A brief visit to Sunset Strip (29th Dec 2006)

A brief visit to Sunset Strip, after the appalling enforced Christmas abstinence, to see the divinity that is Jolanda and the callipygous Helen. It is amazing how much more naked a stripper looks when she takes off her shoes. The first thing Helen always does when she steps on stage is to take off her shoes, & then slowly pads around the stage, Salome-like even without the Salome costume, on the balls of her bare feet. All strippers should dance barefoot, I think. Without wanting to get too personal, she does have the best behind in London, apart OF COURSE from Hannah/Pink at the White Horse who possesses a bottom that you would follow anywhere if you met it in the street. 

When Jolanda steps on stage it is like how Zola describes Nana: “Then scarcely was Diana alone than Venus made her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house. Nana was nude. With quiet audacity she appeared in her nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore. It was Venus rising from the waves with no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause. Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features, mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft, soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men. “By God,” said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.” 

Jolanda wore a lime green see-through slip of fabric for my first sight of her, then a pink dress for her double act with Helen, finishing with that Stokerish white see-through dress. I realise now not only is she a Nana, but a blonde Zora Suleman, and there is not much better than that. For me, she is the Queen of Sunset Strip. Miss Soho 2006. Jolanda is a girl Toulouse Lautrec would have designed posters for. Why don’t they do that anymore!? 

A lovely black windy trees lashing day always looking on the verge of rain (14th August 2006)

A lovely black windy trees lashing day, always looking on the verge of rain. I get back to my flat & put my lamp on & it starts to blend in with the twilight outside & my flat feels so warm & cosy, and I think of COURSE I cannot give the flat up. My little nest. I want to go a long long time without seeing Melani or Jolanda so when I see them again it will feel all brand new & a new life will feel like it's starting again.

Oh God how could I ever have considered giving up my lovely little flat? It is so lovely to come back to at night. All afternoon, and tonight, travelling to Charing Cross I felt so nervous. It was good, it felt exciting, like being in Vienna or Berlin or Brussels at night. Everything was pitch back, windy and rainy and storm-tossed. It felt like winter. It felt like how nervous I felt going out in Vienna at night to look for the peep show place, or how nervous I felt going to look for Stuttgarter Platz in Berlin the first time, or going into Atlantic City every time. I love that nervousness! That excitement! Sitting with my first pint in the Calcutta I still felt it. I felt I was sitting in the Brussels Pullman bar prior to heading up to Empire and Gare du Nord. Or sitting in the Dorint preparing to go out to Pour Platin or Manhattan. It was so exciting. By the second pint the excitement had been replaced by deadness, and I could not recapture the nervousness. By the third pint it had started to turn to the nihilism which can be as exciting as the nervousness but I did not push it to a fourth pint. I think three will be my rule for these Calcutta nightcaps. Oh God I cannot wait to get back to Vienna and the Dorint, and I cannot wait to get back to Munich and Atlantic City. But first I think must come Berlin for Violetta Urmana and the Mort de Cleopatra. That would be special. Any money I save let me use it on Alla & Olga and Erika first. On the 87 bus home someone started playing the Hot Club de France at full blast! It was fantastic. Riding along listening to Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt. Every bus should sound like this at 11 o’clock at night.

Low rumble of thunder. To think I was thinking I could sit out on my balcony once summer comes, and now it is black & rainy & I am turning my heating back on, and it is only 13th August! John Dilys Cooper “turns everything into an epiphany”. I had an epiphany last night. Getting the bus to Charing Cross feeling so nervous, and arriving there in the pitch black, and it was so windy & stormy, and I sat in the Calcutta with my first pint feeling so strongly what it would be like at this same 930PM at night to be sitting in the bar of the Brussels Radisson SAS, or the Ibis Cafe Belge, or the Dorint Wien, or the Berlin Plaza, nervously drinking enough so I was ready to go out looking for Tallulah or Esmeralda. Tingle-Tangle. That feeling in the knot of your stomach. Those butterflies. That excitement, that nervousness. On the bus, around Parliament Square, I was thinking this was how nervous I felt when I went to get that tram in Wien, or how nervous I feel when I leave the Intercity at night to cross Bayerstrasse & round corner of Schiller, my heart suddenly starts beating so fast, my breathing comes so quick, my blood pumps around me so quick, as I am sure everybody knows what I am up to, but they cannot stop me, and I am going to do it anyway. A real epiphany last night, and again on Wednesday, when everything reminded me of Wien Westbahnhof. "We grow beautiful out of our longing." The greatest highs of my life have been those midnight trams in Vienna around the Gurtel to get to ML Revue, or those walks from the Intercity to Atlantic City, or those walks from the Berlin Plaza to the Berlin Erotic Centre or Sarah Young, or that midnight tram from the Gare du Midi up to the Gare du Nord and trying again to find the right exit. Lust suddenly suffuses my whole body. I become so nervous and so excited. In Europe you have dirty experiences. The ONLY time I get close to that in London is when I go to Sunset Cinema, and some man comes in with a girl, and that is so exciting, and then when I am ready, I leave there with my swollen cock rolling in my trousers from side to side like a ship in a storm, just around the corner to Demi or to Pamela. That always feels so dirty. Once September comes I will allow myself this again. As the nights get dark so early. Save my money for October, once the clocks go back! That is why I call November 1st Volcanic Night! I do not think I find Simon Boccanegra interesting enough as an opera to go all the way to  Hamburg to see Prokina in it. I’d rather spend all that money the train would cost on sex in Berlin. I would like to see Urmana in the Mort de Cleopatra though. What to do, Munich & Vienna first, or Brussels & Berlin? NOTHING THAT HAPPENS AT WORK CAN POSSIBLY AFFECT ME. I LIVE FOR WRITING AND FOR TRAVELLING. I AM LIKE A GHOST AT WORK. THUNDER! A dirty, black, thundery, raining evening.