Becoming a musician would require a none-too subtle shift in terms of identity, concluded Gerry. This would have its difficulties and as Gerry considered the possibilities whilst poring over the modes, hairstyles and footwear of his newly-discovered idols, he reflected on recent controversy in connection with his appearance. The move to Wykeham brought temporary respite from the tyre-fitters grip much favoured by his uncle Vic’s barber shop experience which had been ceded prior to the move to the bizarre emporium of Deek’s gentleman’s hairdressers. This extraordinary place held a special place in the memories of all who passed through its many chairs and barbers as they snipped, clipped and trimmed the hair, moustaches and beards of the city of Lindon’s male population throughout the many generations of the firm’s existence.
Located in the city’s Guildhall Street the entrance itself was worthy of mention. A wide porch way which had been floored in the exact same material as the entrance plinth of a double-decker bus - consisting of loose rubber compound blocks which interlocked to form a regular open mesh matting - the entrance way sloped uphill where one might reasonably have expected steps. Narrowing as the incline increased itself by degrees, visitors were eventually compelled to ascend short, often narrow and randomly arranged steps before arriving in a splendid hall which bustled with life and the queues of indolently waiting customers. Frantically busy teams of barbers would invite their next client to sit upon the carefully polished leather, chrome-trimmed chairs with a flourish of their bry-nylon coverall as with their right leg they pumped the hydraulics until the head of the client arrived at optimum cutting height.
“What would sir like today?” was the uniform greeting as they readied themselves for battle with the unkempt mops of schoolboys or the grey band of hair that was all that remained of the many victims of male-pattern baldness and faded youth.
A frenzy of highly skilled snipping would ensue in which the proximity of the razor sharp scissors and shears would freeze the formerly writhing child in its booster seat, mercifully hidden from mocking adult stares by the maroon nylon coverall draped around them. The chatter was of football, potential foreign holiday plans and Gerry noticed with some curiosity how the more feckless of the young men would openly thumb through the torn and folded pages of magazines entitled Playboy, Men Only and Penthouse. Such publications were never to be found anywhere other than Deek’s or scattered randomly in hedgerow bottoms along the pathways that common courtesy and repressive convention then demanded they should be taken to be surreptitiously read and then discarded for the further edification of young lads such as himself. The performance ended in a crescendo of careful shaving with the electric clippers during which the barber would tilt one’s head into strange and discomfiting angles before producing the hand-held mirror which try as he might, Gerry found impossible to relate the picture now displayed via the two mirrors employed, albeit briefly, to the back of his now bristling and itchy neck. A good barber would, as Gerry eagerly anticipated apply a squirt or two - from a glass teardrop-shaped bottle attached to a rubber ball-operated pump - of what was prosaically described as jungle-juice before his coup-de-grace of whipping the coverall away whilst brushing one’s neck with a stiff bristled brush. The entire drama of Deek’s might last an hour, with perhaps five minutes spent in the chair, but was a spectacle that Gerry found fascinating culminating with a short visit to the elaborately appointed mechanical till where paying adults were ritually presented with the esoteric request “anything for the weekend sir?”.
It would be many long years before Gerry would crack this careful code of condom concealing coyness but he did notice that his own father’s weekend requirements were either non-existent or had been inconspicuously conducted elsewhere. Steeped in historical myths masquerading as long-held truths, Deek’s was a veritable museum of urban myths where it was believed that the notorious hangman Albert Pierrepoint regularly visited prior to despatching the latest victim condemned to a hideous end by the judges at the nearby assizes. Whether anyone ever asked the grim executioner his requirements for the weekend was not known though Gerry did ask his father on receipt of this information though no answer other than a look of exasperated disgust was forthcoming.
The exact nature and extent of one’s haircut, which would happen at intervals of three weeks to a month, was entirely dictated by one’s parent and Gerry quickly discovered that whatever he said to the barber’s enquiry would result in a uniform short-back-and-sides. The newest innovation of a ‘square-neck’ left him wondering about its appropriateness to the round and v-necked shirts and jumpers that such a neck-cut might then compromise so he remained mutely resistant to all such invitations. Latterly his exhausted father had allowed the boys to visit the local hairdresser, Philip, unaccompanied. It didn’t matter what one’s individual requirement was at Philip’s, his training at the local hairdressing school having presumably been devoted to one client or model of uniform construction which he could repeat perfectly and endlessly. Returning from their latest disappointment the boys would be confronted by their father’s disapproving glare as he enquired mirthlessly “which one did he cut then?”. But it wasn’t by having too little hair cut that Gerry caused his father to bristle in resentment. Quite the opposite actually. The fateful day on which Gerry returned from a visit to Philip’s with what his father referred to as a ‘crew-cut’ was the beginning of his struggle for identity within a culture of rigidly fixed and immoveable stereo-types. He had listened as his father deplored first ‘teddy-boys‘, then ‘rockers’ and ‘mods’ before alighting on the new, and as he preferred to think relatively unknown phenomenon of the ‘skinhead’. The genesis of Gerry’s discovery of this new anthropological trend was however found to have its roots in music.
His new found friends in his expanding village life were given to regular attendances at the local disco. Once a week all the young boys and girls of his new-found acquaintance would gather at the village’s Memorial Hall where the local council had sanctioned the playing of recorded music for their entertainment. This took the form of popular soul music of the time which consisted almost entirely of records from the Detroit based Tamla-Motown label as the Transatlantic arm of Berry Gordy’s expanding empire was then known. From the very instant that the dj placed his first platter under the tone arm the local girls, clad almost exclusively in stay-prest jackets and short skirts, feather-cut hairstyles radiating a coloured aura from their closely cropped skulls from the ever-changing lights, thronged the floor and, in a carefully contrived and obviously well-rehearsed set of routines, danced in closed groups around a central altar of handbags. The boys shifted conspicuously around the periphery of these knots of formation dancers as the strains of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and other less well-known black American artists laid down their deeply affecting grooves or crooned their soulful melodies. If indeed ‘Farewell’ was the loneliest sound one could hear from the one that you loved, Gerry was more ‘hurt inside’ at the prospect that all the girls were much bigger than him and were they to whisper such a sound in his ear he would need to be standing on a chair in order to share the moment of emotion.
Ballads, however sublime, would clear the floor whereupon the girls would evacuate the building in preference for conspicuous smoking which might then include some of the bigger lads in possession of cigarettes and the appropriate uniform of Levis’ finest denims (or two-tone stay-prest pants) Doc Marten’s boots (or brogues), Ben Sherman shirt, Harrington jacket and, most importantly a pair of braces (preferably red with gold adjusters and clamps). Gerry learned to appreciate and envy this uniform of acceptance and made elaborate plans for his own induction. He listened in wonder to the effect wrought by the opening bass-line and drum beat of Freda Payne’s anthem Band of Gold which never failed to fill the polished wooden floor of the small and dimly-lit hall but left him wondering why a song about desertion and heartbreak would remain a must-have song at weddings and engagements long after he had pointed out its lyrics being inappropriate for such occasions.
The glamour was further enhanced when, upon his first visit to the spring fair with its gyrating carnival rides and tattooed and ear-ringed hucksters, he had been propelled into a whirling and nauseated world of adrenaline to the same soundtrack of Motown’s greatest. The pounding basslines and thudding drumbeats allowed no indifference to this irresistible rhythm and blues invasion and he began to conceive himself as part of this scene without deference to his parents growing concern about his appearance and acquaintance with ‘youths’ unknown to them and clearly tarnished by a cultural change of which they would never entirely approve or even attempt understanding.
Bit-by-bit and over a period of weeks, Gerry slowly and carefully plotted his transition to becoming a recognisable member of his new tribe and as each new acquisition confirmed his metamorphosis his parents watched with mounting disapproval. The purchase of his new Harrington jacket, a rather strange green zip-fronted canvas wind cheater - as his scowling father regarded it - with a red tartan lining, led to rather unfortunate consequences. His first weekend as its proud possessor resulted in a strange and highly unpleasant encounter. For reasons he could never recall, Gerry’s parents had uncharacteristically relaxed their vigilance about the company he was keeping and he was allowed to go on a camping trip with several other boys to the low fields area, down near the river and the sewage farm. Had his parents first witnessed the boys as they balanced precariously on the thin concrete ledges that divided the raw human effluent whilst they threw large rocks and bricks into the beds of ordure in an attempt to dislodge one another from their position in a shower of feculent filth, they might have been more circumspect about the adventure.
The trip was ill-conceived and no planning or consideration whatsoever had gone into their collective needs for food and drink - apart of course from the several plastic bottles of cider that had been rapidly consumed the moment they had gathered together. After watching one of his unfortunate friends actually walk into a septic lake full of butcher’s effluent at the nearby sausage factory, whose surface looked remarkably like concrete in the moonlight, Gerry determined to solve the food shortage with a visit to a nearby garden which he had noted on his way to the camp was well-stocked with potatoes. Boys were set to scavenging wood and making the fire to which Gerry and Buster were confidently expected to return with King Edward’s finest in short order having plundered the stock of their owner’s careful husbandry. Access was easy across the recently clipped and well tonsured privet hedge and as Gerry and Buster set to work, expertly pulling the head of the plant and shaking the loose soil from their roots they were genuinely surprised to find themselves in the company of the owner’s extremely alert and excessively agitated boxer dog. Boxers held a special place in Gerry’s taxonomy of dog-terrors, having once been unexpectedly greeted at his own front door by Brutus, his mother’s friend’s overenthusiastic year-old pup who had overwhelmed the infant Gerry in an orgy of drool-filled slobbering and excitement causing Gerry to evacuate his bladder in shock and fear for his life. Crouching low amongst the luxuriant foliage of the carefully planted potatoes Gerry hoped his latest encounter would not have the additional danger of hostility from the clearly aroused dog which stood on three feet surveying him carefully from the row end. Suddenly, without hesitation the dog ran toward him. Gerry remained in his submissive crouch hoping that this behaviour would result in at worst a lick and at best a greater interest in his friend Buster who was halfway back across the privet hedge behind them. His high-speed departure, amidst a splintering and now ruined privet hedge through which he left a large new access point, at least provided Gerry with privacy, the only concession now remaining for what happened next.
Approaching from behind, Gerry could only hear the dogs heavily respiring breath on the back of his neck before the hound placed both of its front legs upon his shoulders before crossing both feet and locking them together in an unbreakable grip as Gerry felt the entire weight of its body fall onto his crouching and useless legs and torso. With sudden and insistent rhythm the dog pressed home its primal intention and for several moments which seemed like an eternity the dog violated Gerry’s back before spending itself all over the shoulders of his brand-new and previously unsullied Harrington jacket. The end, when it came, was merciful, the dog shifting his weight and with a slobber of dominant satisfaction returning to his kennel without so much as a farewell look of regret. Gerry walked the long and disconsolate walk of the sexually assaulted, empty-handed and unwilling to recount his tale of canine shame, to where the now raging fire was surrounded by shadowed faces, gaunt with hunger and expectation. His description of the dogs savage intent mollified all but those in need of the sight of an open-wound as satisfactory evidence of his struggle. Those who’s faces indicated derision at an assumed lack of resistance to the boxer’s aggression were never to know the deep sense of shame Gerry would feel that night as he wondered what it might be like as a woman to know and to share his deep feelings of disgust at what he had been forced to submit to that evening in the vegetable garden and to which, he was certain, they had to endure, repeatedly throughout their disempowered lives.
The washable jacket and Gerry’s reputation somehow survived his brutal induction into the world of testosterone and lust, but the braces and monkey boots of his lost innocence were humiliatingly hurled into the family’s dustbin on production of his latest school report which Gerry was required to watch his father contemptuously burn over the outside lavatory due to his Geography teacher’s assessment which found him to have ‘appalling manners’ courtesy of his discourtesy and new-found ability to belch, at will, in his presence. His ill-fated conversion to ‘street-cred’ temporarily arrested, Gerry now discovered the paradoxically incongruent desire for long-hair and with it a penchant for loon-pants (with 28” bell-bottoms and split knee construction, necessitated no doubt by the voluminous lower leg acreage of cloth), tie-dyed shirts and clogs. This very impractical choice of footwear, popular though they were to prove, were something of a handicap when pursued with malevolent intent by his former associates who proved less than delighted with his latest sartorial manifestation. Nevertheless, they slid under his father’s radar, mystified as he now was about the perverse change in hair styles that by now both his boys were affecting. The younger generation, he had wisely concluded, were an enigma that he would never understand, and he thereby resolved to stop trying, to the relief of the entire household.
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