by Paul Magrs
Me and the footballer stood by the door, apart, watching the broad, white backs of the others. Noises of slippy lube and sweat, the creak of black pvc chairs. And, when I listened hard, there was music, like incidental music from a science-fiction film. The occasional discreeet cough.
The blond sailor stood by the potted palms and the spill of light. He let his towel drop with a thump and displayed one of those silly, huge, clublike cocks. He joined the group in the dark, in the middle of the room. Everyone clustered around him. He had twenty mouths on him. The footballer was joined by the thin boy. I could see them reach inside towels and bring each other out. The footballer glanced over his partner’s shoulder to give me an ironic look. Then he pushed his thin boy aside and joined the rest of them.
I went back to the sauna to sit on the warm wood in the orange light. A very thin, sick-looking clone was vigorously massaging the glistening front of a very fat man who lay along the bench. He slapped his great wobbling cock and balls around and a cluster of other punters stood by and watched, because there was nothing else to look at. Through the window I watched others in the jacuzzi, sitting poker-faced under the froth.
I hoped the upstairs people were taking care of Jep. The woman worked from home. She sold artworks and was doing a kind of apprenticeship. Just recently they had decided to make themselves known to me, though we knew each other by sight. Every time they went in or out of their flat they would stare through my front window and glass door. I felt they already knew all about my life, before they invited themselves in with a bottle of wine. He worked in Next. Every evening, because they were busy people, they had takeaway. I’d see them go up the fire escape, past my flat, with paper bags, their footsteps ringing dully on the metal. When they came to visit they crowded over Jep. They wanted a child of their own. Marvelled at my having one like this. They bent to look at him. And look at him! My baby did all the wonderful, baby things he does, but they were frightened of him at first. He’s started to crawl. That first night he was scrambling about on the rough, worn carpet and the couple from upstairs drew in their feet, picked up their glasses of red wine. They stared at his fur, his eager eyes. I drank their wine and revelled in his beauty. No, I wasn’t going to keep Jep a secret.
“But he’s got a tail!” the woman from upstairs cried at last, when they dared to bring up the subject. They had waited till I referred to Jep’s strangeness, his spots and his pointy teeth. They waited as if they couldn’t believe their own eyes.
“Only a very short tail,” I said. “But isn’t it slinky and marvellous?”
And the next time they came down to visit, they were less nervy and she could even bring herself to pick Jep up. My heart hammered away in my chest as I watched this. Jep, the little traitor, curled into her arms and nuzzled her expensive cardigan. I wondered if he was thinking — with all the instinct he could muster — of reaching up for her nipple. She had large, plump breasts, the young woman from upstairs.
Even now, sitting in the sauna — of course I haven’t told the upstairs people where I go on my afternoons away from Jep — even now I worry that she is sitting in her flat, breast-feeding my baby.
“But how was he born?” they ask me.
And I won’t tell them.
Simply, this is my child. And, being nice middle-class children, they are only too happy to help. I am so obviously in need.
It’s like bumping into Santa Claus in the queer sauna. That’s what I think. Did I tell you that story yet? I told Sandra that story when we were drunk. Sandra’s the woman from upstairs. I took her to the pub one night, leaving Jep with her feller. “Leave the kids together,” she said and laughed, as we scattered off down the fire escape. Drunk, I told her about the queer sauna and how I bumped into Santa Claus. She laughed and laughed. “But you can’t fuck Santa!” she said, and made heads turn. “You can’t, it’s sacrilegious!” And I told her that of course I hadn’t fucked Santa, though he offered himself. I think Sandra might be all right, actually, I told her about some of my life to see what she’d say, and she took it all in her stride. She asked if she could come out some night, some daft, reckless, copping-off night. She says sex with her partner, with David, has gone downhill. He likes Fantasy Football, the X-Files, Oasis, Irvine Welsh. He’s a man’s man, she shrugs.
I was telling her then that the sauna has homely prints on its walls. Landscapes, puppies and donkeys, as in your parents’ house. It plays retro songs upstairs in the locker rooms, which could be the locker rooms to any health-and-fitness place. In the lounge they congregate at about seven thirty to watch Coronation Street. People keep trying to make things homely. Everything tries to make itself homely, that’s what I decide. It pushes itself into your life and then, suddenly, it’s a part of your life. When I try to talk this over with Sandra – who was at college, she did art, she’ll know – I seem to be talking about watching the telly with a load of blokes, all sitting round in their towels. Sometimes the only time you hear them speak is to turn to a fellow watcher and comment on events in the Street. I sat there one day and thought, sex bonds faggots less than Coronation Street does.
Sandra loves Corrie, and Santa and her partner, David. She tells me about these things. She lived in a large house with her six brothers and two sisters. “Though we weren’t very well off, we were very comfortable. I remember my childhood as happy and idyllic. That isn’t a very trendy thing to say, is it?” She looks at me glumly. She has hair bleached trendily gold, leaving a streak of black at the roots. She wears a silver polyester blouse, blue satin hipsters. She has a leopardskin bag with her, which she seems to have covered with her leather jacket, out of tact, I suppose. “I shou1dn’t go on about a perfect childhood,” she smiles, “because that isn’t very pc. You’re meant to have something wrong with you, especially if you want to get on in life. But I can’t suddenly start saying my father abused all his children, can I? Can I? It wasn’t true. He shouted, but no more than any normal man.”
I wonder why she’s going on like this. “All my friends have something deeply wrong with them,” she’s saying. “Sometimes, being as normal as this, I feel left out.” She’s telling me it’s all right for me to be as wacked out as she thinks I am. She must think I’ve an awful lot wrong with me. It wasn’t until now that I thought of it as wrong. I’ll have to put a stop to her. She’ll make me worse than ever. I’ll tell her some more stories to make her hair stand on end. She liked the ones so far.
And we walked home through the dark canyons of Thistle Street. All the restaurants are shut, the windows are dark.
“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked and outside it was misty. The two paths to take were to his or mine. We took mine. Somehow it became understood that we were going back to Thistle Street. The decision had been made and we had only a bit of a talk. He told me about all the comedians he knew who were doing the festival, which famous people he knew. I hadn’t really heard of them.
The upstairs people were in bed, Their lights out. The flat block was silent.
Even as we sat on the settee drinking tea, it wasn’t clear whether he had come back with me or come-back-with-me.
Oh, but it seemed ages since I’d wriggled about on a settee in the middle of a night, tugging off two lots of clothes, the thrill of possibility of someone bursting in. But who would come bursting in? Last year in Penny’s house the phrase we had for being caught out was ‘having no socks on’. The dead giveaway.
This Wednesday night he was naked, hugely tall, muscled, a bit of paunchy, attractive tubbiness about him. He was a rugby player from Bristol and, even though he was stripped, there was still no definite answer from him when I asked was he coming to bed? His hair all awry, his face gleaming, his cock stubby, hand-sized, cosily similar to mine, and I saw that he still had his boots and socks on, everything wrapped around them, inside out, hanging over the arm of the settee. Took ages to get them off.
I remember asking how he wanted me and being stretched across him, both lying on our backs
— like Vince and I used to get — his cock pressed right up my arse as if to fuck me, him wanking me off, his mouth all up my neck. And when I took both our cocks in one hand to do them together he looked enchanted as if at something new and pushed his own hands in, partway sitting up and going, “I want a go!”
We left the living room littered with all our clothes. A real bombsite. In my room I hoisted up the blinds to catch the first of the light. You could see the back of the bank, the power generators that throb and hum loudly night and day, all that noise I soon got used to. I wanted to see a little of the dirty pink of the sky. It never gets quite dark, of course. I wanted to see him, too.
We roved all over each other. Not as desperately and fiercely as I did last time, with that bloke with the oranges on his kitchen windowsill. There was a carefreeness this time, a what-the-fuck about it. When we came it was in exactly the way that Vince and I settled on in the end. Him sitting astride me and shooting right over my chest, me coming on my own tits. I can never help noticing that it’s me getting all the mess. That sudden stink of detergent when they come on you. I remembered Vince and how perfunctory he became, grabbing any old thing off the floor to mop the spunk up. He dabbed at me tenderly and sometimes that gave me the creeps. With others since then the fun, the postcoital bliss, was all about lying in mess. The more and messier the merrier. “There’s oceans down here!” On Wednesday night we sank slickly into each other’s arms and drifted. Kind of dozed. Then – bang – he was up and deciding he’s leaving. It’s five o’clock.
We’re both walking naked into the living room, where the same CD I left still plays. We’re still wet, in full view of the wide front windows. It’s the start of an awful play, us walking in like this. I’m even asking a terrible first line: Does he always shag-and-run like this?
He sighs. “Am I getting told off?”
I go back for my dressing gown and we kiss a bit more. But he goes and I watch from the top of the fire escape as he reaches the ground, turns off into Thistle Street at the corner of the lane. As he’s going out of sight he swings himself round the corner on the lamp post. It’s an instant of joy. Our first separate epiphany since our attempted shared one, moments ago.
I leave all my clothes on the living-room floor. I’m not sure how I dare. It’s an awful, messy thing to do. I’ve got to check on Jep. Lucky he’s a good sleeper. If they could believe I was a mother, they’d say I was a bad one.
It’s been a long time since I was involved in anybody’s life. Jep
and have been in a world of our own. I don’t expect people to come into our life, not properly. Not any more. I’m used to all sorts of new faces. That’s what I’m used to. New faces coming in, then going.
I was moved because these people I hadn’t known for very long took me into their lives. I need taking into other people’s lives. I think there’s only so long you can survive off your own resources. I mean, it’s different for different people, but I was running to the end of my resources and I’d had enough.
I was out on a Sunday night with Sandra from upstairs. We ended up in CC’s and had more pints than we’d intended and sat at a table in the back. She was getting out a bit more these days, rolling in pissed and getting on Tom’s nerves. Tom was left babysitting my kid. On one of our nights out Sandra confided in me that she’d given up looking for a job. She only pretended that she worked freelance from home, but really she did fuck all. She could tell me this now, I was her friend.
This Sunday was karaoke night and we had to shout to make ourselves heard. They’d replaced the old carpet with black and white tiles and some Australian queen warned us that it got terribly slippy later on, when it was covered with lager. After he told us this he hung about, waiting to crash our conversation. I looked away. I can’t stand men with their chests hanging out in bars. Very expertly, Sandra stared him down over her drink. Mr Australia took two steps to the left and leaned himself against the Bullseye! game, out of our orbit forever.
“You should pay me protection money,” she said, when I told her she was getting good at shooing my undesirables. Sandra looked rueful at this. She was in a bright-yellow leather jacket that must have cost a bomb. “I’m getting too good at being a fag hag,” she said.
“How can you be too good at it?” I asked, but not really paying attention. I couldn’t free myself of the habit – I still can’t – of staring up and down the bar to see who’s in.
“It can’t be good for me,” she said. “I’ll forget how to behave with ordinary men.”
I pulled a face and shrugged. “See him over there? Don’t look. Pays people to shit in his mouth.”
“No!”
“He does.”
“Have you?”
I shuddered. “Not even for money.”
“God,” she said. “I would.” She turned to look him up and down. He was in a leather waistcoat and trousers. His motorbike helmet stool beside him. “I would shit on him for nothing,”
“I don’t think he’d be interested.”
She blinked. “What’s the difference between male shit and female shit?”
But I didn’t know.
Our Australian pal had met another one. “There’s always one!” he crowed, banging him on the back.
“Speaking of Australians,” Sandra said, “a friend of Tom’s has got an Australian lodger and he’s moving out. The room’s coming up free.” It was a shared house, much nicer than the flat I was in. I’d like it, she said.
I thought of the housing benefit people, when they came to my flat in Thistle Street. They examined it top to bottom, checking everything out. They saw all the baby things and Jep asleep under his blanket and they looked as if they didn’t approve. Did my landlord know I had such a young child in this tiny, noisy flat? I didn’t know, I told them. The housing-benefit people said my flat wasn’t worth fifty pounds a week rent. I said I knew, but that what I was paying. Well, they said, it isn’t worth it. Right, I said. They went and wrote a letter saying they’d give me thirty. I tried to write letters back to them and the landlord, saying it wasn’t right. But I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Writing in to complain. Vince could do all that. He made sure he got his dues. Me, I give in.
The housing-benefit people wrote to my landlord and said I had a tiny child in here, a babe-in-arms. I was scared they’d get the social services in. I’m still scared of that. And when they see Jep they’ll put him in somewhere worse than care. I’ll never see him again.
But...if I never saw him again, any life would be easier, wouldn’t it? My life would be simpler without the child.
I’ve resolved to move, to keep on moving. To keep him and me out of their grasp. I told Sandra this. She’s been keeping her eyes open.
“You know this town’s full of Australians. Especially in the summer. And they’re always moving on. It’s a beautiful flat. You’ll love it. I’ve seen the room. It’s airy and light. It’ll be so much better…for Jep, too.”
I look at Sandra. She stumbles on my son’s name, as if she doesn’t think it’s a proper name.
A fat woman is doing karaoke. She sings ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ in the worst, screechiest voice I have ever heard. She makes herself laugh, hard and long, over the mike as the song goes on. It’s infectious.
“I’d like to go and look at the room,” I tell Sandra. I like feeling like someone’s helping me out with my life, and that’s good. At one time I would have hated anyone interfering. Now it feels like a load off. I’ll go and see this airy room.
On the dance floor of CC’s I’ve seen Cameron, and we’re ignoring each other. End up dancing in each other’s orbits. He’s with a woman called Angie. In her late thirties with short, plum-red hair. She screams up into my face, introducing herself. Cameron passes me a bottle of poppers. His other mate Tommy’s there, in half-drag. He’s wearing thigh-high cream stack-heeled boots. I’m dancing with Cameron, realising that I wouldn’t even talk to the bloke if I met him somewhere quiet.
We’re dancing to the Bee Gees and she puts her heart and soul into it. “I remember this!” she grins, flashing her elbows about to clear some room for us.
Cameron was drinking his long vodkas. I forgot how drunk he gets here. How he tried to open up my trousers on the dance floor, then denied it later. He runs around talking to everyone in the place, grinning and endearing himself, never mind if he knows them or not. Once when we stood at the bar here, an old man asked him for a kiss. “Just a peck!” Cameron said, and the old man grabbed him. “That was a real kiss!” Cameron shouted.
The first time he came back to my flat we took a taxi and had to stop so he could fetch chips. Climbing out of the cab he gave the driver a five-pound note and called him a motherfucker. The green shirt he said his gran had given him for Christmas, tied round his waist, fell around his ankles. He was tying it up again, swaying on the spot, when he looked up and saw the fire escape. “Fuck,” he said. “You live so high.”
At the top, as I unlocked the glass door, he asked me if I had any porn. He said he believed in just saying what you really meant. “It’s the nineties – everyone has porn. And not just soft stuff.” I thought, like someone being into football or computers, the boy’s into being an urban gay man.
I watched him that night as I danced with Angie and Tommy and saw that he hadn’t changed much. He’ll be eighteen as long as he lasts. His gay-man routine was most touching when he was at his most vulnerable. He wouldn’t let me see him naked at first. He padded to bed in the dark from the bathroom. The regulation Calvin Kleins whispering down his white, almost hairless legs.