By Elaine Weddle

The wood panelled shop where Emin served d up long slithers of greasy meat on beds of shredded salad wrapped in a pitta with a little chilli sauce on the side was where the life of 19-year-old Vic Summers got started.

We’d been in the pub in Greek Street, since god knows when that night, waiting.  Vic was waiting for the girl at the bar to surrender her telephone number.  I was waiting for Vic

Tall, slim with model features and dark glasses, Vic  blamed his love life, or lack of it, on a particularly lazy eye. The gold brown iris of his left drifted aimlessly across the white or simply meandered around in the middle, while his other eye took the lead and waited for the left to catch up.  It was disconcerting.  Sometimes he put it down to ocular muscle weakness , too little vitreous humor,  too much aqueous humor  or even a  change in the weather.  Anyway, according to Vic the eye was ruining his life and rendering him totally and completely un-shagable.

But the truth was that although he talked endlessly about girls he didn’t talk about them the way other boys did.

I said Vic about girls …?  And he pulled his are-you-kidding-me –I’m- god’s-gift-to women face. He was a boy from a small Northern town who’d left  his left  his parents expectations and his soft Geordie tones behind him.  But it was 1982, Aids was officially a thing for which gay men were completely and utterly to blame. We were all going to die but gay men were going to die faster.

But I wasn’t fooled.  Two weeks after we met, after six Gin and orange and a pint of cider, we’d climbed into bed but fallen asleep without even a kiss, six hours later, embarrassed and still a little tipsy from the night before we’d stumbled across Regents Park to work.  It never happened again.  And if boyfriends were easy  to come by,  Vic with his love of cocktails and vintage clothes was the girlfriend I never had.

That night it was far too easy, the brunette had surrendered her  number by 9.30.  The gorgeous film boys from Charlotte Street who Vic had been eyeing up all night had moved on.  It was time for a kebab .

Crowding around the doorway at Effy’s  was Vic’s friend, Candice, a tall thin drag queen hair like red candyfloss, long chiffon dress, eyes blackened by mascara smoking and smiling at Vic.  Behind her, two boys from the Bondage bar round the corner, still wearing their tightly laced basques

“..hello my friends, is a bloody circus in ere”  said Emin as we crowded in behind the others and approached the counter.

A young man with a number one haircut was serving too, eyes wide open at the spectacle before him scowling at the dark chest hair escaping from  Candiice’s cleavage and the two butch men in thigh-high boots and Vic in his turned up collar, Frankie says Relax t-shirt and dark glasses .

From nowhere the boy launched a punch across the counter which landed on Vic’s dodgy eye.  There was a moment of incredulity, Vic staggered, and Candice shrieked with laughter.

The boy picked up a baseball bat, “Fucking fagots.” He shouts

It turns out that after years running his kebab shop Soho, Emin didn’t notice the punters but had forgotten to explain the nature of his clientele to his sixteen year old nephew from Esher.  Nobody called the Police, instead Emin administered an ice pack and it was free doner kebabs with chips all round with extra chilli.

It wasn’t long before everyone in the pub heard that Vic had been decked for being gay.  He went crazy at first. Started wearing cap sleeved t shirts and talking about football.  Then one of the film boys sent him a note, asked him if was feeling OK and did he want to meet at Patisserie Valerie for tea and cake.  And finally, after a little persuasion, he did.