Dancing Bare
Rigby Taylor
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN: 1512088862
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Dancing Bare is the light-hearted memoir of Rigby, an impossibly innocent young man, swaps the suffocating confines of middle class New Zealand for love and liberation in nineteen-sixties London and Europe. Revelling in the freedom conferred by anonymity, he becomes an actor, stripper, rent boy, lover, teacher and dedicated traveller through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, where travellers were uncommon and countries still retained many of the differences that made travelling so interesting. Rigby meets with a wide variety of people, life styles and customs, eventually settling in Paris where the state did not consider his sexuality to be a criminal offence. A moving and amusing story of hope and love, sex and sexuality, theatrical showmanship and artless innocence, laced with a little philosophical speculation as he wanders the world in pursuit of true love.
grinning. I felt as if I'd been grinning ever since I arrived on this ‘Sceptred Isle’. At Speaker’s Corner a variety of soapboxes from cheese crates to elegant lecterns were stages for the riotous ravings of communists calling for the overthrow of private property, Christians calling for the overthrow of civil liberties, republicans calling for the overthrow of the monarchy, socialists calling for the overthrow of capitalism, libertarians calling for the overthrow of censorship, fascists calling
shabby raincoats were lugging their suitcases from club to club. The girls worked for eight hours at a stretch doing up to ten shows a night in half a dozen clubs. Some also turned tricks afterwards. Other doors held well-worn, over-painted tarts swinging the keys to their upstairs room. None looked healthy, clean or happy. Their clients were ugly, dirty, unshaven, unappetising. And I felt sickened. How could these women bear to let such sordid creatures touch them, let alone fuck them? No
studio or theatre, is not a gift that everyone enjoys so, as intended, I was the one to be shaved smooth and swabbed with bronze body paint. When in Bristol we stayed in the old Gaol – up the hill from the city centre. It had been converted into a hostel but remained bleak. Small barred windows in bare rooms that opened onto the echoing central well. I kept thinking of the misery of past inhabitants. The city itself was dull. It would be another few years before there was enough money to clean
to drive the remaining 20 miles home. Only insanity could have inspired the squandering of beautiful land on millions of acres of multilane highways, overpasses, gigantic interchanges, vast parking spaces for huge restaurants and service areas, with no thought for the obvious consequences. I think it was pressure from car manufacturers. The British auto industry was still churning out cars, but the warning signs were clear to everyone. The Rootes Group, Nuffield, Standard, Rover, Jaguar and
smoke and missing out on eight or nine hours uninterrupted sleep. I paid a visit to Martha’s studio and she referred me to a mail-order catalogue photographer. Suits, shirts, underpants, swimwear, pyjamas. The money was good although wearing clothes before a camera felt slightly perverted. After the catalogue, I was referred to a fellow in Richmond who specialised in ‘odd underwear’ photos for the back pages of Men Only, Picture Post and other cheap very soft-core sexy magazines. ‘G’ strings,