Be a Dog for Your Daddy

(short story published in New Trespass, summer 2012)

He wanted northern dirt on his shoes. Grime and grit. The kind he used to play in as a kid back on that council estate in Sheffield fifty years ago. When he was underprivileged. When he didn’t have food to eat. When he didn’t have love from his daddy. When he lived the blues. Those fucking blues.

Those fucking shoes. American sneakers with black canvas tops and white rubber soles. Converse. Worn by baseball players. Worn by him, back then, when he first ran from home. Running to the sound of rhythm and blues. To the sound of black soul. With blaxploitation movies in his head, that turned his downtown West Street into 10^th street any-American-city. Thinking any-American-city had a ghetto with a 10^th street. Thinking any American ghetto would recognize the pale-faced son of an alcoholic steel-man as a brother. Especially as his daddy hated him and his music. Those fucking shoes. Those fucking blues.

But, what the fuck! I’m glad my feet are his size. I’m glad I’m five seven. I’m glad he gave me this job. I’m glad I met him, or, at least, his PA Dahlia.

"Yeah, just wear them on the estate, scuff them, get them dirty, the usual deal," she tells me when we hook up before the trip. Six months after we first meet at The Cage. When I agree to the other thing with the spike-heeled boots and the frock. For the price. For the fucking price.

We sit at the counter in the American Diner in Old Compton Street and she hands me a plastic bag with the box inside and places rail tickets in front of me.

"He can’t go himself. He still feels the hurt. But it’s his big comeback tour. It’s stripped to his vest and jeans, like in the beginning. He needs Yorkshire dirt on his shoes."

Then she unzips a brown leather handbag with buckles and zips I guess is Mulberry. Slides a long smooth hand inside and pulls out the kind of phone I cannot afford to buy. With the camcorder and the Internet connection.

"Here, he wants you to use it. You gotta phone at a certain time. His number’s in the address book. You gotta send him a live picture. You can’t go faking this trip."

I take the phone, roll it in my palm and open it. Click it on and look at her on screen, adjusting until she’s centred, her red lips cracking a fake smile. Like saying, this fake smile is for you. Professional and true to itself.

I take the tickets and a roll of twenty pound notes. She says it comes to two hundred. You can buy your own refreshments. I flag a cab on Shaftesbury Avenue, ride it to Kings X with my i-pod on random. Listen to a boyband’s lament for lost love followed by a slice of cut-throat rock trash by the New York Dolls. In the station buy a sandwich at one of the concessions. With bacon, lettuce and tomato inside. I mean to eat it on the journey but catch the smell of grilled meat as I finger Attitude magazine in WH Smith. I take a bite, dump Attitude and pick out Dazed. The boys are sexier and it matters that they aren’t so clean cut. Thin guys with expensive haircuts in cool shirts. And the shots are designed to appeal to hetero vanity. I take it and finish eating in the check-out queue. The train’s on time. My seat in First Class wide and deep. I spread the pages and flick through them. Feeling good about the job. Feeling good about the money tucked into my jeans pocket. I love the way Dahlia deals with me. The way she fucking deals.

Like when she told me I could make money if I played a game with her. Back then, in The Cage, on that cold December night three months before. When she came across to the bar and tapped my shoulder. When she asked, "Excuse me, you available tonight?" After I told her it depended on who and how much.

"You know who he is don’t you?"

"Yeah, I told her. It’s my job to know."

"Well," she said. "Mark can be very generous to a young man who likes to play."

Mark Schroeder. The English BB King. With the American inflection and flat northern vowels.

Yeah, I thought. I can play.

"Yeah," I said. "Tell me exactly what he wants."

She took me over to meet him where he sat in a corner at a table. He looked white and shrunken. Black T-shirt with faded new vintage Levis. Black faux workboots. His hair limp to his nape. Balding scalp through a gel-matt sheen of black dyed strands. Toad eyes. Bloodshot from whiskey. I can smell it as he makes room for me after Dahlia tells him my name. After I squeeze in beside him and feel breath on my ear as he puts his right, guitar strumming arm, around my shoulder.

"How you doing Jamie?" he asks me. "Where did you get that frock?"

"The frock? Oh, it’s from Topshop, nothing special."

"Topshop, you little cheapskate. Is it all you can afford?"

"Yes, Mr Schroeder, I’m only a poor South London girl."

"Are you now? That’s good. That’s very good you piece of shit. Tell me about yourself. Where do you come from Jamie? What fucking council estate spewed you out?"

"Brixton," I tell him, because I doubt he will know what a Peabody Estate is. Doubt he wants to know about my education.

"Brixton, where all the spades live. I bet you get called some names when you go out dressed like that, don’t you Jamie, you little whore?"

"Yes, Mr Schroeder, I do Mr Schroeder."

And so on until we get back to his flat an hour or so later. Dahlia pays me in the lounge as he disappears into the kitchen to get a bottle of booze. I place the money in my knee-high black spike-heeled synthetic leather boots. Then she leaves me alone and goes to wherever she goes. And he comes back in pouring Scotch into a glass and chucks a plastic dog bowl down onto the carpet and pours Scotch into that too. Then tells me to kneel on all fours and bark like a dog. A fucking dog.

He sits on a brown leather sofa, watches me crawl around and sip whiskey from a dog bowl. My frock hitched up over my arse. Pants down to my knees. Knees sore. Stomach turning from whiskey and the smell of carpet as it takes him an hour to shoot into a red neckerchief. Then he says to call a cab and pick it up on the next street. Before I go I let him see he doesn’t own me and has not humiliated me for real. I do this by the way I re-arrange my pants and dress and pick up my coat from an armchair and put it on and check my face in the mirror that hangs over a restored Victorian fireplace. And how I look in his eyes when I tell him Dahlia has my number any time he needs to call me. Oh, and thank you for the money. And I see he knows because his eyes look away. Those toad eyes. And I know it bothers him. And I know he will be back for more. Because I know these men and know they always need to stretch their fucking limits.

So the next time Dahlia calls she says to wait home until she arrives. So I dress in my flat. In my fucking Peabody flat. Straighten my hair so it falls to my shoulders. Put on light foundation because my skin’s darker with the weather hot and clear. I make my eyes black and wide. Wear navy Mui Mui bought with his money. Stuff the tits with fake resin breasts. Leave tanned legs oiled and naked. Pink stilettos. When the doorbell goes check there’s no neighbours on the landing because I usually do not dress before I get to whatever dump I’m playing in. Then skip down the stairs and out onto the street. I see Dahlia next to a blacked out 4x4. She pays me in cash before she swings the rear door and says have fun. Then walks off to wherever she goes and Mark Schroeder snuffs the brake and puts his foot down.

We drive through Croydon on the A23 to Purley, then taken the A22 out past the suburbs, into the country. By the time we stop the sun is down and we are off the main road in a car park lit by headlights. Other cars parked around the sides facing in. Mark Schroeder pulls up the hood on his sweat top and steps out onto the dirt. Opens my door and tells me to get out too. I slip out and feel my heels sink. See men opening car doors, heaving themselves into darkness. He tells me to walk with him as he steps into the middle, into the light. I have to press my toes forward to keep from losing my shoes. The men watch us come. When we are in the centre he tells me to get down. Go on you little slut, all the way down, on your paws. I do as he says. He lifts my dress over my waist. Now crawl in the dirt you little slut. Like a dog. Be a dog for your daddy.

When he’s played with me. When he’s shown the men what he can do. When he’s shot on the dirt and watched all the others do the same, as I bark like a dog, he tells me I can get in the car. It feels a long drive back and he only speaks to ask for directions when we are back in Brixton. As we turn into my street I thank him for the money. Let him know with my voice that he hasn’t done it for real. My voice personable and professional. I’m upbeat and pleased with my work. I get out of his motor and if he listens he hears my heels click as I walk away satisfied. 

A couple of weeks later, Dahlia phones and asks would I break in his shoes? Would I break in Mark Schroeder’s shoes? For a fucking living. I wore all those girl’s heels. Must be I had little feet. Mark is size seven. So fucking small. And he can’t stand new shoes. And he’s always buying shoes, something to do with not having shoes as a kid. "Just wear them in. Scuff em up a bit. You know, run around in them for a day. We’ll pay you by the hour. He buys a pair a week. You got good work for good money." So I went to work the following day. Walking around Soho in Mark Schroeder’s new shoes. Walking around Brixton, near my flat. Walking up to Brockwell Park and scuffing them in the grass. 

Those fucking shoes. I put a new pair on as we roll out of Chesterfield, last stop before Sheffield. They fit good. Easy. I place my baby blue Paul Smith brogues in the bag and let my raw selvedge classic 505 Levis slip back over my ankles with the half inch cuff showing the red stitch in the thread. Traditional jeans with traditional sneakers. Levis and Converse. Fated. Fucking fated. 

Wybourn is a council estate twenty minutes from the station. You go up behind, past Park Hill flats, work your way left and pick up the bottom of City Road. Then climb the hill and turn into the estate at Manor Oaks Road. I follow Dahlia’s instructions and come round under a hill with a row of cheap terracing. You go up the grassy slope. It’s where he played as a kid and has family he still sends money to. You go up the slope and get dirt on the Converse. I go up to the top where other kids used to come and make him go crying home to a daddy who didn’t like his sissy ways. With his little hands and little feet and his music always playing. And I’m scuffing the white rim of the soles and making sure the black canvas is mucked, when I see a bunch of kids come out from behind the houses.

Five of them with a white pitbull on a leash. With the bitch straining to run. The kid with the leash leaning back, digging heals in to keep from falling forward. Scowling and shouting at it to steady. The others with their eyes fixed on me as they come in their Reebocks and polyester JD tracksuits. I think about turning. But they come quick. Surround me, the dog yapping at my knees.

The boy holding the leash asks what’s in my bag. "Shoes," I tell him. "Shoes and a magazine." He nods to one of the others and as I feel my bag taken from behind I let it go. The dog keeps leaping off the ground, the leash jerking him back and up as he chucks his weight at me. The other boys look inside the bag and one of them pulls out the shoes. This kid, about twenty, with bad skin and cropped hair, holds them up laughing. His mate holds up Dazed.

"You’re a fucking queer aren’t you?" the boy with the dog says.

"I like fashion."

"Fucking fashion. We’re in fashion. I don’t know what you’re in."

Then they find the phone.

"Look at this," one of the others says.

"Yeah," I say. "Careful with that. Don’t fuck with it, it’s expensive and it isn’t mine."

"Let me have that," the boy with the dog says.

It flies over my head and he catches it clean. Then I approach him and he lets out the leash. The dog nips me with shark teeth that take the surface flesh. I jump back as he re-curls the leather around his hand. The others close around me. He flips the phone open. They hold me, pushing me down onto my knees and step back. That’s when I tell him the phone belongs to Mark Schroeder, a personal friend of mine.

"Mark fucking Schroeder, who the fuck’s that?" the boy with the dog asks as he clicks on the phone.

"He’s a really rich guy, a rock star."

"Oh that Mark Schroeder, who used to live round here."

"Yeah, him."

He clicks through the address book.

"Oh Yeah. Here’s his number. What are you doing with his phone?"

"He gave it to me."

"Mark Schroeder gave you a phone?"

He rings the number and jams it to his ear to listen to the reply. Tells Mark Schroeder he’s got someone here says he knows him. I can hear Mark Schroeder say something like who the fuck is it?

"A queer fucker, says he’s your friend."

The voice is lost in the breeze but the boy with the dog presses the phone harder to his ear as he hands the leash to one of the others. Then he frames me in the camera, focussing and weighing the shot. As he chooses the moment his scowl relaxes.

"Bark like a dog," he tells me as a smile splits his face. "Be a dog for your daddy."


© danny broderick

pic from here