Freddie's Bar," I said.

16's face blanched. "But," he said, "but, we always drink in Secrets
&; Lies. We do, don't we? That's where we drink, isn't it? Someone
tell me. Please."

Captain Vegas leapt up and wiggled his hips. "I don't know. You pick
on me, but even I know that. We drink in Secrets &; Lies but our
team plays at Freddie's Bar."

"Shit," said 16. "That means we're at the bottom."

"At the very," said The Poet.

"None below us," said Seven.

Then an air of sadness descended on us all. It was the kind of sadness
you feel in a really good film where a character you particularly like
dies suddenly of cancer, or gets hit by a very large bus. Nobody could
talk, nobody had anything to say.

It was a bleak day indeed in The Castro. Bastions weren't falling,
they were being newly built right outside the window with shameless
indiscretion. I could see them, plain as day, skyscrapers, condos, the
wide paved area of a supermarket forecourt, getting wider, higher,
bigger. Could all our dreams have come to this? I couldn't believe
that. I wouldn't let it happen. Not now, not ever.

I realised it was up to me to strike a blow to that construction. I
was the self-styled leader of our band. I was the Loop Garoo kid, hero
of too many Westerns to list, too many noon shootouts to recall. I had
to do something.

"But," I said. I stood up and raised my arms to heaven like Jesus did
when he had something particularly important to say to God. I started
to sing:
"We've been broken down
To the lowest turn
And been on the bottom line
Sure ain't no fun.
But if we should be evicted from our homes
We'll just move somewhere else
And still carry on.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on."

I stopped singing. I turned to face the crowd. A sea of blank faces
was staring back at me. In Galilee I wasn't.

I hitched up my trousers, I practised a few scales. This time I sang
and didn't stop until I got to the chorus, the chorus that gave this
tune its heart. And it was as I got to the chorus that this time
recognition dawned. As I yodelled, "The Only Way is Up" Captain Vegas
yodelled back "Baby" getting the point with that showbiz dedication of
his.

And then we started to sing some more of Yazz's only hit, "The Only
Way is Up." The song was a peon to triumph over adversity, to victory
from the jaws of defeat. I put all my lungs into it, every breath I
had. And after a while everyone else joined in. Me, Leia Organa,
AkiMat, Seven and 16. We were all singing and dancing.

Outside workers put down their tools. They put their hands over their
ears. They were shaking their heads. The sound of the foremen's shouts
mingled with our loud singing.

"Get back to work," he screamed. "Get back to work!"

But not a scrap of work was done, not a single tool was picked
up.

We had done it.

We were ready for our next match. It was as easy as that. A song and a
dance. Those New Deal musicals had been right. Andrew Lloyd Weber had
been right. Smile and the world smiles with you.

Brother, can you spare me a dime?

"Hoofers," said 16 looking up at the sign.

"It means dancers," said The Poet, "in slang."

"Right," said 16, now looking down at his feet, now looking back up at
The Poet, "that explains the tap-shoes and spats."

"Exactly," said The Poet, "follow me."

With a twinkling of toes The Poet set off towards the pub. We followed
in in perfect formation, doing as he did with his feet with our feet,
and from somewhere up above I imagined that great choreographer in the
sky, Bob Fosse, smiling down at us. It was exactly the sort of thing he
would have liked, gay musical darts team tap-dancing to victory. Well,
the victory was up to us. But somehow I felt it was on the cards.

Inside, as The Poet would say, imagine the scene. Think America mid
1940s, think Al Capone and all that jazz and I'll add the
details.

Behind a smooth-topped bar backlit with neon strips and hung with
mirrors a waistcoated hairslicked barman polishes a screwdriver glass.
On a slightly raised platform are seated the players of a big band.
Their hands and lips pluck strings or blow into pipes making the sound
that is the defining essence of their era. In front of them stand three
suited Negroes attached at the lip to the cones of microphones.
"Di-Gue-Ding-Ding," they croon over and over. "Di-Gue-
Ding-Ding Di-Gue-Ding-Ding Di-Gue-Ding-Ding Di-Gue-Ding-Ding
Di-Gue-Ding-Ding."

Enticed by this sound couples of male and female attempt to jitterbug
the parquet floor into uniform shapes, their feet an aural
accompaniment to the Negro crooners and the big band players.

And past all this is what can only be described as the darts emporium.
Or as a modern styled darts church. Runway lights start at the oche and
blink and twinkle down to the board. Rococo flights adorn the walls.
The board itself is glamorous, ornate, a homage to twentieth century
chic.

And in front of all this style, all this allure, besuited players are
limbering up, performing pirouettes, pas de deux, stretching hamstrings
on a gilded ballet rail. An occasional dart is thrown with languid ease
and we watch dumb-founded, dumb-struck as it smacks into the bulls-eye
with narcissistical regularity. Again and again, bulls-eye, bulls-eye,
bulls-eye.

"Fuck," said 16, "we don't stand a chance."

And for that second I thought he was right. I thought that tonight was
going to be another drubbing, another humiliating jilting for the team
from Freddie's Bar. But then The Poet spoke. The Poet, who, don't
forget, had been transformed by his Japanese trip and his south-east
Asian lover AkiMat.

"It's a question of adapting to your environment," said The Poet,
taking to the centre stage and holding it with secret agent panache.
"If we adapt to our environment then we can win."

Captain Vegas wiggled his hips violently and clutched tightly onto
Leia Organa. He said that he didn't understand. He said that he thought
that the point was to be different, to win on our own terms, do it in
our own way.

"You're right," said The Poet without the hint of a twitch, with no
sign of the floor rushing up to meet him, "but we can be ourselves and
we can still win. Think of Bandwagon."

"The 50s musical starring Frank Sinatra and Cyd Cerise," said 16, his
face brightening and his left foot making the faintest tap in the hope
that perhaps things might, perhaps, be alright after all.

"Exactly," said The Poet, giving AkiMat a surreptitious hug. "In
Bandwagon the show is failing. The modern Faust is about as popular as
a devil in a synagogue. The audience are leaving in droves, in packs,
in droves of packs. So the cast decide to spice it up. They throw in a
couple of show-stoppers. They throw on a gingham dress and put on their
tap-shoes. Dance and the world will dance with you. But they are still
themselves. They are still little old Frank Sinatra and Cyd Cerise. All
it takes is a bit of hard work and a belief in yourself. And you know
what, they do it. The audience comes back. The packs that left are now
packing out the auditorium. They love the new show. The show is a
success."

"By jingo," I said, "I think we can do it."

"Me too," chorused the rest. "Me too!"

And we were ready for battle.

First up was 16. He side-stepped up to the oche and with a shuffle of
his tap-dancing feet he launched his first fusillade.

One hundred and twenty. One hundred and twenty!

We, the others, formed a line. We tapped our feet in time to the
rhythm of 16's hand, we clicked our fingers, and at the instigation of
Captain Vegas we wiggled our hips. Our lips, meanwhile, mirrored the
De-Gue-Ding-Ding of the Negro crooners.

We would sink or swim together.

Ninety-five. One hundred and thirty.

It was all for one and one for all.

A clean one hundred. Seventy-eight. You can do it boy.

I thought of our first match, of how we didn't even have enough
players, of how we had been beaten so easily. That wouldn't happen
again. I wouldn't let that happen again.

16's game finished and he joined our line. Leia Organa was next.

We wiggled our hips and we clicked our fingers.
De-Gue-Ding-Ding.

I thought of how I had met Seven and the story of his tattoos. I
thought of how I had fallen in love, of how he had joined the
team.

One hundred and sixty. De-Gue-Ding-Ding.

I remembered 16 bursting in on us together in bed and how The Poet
took off to Japan.

The Poet's game started, finished.

AkiMat had come back with The Poet. Leia had come back from saving the
federation. They were both members of the team. We wiggled our hips.
Like Captain Vegas. How Captain Vegas got his name.

"YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A CAPTAIN VEGAS. THAT'S ALL YOU ARE."

I wiggled my hips and I watched the game. I clicked my fingers and my
lips moved. De-Gue-Ding-Ding over and over. De-Gue-Ding-Ding.

One hundred and thirty. One hundred and thirty.

Bulls-eye!

Then.

It was me. It was the last game. It didn't matter. It was in the bag.
The pirouetting players were done in, done-over. They had been swamped,
bowled over, knocked for six, fucked.

We had won.

The Poet had won. AkiMat had won. Captain Vegas had won. Leia Organa
had won. We had all won. The match was won.

We had won our first match.

De-Gue-Ding-Ding.

End of part one.