Torsten The Bareback Saint
Freshly
Freshly buggered, he braved it into school the next day
To tell the friends and teachers whom he'd never dared say he was gay
But he had found a love so real, so pure, the man inside the boy
More I cannot say, your prejudice may not perceive his joy
Teacher! Teacher!
Teacher! Teacher!
How come the world goes your one way?
Teacher! Teacher!
How come it's always judgement day?
Your world's a world full of crime
And your praise is based on twisted lies
Teacher! Teacher!
Today is one more day for change
Teacher! Teacher!
You go on strike for a living wage
But is this the life that you preach
And fill the minds of the children you teach?
Teacher! Teacher!
Is there a 'key stage' in blame?
Teacher! Teacher!
Can you teach me how to bring about change?
Teacher! Teacher!
Are my 'life chances' just a game?
Teacher! Teacher!
I wish it was election day
Free
You loved the head boy
That used to be me
But that's a long time back when
Friendships were intense then
Seems like the highest high
Was a port glass raised in national pride
While those around learnt to grovel and arselick all
Learnt to lose all their ideals and sense of fun
Learnt to be old while we were still young
Free, from a world full of bullies and smokers
A world of wimps and jokers
I'm told the best days of my life were there
We didn't fit so I don't care
We tore those flags down
And ran with such speed
It tore us apart
We hid the cane you and me
Coughed in chapel you see
And were anti-war
Not a gentlemanly thing to be
Cos all those bonds formed on the rugby field and at the A.T.C.
Become those backslapping backhand deals that take
The England that I love so far away from me
Free from the dreamworld that they never left
And a pecking order they can't forget
Their excuse, the defence of liberty
But their 'fags' are you and me
Star For Life
Sucking on the cold stub of a cigarette
Dreams you once thought worthy you must now forget
M'Iud I never stole the little girl's ice-cream money
M'lud I never said I found your wig so goddam funny
It's the real thing
Oh-oh
Yeah
It's the real thing
Ask me, oh please, ask me about anarchy
It's the only book I've ever been shagged enough to read
Oi mate, pass another super strength export lager
Oi luv, you get no buzz from the blow unless you suck a bit harder
It's the real thing
Oh-oh
Yeah
It's the real thing
Pubs turn out they flash their knives
TV on all through the night
Karaoke that's alright
But I wanna be a star for life
Pubs turn out they flash their knives
TV on all through the night
Pubs turn out they flash their knives
TV on all through the night
Karaoke that's alright
But I wanna be a star for life
Pubs turn out they flash their knives
TV on all through the night
Bingo Hall Baby
Bingo Caller: Eyes down now for your main session bingo
Bingo Hall Baby's life after 10
Sat watching TV's "Late Night Late" again
Never had a boyfriend, never seen the world
While calling out the numbers on the winner takes it all
Oh, don't forget there'll be a perk next week
Tesco store voucher for a tin of corned beef!
Calling numbers makes you feel like Meryl Streep
You call the 'eyes down', stop when 'full house' is shrieked
You're a Bingo Hall Baby
Where 'two fat ladles' make your day
You're a Bingo Hall Baby
Hiding your 'legs eleven' away
Used to be a cinema once don't you know
No furtive encounters now on this back row
No change of programme, it's always the same show
Clean around the toilets dear, then you can go home
Bingo Caller : Interval cash bingo, y'know the ropes ladies, four in a row, vertical, horizontal, diagonal or the four corners. Away we go.
They slobber stories and fake their bonhomie
They've lost ten quid, but won a pound you see
The bingo caller's the Goddess in whom they all believe
And she fell in love with me for a couple of weeks
You're a Bingo Hall Baby
Where 'two fat ladies' make your day
You're a Bingo Hall Baby
Hiding your 'legs eleven' away
Hiding your 'legs eleven' away
Bingo Caller: That's your lot, don't forget tomorrow our early bird special; a cup of tea and a slice of cake, free for all of you joining us 15 minutes before the afternoon session. Get home safely now, goodnight!
Fountain Of Youth
She's a fountain of youth in a telephone booth
She has a guitar and will travel
She la-las 'bout love and other spiritual stuff
She sings it out like boots marching on gravel
I said why not play me a tune back in my motel room
Where her clothes and her life story unravel
And the kick deep, deep within all the verses that she sings
Are that the unloved and the ugly do matter
I said if it helps you to know, then I am often home alone
I see the woman within your thrift shop clothes
And as they fall to the floor to let passing happiness in
We, we could either mean nothing or everything
She's a fountain of youth in a telephone booth
She has a guitar and will travel
She la-las 'bout love and other spiritual stuff
She sings it out like boots marching on gravel
For sure I don't know who you are or the cruelty that you've seen
We've become a holy doctrine in which I now believe
I treasure the pleasure of the flesh, I let love become my creed
This completeness I now have fuses all hope and want and need
You resurrect my spirit, a spirit long thought dead
In a body that felt, but in feeling, felt nothing left
And who, who is this angel now so happy in my bed
When sex, sex was a feeling I'd long learnt to forget
Days later she left in the dead of the night
Hot-wiring up my old motorbike
She hammered down the coast road, like an escapee from hell
Perfection is so fleeting, she taught me so well
She's a fountain of youth in a telephone booth
She has a guitar and will travel
She la-las 'bout love and other spiritual stuff
She sings it out like boots marching on gravel
Drink from the cup of the fountain of youth
Choose to be open to being loved and being moved
By the kindness of strangers
In whom angst can be soothed
Be the living proof
Of a life well used
Like this mystery girl
Who sang the blues
And who touched my life
In that motel room
Where we drank and loved to dispel the doom
And every time you get caught by chance
In a great but passing brief romance
Let the memory dance, dance, dance
Of her smile across the arc of your life
And every time you feel down
Let the reminisce of that last kiss
Love you back into life
She was a fountain of youth in a telephone booth
She had a guitar and she travelled
And the kick deep within all the verses that she sings
Are that the unloved and ugly do matter
The unloved and ugly do matter
And the lonely and the lost
And the hurting and the dying
And the desperate and the crying
And the screwed up and the lying
All matter
All matter
World Without End
Think you're a good kisser?
You're a trainee pervert!
Think I'm frigidity personified?
When your sex life it diverts
Attention from all of your problems
Of which I could write a list
It's only love when you'll find
A cure in a kiss
Like a fuckpig in the classified
Personal columns
Rooting through lists of men wanting women wanting men
Sex without end
Amen!
But I'm your Earth Mother
And I'm your Father Sky
I know you screw all you can screw
Just to feel half alive
But all those lies and alibis
Your poor passive bitch kept on the side
She'll soon be mentally classified
'Cos you're a man who fucks men and fucks women and still then
Wants sex without end
Amen!
You coquette and whore
You kinky pub bore
You flawed femme-fatale
Verging on mental
Gone to ground, gone to earth, gone to seed
But still you plead
"Fuck me!"
Sex without end
You're a man seeking men seeking women seeking men
Lovers and chancers, fuck-buddies and friends
Sex without end
In a world without end
In a world without end
Amen!
V For ....?
The king can have
Any earthly treasure
But he wants
Vagina
Every pleasure
Known to man
But he wants
Vagina
Jesters come and
Entertain him
They don't delight
Like Vagina
Subjects criticise his
Long lived reign
He learns to love them all again
Through Vagina
He'd abdicate
Forsake his crown
For the jewel of going down
On Vagina
The king can have
Any earthly treasure
But he wants
Vagina
He wants
Vagina
I Don't Like
Hurtle down the toll-bridge on a stolen bike
The rain in our eyes blurs the city lights
This is fuel-injected speed in the stillness of the night
It's the going home that I don't like
The pillion girls are hanging on for life
It's another of those vodka and burn-up nights
Excitement is two wheels, a valentine rose in the windshield
It's the brutal way she treats me that I don't like
And I don't like
When she sticks up two fingers and she tells me where to go
And I don't like
My bedsit life watching TV in the cold
And I don't like
The bitching texts sent to my mobile phone
But I don't like
My out of office hours being spent alone
She all pissed up and revved up on her stolen bike
A leatherette leather-pet merging with the night
Her Adonis pretensions, she smells of Brut
She gave some chicken a wristy
Then sent him home by Tube
She once dreamt of going to Memphis, a guitar on her back
But she never played a damn note - it was a talent she lacked
Now track-mark scarred she's banged against a car-lot wall
Screaming like a fucked fox how she's a rock 'n' roll whore.
And I don't like
When she sticks up two fingers and she tells me where to go
And I don't like
My bedsit life watching TV in the cold
But I don't like
The demeaning texts sent to my mobile phone
But I don't like
My out of office hours being spent alone
The brutal way you're treated you hand to me straight back
Seems like your best defence is a senseless attack
On the man who really loved you not too many years ago
But who is creeping out the backdoor before we come to blows
'Cause I'm the pillion passenger hanging on for life
To the wreck of never ending love - an unkind lie
And though you beg forgiveness shrieking out of tune
I've found a kind of sanctuary in a cheap motel room
I hurtle through the crossroads on a stolen bike
The rain in my eyes blurs the city lights
This is fuel-injected speed in the stillness of the night
A head-on collision's what I'd really like
A head-on collision's what I'd really like
A head-on collision's what I'd really like
Ride me out of this excuse for life
Mobile
Hey baby!
You're ringing the fuck out of my mobile
And I'm tellin' you baby
I don't like your style!
Do I have to
Spell out why things didn't click with you?
All the reasons why we are through
When you know damn well don't you?
I kept my fingers crossed for far too long
Kind of knew your attitude was all wrong
Wrote all your put-downs in my secret 'book of days'
But ran clean out of paper when I caught you gettin' laid
Hey baby!
You're ringing the fuck out of my mobile
And I'm tellin' you baby
I don't like your style!
Every time that we were about to fuck
You'd wink and sarcastically wish me good luck
A psychotic-sex troll supercharged on speed
Of your complexities, my dear, I'm gonna soon be free
We might have dreamt of love so never ending
There was a time I didn't find that abjectly gut-wrenching
But please believe, I just don't want that or you at all
But that don't make me a bastard or you a whore
Hey Baby!
You're ringing the fuck out of my mobile
And I'm tellin' you baby
I don't like your style!
A text message
Ain't no sex message
When the next message
Is the one you're waiting for
A text message
Ain't no sex message
When the next message
Is the one you're waiting for
Waiting for...
The Boy From The Sauna
I am the boy from the sauna who you picked up
We were never meant to fall in love
The last angel has Just flown
I'm taking the last bus home
And you will never see my like again
In time well be happier that we'd known
Each other in this passing moment of pleasure
Than in the twisted torments of a life we could've spent together
I've done 'relationships'
And we're worth so much more than this
Than me learning so soon every look in your eyes
And me learning your habits that I'd so soon despise
'Cos for that moment we shared we have felt so alive
And our hearts, soul and spirits briefly larger than our lives
So for you to forever mean this much to me
With this kiss, I will bid you goodbye
Weston-Super-Mare
Were you there in Weston-Super-Mare
On a rollercoaster ride above the sands at low tide?
And over cream tea, did I have your sympathy?
Or were you longing to be free?
The way I feel when you're with me
The seagulls still cry
They saw our love die
And the pier bar where we drank is closed
As the storm out at sea and in my heart still grows
And the ghost train where I touched you up
When you said of me you'd never get enough
Yet, in your life story, I'm just a sentence long
The summer love that was so terribly wrong
And we sent postcards to home
As we sheltered in the cove
I long to hold your hand again
In Weston in the rain
In Weston in the rain
Bingo and chips and hats with `kiss-me-quick'
We saw the cargo ships, thought we could stowaway
It took so long to save for that first weekend away
I think of you and smile today
Though the time and place has changed
The seagulls still cry
They saw our love die
And the guest house now is boarded up
Where we once stayed, slept, fell in love
And we laughed and found it strange
The enormous tidal range
Will we build castles from this sand again
Or are the tides and currents of our lives now far too changed
The Bristol Channel all in storm
Conjures you and keeps me warm
I long to hold your hand again
In Weston in the rain
In Weston in the rain
(We Waited For) The Circus
We waited for the circus
To come to town
A month or so after the last fight at the fairground
We fell in love with acrobats
And everything else that
The circus had then come to mean
To the bored and glamour starved teen queens
Of a small town, full of small minds in the Thatcherite '80s
There were tigers, jugglers, clowns
And tightrope and trapeze
Watched in silence, with no sound
A stunned audience enraptured
Encaptured in a moment of suspended disbelief
At the sleight of hand and trickery
Generations of illusionists bequeathed
The fire-eating ringmaster
Dancing horses and dwarf twins
Who mirrored everything
In a balancing act on stacks of chairs
The audience gasped
You simply had to be there
And the kiddies gasped at equilibrists
Who'd hoist their weight up on just one wrist
And the dwarfs who decked into a daze
The strongman with a wimpish kick that missed
Childhood dreams are made of this
You could almost smell the greasepaint
As their convoy came to town
And we'd dream about a night out
When I wouldn't get knocked about
By an alcoholic father
Who shagged all sorts on the side
I was witness from the inside of a marriage on the slide
And soon without goodbye
I left my childhood home of lies
After watching that much loved circus
For the very final time
Good Things
They always told you what you can't be
But never knew just who you are
And the dreams of youth are dying
But the death knell resounds with joy
Because the freedom that you're entering
Takes the man out of the boy
They never knew your hurting
Although they understood the pain
Age of charisma dawning now your
Introversions lost its way
Good things will start to happen
I don't suppose you'll know why
Good things will start to happen
I don't suppose you'll know why
I don't suppose you'll know why
Well, solitude's a sacrifice
But take reward from the thought
That your unachieved ambitions are
The same dreams for all the world
Please grow and learn nobody wants to know
A depressed and angry young man
'Cos the fear that must override your self-doubt
Is the fear of being alone
Good things will start to happen
I don't suppose you'll know why
Good things will start to happen
I don't suppose you'll know why
I don't suppose you'll know why
People Come, People Go
And when the curtain opens, all I want to see is you on stage
And when the curtain falls, I hope that in this life we will have stayed
In tune and so in love through all the intervening days
Because it's like a choir of angels every time I hear your name
You don't know and I won't tell
How I sift through all our pictures everyday
That I do this is my secret
Because 'we' feel like yesterday
I am challenged by your nearness
I am hurting that you're gone
And by the might-have-beeps, if onlys
By the feeling this is wrong
People come, people go
Eyes avert, handshakes unfold
Unkiss the kiss
Release this embrace
But no, I can never
Forget your face
Time will pass, people move on
A whirlwind romance, then you were gone
Lustful lunacy
'Til you tuned out of me
Where can you be?
People come, people go
Eyes avert, handshakes unfold
Unkiss the kiss
Release this embrace
But no, I can never
Forget your face
Don't Call Me Up
A boy once called Andy
Gave head in parks in Hanley
And ran away into my arms
I said never look back
In anger or fear
I'll love you 'til the end of time
Your wish is mine, do you hear?
He said, "I can't believe you love me
The characters I hide behind
The scene was set in empathy
I played my life for laughs
But you saw me."
And if our laughter hides our sin
Then in a sitcom we have been
But the jokes were wearing thin
The love that stopped did not begin
So, shall we hide behind the light?
Or take our curtain call tonight?
Instead of all those might have beens
Just get the hell out of my sight!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up,
You bring me down!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up,
You bring me down!
It isn't that I hate you
I've just moved along the line
Our laughter and our friendship
Were important at the time
'Til we talked of disappointments
Like some mutual loser's club
And you hustled round the late bars
So you could get yourself the rub
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up,
You bring me down!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up!
Don't call me up,
You bring me down!
We were our own royalty
My crown, my orb, my sceptre
And I was so pleased, my love
When you said I almost made you forget her
But, I'm not your cure
Though I'm glad that you feel better
So I walked out of your life
In a sympathetic letter
Tell Me The Story Of Your Poverty
Tell me the story of your poverty
As I'm giving you head
Tell me the story of your poverty
Begging for your daily bread
From São Paolo to Bermondsey
Going to seed at 23
Believing in some curative effect
Of a middle class exec like me
A decade plus worked in a go-go bar
A satin shorted paedo-superstar
Time after time, cutting line after line
In the makeshift backstage bordello
It's all behind me you sweetly say
Like young guys I've had on many other days
Lost Latinos with their smiles that belie
The drugged up drag demons of doubt inside
Tell me the story of your poverty
As I'm giving you head
Tell me the story of your poverty
Begging for your daily bread
This Gay Thing Isn't Working
Don't want to scream and shout
Not like I did when I came out
For too long now the feeling's been deserting
'Cos this gay thing isn't working
It's obvious I've hidden and denied
That I'm an able batsman for both sides
For all the time spent loving men or just flirting
Goodbye boys - this gay thing isn't working
Goodbye boys - this gay thing isn't working
If I said that you were my boyfriend
Would you smile, would you frown?
And if I said that I had a girlfriend
Would you runaway or stick around?
If I seem half alive and then half dead
Will you be my lover or my friend?
If I seem half in love and half in hate
I'm in a no-man's land between gay and straight!
Don't want to scream and shout
Not like I did when I came out
For too long now the feeling's been deserting
'Cos this gay thing isn't working
Goodbye boys - this gay thing isn't working
Oh why, must the world make you choose
When you love like I do
When everyone is your muse?
I'm sorry that I can't be with you
But there's nothing within
Just this heart that's confused
Aflame
Aflame in my heart
Incandescent in my head
Tears dance on this first anniversary
That we've been apart
I tried taking other lovers
But my thoughts and dreams are still with you
You're here in the silence that I try to heal in
And in everything else that I do
All the summer walks never ending
You and I so proudly friended
Hand in hand in the arcade
Forever in love for one day
My heartbreak so distended
My being so upended
And nothing and no-one can reach me the way that you do
Even though you have said
I don't love you
I hang just in case it's not true
I hang just in case it's not true
Mr. Average
Did you ever believe
You'd be talking to me
Thirty years later?
That a lifetime half gone
Spent loving the wrong one
Would leave you frustrated?
Saturnine yet lunatic
Gotta be more to a life than this
Ready with the carrot
But always tasting stick
Finding friends of old
Tell you remember this
You were never Mr. Average
So what the hell my friend got into you?
What you looking at in the car park?
The tail end of another fight you started!
Don't turn away, come back, say it's not true
That you feel guilty 'cos I said, "I love you"
I remember when the Pet Shop Boys were new
It was the first summer that I met you
Cheap beer we said was watered down
Cigarettes so rough we coughed and frowned
On the late bus going into town
I turn around and find that it's still you
Disco-dancing now is much the same
'Jack-Your-Body' found a nu-electro groove
Sweet nothings whispered in the corner
You smuggled vodka in they never caught ya
Teenage roller-disco party nights we two
I turn around and want it to still be you
'Cos when you felt you were living some big lie
I eased your tears, you smiled and then said goodbye
I wanted a '90s Casanova
Not my best friend to say the love affair's over
From ashes and ashes and dust to dust we two
I turn around and I want it to still be you
And here you are
And here you are
And here you are!
Is It Not Enough?
Is it not enough?
Is it not enough?
Is it not enough?
Is this the start of
The death of love?
Me, stripped and stranded
Branded the dab-handed
Abuser and loser
Walking out of a golden future
We such fabulous creatures
If you edit out the details
The dark depths of drug drenched cocktails
Resulting savagery beyond the pale
Callous kiss and tell and hate e-mail
If pride comes before a fall, I fell
Spent a fortune at the wishing well
Hopeful of a different ending
But now the hurt and hatred I curtail
Though I love you
Love this time cannot assail
Is it not enough?
Is it not enough?
Is it not enough?
This is the start of
The death of love!
As I Prepare To Take My Life
As I prepare to take my life
As I prepare for this final long knife night
Like a Kristallnacht for a lost, dark soul
A requiem for the belief
Every hole's a goal
We are better parted
We are better parted
We are better parted
Better parted
As I prepare to take my life
As I disengage before an ending I won't like
All the rejection I prophecised
From the arc of our eyes meet
To this estranged bitter goodbye
We are better parted
We are better parted
We are better parted
Better parted
The only testament
That I will leave
Is a strong sense
That dreams are often not achieved
In my death-note diary
A tome of cries for help
A jealous bitter threnody
Of years spent without you
All the years spent without you
The years spent without you
All the years spent without you
You and your wildly different point of view
We are better parted
We are better parted
We are better parted
Better parted
Better parted
Something of the darkness blackened all my days
Beyond anything Prozac could take away
Sweet tormenting dreams of beauty
Seems mourning you became my tour of duty
As I prepare to take my life
Be happy you were once the crack
That let in light
There was no-one only ever you
Romantic, sycophant, stalker or fool
Take your point of view
It's just that you
Let in light
Let in light
Let in light