Bellies Out at Sounds Like Brooklyn

By the time we got to the gig the support act had finished and the headliners were on stage. Already the lead singer was glossy with sweat, and his Lycra bodysuit was pulled down perilously low beneath the generous swell of his belly. It was hard to look away. The songs came and went, and so did the light displays and the monkey hat, but the drama of the night was concentrated in that gleaming, jiggling stomach and the rolls of Lycra beneath it. It was the same tease they play with underwear models, whose shadowed musculature draw the eyes down and promise that that pants-on situation is purely temporary. This time, however, a thousand pair of eyes were holding that bodysuit up, searing it in place.

A few years back I watched Gossip play Bestival on the Isle of Wight: another mesmerising Lycra and lyrics combination. It was at the time when Beth Ditto was the UK media's darling, and here, yet again, the only thing standing in the way of control was a pair of pour-on leggings and a lot of sequins.

We talk about rock stars being larger than life, and there's something quite magical when they actually are. Everyone wants a piece of you, and there's more to go round.

But God bless that Lycra - the unsung support act of the year.

New York Intimacy

Our Brooklyn neighbours have seen me naked more times than I care to remember. In our front room, more than thirty sets of windows face our window across the street, usually shuttered or sullenly dark in the daytime, but occasionally animated with ghostly life. In the middle room the window looks out onto an airshaft, and a peeping tom would need a wide-angled telescope to cop anything half-decent. Not so our kitchen. Washing up is like looking in a mirror. I turn on the water. My neighbour, standing less than two feet away, facing me, does the same. In unison we clatter our pots and pans, reach for scrubbing brushes and babytalk our mewling cats. The only acknowledgement I make of her is to angle my body to the side, as if sidestepping a mirror after dark - an echo of an older superstition.

The windowframe cuts her off at the chin and the navel. Even in winter she wears tank tops. Last year she turned on the airconditioning in April, and kept it nasally whining until well into the Fall. We have come to the conclusion that either her personal themostat is set on high, or she is just an enemy of the planet. She has probably heard these discussions, since we do not use our airconditioner and keep our windows flung open year round. Or perhaps her airconditioner drowns them out.

Our buildings are cheek to cheek, bending round the airvent to hug close again bathroom to bathroom. I smell the food she's cooking, the smoke when friends visit, which isn't often. I hear her door bell as well as my own, startling up from my desk and sinking back down when I hear the answering buzz of the door release. We don't often hear voices. Because she lives alone, it's easier to maintain the illusion of privacy. Like a child covering its face with its hands we insist: you can't hear us if we can't hear you.

The windowframe cuts me off from chin to navel. When I go to the bathroom in the night I run, my hands crossed over my chest. This is all my New York privacy. And as long as I never have to meet her, it's enough.

A Friend in Jesus (I)

Now I went to a Methodist boarding school and I've done my share of pew-sitting and hymn-book bothering, but the Jesus I was peddled was a jolly good sport. He excelled on the rugby field, but was never a sore loser. He abhorred cheating, bullying and drinking to excess. And in order to give JC a hand with that last one, the vicar ran the sixth form bar, making sure us sixteen year olds never went over our two-can limit. Those, as I recall, were the Scrumpy Jack years.

The Jesus we were praisin' at the Brooklyn Tabernacle seemed like a different fellow altogether, someone charming and charismatic, with an exacting taste in music and spectacle. In school we prayed apologetically, with heads bowed and eyes closed; here palms were raised to the ornate, opera-house ceiling, as if to catch the Glory raining down, and no-one mumbled over their Aay-mens and Hallelujahs. Now I love a hymn as much as the next girl, but back at school the choir's major attraction had been the A-House boys who sung in it. Here the music was praise, both tithe to and manifest evidence of the Almighty. And we got to clap along.

It was the Tabernacle's Christmas show, and we showed up an hour early, like the website said, to find all the best seats already taken by canny folk saving seats for their people. The crowd was a mix of black, white, Hispanic and Asian; out-of-towners and locals; people, like us, soon sweating in their Sunday best and others (the tourists? the real Christians?) in jeans and soggy sneakers.

We'd all come for the music. After telling a friend from Alabama about our expedition to Harlem to hunt out Gospel, he'd pointed out we had one of the most famous choirs in the world a block and a half from our apartment. In fact we'd walked past the Sunday service queue before, without ever really stopping to wonder why all those women in powder blue suits and pillbox hats would bother to line up there every week when there were more churches than bodegas in this part of town.

But now we were joining them, politely scrimmaging for the last few decent seats, then flapping leaflets about, trying in vain to cut a breeze through the fug.
Just as we were getting restless, the light dimmed. Everyone sat up a little straighter and shushed their grandkids. Showtime.
TBC

Cat Attack

We always knew Brooklyn wasn't gone to be one of those cutesy I Has Cheezburger kittehs, not least because she never sat still long enough to capture on film. What we didn't expect was the spitting, clawing hell-cat that ran across the room to sink her claws and teeth into Chris' bare legs. She'd hissed at him before when he'd crossed her path or accidentally backed her into a corner, but this was something different: a bloody, full-throttle attack that only ended with Chris physically throwing her away and us barricading ourselves in our bedroom. This was the same cat that had sat peaceably on my lap all morning as I typed on my laptop, purring like an animal possessed. Who rubbed herself in and out of both our legs as if trying to tie us to her.

The mewing from the other side of the door was pitiful, but when I opened up she ran past me to spit and arch at Chris once more. It took all my wheedling (and a tray of KitEKat) to distract her while Chris eased past and out of the door, holding a towel, matador-like, in his bleeding hands. I followed and our positions were officially reversed: Brooklyn held the bedroom, while the living room (complete with litter tray and door to the outside world) was ours.

It was to prove a hollow victory. In our haste to escape another mauling we'd left our wallets behind in the other room. While Chris washed off his cuts and bites I called the woman who had landed us in this fine mess in the first place.
"Look, are you sure it was a deliberate attack?"
"She ran from the other side of the room, and then she clamped on and wouldn't let go. It was scary."
"If you're really scared, just let her out a window."
"We're on the third floor."
"Look, I've thirty cats and dogs here that I'm trying to get adopted... can I come pick her up tonight. Seven, say?"
With a little firm talking I battled her down to a couple of hours. Which in reality, turned out to be five.

More pressingly our insurance cards were shut away in the other room and we had $2.80 in cash, scavenged from the change-bowl. And now we were about to have our first encounter with the much-demonised US health care system.

Meanwhile, locked in the outer room, Brooklyn yowled as if she knew she had just got herself exiled again...