Thonglateer Extraordinaire

Because I’ll be busy for the next few days as I sit and stare unblinking at a computer screen, I thought I’d keep the blog active by offering you all a sneak peak at my latest opus. It’s called ‘Thonglateer Extraordinaire!’ and I think it’s the most honest account of life on the North Wales stripping circuit. It also happens to be my autobiography.

Gabby is the mastermind behind the book, and she’s even designed a cover for it in anticipation of our flogging it all my gigs in the next year. The first chapter covers my early life and the training that goes into becoming a successful man of the thong. Today, I’m posting the first part of chapter 1.

Thonglateer Extraordinaire!
By
Chip Dale

Chapter I

The Five Mysteries of One Eye Buchanan

I’ll mention it only once so we don’t have to mention it again: yes, I know who I look like.

I’m sure it’s as much a curse to me as it’s a blessing to him. But believe me when I say that I know nothing about the Liberal Democrat’s policy on second homes in Wales and I’m also certain that Lembit Opik doesn’t know the first thing about indulging female fantasies involving pots of home-made raspberry jam and a plasterer’s trowel. Or if he does, I’m sure he keeps it out of his manifesto promises.

Which just backs up the point I’m making: I’m not him and he’s not me. I mean, if I was him, would I be stripping for a living? Okay, perhaps I would. I really can’t say. I’ve not met the man. But I do know myself and I know the path I have taken to become the most successful male stripper in Wales. And if that’s the story you want to hear, then you’re in luck. That’s the story I’m about to tell.

The path that led me to my start on the Welsh stripping circuit began one October night in the nineteen eighties when a baby was born with unusually well-defined abdominal muscles and a delight in shaking his unreasonably large genitals at all the nurses. There, you might say, the legend was born and I’ve hardly changed since. I’m still covered in baby oil, only now the nurses are often drunk, it’s usually Friday night at the Green Dragon Tavern in the heart of Bangor’s town centre, and instead of my blanket, I’m to be found swaddled in a plumber’s outfit or dressed like a bare-arsed cowboy.

With the name Chip Dale, I suppose stripping was in my stars, or at least as far as taking your clothes off for a living can be said to be augured by an alignment of the spheres, if you’ll excuse the early and totally unwarranted descent to the double entendre. There are few jobs that a man can do in Wales when he’s blessed by fantastic good looks, a body sculpted from Italian marble, and a personality to match. The fact that I disliked underwear from an early age merely added to the unusual set of circumstances which led to my declaring to my family on my sixteenth birthday that I was moving to Bangor to become the best know thongman on the face of the Welsh earth.

For the record, I was christened Crispen Walter Dale. I normally tell people that my mother was inspired by the St. Crispen’s Day speech from Henry the Fifth but I intend to be nothing less than honest with you. I was actually named after the Crisp’n Dry adverts from the seventies. My mother had an addiction to fried potato snacks, which is probably why I was known from an early age as Chip.

My life as a stripper began in my formative school years. I’d always take longer than the other boys whenever we changed for gym and I remember the PE teacher once putting me on report for taking off all my clothes when we were only meant to be changing into our pumps to watch some actors perform Shakespeare in the gym. But that was me. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I took every opportunity to prepare for it.

It was, I see now, an unusual decision for a young man to make but stripping was my calling and I could never betray it. I remember once being given one of those computerised career tests just before I left school. When my results came out of the printer, I was shocked to see that it had recommended veterinary work. I demanded to see the career’s advisor and I marched indignantly into his office to ask him why male stripping wasn’t an option. He just turned white.

‘Why would you want to become a stripper, Dale?’ asked the man in a grey suit and topped by a wayward combover.

‘Well, sir, I think I have what it takes.’

He ran a finger around his collar, looked nervously towards his office door and then slapped down his hair which had leapt up in apparent shock. Only then did he stand up and quietly close the door before leaning his weak back against the frosted glass which magnified the rattle in his chest.

‘And what do you think it takes to become a stripper, Dale?’ he wheezed.

‘A big personality, sir.’

‘A big personality?’

‘Oh yes, sir. A big personality and rhythm.’

‘Rhythm?’

‘To dance, sir. I don’t reckon you can’t be a male stripper if you can’t dance.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said, his throat suddenly sounding quite dry. He walked slowly back across the room and sat down at his desk where he began to sort career pamphlets for people wanting to work at the Bradford and Bingley. The poor man. I can see now that he was well out of his depth. I don’t suppose he would have known what to say if I’d gone in there wanting to become a nuclear physicist or a Bavarian bugle salesman. ‘Well, so long as you think you’ve got what it takes,’ he muttered finally and shifted his glasses on his nose. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t like to stand in your way, Dale, but you must understand that I can’t recommend this choice of employment. You never heard it from me.’ He briefly smiled and gave me a flash of tobacco stained teeth. ‘You’ve not considered office work? The Bradford and Bingley offer a very reasonable pension plan.’

‘Office work?’ I shifted uneasily where I stood. ‘I don’t think a big personality and a dexterity about the hips suit the Bradford and Bingley, sir.’ And as if to prove my point, I demonstrated the Chipster’s hip-swivel that would later become one of my signature moves.

‘So, you don’t like the idea of office work at the Bradford?’ he laughed, hesitantly.

‘Of course not, sir. I was born to strip.’

‘Were you? Well, good luck to you, Dale. We all have out crosses to bear and I can see that yours is bigger than most.’

‘You can say that again,’ I replied and gave him another thrust of my hips.

‘Yes, well, could you please stop that now?’ he asked, the slight flush that had reappeared on his cheeks now disappearing for good. ‘And I’d prefer it if our little conversation doesn’t go any further than this room. Wouldn’t like it said that I recommended a lad take his clothes off for a living.’

‘I quite understand. I don’t suppose you get many people coming in here saying they want to become a male stripper.’

He laughed and took off his pen top for no apparent reason before realising his mistake and screwing it back on.

‘No, no, you are quite unique, Dale,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘But so long as you think you’ve got what it takes I don’t want to dissuade you. To tell you the truth, dissuading people isn’t my job. I’m here to give you all positive vibes.’

‘Oh, I’ve got positive vibes, sir.’

‘I can see that, Dale. And good luck with them. Good luck with your big personality, your sense of rhythm, and your positive vibes. I can see that you’ve got what it takes to be… to be… er…’ He looked down a paper on his desk as he almost whispered. ‘A male exotic dancer.’

‘Of course, sir. I don’t suppose it does any harm having an enormous penis.’

He looked at me long and hard. ‘No, Dale,’ he said, with a look of utter envy. ‘I don’t suppose it does you any harm whatsoever.’

I was given special dispensation to leave school early that day and I never went back. Nor did Mr. Morris who I’m told arrived at the staff-room complaining of feeling unwell and went home soon after lunch. He was never seen again. Some say he retired to a monastery but others say he went to live in Thailand before he died after spending five years indulging in untold carnal delights. Some say he just back a Liberal Democrat. I don’t like to think my interview had anything to do with his disappearance, though when the nights are long and my spirits depressed, I often think of Mr. Morris, his grey suit, his combover, his weak chest. I wonder if the Thai air did him any good, or whether once touched by Chip Dale’s dream, he couldn’t live with himself. In a way, you might say that just the dream of being the Chipster had killed a lesser man.

The End

I’m finished. I’m done. I’ve reached the point of completion. I’m at an end.

It’s taken me far too long to finish it but a draft of my novel is now sitting finished on my desk in its gloriously unpolished state. Perhaps I’ll post a photograph of it. Perhaps I won’t. There are more problems with it than with an inbred child, more fatal flaws than a Shakespearean hero. In the end, once I’d cut away all the unused chapters that always drop to the end of the big unwieldy document, discarded paragraphs that have never worked, humanely put to sleep jokes that never stood a chance of living, the book weighs in at a rather measly 82694 words. Perhaps I’ll rewrite some of the end and get it up to 90,000… There are more jokes in it than pages, but whether there are more laughs is a different matter. All I do know is that The Chipster needs a rest. Half of it was scribbled too quickly and the rest drawn out of me with the speed of a sadistic dentist pulling a tooth. It took me a month to write the first 50,000 words and five months to write the next 30,000.

I now feel a bit numb yet I’m already thinking about what I’d like to write next…

My First Reviewer

I thought it time to give you what all the best Sunday supplements would call ‘a sneak peak’ of the Chipster’s novel. It’s now 74,000 words or 341 pages as my word processor counts them. I’d tell you more but I’m afraid of what you might say.

Gabby curled up on the sofa last night with the first two chapters on her lap. I hate waiting to hear what somebody makes of my work. I paced before the fireplace, nervously fingering my thong, waiting for the first chuckle, the first hint that my manuscript might have a place in the world.

I waited forty three minutes before she made a noise. Even then, it wasn’t remotely like a laugh.

‘Chippy,’ she drawled. ‘I thought you say this comedy.’

Well, the Romanians may have had a barbaric history but surely they’ve never been as cruel.

‘It is a comedy!’ I gasped once my sobs and tears came back under control. ‘I worked hard with every line, spent months making it pleasing to the ear and well suited to the funny bone. Every single page has been rewritten a dozen times, honing it so that not a syllable sits out of place.’

‘Yes,’ she said, in that slightly patronising way she has when she finds she has the upper hand, ‘but you forget to include jokes.’

‘They’re there!’ I exclaimed. ‘There on the page. Every single line has either a guffaw or a chuckle guaranteed. There’s not a line without something to bring the wry smile to your lips.’

‘No, no,’ she said, flicking to the first page. ‘I tell you how to fix. You take this line of page 1.’

She cleared her throat and read out the opening I’d laboured hard to get just right.

Here, in the forgotten backwoods of darkest Bangor, I’m ensconced in the pungency of some Vicks VapoRub and a stewing peppermint tea; saying goodbye to a winter cold almost as if I’m saying goodbye to winter herself. Yet I’m also sitting here, amongst the coughs, sneezes, and Boots decongestants, wondering how Wales could have gone so very wrong of late.

‘This example,’ she said, ‘of where you need good joke about farmer and his pig.’

I could say nothing. She picked up a pen from the jar I keep on the coffee table and she set to work. Two minutes later she set it aside and examined the scribble that had all but obliterated my original prose.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Now let us see if this better.’

Here, in Bangor, farmer says to pig. 'Matilda, I very poor so I have to kill you for meat.' Pig looks at farmer. Farmer says. 'I know you don’t want to die but such is life'. He gets big knife and cuts pig’s throat and chops piggy up for meat. Farmer takes meat to market but nobody buys meat. He says: 'Why not you want to buy my pig meat?' People say to him: “Would you buy from man who would cut a poor piggy’s throat?'

I sat there disturbed in so many ways they were fighting for attention as Gabby rolled on the sofa, holding her stomach as laughter strained her every muscle.

‘Oh! So, so funny!’ she gasped, wiping away tear after tear. ‘What you say Chippy? Isn’t that funnier than all those words. Get down to say who man is and what man wants.’

Back in my office, I spent no more than ten minutes crying, wondering if I truly understand the world. A thong is a simple thing and you can hardly go wrong with one. If only the same were true of words.

Wednesday

Gabby and Monica arrived home late last night having spent the day in Birmingham. I thought my seclusion had come to an end but early this morning, may the saints of thongdom be praised, they announced that their singing career will be advanced if they could spend the next couple of days hounding the music press in London. They want them to take more notice of their new single, 'Cheekytime', due out next week.

You might have noticed that I don’t help promote the poor girls’ careers on this blog and you might have wondered why. Or perhaps you know why. The matter is very clear and most obvious: I’m a humanitarian. Let me not be he who casts the first stone. Or, in this case, a CD single with a booklet of printed lyrics that include the lines:

Love is the fire
Love is desire
Love is the sun
And love is the oven.
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna…
Warm you crumpets.

This little masterpiece Gabby penned herself during her poetry period. She claims to have been inspired by Plath but I say she was inspired by the bottle. There are twelve other verses along the same theme. I don’t suggest you rush out and buy it.

The upshot of all this, however, is that I have yet another quiet day to get on with the novel. It’s roaring along, thanks for asking, and I’ve taken on board all your suggestions. Unfortunately, Steve’s suggestion that I should end the novel like a bad episode of Dallas didn’t inspire me half as much as Andrew’s idea of my ending things with a huge explosion. For one thing, I look nothing like Patrick Duffy and, for a second, the idea of putting TNT under the orphanage was something I'd never considered. I suppose it will make readers shed a tear if I manage it right. All the other suggestions will appear in one guise or another but in a context involving high-explosive and burning carcasses of soft toys.

The other news I have to tell you is that I’ve decided to go for a new look, here at Chipster Central. I had an email from a company offering to do me a new Blogger theme for a reasonable price. So, if it all works out, I’ll be revealing a new look at some point, less derivative than the current one, and more fitting for a man moving away from thongs and into a world where he can keep his clothes on. I’ll be nipping out later this afternoon to have my picture taken in a black roll necked jumper and a corduroy jacket.

The Chipster is changing and black is the new pink.

King Leer: An Extract

Do you ever feel like there are too many words in the world? Writing a blog is like flushing so much effort down the drain. Each day requires more effort and at least one more chance to flush good words away. Which is why I’m working on my first novel set in the nightclubs of North Wales. These words are 'keepers' which means that they don't disappear to be immediately forgotten in the white noise of the blogosphere.

I’ve been struggling for a title but after yesterday’s English lesson, I came up with ‘King Leer’. You see how it’s a clever play on words?

This is an extract from the first draft and occurs early on in the story when my hero, Crispen Leer, meets a mysterious Romanian girl during an audition. It’s not based on real life events, nor is it biographical. It’s a novel of mystery and unhinged love. Think of it as ‘Blue Velvet’ but with more references to coal fields, Romanian midget smuggling, and thong adjustments. I hope it will be written, sold, and published in time for Christmas as I think it will be a perfect gift for all the family.

––––––-

The girl was Romanian and try as he might, he could not overcome the great feeling of wanting to possess her; wholly, without compromise, from the yellowing top of her bleached blonde head to the cracked tips of her nicotine stained fingers.

Crispen leaned at the bar and washed the last of his ginger ale around the bottom of the bottle until the barman returned.

‘You’re in luck,’ said the man, slipping the notepaper back across the counter. He smiled a wide unpleasant smile as welcoming as a razor wound. ‘He said you should wait around. He’ll see you in half an hour.’

‘Does that mean I get an audition?’

The barman’s features collapsed. ‘Listen, I just deliver the message. It’s up to the gaffer if you do your thing.’

The edge of disgust in the man’s voice was hard to ignore but Crispen had lived long enough in the trade to know that not the moral life of a male stripper would never be the first thing any man would imagine. He shared the man’s apathy to the world. He shared his disgust with himself. There was really no reason no to.

He instead turned his attention back to the girl. She’d finished setting up her mike stand and had positioned a small cassette deck on a stool to her side.

She stood behind the microphone and waited as intro beats ticked off and the music began. He recognised it as a Depeche Mode song but couldn’t remember the title. When the girl started to sing, the lyrics didn’t help. They came out strung across a unrecognisable scale that wasn’t wholly melodic.

It took his ear a minute to understand the girl’s problem. Her voice was smoothed like brushed metal and emitted no warmth. Every note glided from her throat as though untouched by her being and the words held a natural pathos that froze on the ear. Studying her performance, Crispen wondered what it would be like to live without the constant rain of emotions. Rolling drops of sentiment came dripping from him when he performed but, with her, emotions existed without form and without function. They were as alien to the girl as the words she was struggling to pronounce. He slumped a little heavier against the bar. The girl’s failure only made his longing the greater and he immediately hated himself for feeling so drawn to her.

After three verses, she shook her head and pressed the stop button on the deck.

‘Not bad,’ said Crispen, stepping forward to the stage. ‘You have a natural gift.’

‘Do I?’ she asked, her voice as impassive in speaking as it had been in singing.

‘I think you phrase things wonderfully,’ he replied. The truth, he thought, was that she sang as impassionately as a cold front which descended on all who lay before it.

‘You can tell my English bad?’ A finger traced the line of her brow and pushed a tendril of blonde hair over her ear.

‘It gives you character,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

She looked to the microphone. ‘I should practice,’ she answered.

Crispen was relieved as soon as she declined his offer. Did he really want to know more? What was there to know except that he was looking for affirmation in any place which wasn’t of the ordinary?

She dug a packet of cigarettes from out of her bag and quickly lit one with a lighter she had hung around her neck on a chain. It was that kind of detail that made him go weak at the knees.

‘But you buy me double vodka and we have deal,’ she said, blowing a cloud of smoke over him. Its chill was beguiling.