by Max Schaefer
When I left the cinema the world felt delicate, like a forming scab. It had rained, and couples just emerged from pubs clutched each other teetering on the glassy streets. In Berwick Street, whose market trash had turned papier mache in the gutter while pink lampshades glowed without irony on the floors above, I found plastic strips flapping in a porn-shop doorway, and went in.
Its walls were lined with racks of DVDs, and a display case by the counter held a selection of ‘room aromas’ and dildos in shrinkwrap, like popcorn and Coke by the tills at Blockbuster. Three younger boys in the corner, drunk and perhaps a bit high, glanced at me when I entered and turned back to the film they were inspecting, which they discussed with a fledgling, bitchy esprit that seemed to tilt on swells of adrenalin, as the mutual consequence of this still jokily hypothetical purchase made itself felt in one and then another. I watched them across the room: one was thin and very pale, with a spotty face and neck, and black hair dyed blond at its ends and a little greasy; he wore a football shirt and a gold chain, and was saying something with a grin to one of the others, a light-skinned black boy with short hair close to his scalp, who now for the second time caught my eye. I turned away, and approached the counter.
The assistant looked up from his Empire. He was older than me: early thirties, perhaps. I said: ‘This is going to sound a bit strange …’ and he shrugged.
‘I’m writing a script, well, probably a script, about a guy called Nicky Crane. He was this very scary, violent racist skinhead back in the ’80s who also starred, allegedly, in porn films. I’m trying to track them down.’
‘Do you know what they were called?’
I shook my head.
‘We do have some older stuff. It’s popular because it’s all bareback so they reissue it. But without the titles — I’ve never heard of the guy, so …’ The three boys left; the strips swung back to vertical. The man said: ‘If you want skinheads then Cazzo’s quite good.’
I thanked him and walked to Trafalgar Square, where I found a bus heading south. It pulled away as I was climbing the stairs, and I gripped the banister, enjoying the tug as we surged into the curve. Down a deserted Whitehall and past the cathedral with its obscure familiar statues, we pressed the tapering gardens tight against the river, its water bubbling with the lights of the far bank. More people boarded under the ludicrous ski jump of Vauxhall bus station, and watching them pass me I spotted the boys from the porn shop, a few rows behind and slightly wilted now. They saw me looking but soon fell back into conversation about someone referred to as ‘him’, as in ‘you never should have tried that with him’, and ‘he wasn’t going to anyway’. We were heading towards Wandsworth, which wasn’t right, but there was no urgency: I could see where the bus took me for a while. When I next looked the boys seemed to be arguing: they were leaned into each other, arms tensed like mantises’, speaking with bristling muttered care.
I was seriously considering getting off, to find a way home, when someone sat next to me. It was the black boy from the group: his companions remained silently in place, ignoring his peremptory move. I looked out of the window. After a beat he said: ‘Hello.’
He had a slim, serious face, high cheekbones, brown eyes with feminine lashes. He said: ‘Is it all right me sitting here?’
‘Um,’ I said, and then politely: ‘Yes, of course,’ and turned away as if that was a natural end to it.
‘Are you sure?’ He spoke with that affected stress of some gay men, which always makes me think of hairdressers and wonder, particularly in boys so young, how deliberately it was acquired. When I turned back I saw how beautiful he was. He repeated: ‘You sure you don’t mind?’ and I gestured vaguely as if to indicate that it was a free country, without actually saying so, which could have been rude.
The boy asked: ‘Did you find what you was looking for in that shop?’
‘No.’
He giggled. ‘Me neither.’
I registered an odd sensation: my realization, slightly delayed, that it was his hand on my thigh gave me a sudden and acute erection. ‘Is this all right too?’ he asked, and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and smiled back, surprising myself. He said: ‘Shall we go to yours?’
‘I was about to get off.’
‘Was you?’ The hand moved forward a little.
‘I got on the wrong bus.’
‘Which way are you heading, then?’
‘Back to Vauxhall. I can work it out from there.’
He reached for the bell. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, and before I could respond he was heading down the stairs. We stepped out by a kebab shop, where the road levelled between inclines. ‘Where are we?’ I asked, before the bus pulled away, revealing the station opposite: ‘Clapham Junction,’ he said, pointing, and as I looked in the direction of his outstretched arm he pulled it back and touched my face with his hand, and held it for a moment. Men with rugby shirts and voices swayed past us, bent on kebabs. The boy said: ‘There’s the bus — come on,’ and ran across the road, past bereft-looking couples at a taxi rank. Once more I followed; he was right: a bus running back on the route we had taken came quickly down the hill. Upstairs his hand reappeared on my thigh and he made a noise between laughter and a squeak. A string of illuminated estate agencies below blared vertiginous prices at passing drunks. I said: ‘What about your friends?’
‘What’s that?’ He shifted closer, and I felt his breath across my ear.
I said: ‘Your friends, on the bus.’
‘Oh, them.’ He giggled again. ‘They’re being arseholes anyway.’
‘Weren’t you on your way home?’
‘No, I live north. I was going round theirs, but they can fuck off.’
‘Whereabouts north?’
‘Hackney. Why, you coming?’
I rolled my eyes and smiled. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘No,’ I said, trying to sound amused at his persistence and slightly becoming so, ‘you can’t.’
‘Why not? Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘I have, yeah. Though that isn’t actually why not.’
He laughed and repeated ‘actually’ in a silly voice, like a child who thinks something is funny. ‘What is why not then?’
‘It’s not something I do.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Meet … boys on buses—’
‘How about in porn shops!’
‘—or in porn shops — and go home with them.’
‘Don’t you fancy me or something?’
‘No, you’re very cute.’ I looked at him. ‘How old are you anyway?’
‘Eighteen. What about you?’
‘Twenty-five.’
My answer met with silence for a minute. Then he said: ‘I don’t do it either, you know. Meet guys like this. I just really want to have sex tonight.’
The orange glow of the Sainsbury’s at Nine Elms bloomed ahead of us. I said: ‘We’re almost there.’
‘Can’t we just have a drink?’ I was standing now, and he blocked my way with his legs. He said: ‘Please.’
Of course, when we stood on an island among Vauxhall’s conflux of roads he looked around hopelessly. ‘I’m not sure where’s still open.’
‘Perhaps we should both go home.’
The lights changed, and the queue of traffic from the east set off as if at a starter pistol. It came straight at us, then split into streams bent for different destinations. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and put his arms around my waist, pulling me against him. We kissed for a moment.
‘I do turn you on, don’t I?’ he murmured.
I said: ‘I’m not disputing that,’ and pulled him in to me again.
‘We can go to Soho,’ he said. ‘Just for a drink.’
On the bus he said, ‘I’m Nat, anyway.’ He gave ‘anyway’ a comic emphasis. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m James.’
Now I had conceded the drink, he started chatting. He said he was studying design part-time; I
wondered if I believed him. He lived alone, was somehow on housing benefit. He’d had a few boyfriends, none for long. He asked what all that was about in the porn shop, and I tried to explain my Nicky project without sounding weird. He seemed amused.
The first bar we tried was open, but charging £5 entrance. ‘Can’t we just come in?’ Nat asked, and then: ‘All right, never mind, thanks.’ I was offering to pay but he pulled my elbow and said he knew where to go, a members’ club. Old Compton Street was quiet, its usual crowds diminished to those desperate to stay out, or just desperate, and those who never left: in the doorway of a post-production house, a thin boy sat begging in a padded jacket. Nat stopped to speak and I realized they knew each other: the boy said, ‘I’ve not seen you around much lately,’ which made me uneasy, and a minute later I said maybe I would just go home, but Nat said, ‘It’s just round this corner.’ He buzzed and asked if Suzie was there. He repeated himself a few times, tried to explain who he was. I heard him say, ‘But Suzie said if I was ever around I should just …’ He slumped with resignation. ‘Yeah, all right then, yeah, OK.’
He turned to me: ‘Can’t you just come back to mine?’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘We tried.’
‘Just for a drink. We can get a cab. We don’t have to do nothing.’
‘I think I might go home.’
‘Are you worried I’m going to rob you or something?’
‘No!’ I was insulted, and angry, because it was a cheap tactic to play the race card, and embarrassed, because of course he was right: I recited in my head, and imagined explaining, that it wasn’t that he was black, but he was a bit strange, and young, and had come on to me on the bus (where I was beginning to wonder if he’d followed me); he had no obvious income and knew beggars we happened across in the street, and his friends had looked like junkies; besides which, any reasonable person would be concerned for their safety if they were seriously considering going home with a stranger at one in the morning when none of their friends knew where. I saw him looking at me, and considered my accent and obvious education, and where Adam might be at this moment, and how Adam come to think of it might act in a situation like this; how little I ever did that was not indemnified and caveated and warranted-for in advance; that I was probably as strong as Nat, that the minicab driver would know where he’d taken us; that this was what men had to do once and men who were not like me still regularly did; that even aware how absurd it was I nevertheless believed that I was a fundamentally good judge of character; that he was very beautiful and we had really kissed and what I was now considering could be made real also, and anyway he was black — and I said: ‘Well, how far is it?’
Nat smiled and I let him kiss me again. ‘Mm,’ he said. Outside the minicab office he confessed: ‘I don’t have any money. Is it all right if you pay for the cab?’ and added: ‘Can we buy something to drink first?’
We found a convenience store. At the counter he asked: ‘Can we have … what do you like? Vodka? Is Jack Daniel’s OK? OK, can I … can we please have a bottle of JD please?’ Watching the shopkeeper, I appreciated for the first time quite how drunk Nat was. The man said: ‘It’s past licensed hours, mate. I can’t sell you alcohol.’
‘Oh,’ said Nat. ‘But can we … there’s no one in here and we’ve been going all over looking. Can we, can’t you just sell us just one bottle really quickly for cash or something?’ He pulled what was presumably intended as a cheeky grin. I was about to apologize when the shopkeeper reached back and passed Nat a bottle, which he stuck under his sweater. He pointed to me: ‘He’s paying.’
The man told me: ‘Seventeen fifty.’ I found my wallet and handed him a twenty. ‘I can’t open the till for this,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘Keep the change, then.’ Nat took my arm, grinning.
The shopkeeper regarded us. ‘Be careful, boss,’ he told me quietly. This advice preoccupied me in the cab, and I stayed alert to the address Nat gave the driver and the route we took, barely reciprocating his touches on the back seat. He lived on the ground floor of a converted Victorian house. There was a living room with a bay window at the front and a kitchenette to the rear: a box of Tesco own-brand cornflakes stood on the counter. He had a sofa, to which he directed me, and a television, which he switched on. He said: ‘I need a wee,’ and was gone for some moments while I watched the screen. It was a cookery programme: ‘And the fantastic thing,’ a woman told me brightly, ‘is that this is really easy to make.’ She seemed to be frying grapes in butter.
When Nat came back he asked, ‘Aren’t you taking your coat off?’ He found glasses and poured the whiskey: ‘We should have bought mixers.’ ‘You don’t need to keep stirring it,’ said the woman, ‘but you do need to make sure it doesn’t burn.’ Nat pushed me against the sofa. Where our hips met I felt my wallet in my pocket, and remembered the laptop in my bag. ‘Is this all right?’ he asked. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘yeah. I just—’
‘—and then just pour it into your sponge case.’
Nat said: ‘Take this off too. Have you been with a black guy before?’ A minute later he asked: ‘Can I go up the road and buy some coke?’
‘No.’
‘I just really feel like something. Or some pills. There’s a guy up the road. Have you got forty quid?’
‘We don’t need it.’
His bedroom had posters and raffia blinds. Every so often, at some particular movement, he would give a shuddering gasp like someone experiencing real horror, and say: ‘Oh, that feels nice.’ My refusal to buy the drugs seemed to have comforted him somehow; he kept looking me in the eye, his crude insistence softened into childlike affection. His body lay like calligraphy on the sheet.
At a certain point, as if he had just remembered something, he grinned and lifted his legs like a baby in a cot. He formed a spatula with his middle fingers and licked it hungrily, then applied it to the exposed part. He pulled me towards him.
‘What about a condom?’ I asked, and he said, ‘I haven’t got any.’
‘Im not doing it then.’ I was secretly relieved.
He gathered himself up. ‘Oh,’ he said, looking around. He mumbled, apparently to himself: ‘You can take it out after a bit,’ and a cloud of shame passed across his face. Then it was abruptly gone and he leaned forward and grabbed me like a petitioner. ‘Come on,’ he said, with a determined smile, and licked himself ferociously. Even with the necessary mediation of his fingers, it made him look like a cat. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Fuck me a little bit.’
‘Jesus,’ I said, and sat up. I told him to listen: he was a teenager with his life ahead of him; it wasn’t curable, whatever he thought; people were still dying; even managed it was nasty; it would be his whole life with blood tests and side effects and Christ knows what; he was being fucking stupid.
Nat looked up at the ceiling. I thought his eyes were watering, and stroked his arm, but I might have imagined it: I was awkwardly aware of feeling righteous and grown-up. On the television in the front room the newsreader said something about video analysis, and captured aid worker’s family had accepted, and there were sombre voices before a reporter’s brisk recap. She said ‘video’ again, and ‘mosque’ and ‘marines’, and we heard muffled urgent shouts and shots.
Nat said: ‘Aww.’ He smiled. ‘You’re sweet,’ he said, and touched my face. But not long afterwards he said: ‘You could fuck me though. I trust you.’ I washed my penis in the bathroom sink, where a water heater was bolted, warning, it said: to be opened by qualified electrician, and hummed when I ran the tap. I sat on the bed, pulling my socks on. Nat opened his eyes. ‘Are you going?’ he said. ‘Don’t go,’ and fitted himself round me, his head on my thigh.
‘I’ve got to,’ I told him.
‘Don’t go,’ he repeated. ‘I’d feel so good in the morning.’ He pronounced ‘morning’ like Alfred Dolittle.
When I stood he asked: ‘Will you leave me your number?’
The television was showing motor racing: a camera insid
e one car filmed its driver’s head, almost still before the juddering interior. I switched it off and screwed the lid on the Jack Daniel’s. Then I sat on the sofa in my hat and scarf and waited for the minicab.
I got in shortly after five. The flat was silent, but I knew Adam was home from the envelope propped on the kitchen table. It was a letter addressed to me from the General Register Office, which apologized for the delay, and failure to locate a death certificate for Nicola Crane based on the information I had supplied. I should consider variants of the name (‘the informant may not have known the exact spelling or order of the deceased’s forenames’), or later dates (‘deaths can be registered some time after the event, if for example there was an inquest’).
‘A very small number of deaths are registered without a name.’
‘The death could have occurred outside England and Wales.’
I deposed the cat from my place in the bed. Adam could sleep straight through the night and hardly move, but I was more restless. I’d wake several times, and need to shift, and he, apparently automatically, would adjust himself around me. Now, as he felt my touch, he woke long enough to kiss me and say, ‘Hey. How are the nazis?’ then rolled over, facing the wall — it was how we usually went to sleep, front-to-back, our bent knees tessellated. I wrapped my left arm round him and he clasped it to his chest with both his hands; my right, which I could neither twist behind me nor crush beneath his weight, I laid on the pillow above my head, touching Adam’s crown. ‘Nicky Crane,’ I whispered, ‘never really died.’ But he was asleep again: I kissed the back of his neck. I could still taste the sweetness of his milky breath, which would be curdled by morning: he had the habit, which I found almost heartstopping, of taking a hot chocolate to bed — after brushing his teeth with electric thoroughness. But that was his charm, I thought as I held him: with the left arm, a man to be clung to, a raft in the night’s pitch, and with the right hand, a boy to stroke the head of.