Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

'Well, they're not going to find out.' Woody removed her jacket to reveal a tight-fitting khaki combat vest.

'What did you do with your tits?' Bax was amazed.

'I strapped them down with tape.' She pulled down her track-suit bottoms to reveal a pair of men's Calvin Klein Y-fronts. Her breasts were small, and suppressing them gave her the appearance of having developed pectoral muscles. She bundled her discarded clothes into the bag and stepped back with her hands resting lightly at her hips. 'So – do I look okay?'

'You look like Valdez in Aliens .'

'But do I pass as a man?'

Jack pulled off his nylon cap and carefully stuffed it into the front of Woody's pants. 'You do now.'

'You wish.'

'I know .' He and Bax stripped down to their underwear and headed for the bag-check. The bag-man handed them three reclaim tickets and took their clothing out into the small annexe behind the bar that housed the cloakroom. Jack wasn't entirely sure how he had been persuaded to smuggle a girl into a men-only club on Underwear Night of all nights, but now they were inside together he decided to make the best of it. She had been nagging them to take her for weeks, ever since she'd heard about the place. Jack and Bax were her best friends, and the fact that they happened to be lovers never deterred her from hanging out with them wherever they went.

The club was called The Outlook, and attracted men who were prepared to take a walk on the wilder side of life, partly because the activities that took place beyond the dancefloor were apt to get a little raunchy, and partly because the pub was situated at the edge of South London's largest and most trouble-ridden public housing estate. In the mid-1850s the Skinner's Arms had been a boxing pub with a glass cupola above a sweat-stained ring, where workers gathered to cheer and bet on the neighbourhood's finest fighters. The matches had been halted by an unavailability of suitable pugilists in the Great War, and the old glass roof had been demolished by a stray bomb in the next. In the seventies the ground floor had been cleared of its separate Snug and Saloon bars to become a disco, and in the late eighties it had turned into a crack den. No matter how many times the police held raids, the local hoods continued to trade drugs both inside and on the street. By the time it was turned into a gay club the exhausted police and the desperate residents were happy to leave it alone because, in their eyes, anything was better than pushers, even queers. Just so long as no-one could see or hear what was going on inside it remained under a flag of uneasy truce, on the frontline of a no-go area. People entered and vacated the building quietly, and the smart cars that parked outside were left alone, because even the local kids could figure out that if they started smashing quarterlights and boosting stereos the bar would close down and the junkies would return, and nobody wanted that.

'What have you got in your briefs, a pound of sausages?' Woody released a high laugh, then quickly lowered the timbre, looking guiltily around.

'This is all me,' said Jack, looking down at his underpants. 'Can I help it if God was bountiful? This is yours.' He passed Woody a pint of strong lager, which she had ordered in the belief that it would provide her with additional gender-camouflage. She took a sip in a way that showed she was unfamiliar with holding such a glass, like a non-smoker drawing on a cigarette. As she did she took covert glances at Bax's sculptured torso.

'I'd drink that slowly, if I were you,' said Jack. 'There's no ladies' room in here. You may be able to pass for a man but I doubt even you can convincingly pee standing up.'

The room was starting to fill. The temperature had begun to climb with the volume of the music. Woody clutched the glass to her flattened chest and took a deep breath, drawing in the smell of bitter hops that had soaked and impregnated the surrounding wooden bar for more than a century. All old pubs had this odour, but here there were other scents; traces of aftershave, cologne and the musky maleness of nearly a hundred stripped, sexed-up and overheated men. She felt herself becoming aroused, even though she was aware of the paradox; they would only be interested in her if she could successfully prove herself to be male, and that was the one thing she could not do. In the dark beyond the dancefloor she sensed naked torsos touching, arms and legs shifting across each other. Maybe she had made a mistake coming along, and they were right when they asked her what she was trying to prove.

'You okay?' Bax laid a hand on her shoulder.

'I have a faint suspicion,' she said, narrowing her eyes, 'that there may be people fucking in here. It smells like fucking. Don't you think?'

'A fuck's just a way of celebrating life, princess, like a champagne toast. Look, you asked to come along with us.'

'I know, I just didn't realise I was going to end up in the House of Testosterone. Who's Jack talking to?'

Bax looked over his shoulder. Behind him stood a vague, thin-limbed boy of about nineteen. He had carelessly cropped blonde hair, watery blue eyes and the self-absorbed stance of a piece of minor Victorian statuary. He also had a dog-chain tightened around his pale cigarette-burned neck. 'His name's Simon. He knows us from evening classes. Gives me the creeps. He's into humiliation. Likes to take punishment. They say his dad sexually assaulted him for years, and nobody found out about it until after the old guy was dead. I don't know why Jack talks to him. I never do.'

'You mean he's a masochist?'

'Yeah, why? You wanna interview him for your thesis?' Bax drained his beer and set the glass down on the cigarette machine. 'He won't be very interesting. People who are into role-playing never are.'

'Why's that?'

'Because they're selfish, working out their childhood shit. They just take what they want from sex.'

Woody peered around Bax's chest. The boy was flirting shamelessly with Jack. 'Perhaps he has no choice.'

'You're right there. Kids like that are just whipping boys, put on earth to suck up all the bad vibes and take the blame.'

'Don't you get jealous when guys flirt with Jack?'

Bax looked surprised. 'Me? We've been together for six years. I hardly think he's about to run off with someone else, and if he did I'd like to think he'd choose someone attractive. Besides, we have a deal. It's simple; if he ever leaves me, I'll kill him. You want another beer?'

'I can keep pace with you, no problem,' she said defensively.

'Come and give me a hand.'

The two bartenders were ignoring customers in order to conduct some kind of odd argument with each other. Something was clearly wrong for them both to look so worried. 'What's going on?' Bax shouted over the music as one of the boys distractedly took his order.

'They found some little kid on the wasteground this afternoon,' explained the barman. 'Dead. Raped. A little boy.'

'Christ. That's terrible.'

'Yeah. One of the customers just told me there's a crowd hanging around outside.'

'What do you mean?'

'A bunch of people who live on the estate. At least, that's where he thinks they're from.'

Bax was appalled. 'They don't think the person who did it is in here ?'

The barman looked at him as if he was stupid. 'I wouldn't be surprised – would you?'

News of the boy's death had swept around the estate with electrifying speed, and as it passed along each street it gained gruesome new details. The boy was local and liked by all. Some other kids had seen him talking to a man, not someone from around here, a visitor, a stranger. The only people who came to this area did so to frequent that pub across the road. The pub was just five hundred yards from the wasteground, the perfect sanctuary. They were shielding him inside, protecting one of their own. In the minds of the growing mob, deviants of that nature knew no difference between love and rape, between adults and children.