Girl, Woman, Other. Bernardine Evaristo

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      if they looked after the place, he wrote

      they could stay for free

      they stopped the illegal tapping of electricity and opened an account with the London Electricity Board

      likewise with the gas, hitherto powered by a single fifty pence piece jammed into a meter

      they needed to set up a management system and gathered one Saturday morning in the lobby to thrash it out

      the Marxists demanded they set up a Central Committee of the Workers’ Republic of Freedomia, which was a bit rich, Amma thought, seeing as most of them had taken ‘a principled stand against the running dogs of capitalism’ as an excuse to not work

      the hippies suggested they form a commune and share everything, but they were so chilled and laid back, everybody talked over them

      the environmentalists wanted to ban aerosols, plastic bags and deodorant, which turned everyone against them, even the punks who weren’t exactly known for smelling minty

      the vegetarians demanded a non-meat policy, the vegans wanted it extended to non-dairy, the macrobiotics suggested everyone eat steamed white cabbage for breakfast

      the Rastas wanted cannabis legalized, and a reserved plot on the land out back for their Nyabinghi gatherings

      the Hari Krishnas wanted everyone to join them that very afternoon banging drums down Oxford Street

      the punks wanted permission to play shouty music and were duly shouted down

      the gay guys wanted anti-homophobic legislation enshrined into the building’s constitution, to which everyone replied, what constitution?

      the radical feminists wanted women-only quarters, self-governed by a co-op

      the lesbian radical feminists wanted their own quarters away from the non-lesbian radical feminists, also self-governed by a co-op

      the black radical lesbian feminists wanted the same except with the condition that no whiteys of any gender were allowed inside

      the anarchists walked out because any form of governance was a betrayal of everything they believed in

      Amma preferred running solo, and mixing with others who didn’t try to impose their will on anyone else

      in the end a straightforward rotating management committee was formed with various rules against drug-dealing, sexual harassment and voting Tory

      the plot out back became a communal space featuring scrap metal sculptures

      courtesy of the artists

      Amma managed to lay claim to a typing pool so large she could jog around it

      with its own private toilet and sink that she kept blissfully clean and suffused with floral scents

      she coated the walls and ceiling with a striking blood-red paint, ripped up the corporate-grey carpet, threw a few raffia mats on the wooden floor, installed a second-hand cooker, fridge, bean bags, a futon, and a bath reclaimed from a junk yard

      her room was big enough for parties and big enough for people to crash

      the disco beats of Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, Minnie Riperton and Chaka Khan swirling on vinyl got her parties going

      Roberta, Sarah, Edith, Etta and Mathilde Santing were the soundtracks to her end of night seductions

      behind the eighteenth-century black lacquer Chinese screen, rescued from a skip outside the old Chinese Embassy

      she worked her way through many of the women of Freedomia

      she wanted one-night stands, most wanted more than that

      it got to the point where she dreaded passing her former conquests in the corridors, like Maryse, a translator from Guadeloupe

      if she wasn’t knocking on Amma’s door in the middle of the night begging to be let in, she was lurking outside it to harass whoever was getting what she wanted

      this progressed to name-calling from her window whenever she saw Amma approach the building, all of it coming to a head when she tipped a bucket of vegetable peel over Amma one day as she passed beneath her window

      infuriating both the environmentalists and the management committee who took it upon themselves to write to Amma that she ‘stop shitting on her own doorstep’

      Amma wrote back how it was interesting that quickly people turned into totalitarian fascists once they’d been given a little power

      but she’d learned her lesson and wasn’t short of attention; groupies queued up for Amma and Dominique as the main players of Bush Women Theatre

      everyone from baby dykes in their late teens to women who could be their mothers

      Amma didn’t discriminate, she bragged to her friends that her tastes were truly egalitarian as they traversed culture, class, creed, race, religion and generation

      which, happily, gave her a bigger playing field than most

      (she kept her predilection for big tits quiet because it was unfeminist to isolate body parts for sexual objectification)

      Dominique was more selective and monogamous, serially so, she went for actresses, usually blonde, whose microscopic talent was overshadowed by their macroscopic beauty

      or models whose looks were their talent

      women-only bars were their hangouts

      Fallen Angel, Rackets, the Bell, the Drill Hall Theatre bar on a Monday where the lesbianarati hung out, and Pearl’s shebeen in Brixton on a Friday night run by Pearl, a middle-aged Jamaican woman who stripped her basement of furniture, set up a sound system and charged at the door

      Amma experienced commitment to one person as imprisonment, she hadn’t left home for a life of freedom and adventure to end up chained to another person’s desires

      if she slept with a woman more than two or three times, they usually went from attractively independent to increasingly needy

      within the space of a week

      she’d become their sole source of happiness as they moved to assert their authority over her autonomy, by any means necessary

      sulks, tears, accusations of selfishness and heartlessness

      Amma learnt to head all women off, to state her intentions upfront, to never sleep with the same person twice, or pushing it, thrice

      even when she wanted to

      sex was a simple, harmless, human pleasure and until her late thirties she got a lot of it

      how many were there? one hundred, another fifty? surely not more than that?

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