Two For The Price Of One

There is more than one way to tell a story

The Three Amigos below is the beginning of a short story or novella. And today you have two for one, the written and the performed version. I wonder if you can spot any differences?

The Three Amigos

Part One-ish

The Three Amigos were three seventy-something men who fed up with bingo, lunch clubs with piss-weak tea, and queues at the Co-op had decided they wanted more.

What that more was they had no idea until they, under the influence of a pretty decent malt spied The Back Street Boys on TV.

It was back in the good ole days, when blogs were still read, kindle books were a mere pipe dream, and Madonna’s plastic surgery was still believable. The world hadn’t ended as some cults had predicted, Tom Cruise was a believable hero in the second Mission Impossible, boy bands were all the rage, and the music from the Full Monty film was played everywhere in Argyll.

The Three Amigos, Kenny, Glen and Randolph were celebrating the turn of the century with a malt. Glen had recently retired and was so bored he had taken over the weekly shop, the TV remote and followed Elsa, his wife everywhere, driving Elsa crazy.

Kenny was so bored he’d taken to coupon collecting and had so much ‘buy one get one free’ food he kept the homeless food box full-to-stuffed.

While Randolph, a man with a sporting past spent his days lurking around the sports field of the local school shouting advice to children until someone called the police.

The men were channel flicking when Elsa, with a tray of bacon rolls, appeared catching them chuckling at The Back Street Boys' baggy pants. She, talking about “herself next door” leaving the meals on wheels out for the birds stopped mid-flow.

“You could swing a cat in those pants.” She laughed.

She poured herself a gin, lifted the remote, and began to channel flick stopping at a “seventies” music channel. The Bee Gees were giving their all in trousers so tight…she nearly choked on her lemon. She’d forgotten about those days…the discos, Germain Greer, John Travolta, Cosmopolitan…

The Village People followed and before the first chorus of YMCA, the men under the influence of Woodbine, and whisky were not only singing but, YMCA-ing…

Elsa laughed so hard she nearly wet herself. And yet something stirred in her, a feeling from the past when Glen and her first met at the local dance. Memories of her husband swishing about in a kilt at the Scottish dancing, of Kenny playing rugby in short so tight they almost split, and Randolph leading the pipe band with a sporran so long he nearly tripped.

They were a far cry from The Village People and yet…

“You could do that” she blurted out.

The others looked at her with a “What?”

“Dance, perform, entertain.”

The others continued to stare.

“Strip”.

“Strip?” Spluttered Kenny.

“I mean you’re not in the first bloom of youth but…”

“Speak for yourself” huffed Randolph.

“…you’re not in bad shape,’ she turned to Kenny “I’ve seen you at the bowling club thrusting a ball across the lawn.”

“I wouldn’t call it thrusting,” Kenny muttered.

“There is more to life than “five a day” she proclaimed.

They all laughed Elsa’s five a day is a block of fruit and nut.

“And it’s up to you men to prove it.”

They stared at her——prove something? Were they not too old for that sort of thing?

Who was the first to agree no one can remember, or where they got their name but The Three Amigos were born that night.

Inspired by the Village People, Randolph dressed as ‘Randy The Cowboy”, Glen as “Glen The Leatherman, while Kenny a little confused with the whole Village People/Amigo’s theme went for a Mexican look.

They trained by sped-walking along the Crinan Canal chanting any YMCA lyrics they could remember.

They devised a choreography involving sticks and were happy to strip for “anyone in a warm place’ as they “didn’t do “chills or drafts.’ 

It took them two songs to get their jackets off and three to get down to their psychedelic long johns, (Kenny in tied-dyed boxer shorts). By then the audience, mainly women of a certain age were half-cut. One flash of Kenny’s varicose vein was enough to drive them crazy, laugh at anything while shoving tips down the Amigo’s long johns——and beyond.

Kenny was a flexible man capable of not only the splits but back bends and biting his toes which he was known to burst into at a moment’s notice especially when a new Home Help was on the scene.

Randolph was the most comical of the three, he had the pelvis of Elvis and the miming talent of Charlie Chaplin, he could mime a sore back, a joke, and an orgasm in one song.

While Glen liked to swing things, microphones on leads, belts, socks, a G string, and even Kenny’s poncho which for some reason drove women wild, he lost more ponchos than Elsa went through garbage bags.

Elsa called it comedic erotica for women on the wrong side of menopause and soon organized a tour of the ‘Celtic West’ with a ‘climatic and sensational’ finale in the Argyll in Dunoon.

It seems there was a call for older men in long Johns and boxers and they thought they had cornered the market.

until next time happy reading