Anchored In the Reno
We have reached station 8 in my examination of Audre Lorde's The Master's Tools. The Sword (The Final Choice/Resolution.) It can stab you to death. Or like Arthur, you can pull it from the stone.
You’re not gonna believe it. A producer working on the BBC series Marvellous Miniature Workshop contacts me. 'A show that explores lost or derelict buildings that are personally significant to people. Our expert model makers recreate an exact replica for our contributors to take home. Each episode also looks into the social history at that time, and what the buildings meant to the wider community. We are currently exploring the possibility of telling the story of the Reno in Manchester for one episode in our series. After watching many of your YouTube videos, memoirs, and excavation project, I’d love to hear your memories of the club from its heyday. Your connection and experience would be invaluable as we explore whether it could be a story for the series. I have spoken with Persian last week who was fantastic to speak with and listen to his memories DJ-ing there.’
Great that she asks at the beginning of their endeavour and not at the end. I do some journaling. I arrive at — I don’t want me or the Reno to become Bryan May’s hair on the balcony of Buckingham Palace or wherever these counterculture stars became mainstream for some fucking jubilee. How embarrassing.
Hi G
I'm not Interested. Sorry. I was going to suggest you contact Gail Allott to help you find others. She says she already spoke to you and led you to Persian. She could help you find others too.
Linda
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your email, no worries at all.
Yes, she has been very helpful - and it was so lovely to speak with Persian.
Best, G
Good luck with it.
Linda
Title: Anchored In the Reno
Object: seabed
12 associations
1. Anchor
2. Bottom of the sea
3. Bottom of the sea, sea, sea
4. Kick can
5. Elastics
6. Donkey
7. Terry Cockran
8. The Claremont pub
9. Fur collar
10. Fur coat and no knickers
11. Her up the street.
12. Joy
I am anchored in the Reno for many reasons. It is the salve to my greatest tragedy. It is where I go when Ivan is in prison. Just up the street from me along Princess Parkway from Boundary Lane. I walk down the road. What am I gonna do? I am just a nobody. On the dance floor. On my own.
Gecko takes me there when they came to do a workshop for Reno Regulars, in the Reno at the Whitworth. My first real night down the Reno is on my own. At the bottom of the sea. On a cloudy, murky seabed. A sea of creatures I would never mix with. My mum and dad have brought me up well. I am destined to do A levels. Go to university. I am gonna break the mould. Break the mould of Moss Side. It is in my destiny. It is in all my essays on the wall. In my history homework. The Romans. The Greeks. On sugar paper. I've told my teachers my dad is a doctor. Not a person who humps wood; he doesn't even make the rails. He isn’t a blacksmith. He is a menial worker. But I have talked myself into great things, great things.
Then one night I am in George’s Café and this tall black guy looks across from the pool table and our eyes meet and by the time Pauline comes in and throws their washing on the pool table — cos he hasn’t done it and she pays for everything — we are a couple, and we go to a blues, and then the blues begin. Breakfast in Bed, playing. Dennis Brown ‘I’m Still Waiting’. On repeat. As we lie there in each other’s arms in a hole, in a hovel, where my brother visits. Cos his sister has dropped so low, he is crying.
Like when my dad cries cos his youngest daughter is now in prison on heroin. He can’t see why. He can’t see out of the box he has constructed as the English gentleman. Why can’t my mum and dad get it? Why can’t they get it? He looks at her once. She tells me herself. ‘He touches my back.’ It is the same thing. She leaves her kids. I leave my home; I leave my education. We live in a flat I have from the council on Boundary Lane.
Where he runs in. His eyes are wild. Then he runs out. Then the police come for him. I go to the Reno to stem the pain of being alone after I say to Pauline, you can have him. How can I have someone who burns someone with an iron? On her breast from which she breastfeeds their baby. Is this how he is gonna treat me? The mother of his other kid? From the Reno, I sleep with TB to stem the pain. I don’t want to see Ivan again. You can keep him. I don’t want to see him again. She takes him chocolate and cigs and chicken. He knocks on my door. Then won’t open the door. Then opens it that evening. She stabs him with the breadknife she takes from the kitchen before he manages to get her out. This is the price. The price he pays for all the times he empties her purse for the bookies, all the months when she takes the bus to Strangeways. This is the price. His chest is carved like Frankenstein as he takes his last breath as a living person and coughs and then they breathe him after a nurse forgets to turn the machine on and his brain is starved. Our Elaine comes to work to tell me he has passed. I have an abortion. Caesarean c-section. I go to the Reno again.
I am standing on the Reno dance floor crying, uncontrollably crying in the guided astral projection back, back to my first night down the Reno, led by Gecko before they have us look into each other’s eyes. More, then more, then more, then more, until we pass the point of embarrassment. We revert to the kids who play Kick Can. The innocent kids who play donkey. Throw the ball against the wall and jump it. Elastics to your waist and jump them. Feats of engineering. Where you have to let go and trust. You have to let go and trust you will achieve it. Like my Arts Council grants. Like holding my hand up in 3rd base. I don’t know why it works that day. I am shit before this day. I want to fit in. I want to be a team player. I want to go mainstream in school. I want to be sporty. But I’m just so rubbish. I put my hand up, and I trust. I don’t know what part of me that trust is located in. I don’t know how I have not been able to reach it before. I hold my hand up. I feel the ball connect. From that minute, I am a star rounders player. Moved to first base. I hold my status by never giving in to my fear. By trusting only in the thing that knows what it is doing.
She has such low self-esteem my mum every woman with nail polish on is a her-up-the-street. All fur-coat-and-no-knickers. She hates women. She hates Terry Corkran's mother in her cheap fur collar on her way to her date-night with Mr Cockran in the Claremont Pub every Friday. She hates Joy at Uncle Lee’s retirement party in her purple see-through top. If he ran off with her, he can run off with anyone. Joy, with her black panther look. Her Angela Davis look. Her fucking black bitch look. And the black women. the nice church going black women with no nail polish are ashamed. Of her. Of him. How can he business with such a thing, when Hermoine, his wife back home, holds her purse by its neck on her lap when she sits like any respectful woman holds her purse. My mum must have been dynamite, to hold him. But she will not allow herself any style. She cannot be seen as her-up-the-street. He has bags of style. His suits look great on him. His trilby tilts at just the right angle. Everyone looks at him. He makes it a point that everyone looks at him. His suits are handmade.
Like Frank's in the Reno. Stan Finni with his extra waistcoat — great at layers. Lizzie in a straight grey dress paired with straight red hair and brogues. Myra brings the 70s of Breezy. Derrick has this walk. His jeans are so small. Even though he's tall. His legs are short. Handsome. Even though he is ugly. Grey V-neck. Derrick Star his cousin wears his jeans tighter, His wrangler jacket tighter still. His Rizlas in his top pocket. Chips is never without her white fur coat no matter what the weather. Frank’s new woman is a straight-backed girly without the mouth. Chips’ mouth goes with the coat. They are inseparable. Fonzo’s Bob Marley locks sweep the floor when he does his backflip perfectly skimming the ceiling. Assassin in his white lady’s shorts, bat shit crazy spouting poetry. Mavis, J, and can’t remember the other girl’s name. All half-caste, all jeans and V-necks, all androgynous. Ava who Julie helps with the spectrum to make the transition, Cerise with the e-type jag, make real life realer for us. Carmen bum length hair makes it grown-woman Seven Archies wearing entrance. White Mike’s long waxed coat before long waxed coats became a thing. None of us dress like the Barbies from town. The next generation down from us love the Barbies from town. The Barbies from town know not to come up our end of the dance floor. Get down your own end bitch. No way on earth will he stick up for her. Caz sprays her cowboy boots silver and wears a white frilly petticoat under her long denim skirt. Only Caz can make it catwalk.
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea, to see what he could see, see, see, and all that he could see, see, see was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. We first meet the Reno in Julie’s off licence on the corner of our street. 1968. She gets out of her MG, spoke wheel, white, a hammer in her hipsters. A mix between Patti Smith and Mick Jagger. Young. Deliberately. She climbs onto the roof to mend the slates. We watch. The only thing giving her away is she has tits in her white t-shirt vest. She defo has tits with no bra. Middle class. High middle class. Her brother is an architect. She gives us paid opportunities. We work in her off licence. Go to the laundry for her. She takes us to great parks in the trailer attached to her MG. She is everything I want to be. Even the fucking Reno, before we know there is a fucking Reno, is in her upstairs living room, selling her weed. We are smoking their weed. Aged 13. They have at least 13 years on us. My brother is taking the piss out of Frank's African top and his little weird hat. We are taking the piss. They are laughing at us. We are laughing at them. Frank warns, 'Don't make me give you a slap.' My brother, quick as a flash, 'Don't make me take out my dagger and juk you to death.' I nearly wee myself.
I have to pause there. There is something in that exchange. If I pull the sword now it will be lost. I need to contemplate and 8-station examine the tectonic movement of the entire essay. So it can take me to THE DRESS my next project by way of a little girl standing still for her dad to tie the big bow on the back of her yellow sticky out dress. Before there was any Joy, any Ivan, any Reno, any Arts Council.