“Fuck off Deakin!”
The Travails of a Questionable SOHO Photographer:
“The worst day in Dan Farson’s life was when he met John Deakin’’- Dan Farson
John Deakin was not my first choice for this spectral encounter. I very much wanted to engage with the New York writer, satirist and hard talker Fran Lebovitz. Lisa and I had recently watched her superb Pretend It’s A City series, featuring Martin Scorsese as her astute interlocutor. She was the perfect subject for robust discussion, daring and assertive on any and every subject. And when necessary, a little confronting. The only problem was she is still alive. Frustrated, I could only think of the inconveniences some people put in the way of humble scribblers. So moving on I briefly toyed with the idea of writing a po-faced encounter as if she was in fact dead, a conceit that would have the potential to create some serious friction. But knowing how formidable, even frightening she could be in her living persona I demurred, having seen her in action many times on television. So I thought better of it and manoeuvred on to the stage a figure who was indeed on the other side.
Having held court with Francis Bacon in a previous encounter, it seemed appropriate to engage with a questionable figure from his raffish and perpetually inebriated SoHo circle in the 1950s. And there were plenty to choose from. However there was one who stood out as the most odious and reviled, the notorious photographer of the London demi-monde, John Deakin. A gorgon both feared and loathed, habitué of the Colony Room and especially disliked by its fearsome founder and owner Muriel Belcher. Irritable and irascible, he was frequently and indeed brusquely put in his place by club members who had no time for him. The title of this piece, suffice to say, was de rigueur.
So with a deep breath I once again stray into London’s dark heart. We encounter Deakin not in a simulacrum of the elegant Colony Room, as might be expected, but the aptly named Gargoyle Club in Dean Street next door and suffice to say, when he was on the pale ale he could certainly be one. But when the Kray twins and other underworld habitués were in the house, such as the notorious hitman for hire Richard “Dickie” Morgan, there was always the possibility of broken bones, electricity to the genitals or worse, if such an atrocity exists, for disliked, wannabe hard men and those reneging on loans, which were legion. Deakin was not beyond their radar and when he was a nuisance who knows what could happen when he was discreetly summoned to an audience with Ronnie Kray. For the time being in this compartment of the void he is present as an olfactory, dithering brown haze reeking of soured Carlsberg lager. Suffice to say, I have cotton wool galvanised with wax shoved up my nose. His form of communication occurs through words inscribed on the frosty window of something resembling a bar fridge. His hand writing, to say the least, is not the best as the DTs would seem to have followed him in to the abyss. Let the malevolence begin.
*
DT: Let me start with a blurb by the writer Patrick Skene Catling on the back cover of Daniel Farson’s SOHO In The Fifties: “This book is delicious. It could be Proustianly subtitled ‘Remembrance of Times Pissed’”. This pretty much sums up your daily routine in those days wouldn’t you say?
JD: Well for a start you can leave that French ponce right out of it right, ’oright? I want nuffink to do wiv ’im.
Well, quelle dommage. And by the way your cockney is showing.
I’ve heard about this risible palaver and sarcasm of yours from Francis. He tired of it sharpish and just went along wiv it just to shut you up.
Risible indeed. Now that is a big word for a regional Bootle boy like you. There must surely be a lot of erudite and rascally presences wherever you are in the void to nick such word smithery from, or should I say smiffewy, wot.
Maybe it’s time to finish this and leave good people alone. And remember Francis could be a belligerent man when he wanted to or needed to be.
Well a correction for a start, you and Bacon are no longer people and there is nothing good about you as far as I can determine. “You”, such as the word means anything, are a temporary and ineffectual presence that can only be summoned to an audience by a living being. And you will note that I said “that” and not who.
[At this juncture there is a loud, abrasive sound that resembles a raucous and sickly cough that is sustained for some time. As the spluttering continues unabated, with only the occasional pause with which to re-ignite his smoke, I tap out an impatient tattoo on my computer with my fingers, waiting for some kind of resuscitation. After what seems an eternity (and I am acutely aware of the irony and or bathos of this term in this context) Deakin retains some semblance of presence]
Well, that was quite a paroxysmal bout of spluttering. And as I mentioned to Nick Tosches some time ago in this void, those things will kill you. He wasn’t too happy with this provocation and called me a cocksucker.
[Apparently having taken control of his breathing, he measures his words between small silences before regaining some semblance of “normality”]
I’ve never heard of this Nick Touches geezer but I completely agree wiv what he called you.
Well your approbation for that sometime belligerent scribbler has been totally compromised by the mangled spelling and pronunciation of his name. If I were you I’d keep well out of his orbit as he is, or rather was, a notorious grammar Nazi.
Grammar. Load of codswallop.
As you say. Let’s move on shall we, ’eh guv?
[Petulant Silence]
*
Prior to concluding the discussion with the grotesque shade of Deakin, I am reminded of an unexpected, quirky moment that happens every time I am working on a writing project, including this one. Requiring a break to free up space to think and pump oxygen into the old brain box, I invariably go outside and sit in the sun and enjoy the doves cooing and tending to their babies, go out for a nice walk, meandering around the bucolic treelined streets of Rezza. When I get back Puss is routinely waiting for me. Sitting on the computer keyboard like a pampered sphinx and apparently staring at the record stacks, she seems to also be taking an active interest in the football on the tele in the distance. I’m really not sure what detains her attention the most. I like to think that she has picked out one of my LP treasures for attention, the Coloured Balls’ “Ball Power”. A quite fitting choice actually as Puss sometimes likes to play, on her own terms, with balls. Trying to take one off her when she is owning it is a very brave thing to do. And I have the scratches and bite marks to prove it. Anyway, rubbing my scarified hands in expectation of what is to come in ending this fiction, I adopt the role of a northern suburbs Svengali and relish the prospect of Deakin’s demolition.
*
DT: There is one more question to go before you may return to your particular hovel in hell, where or whatever it is.
JD: About time. Get on with it.
Well quite simply, what went wrong?
What the fuck do you mean?
Steady on, no need for blasphemy. I’m referring to you, to your looks.
What of them?
I’m sure you are acutely aware of the difference between the simply dashing, handsome young man of years ago and the in-bred looking gorgon you became.
Who gives a toss about looks, or what people think.
I do.
Well good for you. I’m off and you can fuck off.
I shall take these as your last words, but one more thing. You were well known, risibly in the most part, for your indiscreet “up-skirt” photographs of models when you were working for Vogue.
What of them?
Um, selling them on to your scumbag mates in SOHO and beyond perhaps.
Mates are mates.
And after that clichéd atrocity, mate, it’s nothing but deafening silence waiting for you. Enjoy.
[In an immediate and malodorous blast of acrid beer, he is gone]
*