by Paul Magrs
That night, even though he’d carefully promised not to, he had made himself too tired and drunk and overwrought to come. Those endless, sweaty nights of fruitless sex. My cock was hard, turning numb, feeling like someone else’s. He kept going, “Oh, fuck it,” every time we gave up for a few minutes to relax, or try to doze. He launched us back into it.
I thought he was like an angel. We matched compliment for compliment, stacking them up, playing snap. He was someone else I slept with all clasped up, hot and dog-breathy by morning. The first night I came two or three times without him, and he couldn’t till the next day.
I loved that heavy, smarting feeling you get the next day. Someone’s weight still lying on you. I had languorous, cat-like days.
Me and my new flatmate get drunk. He is the senior flatmate. He’s in his late thirties, he’s rich and spectacularly miserable. We drink a bottle of Bombay Sapphire between us. He tells me it’s much nicer gin, chockablock with bits of coriander and spices. He chops lemon wedges to plop into our tumblers. He has a bin bag of ice chunks in his freezer. This is the night of my moving in. His kitchen is at the top of one of the Georgian houses in the east end. We’re off Leith Walk. This is where I live now, up four flights of a daffodil-yellow stairwell. I’ve landed on my feet, I think.
Even up here in the attic space he can have a stone-flagged kitchen floor and an Aga which, he says, in winter gives a lovely cosy glow. They make mulled wine at Christmas. Imagine being settled for Christmas, here in the lap of luxury. My flatmate, the rich landlord, is called Bill, and he owns the Scarlet Empress. I’ll ask him if he’ll give me discount. He’s drunk. “Ha,” he rags me. “You’re a wicked man, Andy. A wicked, wicked man.” Under the table he keeps that leg of his trembling, trembling. He can’t stop it bouncing, wherever he is. It bounces to keep a certain beat going, its own particular time. When I asked, he said it was from a car accident. Pished, he said. Hurt a woman. But her number must have been up. He says, “What can you do when your number comes up? It’s all fated.”
“Ay,” says Bill my landlord. “Shit happens.” His eyes are pink and yellow and the flesh of his face is lurid and bruised from the drink.
They have this skylight you can climb out of. We stand on the stone balustrade and watch Calton Hill, all lit up. The Observatory and the Round Tower lit up white. We went there the night of the Festival fireworks. We got locked in the Observatory gardens as we hunted through the crowds for a vantage spot. Standing on the roof guttering, my landlord and I roll cigarettes and watch the buses and cars far below on Leith Walk, on London Road. The automated crossings are chanting ‘traffictoprincesstreethasbeensignalledtostop’ in a singsong Scottish burr. Crowds are coming out of queer bars and takeaways and off licences. Now I live in the top corner of the city’s gay triangle. I am at the centre of things.
“Ay,” says my landlord. “What a thing it is to have no ties.” Then he grimaces and I know it is to do with his partner, also called Bill. Little Bill is out somewhere tonight, up to what my landlord will only call ‘funny business’. “Ay, the ties I’ve got are all to do with that baldy bastard. That baldy twat. And tonight he’s out tomcatting like fuck. Tomcatting around and coming crawling back next morning as ever and I won’t say anything. And I give him his money for the day and he has nothing to do but watch cable TV.”
My heart gives a leap. Cable TV! Now I’ve moved in I’ve more than fifty channels to choose from. All those golden oldies. Tomorrow People. Bionic Woman. Charlie’s Angels. It’ll be like being a kid again.
My landlord’s tab end has gone out and he’s still sucking on the roach, until it falls to pieces between his fingers. We watch a woman dash and miss her bus. “The last fucking bus,” says Big Bill. “She’ll not have the money for a taxi. She’ll get raped walking home. You watch.”
He looks at me for my reaction. The exaggerated care with which he swings his head, you can see how pissed he is. He turns away again. “Life is all missed buses and taxis. You remember that, Andy. You wicked man.”
I snort. “That’s a classic, that. Life is all missed buses and taxis.”
“Too fucking right it is,” he snarls. The streaks of grey in his quiff are all bright with the lights from the bars and the takeaways. “Especially when they’ve banned you from driving for a year.”
We smoke and drink some more. He rolls terrible joints, around pencils to make a tube into which he pokes the bits of baccy and dope down with a cotton bud. So he lights, inhales, and blows the whole contents into the air. I tell him he’s filled the air with burning spite.
“Ay,” he Iaughs, coughing and choking.
Then I’m telling him how I made a bacon sandwich with cheap, streaky bacon. Little shreds fell through the grill into the pan and lay frazzling in the thick grease. I thought, “All of it’s old meat, anyway. No such thing as new. It’s all belonged to someone else.”
“Ay,” he says, and fetches some more of the Bombay Sapphire. He gets it all from work. I’ve become shivery inside and I’m glad we’re back indoors. This is going to be a very boozy home, I think.
“Fucking look at this.” He opens the fridge and beckons me to come and see. Little Bill has written on all of the eggs in the rack. Boiled Egg, Boiled Egg, Boiled Egg. My landlord sniffs, “He said it was because he knew I’d get fucked out of my nut tonight and I’d go smashing them in a pan and try to fry then. But he’s already boiled them because they were going out of date. Fucking miserly erse.”
“Hm,” I say, aware how unpleasantly close my landlord has staggered now.
“He’s out tomcatting,” he says. “And I’ve got a fucking problem. Everyone I love is boys.”
“Everyone he loves is boys.”
“He loves women as well. He says he loves fanny, like.”
“So?” I go.
“It’s a problem,” he says. “He’ll leave me for a bit of fanny. For a fucking bit of skirt.”
“He’s with you, isn’t he?” I ask.
“I make it all possible for him,” he says.
I’m still thinking about how I made bacon sandwiches out of old meat, in old fat. And how I made them for Jep. I’ve discovered that bacon sandwiches are his favourite thing, too.
I haven’t brought him to the new flat yet. I haven’t told my new flatmates about my son, But here I am. I’ve got my foot in the door.
It’s still too chilly to sit all night with the window open and too airless to have it shut up. I feel like I want light and space here. I woke itching furiously so that I almost wept.
Sandra and Tom were round yesterday evening, to watch the portable telly with me. One Channel Four comedy after another, and I was bored. We sat on the settee and they held hands. I thought, this afternoon I was having madly anonymous sex in the dark and now here I am watching the telly.
This afternoon I sat next to two skinheads and was pulled into a threesome with them. I’d sat down blithely and they reclined, drawing me in, easily. What is it with me and skinheads these days? Halfway through I realised that it had to do with Mark Kelly. His baldness. I came with the pair of them, powerfully, touching that harsh scalp of the sexiest one. It was overwhelming, you could feel the atmosphere charge up, change gear as I sat by them. They were waiting for me to join them. I quicken things up.
Afterwards I sat in the sauna. This was only half an hour after I arrived. I’d planned to stay till closing, to wring my money’s worth out. To come as much as possible and test myself. But I felt the pressing need to sleep. Sometimes I get like that.
I’d arrived at the same time as a young, red-bearded bloke who told everyone downstairs that it was his first time there. I must be a regular if I wince when I hear someone trying to make conversation. I was wondering how I can now think of someone bearded as looking young. He was probably the age of my young dad when I still looked up to him. And this time I thought, how many of these men who come here are married and supposedly straight? You can always tell new guys because they wear their ru
bberbands with locker keys on their wrists. You learn to have them on your ankles. On your wrists the things rattle obtrusively if you’re wanking someone off. If they’re on your ankle, though, they make an alluring noise as you approach.
Watching telly with Tom and Sandra, I smile politely when they make jokes about the excitingness of my life. Well.
I keep imagining moving out of this flat in Thistle Street, moving away. And I get vertigo. I can picture me carrying all my things in boxes and unwieldy bags down the red fire escape in the rain. Down to the fat taxi driver who’ll be wearing an arran jumper, waiting at the wheel of his minibus. Down on the cobbles of the alley.
I dreamed last night I dropped Jep out of the window.
You meet some funny people when you fuck them. I talked to the less sexy of the skinheads in the locker room. We dressed and he said he was a mathemetician, he was doing a PhD. He said the first time he knew he was queer was when he started algebra at school. He was telling me all this in the open-plan changing room, where everyone’s looking at each other. He was saying that, for him, the beginning of algebra was the beginning of queerness. I said I never did o-level. I was no good. “Oh,” he says. “The possibility of crossing over the equation sign! If you do something to one side, you must do it to the other! Crossing over to the other side made all sorts of new ideas occur to me. finding the values of the secret x’s!”
It’s what I wanted to tell Sandra. All of this casual, brutalised sex – it’s educational.
Wednesday night I’m out pissed with Stephan. He’s new. New for autumn. I’m in the Scarlet Empress at past twelve o’clock – things are looking up. Big Bill offered me a job here, waiting on. I should be watching the waiters’ techniques, but I’ve had seven pints. Sitting at my favourite table here by the window and watching the dark garden. The fire is on because by now the season’s turned.
Stephan’s nipped off round the corner home for his money which he forgot – to pay for all the pints we’ve had and the nachos. We teased out Dorito crisps from under layers of molten cheese, let the whole thing go soggy and corrupt with salsa and guacamole, all stirred into one. Heaps and hoops of sliced jalapenos. Stevie Wonder’s playing as I wait – I fucking love Stevie Wonder, I’ve decided – and the place is full of dykes and that – everyone together. They’ve repainted this place bright orange, even though it’s called ‘Scarlet’. I’ll have to say that to Big Bill tonight when I drag Stephan home for our first night together. I’ll say, Ow, Bill, you’ve got the fucking colour of your cafe walls wrong. But he’s about to be my boss.
I love lager these days. Never used to.
Letter from Penny yesterday morning. Don’t know how she found me but she wants to see me. Things are happening at home. Something’s happening to Liz but Penny’s writing’s so bad and the card’s so small that I can’t properly tell what she’s on about. She sent me a painting by Paul Klee, ‘Bird Wandering Off’. There’s a cartoon duck thing striding off the edge of the page. Made me laugh. But she can’t come up to visit. Says how worried she is about me. But they’ve all left me long enough without getting in touch. None of them even know that Jep exists. I can exist without everyone in Phoenix Court. We both can.
One thing I can make out for definite in her card: she shagged Mark Kelly. She shagged the man with tattoos all over. Fucking bitch! I can’t even work out what I think about that yet. I’m not very happy, though. I can’t say he’s mine, but he shouldn’t be hers. And I can’ t help thinking Penny shagged him because I wanted to and couldn’t anymore. In some twisted, tucked-up, stupid way, she’s made this into a competition. What a fuck-up! And she added, ‘It doesn’t mean anything. It was just a fantastic shag.’
It was so fucking easy for her.
Burt Bacharach playing now. It’s all easy listening. Taking the piss out of easy.
I stewed over Mark and Penny, Penny and Mark, all day yesterday. I saw Sandra and Tom. They came round. Sandra knows Big Bill ’cause she sold him paintings once for this cafe. He likes new, big paintings. The flat is full of them. Abstracts in the toilets, in the uncarpeted hallway. Tom and Sandra respect Big Bill’s money, but they look down at him, think he’s common. I told Sandra about Penny, but she never understood. I explained that Mark Kelly, the feller with the tattoos, was Jep’s other father, and Sandra just looked at me. Like, now that I don’t live beside then, they can stop taking me seriously.
So I went out last night as well and got smashed. Proving I didn’t need to be with anyone else. Sure that everyone fucks up and betrays you. And they do. Where’s Stephan with that money from home he’s meant to be fetching?
I was in the back of the bar last night at one in the morning, kissing some bloke I’ve never met before – that was Stephan. He was wearing a sling for broken collarbone saying, “I really like you,” and I’m saying, “You taste really nice,” because he did, he tasted of Marlboro Lights. He got bad hiccups and looked like he was going to throw up. He is taller than me, painfully thin, and the sling made him look like a damaged starling.
So we met today in that ‘Over the Rainbow’ bar, where they give you lollies and lovehearts with your pint – except they don’t do pints, just cans they charge double the price for. There’s a big fuck-off fairy with a wand in the window and we started to get pissed. He was shaking with nerves the whole time, could hardly speak, and so I kept talking. I ended up telling him all about Phoenix Court, Vince, Penny, Mark, and Liz in a coma. I didn’t tell him a single word about Jep. It got dark out there on Broughton Street very suddenly and he was only wearing a trendy white skintight top. Dressing os hard with that sling of his. He’s a chef – a chef! – in a smart bar and he’s got two months to get mended and pulled together.
Here the waiter has asked me, “Are you reeling and fucking dizzy yet?” And I order two more pints. “You’re fucking lushes, you two.” He smiles, and I smile back because at first I thought he said luscious.
When we came home he said simply, “What do you want to do now?”
The two Bills were out. We had sex on the kitchen’s stone floor. We sat up clasping each other by the washing machine. Under the harsh kitchen light he was almost tangerine. His home tan. He says he has a sun bed in his bedroom. I realised what a toned body he has. His dick, yard long, stuck out from him, looking ridiculous. We were drunk and we passed out before we came and woke up an hour later. We finished each other off then as if there’d been no break. I said, anyone could have walked in. We went to my bed and that’s when he saw Jep, in the Habitat crib in the corner. Did I say that Big Bill had bought a Habitat crib?
“It’s a fuckin’ puma!” Stephan mumbled. His enunciation is terrible. This thick Aberdeen accent. I have to ask for everything twice.
My skin’s gone blotchy through lack of sleep. But I’m having a nice time.
Saturday I left Jep with Tom and Sandra and I was meant to pick him up at teatime. It was Big Bill’s birthday and we were in the cellar of the oyster bar, where it always smells of damp. We got on the tequila slammers. Lick, slam, suck. Salt and lemon juice running down our chins.
I left and walked by mistake to my old flat, to the red fire escape in Thistle Street. Now even though it was late I climbed to the very top, and the view from there is terrifying. I peered through Tom and Sandra’s window. The telly was on, the flat dark, and they had fallen asleep on the settee, watching some late-night film. The young couple were spread out and tousled, lying half clasped to each other. Jep had crawled on top of them and rested there, content.
I banged on the glass door till they awoke and let me in. I put ‘Love is in the Air’ on their stereo and danced madly. I made them dance, too. They laughed and danced on the settee, bouncing up and down, and I stood on the kitchen work surface, dancing there. And Jep stood up too. He has found his feet. He was dancing before he can walk.
I knelt to dance with my son. We put the song on replay replay replay. I gave myself carpet burns dancing with him, like the carpet burns I’v
e got from fucking Stephan. All of these burns are celebratory ones. These are my Burns nights.
Sometimes I know I am a proper person. Sometimes I know I live in the same world as other people, that I know the things they know, that I can get by the way they do. I have competence, nous, knowhow, capability, confidence, bravado and pluck. I am your average man or woman in the street. Wiring plugs, putting on a double duvet cover, having to do with the council. None of us any wiser than the other. No one is better or worse than me.
Other times I tell myself Andy, you’ve not got a fucking clue,
Last night I was in Deep Sea, the fish shop across the road from CC’s. It was one in the morning and I hadn’t eaten all day. They said, “You’ll have to wait ten minutes for fish.”
All right. I was starving. And my fish would be fried fresh and perfect. Smuggle it back to the flat for Jep and me. A shared midnight snack. Make the flat smelly with fish and hot grease. Nanna Jean once said “Never go too early to the fish shop. They’ll heat up last night’s leftovers. The hardened, stewed-over scraps. Better wait ten minutes while they fry up the new.”
So I lean again the cold window, sitting with two hard lads with footballer’s perms. Their mate is at the counter and they’re all waiting for fish. Sniggering and scowling at each other, the mirrors, the deep-fat fryers, the woman serving on, bored and sweating in her blue-checked pinny.
The Polish men come in and the fun begins.
Oh ay, the boy at the counter raises an eyebrow to his pals. Look at the state of this pair. They are a gay Polish couple, middle – aged, one more pished out of his mind than the other. It is the worst-for-wear one, the scraggily bearded, dirty-overcoated one, who speaks the better English. He holds all of his Scottish notes out for counting and demands their special.
Hard-faced by nature, the proprietor looks at him, hand on hip, her feet foursquare in sandals on the tiled floor. The bank of fat fryers between them, she stands her ground. “Fish will be ten minutes. That special enough for you, doll?”