by Zack
In a singsong voice, Jim said, “Oh, hello Jim. Hello Donny. Thank you so much for coming to see my exhibition—”
Mike’s jabbing gesture cut off the sarcastic tirade. “I didn’t ask you to come here. You have to leave.”
Jim pursed his lips thoughtfully for a second. “That would be rude to Ethan. You see, he asked us along to look at his picture.”
“I— I’m sure he won’t want to draw any attention to it. And I don’t want any fuss—”
“Hello there.”
Mike’s heart sank as he whirled around on Kevin, who looked curiously at Jim, a man clearly too old to be a fellow pupil, although Donny could have fitted in… without the Geordie accent, of course.
“You must be Kevin,” Jim said, all smiley BBC urbane. “James Attridge, and my friend Donald—”
“Doan’t call us that.”
“Donny’s originally from Newcastle,” Mike added faintly.
As Kevin shook his hand, Jim asked Mike, “Ethan around?”
Out of Kevin’s sight Mike tried signaling Jim to drop it.
“Aye, it’s the snap yee did of Ethan we’ve howey fre,” Donny added brightly.
“Who’s Ethan?” Kevin gave Mike an enquiring look.
“Ah, there he is. Eee-than!” Donny waved and Mike’s heart dropped.
It hadn’t been realistic to keep Kevin away from the opening day after he’d juggled assignments around especially to make it, but Mike had hoped to play it cool enough that if Ethan did put in an appearance—as he was bound to do—it wouldn’t be obvious to Ethan that Kevin was his… his friend. He glanced over his shoulder to see Ethan pushing in their direction past a clump of boys. Jim gave Kevin a polite smile and followed Donny to meet him.
Kevin leaned close and spoke in a light vein. “You’ve never mentioned your friends. I might think you were ashamed of them.”
Mike shrugged it off with a deprecating smile, which Donny’s words to Ethan wiped out instantly.
“Feckin faberoony assholes, man! Yee shudev seen the size o his dick.” He held up a pumping fist to his mouth and spread his thin lips into as wide an O as he could. The gesture was unmissable.
Ethan looked around at Mike, saw Kevin, and his eyes widened in assumed recognition.
“Aah, tha’s Mikey’s boyfriend, Kevin, yee knaa,” Donny said helpfully.
Ethan slowly turned to look fully at Kevin. He blinked and then said, “I think it’s amazingly broad-minded of you to let Mike hustle his dick and ass up the West End.”
Kevin had taken Mike to see the World War Two Arnhem epic A Bridge Too Far the week before, and Mike thought he knew what those poor bastards stuck on the eponymous river-crossing felt like when the German tanks poured down shellfire on them. Perhaps the ground might open and swallow him. Looking back on it, fatalistically, he supposed it had all been too good to be true. Life didn’t allow for real happiness, a perfect fit, unconditional love, an ideal friend.
Ethan’s first words were not the Exocet missile, only a shot across the bows. But even Jim began to look like he wished he were elsewhere as spurned and thwarted Ethan Hall succinctly tore apart Mike’s life while Donny looked on in dismay, aware suddenly of his innocent part in the destruction of Kevin’s world. As he walked from the hall, Mike followed, trying to explain what could not be forgiven. Kevin didn’t even pause to question the veracity of Ethan’s words because Mike’s very reaction and his own stumbling attempts at explanation confirmed the awful truth.
A miserable two days passed—exams done, no one missed him at school—in wandering the streets in a daze. Not even the prospects of his regular driving lessons, the continuing part of a birthday present, raised his spirits. What point was there to driving when life was ended? On the third day with no phone call from Kevin, he dared go around to The Boltons. He was on the verge of hyperventilating when Mrs. Manners answered the door instead of the usual Filipina maid. She seemed as put out as he was surprised. The struggle to place his face lasted moments, evident in her expression. Then she nodded briskly. “Ah, I am afraid Kevin is not here.”
Mike shuffled uncomfortably under her blank gaze. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“I can’t say. He left for a student engagement in Prague, or was it Paris? Wherever. He took a flight yesterday, and I’m sure he’ll be gone a few days, or more. I expect he’ll let me know at some point. Was there anything else?”
Mike shook his head and walked aimlessly along The Boltons until it turned into Gilston Road, then down to Fulham Road and a long long walk home. His sense of rejection was total.
CHAPTER NINE
Julian Interlude
“In dismantling the web of Keynesian economic policies, the government of James Callaghan has laid the country open to a run on sterling and created a balance of payments deficit of unprecedented magnitude… I tol’dja it was boring stuff.” Julian chuckled throatily and coughed around a deep drag on the joint squeezed between his tight lips. He leaned over to reach across the rickety narrow table between them to hand it to Mike. “This is good shit, though.”
“Yeah, you just never said how boring.” Mike grinned, referring to the politics not the dope, as he lipped the damp roach and drew in a lungful of pungent smoke. “So now you’re an accredited student of the Lesser Sexual Emissions.”
Julian flopped back on the broken-down sofa, hands behind his head on the back rest, long legs stretched out under the table. He spoke with the slow emphasis of dope and a bit too much beer. “Ha ha. I’ll have you know the London School of Economic and Political Science, to give the place its proper name, is a prestigious dump.” He blew a column of blue dope smoke up into the already thick air. Two joss sticks smoldering away in a tall container on the wonky mantel added further aromatic clag to the atmosphere.
Jules had gotten the dope off the Smiths’ tenants Randall and Henderson, who usually toked to the vibes of something sitar-ish and Indian, whereas Jules had insisted on putting God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols on repeat and only the gap while the record-player’s tone arm retracted and set off again broke the raucous shouting of Johnny Rotten.
“And you did okay with the A-Levels. All passes, so why go for a dead-end job instead of some advanced studying?”
Mike thought this was a bit rich coming from one who wanted to be a get-rich-quick barrister but who had settled for dull economics instead. He chugged down a gulp of his lukewarm beer and added its intoxication to his metabolism. “’S’not a dead end. They were happy to take me on full time. At least I’m working with film and stuff. Fox Talbot’s okay, and I can save for the fees to go to film school next year. You’re inebriated, Jules.” He enunciated the non-sequitur carefully.
“So’re you, and you’re ripped, so what? Christ but it’s strong stuff. I’ll get the munchies and the hornies in no time. Can’t two buddies get off their heads once in a while? Haven’t seen you for an age, other than last week. I know things haven’t been so good.”
“Over it now, thanks to you. Really. Well, on the road to recovery anyway.”
“’Kay… So, no proper job but I hope you’re back in the saddle, out every night getting well and truly knobbed.”
“Hah! Chance’d be a fine thing… there’s not much to tell there. So you spill. How’s your love life?” Mike handed back the joint, happy to get away from the talk of jobs and education. He stretched out on the uncomfortable single armchair until his bum was on the edge and his legs shuddered pleasantly with the effort. The movement had the effect of bunching up his genitals and a sudden erotic wave washed through his frame.
“Oh yeah, right, Mikey, sex-is a lorra more int’resting than bloody Maynard Keynes and his economic theories that have run us since God knows when. Hey! He was like you, a raving poofter. Chased boy-ass all over the shop and no one seemed to mind.”
Mike raised an enquiring eyebrow. “I read somewhere he ran around with Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury lot.”
“Yeah, he got the
hots for a painter named Duncan Grant… You’da liked him.”
“How do you know?” Mike caught Julian’s naughty grin. “Oh no, don’t you give me that chasing anything wearing trousers crap, Jules. Anyway, I’ve met lesbians who wear pants, so it means nothing.” For a moment Mike stared through the dark window high above Julian’s head and tried to imagine Duncan Grant, but he couldn’t bring the face to mind. And he was aware that his friend had neatly turned the conversation back on him.
“Lesbians, hey? Couple of girls getting it on, now that’s what I call entertainment,” Julian said with due consideration. He took a second deep drag and then stubbed out the butt without the ceremony due the Lalique ashtray Mike’s mum had bought him as a house-warming present. Absurdly expensive for a student bed-sit.
Mike chuckled. “Like you’d know what to do, yeah?”
And sometimes, it seemed Julian did know, though not about lesbians…
That they had gotten together again a few days before the present pot party was down to his best friend’s dogged insistence. After several months of occasional phone calls, Julian finally pinned Mike down. Truth to tell, Mike had been too absorbed with Kevin to bother with any other social interaction beyond the Dilly. And when that crashed, he just wanted to hide away from everyone except nameless punters he could throat-fuck to self-oblivion.
Julian had crossed London to the cramped flat Mike managed to rent. It was one of a long row of artists’ studio-apartments known as Bolton Studios, tucked between the backs of houses on Gilston Road and Redcliffe Road. The place was a stone’s throw from The Boltons and Kevin’s parents’ palatial residence. He’d spotted the To Let agency sign after leaving Mrs. Manners, and in a fit of melancholy enquired after it a day later. He was lucky that the renting agent could let him have it as a cheap sub-let for the painter who lived there, who had gone off somewhere for six months. It still cost him heavily, and his parents kept berating him for the waste, but it meant he didn’t always have to go back to Aberdare Gardens reeking of sex, as he imagined he did after a night out on the pull up West. He’d also been careful not to let anything like that slip to Julian, who would surely be revolted at the thought of his old school chum whoring. They went to grab a burger in a place on Fulham Road Mike sometimes used, and Julian lectured him that life went on, even Kevin-less.
“This feeling sorry for yourself, it’s not like the Mike Smith I used to know.”
“That one’s left the building.”
“Elvis is better off where he is than the lard-bucket he turned into.”
Mike smiled palely. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Well, you ain’t dead yet. Now, listen. I just saw Gone With the Wind up at your Odeon in Swiss Cott—”
“You what! Gone with the fucking Wind?”
“What’s wrong? You obviously haven’t seen it.”
“That old drivel. No, I haven’t, and I’ve no intention of ever seeing it.”
“Then you have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen it three times now.”
“I just don’t see you and… that pile of toss—”
“Well don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. It’s a great deal better than you imagine. It might just possibly be one of the greatest films ever made. Anyway, that’s not the point.” Julian jabbed a forefinger imperiously.
“So what is?”
“Scarlett O’Hara—now don’t get me wrong—is like you.”
Mike’s splutter over a final mouthful of fries failed to stem Julian’s flow.
“Yep, brave, cheerful, full of optimism, full of herself in fact—you’re a tad more caring about others than she is—but the misfortunes of life bring her down, and all around her moan and whinge. When she’s at her lowest ebb, bit like you now, she’s trying to find food for her useless sisters. She’s starving, been starving for ages, and she pulls this carrot from the soil. It’s covered in dirt, but she bites into it. It’s the film’s fulcrum and the end of the first half. She looks into the sky and makes this speech. Here.”
Julian pulled out a piece of folded paper from his inner jacket pocket and held it out. Mike looked at the offering with suspicion, but took it, unfolded it, and got a greasy finger print on the corner. He stared at the neatly typed words in puzzled wonder as Julian recited them from memory.
As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over I’ll never be hungry again, no nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill… as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
He could have laughed. He could have teased Julian some more. Instead he wiped tears from his eyes and kept staring at the words, unable for a moment to look at his friend. As God is my witness…
“I’m not thinking you need all that stealing shit and killing stuff, but…”
The cheating and whoring kind of fits. “I get the point, Jules. Thanks.”
Julian left him to mull it over, then rang a few days later and popped over again, full of good cheer: some beers from the corner off-licence; and a tin of tobacco, papers and a chunk of cannabis resin “from your American sitcom mates.”
And now here they were, getting ripped in the tiny sitting room above the absent painter’s studio below, Mike slumped in the sole armchair, Julian on the creaky divan-sofa. He produced a packet of Rizla papers from his tin and leaned forward to begin construction of a second spliff. Even though Mike could see that his ear stud intrigued Julian, his friend had tactfully refrained from mentioning it until Mike explained how he’d been given it. Julian nodded, said, “Makes you look piratical,” and left it at that.
He joined two papers length to length and a third across the end. “So what does a single, good-looking gay boy get up to of an evening…” He glanced up mischievously. “I mean, not tonight, but normally.”
Mike felt a second unwelcome erticjab in his groin. He pushed his head back against interlocked hands and stared up at the low ceiling. The uplift of his elbows stood in for a shrug. “Oh, you know… nothing much. Been dancing at Adams.”
“I head about that. Some girl at LSE swears it has the best dance music in town. Bit of energy and not too much head-banging punk.”
“About right.” Mike nodded ironically at his battered turntable as the tone arm banged down and Johnny Rotten lashed out for the nth time.
“Go with anyone?”
“Mostly just me. The vibes are cool. You can dance, and there’s everyone around just doing their own things. And you? You haven’t given much either.”
Julian ran the tip of his tongue along the glue edge of the paper and deftly rolled up the joint. As he ripped a strip from his Gold Leaf pack for the roach, he looked up from the task with a mobile mouth twitch. “There’s been a couple of girls, bit of snogging, the usual… ‘Oh, Jules, I’m not ready to go that far.’ You know.”
Mike grinned at the poor girlish imitation. “Not getting much, then?”
Julian’s snort blew the roach off the table. He bent to retrieve it. “Not much? Fuck all nothing, my man. There. I said it. I’m a sad sack of unbridled lust, a desperate need to get laid, with the sex appeal of a Greek god, and getting nowt.”
The description was not one Mike necessarily agreed with, although at school the younger Julian looked less comely than he now did. Looks weren’t everything. Julian had a personality that, on form, crackled and made his facial features—which the very unkind might describe as gnomic—radiate good humor. When Jules smiled, Mike thought, he could call himself a… a Celtic god, perhaps.
“I’m working on this bint from the next year up. Sure she’s got the hots for me, but too shy. A real looker. And she looks, too. Know what I mean?” He leaned back from folding the roach into the end of the joint with a ball-point pen and grabbed his crotch in a vigorous jerking gesture. Which only drew Mike’s unwarranted attention to the bulky result left behind.
Absence makes the libido grow fonder…
Shit, I’m perving my best friend again.
Julian let loose a long outblown sigh, shook his head, and leaned back again to stare at pretty much the same spot of ceiling that had so held Mike’s attention minutes before. The joint lay forgotten on the table. “I had this fantasy.”
At the curiously quiet tone, Mike looked up from where he’d been contemplating the newly rolled joint. He said nothing, interested in a sexual fantasy of Julian’s, given that at school they had never touched on the subject.
“This girl, I mentioned, she’s got me around her place—”
“Where’s that?”
“Don’t interrupt. Doesn’t matter, I don’t know. It’s a fantasy for fuck’s sake! She’s got me around her place, and she says, ‘Lose the shirt.’ So commanding. I unbutton it and then she’s tugging at my belt. I’m sat down on a sofa… actually, a bit like this.” He spread his stretched legs slightly. “Anyway, in seconds she’s got my trousers and knickers off, like…”
Mike found himself sitting forward, eyes fixed on Julian’s dreamy ceilingward expression. “She removed your boots first?”
“Whose fantasy is this? Boots long gone. Me bollock naked. Then I hear a whisk of the nylons she’s wearing and I’m aware she’s left the room only to return a moment later with a bowl in her hands. And then comes the cold shock. Whipped cream. She coats me in all this whipped cream and then she kneels down over me and slowly… very slowly—so, so very slowly—licks it all off and…”
Julian cut off and half sat up. “Shit!” He laughed, an uncertain chuckle. “Someone being rude about me said I was a slave to phallocentric discourse.”
“Whatever the fuck that is,” Mike shot back. But he couldn’t avoid noticing how much Julian’s package had grown. With a terrifying abruptness a freezing cold shower drenched him from head to toe. He felt entirely outside his body as he propelled himself to his feet and almost staggered from the narrow sitting room. When he returned a moment later Julian’s expression flickered between intrigued, alarmed, and… perplexed.
“What’s that?”