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Candy Comes Back
Colin Greenland

Dr Colin Greenland (‘our resident cyberpixie’, The Face) is running
out of shelfspace for awards following the success of Take Back Plenty, a
rumbustious regearing of space opera tropes that won both the Arthur C.
Clarke and British Science Fiction Association awards for best SF novel
of the year. On ‘Candy Comes Back’ he offers the following: ‘Reading
Charlotte Greig’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, you are struck by
how precarious everything was, working for a girlgroup in the ‘50s and
early ‘60s. Songs like “Sweet Talkin’ Guy” and “Then He Kissed Me” may
have given voice to the aspirations of a generation of American women,
but they didn’t do much for the women who sang them. It was production
line pop, performed by sweatshop quartets. If you didn’t like your
high-heeled shoes, there was always someone ready to step into them.
A popular entertainer in Britain in the ‘90s can’t help snaring a little of
that insecurity.’

Shoop shoop shoop, ba-ding-a-dang-ding, shang-a-lang,
shimmy-shimmy-ko-ko-bop . . .

****



S
ammy is a salesman. He has a wife he doesn’t see for weeks on end, which
worries him sometimes but doesn’t stop him fooling around a little. He
doesn’t worry much that he almost never sees his daughter; he has long
ceased to understand her. When anything does worry him, he has another
drink. Tonight Sammy is drinking with a guy from Seattle who supplies trade
fairs for the garment industry. ‘I can take as many as they got to get rid of,’
he keeps saying. ‘Come on, Sammy, how many they got to get rid of? You
can trust me, Sammy.’ The guy from Seattle paws Sammy’s arm in
alcoholic fraternal bonhomie. Sammy thinks he is a pain in the butt. Guy
should know he can’t commit to anything before he’s talked to the boss.

In any case, just now Sammy wants to pay some attention to his other
companion, who is forty-five if she’s a day but is stacked. She is a bottle
blonde in a purple sheath dress so tight Sammy wonders if it came out of a
bottle too. She has a smoker’s cough, a laugh like a crow, and legs that
could stop traffic. Right now she has a sour expression on her face. She
wants the guy from Seattle to shut the fuck up, and so does Sammy. When
the broad goes to the John, Sammy says, ‘I hate to cut and run,’ and takes
out his billfold to settle up. In his billfold he sees the picture of his daughter,
who is sixteen and cares more about Candy and the Bon-Bons than about
him or her mother. Any boy who wants to feel his daughter’s tits only has to
buy her a Candy and the Bon-Bons record. Candy and the Bon-Bons have
made four records already, and Sammy’s daughter has them all.