More tales from Mannequin Mansions

On a stormy night, on a cold depressing January evening on a desolate road to nowhere. My car broke down. In the rain, in the night, in the dark. As my luck would have it there was an old spooky house about half a mile further back down the road. I was a bit perturbed that this situation was beginning to resemble the opening to “The Rocky Horror picture show”. But I felt secure in the knowledge that I was certainly no Brad Majors and there was no Janet here either and I pride myself in the fact that I am not as innocent as those poor unfortunate fictitious creatures were! As to the opening of the film, well come on that kind of thing has been going on since 1932 when James Whale first opened his “Old Dark House” and unleashed the rather odd and eccentric Femm family on to an unsuspecting audience.
Mannequin Mansions lay at the end of a long and winding road of mud and sludge, not helped by the fact that it was raining. Gargoyles looked down, malicious and menacing in their appearance. Their sinister expressions frozen in stone for all time. What secrets lay behind those cast iron doors that now loomed ominously in front of me? I pondered. A sweet Transvestite, a drunken aggressive butler, maybe even Lurch himself? The name was odd. Mannequin Mansions. A bit of a giveaway perhaps. The old crumbling house itself gave the visage that it had just stepped outside of Edgar Allan Poe’s tortured mind and was now inhabited by mannequins, mannequins that were alive! Such as the Autons from Doctor Who. As for me, considering the ludicrous situations that I usually find myself in I’m probably about to step into a remake of “Carry on Screaming”.
My shoes by now were completely ruined after treking up to the iron doors, mocked all the way by the aforementioned gargoyles. Incidentally there had been an “ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!” sign hanging on the front gates. The doors opened gently to my touch. There was no “faithful handyman” to let me in. No not this time. I considered the possibility that this could still be a Rock and Roll musical that I was about to step into, only time would tell. As I stepped into this alternative world I abandoned reality and all of its mediocre trappings and left them out there in the rain, in the cold where they belonged. I clearly felt a sense of the illogicalness as my pupils widened as they adjusted themselves to this preposterously ornate, retro and kitsch boudoir of the absurd!
Never in all my years had I experienced such a phantasmagorical sight. Everywhere I looked there were mannequins. Mannequins of all varieties. Dressed, undressed, limbs missing, heads missing, broken, damaged. Some where brand new, some clearly vintage, adult, child, just limbs on there owns. In one dark corner I noticed that some were hanging from a multiple gallows. Strip lights that flashed on and off in many different colours illuminated some. Some stood in front of neon lights. All manor of costumes, but there did seem to be a heavy preference for fetish gear. Whips, riding crops, leather caps, dog collars, some on dog leads and others bound up in chains. There was an entire mock orgy on a double bed in one corner of the room. Amongst this amazing spectacular spectacle were all kinds of things from, vintage Coca Cola signs, imitation skulls and dolls (broken and otherwise) books littered the floor along with torn up photos and postcards. I carefully closed the door behind me, wondering if anybody had heard me come in. I got the distinct feeling that amongst all of those mannequins that there was someone or something watching me. It was impossible to tell.
I made my way across the floor, disturbing the torn photos and dust as I did so. At the back of the room, behind the mannequins was another set of doors. Above them was a sign in flashing red lights that said “Cinema”. I cautiously opened the double doors and stepped inside. It was indeed a cinema. An empty cinema. I had half expected to see the seats occupied by mannequins but there wasn’t. All of a sudden the lights went down across the auditorium and the red velvet curtains slowly drew back to reveal a huge screen that seemed to be slashed all the way along. Not slashed as in vandalised but purposely cut all the way along. The reason for this would soon become quite clear. “TRAUMATIC PRODUCTIONS” emblazed itself upon the screen with two badly drawn faces, each bald in the middle with long hair strands down each side. They were the comedy and tragedy theatrical masks. Loud heavy screeching guitars began to play and to my amazement a guitarist stepped through the splits in the screen, dressed somewhat like Jimi Hendrix. As he did so dry ice began to fill the bottom of the stage. Intrigued at the sight that was unfolding in front of me, I took a seat, sat back and became mesmerised at what was going on. Was this all for my benefit I asked myself. Was this normal? Did they know I was here? All these questions and more filled my head as a drum kit and drummer rose from the left hand side of the stage and began to play along with the bass player. Who had also stepped out of the screen which now seemed to be playing a collage of clips from “Eraserhead” The band were playing a heavy rock version of “Somewhere over the rainbow”. This was quickly followed by a fanfare and through the screen which had now gone onto showing a psychedelic light show (quite like that from an early Pink Floyd show!) came what can only be described as a vision. Try to imagine Danny La rue crossed with The New York Dolls and you’d be halfway there! A spotlight shone onto this delicate creature as he exclaimed quite dramaturgically “The only Performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness! Right! Am I right?” At this point an usherette burst through the doors behind me and whispered into my ear “Could you please sit in the front row for this Performance sir if you please” and with that she took me by the hand and showed me to a seat in the front row. “Really” exclaimed the performer on stage. The guitarist then counted up……”One…..two……three……four!” and the band broke into “Memo from Turner” which was also playing on the screen. On the screen Jagger as the character Turner exclaimed, “I like that, turn it up” Whilst that was happening on screen two elderly women staggered onto the stage and ripped off the frock from the performer to reveal a brown suit. Identical to the one the one that Jagger was wearing on the screen. The song started and I sat there completely amazed as the song was sung directly at me. He disappeared back through the slits in the screen for the musical part of the song and reappeared for the next bit. When the song had finished the sound of an audience at a stadium was played at deafening levels through the P.A system. It came to a screeching halt. The performer then sat down onto the stage right in front of me whilst the guitarist took up an acoustic guitar and he sang Radiohead’s “Creep” right to me. When this finished the sound of an over emotional crowd was heard.
“I’m a movie” he told me. I can’t function out there in your real world anymore. I’m a product of a bygone era. All your audiences want these days is reality television programmes, fake plastic pop stars miming to the umpteenth version of “Unchained bloody melody”. The worship of bland mindless puppets which you call celebrities. Revelling in a pool of pointless magazines in celebration of there false gods and drowning in a pool of skinny lattes. Oh it’s so depressing! So I came in here and locked the world outside. My life has become celluloid. Every night we act out in front of the screen the great cult movies of yesteryear. One night I will be Vincent Price camping it up as Doctor Phibes. Or Hacking up whores as Jack the Ripper. Doing battle with flying saucers and big scary bug eyed monsters. Committing rape and ultra violence as “The Droogs”, dressing up in fishnets as Frank n Furter or Hanging Nazi scum as Pierrpoint. Sometimes I’m James Bond other times I’m big bad John Wayne riding through the screen on an embarrassingly bad pantomime horse. Then of course I get my brains bashed in as Joe Orton in “Prick up your ears” or succumb to a fatal heroin overdose in “Sid and Nancy”. Whatever the film is I ham it up to the high standards of a badly produced Shakespearean tragedy……..Maybe you could join us; I’m looking for another actor to play up against. It’s no good relying on the band, they couldn’t act for toffee”

So that’s how it all started. From that day my life would never be the same. The performer had introduced me to a fabulous world of make believe. A world in which I could be absolutely anybody from Elizabeth Taylor to Bela Lugosi. I later found out that this was all an escape from the real world, how the performer dealt with very bad depression and how he had escaped the trappings of a constrictive job that slowly strangled him. He was a loner an outsider, just like Thomas Jerome Newton as portrayed by Bowie in “The man who fell to earth” A movie that would be re-enacted on many occasions here at Mannequin Mansions. I felt that by staying that I could help the performer in someway. Help him to beat depression, find out the reasons why he’s so depressed all of the time. I wanted to help him reconnect with the human race. In between shows he would tell me in confidence that he once lived a very decadent and bohemian life and that had all gone away. Like the death of glam rock, when Bowie announced the retirement of his bisexual androgynous space age creature Ziggy Stardust, the fans were crushed and were completely lost. Their space commander had left them and all these space cadets were left without their leader. It would be sometime before the explosion of punk rock. This was exactly how the performer was feeling. He was stuck, quite stuck, every night gin soaked, playing out the roles that only the divine and strange rock and rollers of the seventies had dared to live out. From Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper. They were fictions, characters played out on a stage of guitars and theatrics. They had all taken it too far and had all paid the price. In the same way my new found friend the performer has. He had to rediscover himself. Find out who he really was. Life inside Mannequin mansions was a fantasy. The outside world was cruel and unforgiving and people like the performer, if they are not careful would fall apart all too easily.
Lost, stuck and frightened, the performer picked up the pink feather boa from the floor, draped it around his neck picked up a bottle of cold gin put the stereo on and began the performance all over again. Longing for something more………..much more………………………………