Skinhead Gets Married

Jerry the Junkie and Marilyn the Madam had their wedding reception at Kafe Kollaps. It was a double wedding—Jerry married Krysta from Poland and Maz got hitched to Goodman from Nigeria. The short ceremony had been held at Camden registry office with two witnesses and Fast Alan, who'd driven them in the Citroen Dyane to and from Euston Road. Once at the Kollaps, it didn't take long for Krysta's boyfriend to decide that the Mercs were too loud and so he took her home to Green Lanes. Goodman disappeared almost as soon as the car pulled into the space beside Raymond's Ambulance at the back of the Kafe.

Jerry was a Liverpudlian, and almost incomprehensible when straight. His nasal whine registered somewhere above middle-C and he mangled vowels and consonants as if chewing nails as he 'spoke'. But given an armful, and when he wasn't nodding out, Jerry spoke almost perfect English with only the slightest hint of what sounded like an Irish twang. He had arrived at the Kafe one day with the Mercs, and became their roadie, guitar-tuner and ineffective stage security. He weighed about 96lbs when wet, his cheekbones were the most dangerous part of his body (sharp) and when he tried to punch anything it looked as if he was throwing a bitch-slap with his eyes closed.

Jerry first met the Mercs in Berlin when he was there with Maz to visit her father. They'd been in Germany for three months when the Mercs moved into their squat. Maz was turning tricks to feed them both (ice cream, Rote Hand cigarettes and crudely cut smack, mostly). Her US serviceman old man had kicked them out of his digs two days after they'd arrived in the city. It was a real 'surprise' visit for him, though—he didn't know Maz existed until the two skinny, stoned Brits fell over his doorstep early one morning, with her calling him 'Daddy' and Jerry saying something that sounded like 'alllraynowinityouse'.

It turned out that 'Pop' might not have been Maz's father at all, but neither of them could be sure—he remembered an affair with a Liverpudlian redhead almost twenty years earlier while stationed in the UK, and Maz's mother's death had thrown up a diary which had his name and regiment in it, at a date that corresponded with Maz's conception, so… When 'Pop' caught Jerry trying to sneak out of his house on day 2 with a Military-issue pistol wrapped in a laundry sack, he flipped, laid Jerry out with one punch and searched the pair as he put them on the sidewalk.

That had been a year earlier, now Maz was established as a small-time Madam in Brixton with two girls and a half-blind 'maid' to run the upstairs apartment, and Jerry was lodged in a Housing Association studio with Big Janet a few doors away from the Kafe. The marriages were her idea, and she'd taken a percentage of Jerry's fee of £400. We'd been happy to hold a wedding reception—our first and only, as it turned out—with the Mercs supplying live music and Darlington Dave spinning the deck (he only had one) after their performance. It was to be a usual Saturday night for the Kafe too, closing only when everyone had drunk the place dry.

Jerry had become a skinhead when the Mercs auditioned for the Blue Coat Boy, and while it made him look like an Eastern European refugee with malnutrition, he took to the gear with enthusiasm. Mind you, he'd strongly objected to the cut at first, mostly because he knew that he'd no longer be mistaken for Blixa Bargeld any more—they could have been separated at birth. But, after nicking a couple of pairs of white Levis from Camden Market, he'd swapped a heavily stepped on £10 bag of skag for a pair of Doc Marten boots, and most days now almost looked the part. He borrowed my one good suit—a genuine 1960s-made, blue two-piece with drainpipe trousers and lapel-less three-button jacket—for the wedding. He also shined up the boots and put on a white Ben Sherman with a button-down collar.

Maz looked like she'd stepped out of a 1950s b-movie. Her style icon was Diana Dors, and she'd given up her smack habit in order to put on some curves months back, and she now filled out her two-piece tweed pencil-skirt suit, worn with seamed stockings and open-necked blouse, beautifully. Her hair was bundled up in a near-beehive 'do', her stiletto heels sharp enough to puncture a lung with a flick of her ankle. She had a loud laugh and a filthy mouth, and wanted to run her brothel on true socialist principles. Her customers were charged what they thought they could afford, or should pay, and every penny was shared equally between the girls and Maz. Which was why she also ran a few quick cons on the side.

Green card marriages were all the rage in the early 1980s, and checks on identity and follow-up on the arrangements must have been slack: this was Maz's second wedding in six months. She'd managed to get herself a birth certificate and accompanying National Insurance number in the name of a dead girl, born in almost the same year as she'd been. Throughout the night her voice could be heard firmly intoning, "Call me Gloria!" followed by a low, lingering chuckle. The Mercs threw in a version of the Van Morrison song for her and she clambered on stage to sing it with them.

One of the Kollaps collective, Stanley, a vicar's son from the West country was clearly in love (or lust) with Maz, and she knew it. For the past few weeks whenever she came North to discuss the wedding, Maz would flirt outrageously with him, but always either leave without as much as giving him a second look, or when she stayed the night, she'd enjoy a long tease with him. She'd disappear into a spare room in order to disrobe, and emerge shortly after wrapped in a towel in order to knock on Stan's door. She'd ask for cigarettes and the towel would 'slip'  as Maz leaned across the threshold of his room. But as Stan froze in the doorway, she'd chuckle, tut, and turn away, padding back to her room with the towel trailing lower and lower down her back.

On her wedding night though, and after quite a few celebratory drinks and dances —some real close—with Stan, just as the sun was threatening to appear over the Arkwright Road, Maz fixed her eyes on him and said, "Right, it's my wedding night and the groom's fucked off. Are you man enough to fill in for him?" With a smile that would have outdone the emerging dawn, Stan escorted the bride to his handmade platform bed, tucked away in the attic of the Kollaps.