Selections from my first day in Brighton

Yesterday I drank four cups of tea, adopting a favored custom of the natives here in England. I was enjoying my second, sitting at the small kitchen table, when one of Bella's friends, Sara, arrived, and the two tall, blonde young women came and stood in the kitchen door. Sara had just returned from her maiden flight as a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic, and she was full with the experience, telling about it in a laughing but excited manner. Before she took the job she had, she said, always been made queasy by the smell of airline food ("it made you vomit," interrupted Bella, "I've seen you"), but interestingly, while working with the food for a number of hours she suuffered no ill effects. Her first trip had been a flight from London to Barbados, which Shania Twain was on, seated in first class with her husband and young son. During the flight one of the attendants asked the seven-year-old boy if he wanted a bread roll, and he hesitated, then said she would have to ask his mother. When Ms. Twain was appealed to, she first said, "did he ask for a roll?" When the attendant said, no, she had offered him one, mother decided, "yes, but only a brown one." The boy timidly took the roll and nibbled on the end, fearfully watching his mother out the corner of his eye (Ok, I made up that last part).

If Shania was a bit cold and imperious, her husband was the opposite, chatty and friendly. But, Sara added, "he's quite ugly. Possibly the ugliest man I've ever seen."

Rachael took me out to walk around Brighton. For the first time in "weeks," as everyone we met repeated, it wasn't raining, but the day was cool and blustery. We walked along the bohemian streets, which reminded me of Camden Market in London, though less touristy. There were many young people about from various parts of Europe (there are numerous English-language schools in town), a number of hippy sorts, and lots and lots of queer people--apparently Brighton is something like the Provincetown of England.

We went into small thrift stores, each supporting some cause such as Oxfam or Vets for Pets; we searched for potential pirate costume items, as we were supposed to attend a medieval wedding the next day (more tomoorow). We also stopped into used bookstores so I could examine the travel book sections. Eventually we ended up down at the seaside where the wind was blowing a gale and big foamy waves were marching in and crashing on the rocky shingle. A thin spray filled the air, even well back from the water's edge, and no one was having a bathe. Out on Brighton Pier we had fish and chips, and the Irishman behind the counter said he couldn't believe it was July, what with the terrible weather and the resulting small number of people out for a stroll. There were just enough folks for me (including a flotilla of elderly in wheelchiars, well tucked in with lap blankets, their wispy hair tossing about their heads), and I found the wind and waves dramatic and was not at all put out.

For dinner Rachael made pasta and a big dish of homity (a sort of potato pie), and several of her friends came over to eat. Debbie arrived first, a dapper woman in corduroy pants, brown suit jacket, waistcoat and snowy white shirt. We had the same haircut and I immediately took a liking to her. She and her partner have a two-year-old daughter named Lilith, and we talked about the value and power of such a name. Like most people with small children, she talked of Lilith with a mixture of awe, dread, and overwhelming love. A couple soon appeared: Melanie and Rachael met in a drama class, and Melanie works at the local art house movie theater; Melanie's boyfriend Steven is a tennis coach and plays bass in a punk band, and later I wished I'd asked him if he'd read Infinite Jest.

Two more woman arrived, Ella and Lucy, both midwives. At one point in the evening after dinner and well into the drinking, they and Rachael launched in on a series of midwifery anecdotes, the most memorable of which was about a woman who had had an orgasm with each contraction. At that point, Donald, a gay man in his fifties who Rachael hadn't seen for four years but who had called up earlier depressed and wanting company, launched into a story of his own birth. Apparently one day when he was fourteen, sitting with his mother and grandmother, his grandmother had said, "go on, you ought to tell him." And his mother replied, "no I don't have to do any such thing," but his grandmother persisted, and finally his mother did tell him--that he was actually born, at home, into a toilet. This was the punchline of the story, one Donald meant to be a surprise, but all three midwives broke in and said that such a thing was not at all unusual, that it happened all the time, you'd be surprised.

Later Ella's husband arrived, Harper, a striking looking man, tall and bald and bearded. He manages bands and singers, including at one time Goldfrap (who Rachael tells me has been on The L-Word), and who was also his ex-girlfriend and had recently fired him because he married Ella. He had been at a pub somewhere and took a taxi over becasue he was a little drunk. He arrived a bit late for Ella's taste; and she didn't like that he had been smoking cigarettes. "I can smell them on your hand and in your beard," she said.

He replied, deadpan, "I don't smoke."

"He does," she said, turning to us, "he's a sneaky bastard."

Harper said, "I haven't been smoking."

Ella laughed and said, "you have." A few minutes later she was planting a series of kisses on his smooth pate.

Donald told several bad jokes that I can't remember, though one involved the police consulting a monkey at an accident scene. He was a little drunk and got testy if anyone spoke in the midst of one of his story jokes. After Donald left in a taxi, Ella said something about him, and Harper, who didn't know Donald, said, "you mean the damaged man." Ella objected strongly to this term, saying that Donald was "lovely."

Harper is the first person I've met on the trip who has been to Minnesota. He was there in Janaury years ago and it was "bloody cold" and he was not impressed, in part because he was miserable about some woman and in part because he didn't manage to spot Prince in any of the clubs.

Ella and Harper had only been married a year or so. She had last been with a woman, and for some time, and when they broke up, her partner, from spite, had seduced a woman who Ella had long had a crush on. This woman, who owned a shop called Pussy that sold retro and kink sundries, was Harper's wife, though not for much longer. Harper and Ella, separately, both had to give up their houses, but their two ex-s pooled their resources and bought a nice big place and moved in together. Subsequently Ella and Harper had been thrown together at family functions (everyone involved had children), and soon they were dating.... There's more to this complicated story, but I'll leave it there. It was one of many that these intriguing people shared over the course of the night. Rachael told stories too, the comic variety, sung to the accompaniment of a ukelele in a spoken word/song style for which she is deservedly admired by her friends, who laugh and join in and add verses of their own.

Though there was much hilarity throughout the evening, it also had a sort of memorial feel, as Rachael's friends are quite distraught that she is leaving them next month and moving around the world to Alice Springs. A place she sang a long song about.

My first day in Brighton was a success.