* * * Hardness
Rough, polished, reflective, dull. London offers its surfaces to me. Pockmarked tarmac, brick blackened by pollution, curvy metal balustrades and gleaming glass. Countless greys and postmodern complexities. Concrete, clouds, and pavements clotted with commuters. The ground-level windows of office buildings that I’m always compelled to use as ad hoc mirrors. Routes that are allowed, routes that are not. To navigate London is to navigate wealth and power, literally crossing the usually invisible boundaries between public and privately owned space (evinced only by cameras, security personnel or discreet signage).
I was born in London and lived there for most of my life, but last summer I moved to a 17th century farm at the top of a wooded hill in West Sussex, two hours away. The surroundings are damp and dense. Insects secret themselves in the grass, morning dew sinks into the mud. The air is moist and sweet. Surfaces are actually depths – the ground, the trees and the sky. The wetness of puddles has more impact. Soaked socks.
I miss the hardness of the city – a quality that is both literal and metaphorical. The built environment is resilient, yes, but so is the high-octane energy of ambition, the resolve of creativity, and the intransigent attitude of successful people. I miss driving through the City of London, with its coterie of skyscrapers manifesting corporate power. The Gherkin, the Cheesegrater, the Walkie Talkie, the Shard – these cutesy nicknames for the most recent buildings in London’s financial heart distract us from their dominant status. The Daily Express building at 120 Fleet Street was built in the 1930s to house the offices of the eponymous newspaper, and has a different energy – one that is optimistic and charming. Curvy like an ocean liner (an Art Deco trope), it has a black vitrolite and clear-glass façade. Despite its gleaming surfaces, it has an almost bodily presence. I want to touch it.
Sometimes when I’m walking through that part of town, I think of the American artist Bruce Nauman and his piece Body Pressure (1974), a text work that invites the viewer to: ‘Press as much of the front surface of your body (palms in or out, left or right cheek) against the wall as possible. Press very hard and concentrate.’ The instructions end: ‘Concentrate on the tension in the muscles, pain where bones meet, fleshy deformations that occur under pressure; consider body hair; perspiration, odors (smells). This may become a very erotic exercise.’
The City seduces me and I begin to forget who I am. Is that what seduction is? Moving towards what you want, away from who you are?
Fetter Lane, which connects Fleet Street with High Holborn, is narrow and flanked by tall buildings. Each one is an outstanding example of a particular architectural style – together, they span centuries. The etymology of its name has nothing to do with chains, but still makes me think of bondage. To drive along Fetter Lane, especially at night, is to feel the metaphorical weight of its architecture. A pleasurable feeling of being squashed, something like asphyxiation. Fear can be erotic, too.
In 2022, one crisp February day made bright by the winter sun, I walked north up Fetter Lane until I reached 12 New Fetter Lane, the contemporary office building for an international law firm, which features emphatically articu-lated fenestration in painted metal and glass. Down Bream’s Buildings (the name of the street as well as the buildings on it) and the buildings were not as tall, and constructed in classic London red brick instead of steel. Then I reached Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four barristers’ courts in the city, with its Old Hall that has elements dating back to the 15th century, and the more recent (Victorian) Great Hall. The Irish fashion designer Simone Rocha had chosen the latter as the setting for the presentation of her autumn/winter 2022 collection, and I took my seat in the audience. In this new work, Rocha explored the subject of the ‘loss of innocence’ through the prism of the Irish story The Children of Lir, which is about four children who are turned into swans for 900 years by their stepmother. The intensity of this tale was channelled into the clothes, which were adorned with pearls, jewels and feathers. The models wore long hair in plaits, and layers of tulle and cotton were piled heavily into skirts like the plump bodies of swans who need to keep warm and whose feet drag below the water’s surface. Sitting there watching this show, I felt I had travelled to another time – one more universal and enduring than 2022, which was merely another year.
* * * In between
London is synonymous with moving. Modes of transport prescribe varying degrees of intimacy with fellow travellers. The Tube is a social experience, which can be enjoyable or oppressive. Taking an Uber usually means sitting in awkward silence with a stranger. I like the bus for its proximity to the street and the ever-changing views. In relationship terms, the bus is non-committal – it’s so easy to get off. The double-deckers are mounted with CCTV screens that display a rotating live stream of different parts of the vehicle. Suddenly, you’re on screen from a strange angle, seeing the side of your neck from above, for the very first time. I love these accidental portraits.
Living in a city means enduring quick shifts between privacy and exposure – you’re on display, to some extent, as soon as you leave the house. We are seen in a city. And if we form a sense of who we are in relation to others, then cities are like identity laboratories, offering both judgement and permission.
Black cabs are comforting. They extend the privacy of the home, cosseting you in a spacious, heavy, leather cocoon that takes you exactly where you need to go. Also, taxi drivers have the Knowledge, a complete working memory of the map of London, meaning they can navigate to almost any destination without using GPS. I find this geographical wisdom deeply reassuring, and enjoy relinquishing responsibility as I am shuttled from A to B.
I think taxi drivers might also have an unwritten code of conduct that they will treat as very urgent the desires of those who have spent the evening together and decided, at the end of the night, that they’re desperate to fuck. They get you home fast and are usually extremely discreet. Some people love foreplay in the back of a cab and are turned on by the exhibitionism of it. There must be so many taxi drivers who develop voyeuristic tendencies. Others prefer the tension of waiting until they’re at home. Denial drives desire.
The erotic energy of a date can be cultivated on the journey there. Flirting with the future. Twenty minutes on a bus can feel like an eternity. I once drove my car all the way across London to a dinner date in Kensington, because I knew it would heighten my anticipation. In my black Saab made in 1990, I listened to music, smoked and accelerated with impatience. It was cinematic and romantic, an act of self-seduction. I can’t remember what we ate, only that he loved Humphrey Bogart.
* * * Soft serve
I like men who like ice cream. In my late teens, I had a boyfriend who loved Häagen-Dazs. We’d sit in its flagship parlour on Leicester Square, and I would always have two scoops of Cookies and Cream in a cup, covered in hot chocolate sauce. In the 1990s, Häagen-Dazs partnered with British advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), which created a series of sexually suggestive campaigns for the brand and wrote its tagline, ‘Dedicated to pleasure.’ I remember billboards, posters and TV adverts of semi-undressed couples feeding ice cream to each other and licking it off their bodies, limbs entangled. Häagen-Dazs’ sales quadrupled in the first year it worked with BBH.
It’s the sensory impact of ice cream that makes it so good. It’s the cold shock it delivers to the mouth, and the quick melting within – sweet creaminess flowing over and under the tongue, between the teeth, down the throat. Combine it with something hot, and things get even better – think affogato, think apple crumble. The ice cream I like most at the moment can be found at Toconoco, a Japanese restaurant tucked away on a basin of Regents Canal in Haggerston. It has a tiny play area for children that includes a wooden oven with electric dials and lights, and a bunk bed for impromptu naps. When I take my son to Toconoco, he eats his rice and seaweed diligently, knowing it’ll be followed by a beautiful wooden bowl filled with two scoops of matcha, red bean, miso or black sesame-flavoured deliciousness.
Meanwhile, lotus flowers rest on the surface of the canal outside and dragonflies make a rare appearance. The natural world makes its presence felt.
I appreciate parts of the city that manage to hide themselves. Basement bars in Soho that I have visited with lovers over the years – The Black Gardenia, The Pink Chihuahua and Below – windowless caverns where the time of day doesn’t need to matter, spaces surrounded by earth.
* * * Underground
The Black Gardenia was a shabby dive bar on Dean Street that opened during the noughties. It was damp, dusty, and flew in the face of health and safety – this was Soho before the Olympics, before Crossrail, before, before, before. It was run by a man called Jake Vegas who dressed like a jazz gangster – quiff in his hair, silk scarf around his neck. He was always hanging around in Soho, and I think he might have owned one of the porn shops in the area too. He sang in a band called The Black Diamonds. At midnight in The Black Gardenia, someone played loud blues on a battered piano. The seating was leathery and old, the walls of the toilets were slick with condensation. It was unbridled, chaotic, it was Generation X.
The man I first kissed there was the one who managed to get us a membership for The Pink Chihuahua (I have no idea what the criteria were). Underneath a Mexican restaurant on Brewer Street, this club is still going and has always been full of people dancing whenever I’ve been. It’s the bright, jubilant opposite of The Black Gardenia’s brooding angst. I remember the legendary barman Dick Bradsell serving drinks there most nights I went. He was the man who invented the espresso martini – what a legacy!
Below opened more recently, in late 2021, like the viable child of a Soho that’s been lost under the rubble of redevelopment and generational change. It’s in the basement of the 19th century Welsh chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue, and the entrance at ground level isn’t marked, so although it has an open-door policy, in some ways it’s very exclusive because it’s not easy to find. Make it there and you’ll find delicious drinks, delicious food, delicious dancing. Subterranean and secret, nestled in London’s clay. Mixing drinks, mixing music, mixing people.
I think about London on a vertical plane: the skyscrapers reaching upwards in showy declaration, the hidden worlds delving into the deep. Moving up, moving down, moving between. The brashness of a central London square, the peace of the canal. History and experience layering themselves onto space. London is a relationship unlike any other.