SOUL ON ICE

by
Megan Hall

In an inspired moment, after dressing the window dolls one Saturday morning in June, I decided it was time to go to New York. The theme for the mannequins was Studio 54, I hung a silver sequinned thousand pound fish scale dress from bony shoulders of Doris (my favourite painted lady), and fitted a white plaited afro wig onto her smooth lacquered bald head. Switched the mirror ball on from the mains, and glued a pair of transvestite lashes onto her eyelids.

�Well maybe I will find my destiny there� I mentioned to the Rootstein doll, �You know, Andy Warhol was a window dresser too, that�s how he started. Maybe I should go and stay at the Chelsea Hotel? I�m 21 in September; I might go for my birthday��

The day I was 21, I was on the tail end of a chemical binge, I�d been up for 3 days without sleep, smoking pills, and doing lines of coke with my bastard boyfriend who loved every minute of me falling apart. He put me on a National Express with my little ballerina suitcase, Morrison Hotel sunglasses, and fur trimmed 70s coat, and waved me off pissing himself in the bus park of Leeds Terminal, knowing that I might come back half dead.

By the time I trampled through customs at Gatwick, I was still high from the previous night�s excess and decided to take advantage of the free vodka on Virgin Airways. I got so loaded that I got refused any more drinks from the bimbo waitresses, and thought it would be fun to try and mile high the unfortunate businessman sat next to me on the flight. Wearing a stretch tight Buddha print top and cord trousers held up with a safety pin, my poverty was obvious; this didn�t deter me from turning Jezebel after a skin full of booze. Watching from the window of the plane we dropped into Newark airport in NYC, this was it, I was here, my fucking destiny, I was Leeds� version of the Midnight Cowgirl, ready to take on the world.

This thought came to an abrupt end when I hit US Customs. Wearing my shades to cover the black saggy bags under my eyes, and stinking to hell, I got pulled out of the line by four Henry Rollins motherfuckers in uniforms.

�So where you been this weekend Mam? Can you tell us why you want to come to the States?�

And like the stupid fucking mouthy bitch that I am I said �What�s it to you why I�m coming here. It�s my big adventure�

�Miss, can you please take off your glasses?�

�No�

�Miss we�re asking you again to remove your eyewear, if you don�t comply with this we will have to remove you for questioning.�

I took off my glasses, and threw them on the luggage belt.

They picked up my ballerina case, and stuck a knife through the lining, cutting open the handles, I started to blush. Then they pulled out my tiger print underwear.

�Is this yours Miss?�

�No. I got paid to bring it here. Oh and watch out for the half ounce of crack that I�ve got stored in my shoes��

The four men looked at me blank. Humour would not be tolerated as US Customs. They pulled out my favourite pair of brown patent shoes, and stuck a knife through the soles � ripping them into a million pieces. They tore the coat off my back, slicing the lining open, even tearing open the fake fur collar � this wasn�t the first or the last time my big mouth worked against me.

Broken in two I picked up my torn clothes and luggage and staggered through the gates � alone in New York, on a comedown, with cases held together by gaffa tape. The glamour, the lust, the life. I sat outside of Newark terminal and cried my heart out, I was so upset that I think I might have been there for 2 hours before a little Latino guy comes over and asks if I am okay, he gave me a cigarette.

�Hey, it�s ok, we know what you feel, people get treat real rough at customs�.

He might have been an airport porter, but with his last few cents went and bought me a coffee. For as much pain as I had inflicted on myself there was kindness on the flipside from the place I expected it least. After pulling myself together I got on a bus to Manhattan, sitting next to a man dressed like Liberace, with a sparkling suitcase adorned with the virgin of Guadeloupe. I was wearing my giant enamel ring, with Jesus painted on the top, he asked me where it was from, and thought that Leeds sounded like a �lovely place�.

I arrived at The Chelsea Hotel in the pouring rain, only to be told at reception that my room had been double booked. I sat in the front seats, tried to hassle the man, but apparently �It�s New York Fashion Week and all the rooms have been booked by Vivienne Westwood�. I walked the streets with holes in my shoes, broken cases, and torn up fur coat whilst the rain smeared my peacock eyes down the corners of my cheekbones. That week there was a tornado in New York, and the rains were the first indication of the gusts that would hit over the time I was there. Just my fucking luck, it was Fashion Week, and I couldn�t get a room anywhere.

After 4 hours of traipsing around the west part of Central Park in the tornado rain, I ended up on a side street that had a hotel. They wanted me to pay $180 for the night, and seeing I only had $300 to last the whole bloody week I couldn�t justify it. So I sat on the pavement outside the hotel and watched the people walk by with their 17 Pomeranians or Bijon-Frises or whatever upmarket hounds they could lay their hands on. I laughed myself stupid for hours watching these women who were convinced they were trotting the best in show at Crufts. Smoked more fags, supped on my vodka flask, waited for something, anything to happen to start the adventure. It rained some more, and by 2am I had started to cry to myself again.

�You silly fucking twat. What the fuck are you doing here?�

Blubbed some more, called my Mother of all people.

�Well love, just get on the next plane home, I�ll sort you some cash out.�

That wasn�t the answer. So I sat back on the steps outside the hotel, and the porter started chatting to me. His name was Ephrain. He took pity on me, and after realising that I had a little charm and a kooky English accent, he invited me back to his luxury pad in a little place that I�d never heard of called Hunts Point North. I knew that this was my only way out, so when he clocked off at 5am, he took me on the underground, and we transferred onto South Bronx.

�You know lady, you might wanna take that coat off.�

�Why?�

�Because, you know this is my hood, and well, I�m not being nasty or nuthin, but, you might get stared at, and I don�t want you runnin into any trouble down here.�

�But it�s my only coat, and I�m freezing.�

�Just take the fucking coat off okay, you can borrow my coat.�

So, I stripped off my afghan pimp coat, and put on his anorak thing as we walked out of the station onto the main parade. It was baking hot sun, and I noticed that I had definitely seen this place a million times before on the TV - classic murder in the hood territory, surely this is what it�s all about right? When we walked down the streets people parted for us, like we had some invisible repellent, maybe they can tell I�m English? Maybe they want to rob me? The real answer was that my new guide for the next few days wasn�t just a lowly hotel porter. This guy was a motherfucking hustler.

Ephrain was a Latin King gang leader, and had served serious time for dealing and arms offences, on payroll he got a little job as a porter to see him through. As we walked to his tenement block faces would nod to him, he would nod back. From the horses mouth he told me he was a street heroin and crack dealer. To get cash he would run off for 5 minutes, stand on a corner, knock out diesel, and come back with $50. He shared his flat with a sister, who wanted to know exactly who the fuck this stupid white piece of shit was when he turned up with me. The flat was in a block in the projects, it was on the fourth floor, and had a floral couch in the sitting room with plastic covers sheeted over the cushions to keep it clean. There was a double bed in the corner with four foot model of the Virgin Mary above the head, there were drips on the side, and bars at the bottom; it was perfectly made hospital bed. Their grandma had died in the bed a year ago, and they kept it as a shrine to her.

�Can I sleep in there? Is that my bed?�

Well, no, they didn�t quite appreciate that either, so he let me have his bed, a single moth eaten canvas bed with a poster of Tupac on the wall. He kept talking to me like I was the most exotic creature in the world. Rustling up close to me when I unpacked my bags. When I was in the shower, and his sister had gone out, I pulled the curtain across a little, swished the floating roaches from the cracks in my feet, and saw him peeking through the door, sucking his teeth, watching me rinse the foam from my face.

�Sure you don�t want some help in there?�

I remember laying on the bed, it was early morning, and he was standing at the doorway watching over me. I pretended to be asleep, but I could feel him creeping over my shoulder, breathing slowly onto my neck. I thought if I stayed deathly still then he might leave me alone. It suddenly occurred to me that I was in a strange man�s flat, his sister was out, he could rape me, rob me, take my passport, skin me alive and nobody would know what the fuck had happened to me. I would have vanished to New York, and it could be months, years, decades, before my body was found. It was the first time I ever realised that I could die here and now. My life there and then was over. I held onto the sheets tightly, and summoned up courage not to move, not to say anything. If he knew I was awake I would die. You stupid fucking dumb bitch. You are in New York, on your own, in South Bronx, and in an hour you will have met your fucking maker.

�I know you�re awake� he whispered, then walked off down the hall.

Just how exactly are you meant to get out of this kind of situation? I couldn�t open the window, as there was no escape, if I put up a fight, then I would be finished, it was a straight up no win. The only escape was to flirt my way out. I knew he was gunning for me, so I resorted to feminine tactics.

Luckily, I managed to convince him that I should take him out for breakfast, he was hungry, and agreed - it also gave him chance to show me the hood. He took me to a centre that KRS-1 had set up for kids in the area; it had brightly sprayed walls and a music studio with a bunch of bad boys recording some tracks. We also went and scored some red weed, he took me into this little old Spanish guy�s flat where he weighed me out some bags and gave me a cheap deal. He thought I was pretty and �a sharp one�, and invited me back to score, �anytime baby!�. We ate eggs sunny side up in a corner caf�, as I looked in disgust at him pouring maple syrup all over his sausages.

�That looks absolutely foul.�

�Trus� me, tastes great � it aint normal syrup, try some.�

I tasted the meat from the end of his fork, rubbed my shoes up against his under the table, winked at him when he talked, made him feel special. He took me back to Central Park under the premise that I was going to do some shopping, then would meet back with him at 2, and we would go and watch the boxing at his flat. By the time we got there he had made up his mind that I was the woman that he wanted to marry, even though I had a boyfriend, it didn�t matter.

�We�re two Virgos, and we are made for each other�.

I took his number, pecked him on the cheek, and agreed to see him later. As I walked away he said, �I ain�t never seeing you again am I?�

�Don�t be daft, of course you�ll see me, I promise, I�ll see you at 2.�

And that was the last time I saw my Latin King Guardian Angel.

Two weeks after coming back from New York I got told I was losing my job. I didn�t really give a shit, but sort of needed the money � maybe there was another job I could do to earn fast cash. In Leeds centre? The world of sex line hell awaited me. Laying in the bath, dunking my freezing cold head under the water, my dripping face slowly arose out of the foam. I sat up in the bath and noticed my arms, shoulders and legs were covered in hair. My beautiful long black and blue waist length locks, my pride of fucking joy, were floating around in clumps in the pool below. My stomach turned upside down, and tears were rolling down my face.

Losing your hair is the worst physical thing that can happen to a girl. Within the space of a week, a patch the size of a grapefruit had fallen out from the back of my head. I was so ashamed, so embarrassed, that I couldn�t tell anyone or even leave the house. I even managed to avoid my parents for two months.

I made an ornate cloth orchid on a clip, and tied what was left of my 3 ft mane into a ball. When outside, wear a hat, when inside, hope to god that nobody calls around. I lost my hair, but also lost my sparkle, my smile, the banter that makes me happy. My self respect had vanished, only two weeks before I had been doing lines at a warehouse party with Noel Gallagher in the Meat Packing District, and now I was jobless, fucked up, and half bald. Divine punishment for the palace of excess? Now matter how hard I wrestled with it I still blamed myself.

My Mum cried when she eventually saw me, she ran her hands across my patch and had tears running down her trousers by the time I turned around. She took me to see the doctor who said that it was the most severe case of Alopecia he had ever seen in 25 years as a GP.

�Been on the happy pills again?� (His answer to any anxiety connected disorder.)

He told me that there was no cure. That I could expect my eyebrows to fall out too and that at 21 years old I should �invest in a wig� as I might be bald for the rest of my life. The bastard prescribed me Seroxat (now banned), which after 4 days destroyed my half broken soul to a lifeless whisper. I would rather be bald than not have a brain. It was like having electric shock therapy but at least I could fuck off the tablets.

On returning to my Harold Walk back to back I packed out my three sets of Tarot cards into a silk scarf. Now was the time to chuck out the crap. I wrapped up my spell books, Crowley Cards, Witches Tarot, and incense pyramids into a red silk scarf that had covered my patch in a bow on the back of my head. I walked two miles to Burley Park at midnight, and threw a bottle of turps and a bottle of brandy over the lot. With a lighter I torched it out, at least got rid of some of the shit that had caused me pain inside. Those little fuckers had become just too accurate, deathly predictable. It wasn�t worth the money I got paid to unleash that kind of shit on vulnerable old ladies.

My religious paraphernalia got binned out too, along with my spooky books, ornaments of icons and mannequin body that sat next to my bed. She had no hair and was armless, yet peered at me with a sneering look every morning as the sun pushed through my gold velvet curtains. Rubbed in the fact that she was bald by choice, Where as I had no such excuse. From what the doctor told me I had nightmares every night, screamed in the bath every time I washed my hair and saw the strands hanging over my brown nipples and skinny rack ribcage. He reckoned that I would never get better, and the only way to heal the hurt was to go into Bootham loony bin. Well fuck that. I ignored his letters, ripped up my New York photographs, and decided that maybe if I fed myself properly I might just improve with time. You know what, within 2 months my hair had grown back.

Sometimes doctors are the last people to know how to fix you from the inside out. Stocked up on some vitamin pills, a pile of Chet Baker LPs, and stopped going raving. Did me the fucking world of good. Swore blind that never ever again would I set foot on the grubby soil of New York City. Sure I picked up a curse on Hunts Point North, shaken off only by Yorkshire air, fruit & veg, and the desecration of the idols who peered down from my walls. Out went the drugs, the bad boyfriends, the sexline shifts. In came the London dawn, new love, and stomach churning under tree fucks.

With my new hair came a new me.

� Megan Hall
Reproduced with permission

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