Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz: An Extract

Set in Glasgow in 2001 and told from the point of view of Vicky Romeo, a twenty-one-year-old working-class butch-about-town, ‘Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz’ is a girl-meets-girl rom-com slant on Shakespeare’s classic, ‘Romeo And Juliet’.  Fearless Femme couldn’t be more excited to give you a taster of this novel here first and whet your appetite for the rest… scheduled for proud publication in February 2019, with Knight Errant Press.  Huge congrats to our lovely contributor, Ely Percy.  

Illustration: Ida Henrich 

*

It’s quarter past ten and Julie still hasn’t arrived. Minty makes a few smart comments as she passes then begins serving a crowd who’ve just come through the door.  

Maybe Julie has car trouble or maybe she’s the kind of girl who likes to make an entrance. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Rachel Hunt, alias Doc Martin Boi, owner of Sandra Dees, and apart from Sam the closest person I have to a godparent, swaggers over to the bar.  She’s the same age as Sam but looks nearer forty and has a hairline scar up one side of her face. She’s run a lot of rackets in her time and someone once told me that she’d even been in the can for GBH. But her bar, it has to be said, is the smoothest run operation in the pink triangle, which is probably why she drinks there herself on her nights off.  

Rachel claps me on the back, and signals to Minty to bring us some drinks.

‘‘Pint of heavy, Min, and whatever Vick’s having.’’

‘‘Cheers,’’ I say, trying to resist the temptation to watch the door.  

‘‘How’s yer maw and Sam? They’ve not been in for a while,’’ she says.

‘‘Sam’s got a new job managing a gym that’s just opened in Paisley,’’ I reply.  

‘‘So,’’ says Rachel, ‘‘how long’s that now they’ve been together?’’

The time is getting on, Julie’s late, and much as I like Rachel, I can’t be bothered getting into a conversation about Ma and Sam’s love life. You’d think after more than a decade, people would get sick of asking that question.

 

*

 

I’ve always seen Sam as a friend, rather than just a stepparent. Although sometimes I call her ‘‘Daddy’’ to mess with her head. Anyway, she did a better job of helping Ma to bring me up than my real Dad ever did.  

There are only ten years between Sam and me, and almost ten years between Sam and Mama. They met at a gym class when Ma went there to get in shape, but their relationship was never talked about when I was a kid. They never kissed or hugged in front of me or did anything that would allow me to acknowledge them as a couple. As far as I was told she was just Ma’s friend who sometimes stayed overnight.  

I liked Sam right from the start: she was never too busy for a game of dominoes, and she taught me how to play gin rummy and poker for matchsticks. I always thought it was funny how she dressed like a boy and had a boy’s name, but then I knew Sam was short for Samantha so that was ok.   

Sam also took me to ball games and ice hockey, which is something Dad had never done. It almost felt like we were a real family. I’d never seen Ma so happy before and sometimes I even wished Sam WAS a boy cause then she and Ma could get married and live together.  

I was twelve when I found out that Ma and Sam were gay. Looking back, I suppose I should have guessed because there were only two beds in our house.  

 

*

 

It was a Monday night, I remember cause I had band practice. Sam picked me up outside the school gate and told me she was taking me for a burger, her treat. I was thrilled about this, and I didn’t mind trailing my books plus my violin all the way to Glasgow, because a) I loved spending time with Sam, and b) going out for fast food was a no-go ever since Ma declared a zero-tolerance policy on meat.

So there I was, all psyched up to go to Burger King, mentally ordering my regular coke, regular fries, regular hamburger ‘‘hold-the-mustard, please’’, when Sam walked straight past it and crossed the road, leading me down a criss-cross of darkened alleyways through the ‘‘dodgy’’ part of town. There, in the vestibule of what had looked to me like a miniature Chrysler building (but with a rainbow flag and multi-coloured stain glass windows), she explained to me how this was the place she called her second home: she had taken me to Sandra Dee’s Diner.  

For the first time in my life, I felt as though I’d landed on my own planet. Inside, there were people I could identify with: there were dames with short hair who dressed in guys’ clothes, and one of them was even wearing a shirt and tie.

‘‘Hey, Sam!’’ A big guy with a slicked back mullet clapped Sam on the back. He looked so tough he could have played a part in Goodfellas.

Sam’s face broke into a huge grin. ‘‘Hiya Rach! How you doing, girl?’’

I blinked and had to do a double take.  

‘‘Hey, who’s the baby dyke?’’  Rachel meant me, of course: grass stained pants, baseball cap and a baggy football top that barely masked the recent eruption of my small but noticeable breasts.

‘‘It’s about time we got you fitted for a bra,’’ Ma had stated, only days before.

Not likely, I had thought, Joe McPherson in my class has bigger tits than me and he doesn’t have to wear a girly bra.  

‘Vicky, this is a good friend of mine, Miss Rachel Hunt.’ Rachel took my hand in her huge fist, shaking it, lightly.

‘Rachel, this is Vicky,’ she said, pausing, before adding, ‘Maria’s daughter.’

‘Who, the hetty?’

I’d never heard the word ‘hetty’ before, and I assumed it was another name for someone who’s Italian.

‘Shut it,’ said Sam. Then Sam looked between me and Rachel with a conspiratorial look in her eye, and she said, ‘I think it’s about time me and you had a little chat, pal.’

That evening, I heard the whole story of Sam and Maria’s forbidden love: how Mama was young and naïve when she met my father, how she did her best by me, how Sam and Mama had tried to hide their relationship…

‘Ye see, me and yer mum…we’re…we’re…’

Spontaneously, I interrupted:  ‘Dykes?’

Sam laughed, nervously. ‘Dae ye know what a dyke is?’

Slowly, I nodded; then I paused, chewing my bottom lip, and I said: ‘But I thought only guys could be poofs?’

 

*

 

I sit studying my watch. It’s a quarter to eleven, now. Half an hour is fashionably late but any more than that is bordering on disrespect.  

She’s playing me. She’s playing me like I played all those other girls before her.  I’ve never had to try very hard to win any woman’s affections. I’ve always had more than my fair share of honeys falling at my feet. And if at first I don’t succeed… Candlelight, soft music and a bottle of red wine usually does the trick.  

I sit examining my fingernails.

‘Hey see that wee burd over there – ’ Minty’s on form tonight, chatting up everything with a pair of tits. She nudges the third pint of the evening into my hand.

‘Her up at the bar,’ she points.

‘Mmm.’

‘She was asking about you, wanted to know if you were single.’ I shrug. It’s the same little alco-pop-drinking brunette that I seen last night, but suddenly I ain’t interested. ‘C’mon man, what’s the matter with you?  You’re not still hung up on that hetty burd, man, are you?’

No comment.

‘She’s fucking stood ye up, man.’ That’s three times in less than ten seconds she’s said ‘‘man’’. I tell her that. ‘‘Fucksake. Who the fuck cares, man? What is it wi you lot, anyway? Yous are all acting like a bunch of pansies. Mel and Cherie are playin happy families wi their new flat, rings on their fingers. All they need is the two point four cats. And Paris, she had an argument wi her maw and now she’s moved in wi Scarface.’’

I roll my eyes and shake my head.  I always said Paris was a loser.

I find it hard to believe that someone like Julie Turner would give her the time of day, but there are plenty of folks backing up that rumour.

‘‘You let a burd into your life and all of a sudden, the walls are all poof pink…’’

‘‘…there’s pot pourri all over the bog and knickers in your cornflakes,’’ I finish Minty’s sentence. It’s a line from one of her favourite films, Number One Gangster. She used to insist on watching it every time she came over to stay at Ma’s house. Sam was pretty into it as well but I think it’s a bit of a sucky film.

‘‘D’ye think they’re shagging?’’ she says.

‘‘Who?’’

‘‘Paris and Scarface.’’

‘‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’’ I tell her.

‘‘Imagine leaving a fucking posh house in Kelvinside where she’d been staying rent free wi her parents,’’ continued Minty, ‘‘to go live in a bedsit wi that skanky weirdo.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ I agree. ‘‘Pretty fucked up.’’ I’m getting bored of this conversation. And the idea of Scarface and Paris getting it on is making my insides crawl.

‘‘But not as fucked up as you mate,’’ smirks Minty. ‘‘You’re chasing some stuck up rich bitch who’s not even a real dyke.’’ I tell her to shut the fuck up, but I’m beginning to think she might be right. ‘‘Awright, but tell me one thing, first.’’

I sigh and take another swig of flat beer. ‘‘What’s that then?’’

Minty grins at me. ‘‘Has she gave you yer Nat King, yet?’’

‘‘Hey, gimme a lil bit of respect,’’ I say. ‘‘Why does it always have to come down to that?’’

‘‘Obviously that’s a no then.’’ I scrape back my bar stool and push away my pint.  It tastes like cat’s piss, anyway. ‘‘Where are you going?’’

‘‘I don’t have to listen to this shit. I’m getting the fuck outta here.’’

Minty sits there looking all smug like she was judge, jury and executioner and she’s just proved that Julie was a bonafide heterosexual.

*

Copyright of the above extract remains with the author and may not be

reproduced without the prior permission of author and publisher.

For queries, please contact Knight Errant Press.  

Ely Percy is a Scottish fiction writer, a memoirist and an epistolarian.  Their first work ‘Cracked: Recovering From Traumatic Brain Injury’ (JKP, 2002) took the form of both a creative and an academic text; they graduated with distinction from Glasgow University’s Mphil in Creative Writing in 2004, and since then their work has appeared in many reputable literary journals (e.g. The Edinburgh Review, The Scotsman Orange, New Writing Scotland, Causeway).  Over the last fifteen years, Percy has facilitated countless writing workshops for various minority groups; they’ve been writer-in-residence in a prison, they’ve edited a lesbian publication, they’ve worked as a community librarian in an LGBT centre. They are currently writing a neo-queer-noir novel.

Ida Henrich is a German Cartoonist, Illustrator and Designer based in Scotland. She has worked with award winning publishers, online coaches and magazines. Ida is a graduate of Communication Design at the Glasgow School of Art where she specialised in Illustration. In her own work she explores themes such as sex-education, growing up, and women’s experiences. Her comics and illustrations are written for both men and women and aim to start an open dialogue between partners, friends, parents, and children about their experiences. Ida believes that Art is a powerful way to make ideas and feelings tangible.

As Art Editor at Fearless Femme, Ida is responsible for all things visual, including the correspondence with our visual artists, the design and realisation of the online magazine and the illustration of our amazing cover women. She also creates artwork for some of our articles, poems and stories.

Ida loves her coffee in the morning, that feeling after finishing an illustration and going for a run in the (Scottish) sun; and pilates on the rainy days. Ida enjoys SciFi books and autobiographies, and autobiographical comics. She is always delighted to meet new people on trains but is also smitten being home alone colouring in an illustration that she has made way too intricate while listening to Woman’s Hour. You can contact her at ida@fearlessly.co.uk.