by Liam Livings
“Right.” He nodded, but somehow it sounded a bit like a question.
“But for now, it’s bed unless we want a tongue-lashing from Mum for not eating her roast. She’s looking forward to meeting you, after all she’s heard.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I was hoping we could stay here, in this little bubble away from the real world. I’ve got a couple more if you wanted.” He pulled two white pills from his pocket; they lay on his palm.
I shook my head. “That’s another couple of hours before we can sleep. I’m just the right side now, ready for a bit of shuteye.”
“But this is so fun. I don’t want this to stop. If this is fun, doing this—” he looked at his palm “—is more fun. Logical, innit?”
This was a frequent conversation between us: Paul’s desire to go with the flow and keep things going, floating at the clubbing or afterparty stage, and my acknowledgement of enough being enough and it being time for bed and all that it entailed. Both jostled for prime position and an agreed decision; sometimes he won, sometimes I won. Sometimes there was no contest and we agreed what to do.
“I’m going to bed.” I stood. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep without a bit of a release. If you want to give me a hand… Well, that would be good. If not, I’m sure I can manage on my own.” I grabbed my crotch, bent down to kiss his forehead and walked upstairs. As I left, I saw he was adjusting himself in his baggy grey clubbing trousers.
Once in my room, I stepped out of my clothes and into my single bed, lying on my back, remembering the events of the night, of all the previous nights with Paul, of the conversation we’d had in the kitchen, of his face, of his kiss, and I felt myself respond. My eyes shut, I grabbed myself.
The door closed. I opened my eyes and Paul stood, completely naked in the middle of my small bedroom, his hand on himself, trying to minimise the shrunken-drugs-cock look we often laughed about at times like this.
I lifted the duvet, exposing myself to him, and quick as a flash he jumped in beside me. I moved up against the wall, he next to me, under the duvet. It took a while, and we both agreed we’d never sleep without the release, but with Mum and Dad next door and our bodies feeling like an empty husk from dancing and smoking all night, gymnastics weren’t called for, so instead settled for pulling on one another, while kissing and occasionally checking under the duvet, until first he finished, all over my hand and the duvet, and then I finished and said, “Right, roll over, sleep.”
He rolled onto his left side, facing the wall.
I did the same, pushing myself close behind him, no gap between our two bodies, my right hand reaching round him, stroking his navel, and my left hand tucked behind me. I kissed his neck. “Night.”
“Night,” came his reply as he stroked my hand, then kissed it.
***
Later, Mum’s shout upstairs woke us. “On the table in fifteen.”
“Must we?” Paul asked, quietly, slowly kissing my hand again, his eyes still closed. “I might just nip home. Your mum won’t mind, will she?”
“She’ll mind. Yes. We must go. Both of us very much indeed, must.”
“Really? I don’t think I can eat anything. I’ll slip out. Go home. We can do meeting the parents another time. I think I must have eaten something dodgy. I feel a bit fragile.”
“And the two doves, pack of ciggies and dancing your tits off all night has nothing to do with it, eh? Whereas I’m feeling like I’ve been doing yoga, drinking water and breathing buckets of fresh air, aren’t I?” I pulled myself away from his back, pausing briefly for a little kiss on his shoulder. “Shower, you’ll feel better.”
I grabbed a towel from the back of my door and jumped in the shower, standing under the water getting my head wet, noticing the nerves in my body returning to normal levels of sensitivity. I returned to my room to find Paul still in bed. I pulled the duvet off, threw him a clean towel and told him the shower was still running, then leant down to his level and whispered, “And you wanted to do those last two pills. Imagine if we had.”
“I’m dying.” He turned to face me, opening his eyes one at a time.
I kissed him and lifted him upright, so he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
He slowly walked to the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
Eventually, he returned, wet, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.
I handed him some clothes he’d left at mine and Mum had washed and put back in my room.
I waited on the bed as he dressed, and once he’d put gel in his hair, forming it into thick spikes, as he had last night, he looked normal, like my Paul once again.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” He stood, took my hand and we walked downstairs together.
Mum looked us both up and down as we arrived in the kitchen. “So, the clubbing wanderers return. Good night, was it?”
“Had ’em eating out of our hands, didn’t we?” I turned to Paul.
Paul nodded while taking a seat and folding his arms.
“Didn’t we?” I tapped his arm.
“Yeah. Out of our hands.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked Mum as she sat.
“Working. He’s fixing some streetlights in Lewisham. Why it couldn’t wait till tomorrow, I don’t know, but you can’t argue with triple time, can you? Don’t sit on ceremony, dig in. Anything we don’t eat now, it’s for dinner during the week. So it’s in both your interests to eat up. I’ve saved a plate for your dad, so no holding back.” She looked at me as I chewed my cheek slightly. “I told you this was the plan. I said would you be all right to eat after all night on the disco biscuits, and you told me you would. ‘Yes, Mum, it’ll be fine,’ you said. So here we are, eating.” Her eyes narrowed. “Eating.”
I swallowed the ball that had appeared in my throat, then dug in, putting a small amount on my plate and encouraging Paul to do the same. Slowly, forkful by forkful, our bodies remembered the concept of food and that our stomachs hadn’t seen any since lunchtime yesterday.
We told Mum how it had gone last night, the set we’d done together, the waves and shouts of the crowd, the reading the mood of the room, the songs we’d played. She hadn’t heard of any of them, but when Paul hummed the chorus, she nodded in recognition. There was a pause and then Mum asked, “What about this Slinky Simon? What’s he reckon to you two?”
Paul, with a mouthful of food, said, “Wicked,” then looked at me, then Mum, swallowed and said, “Sorry. Mouth full.”
Mum shrugged. “Don’t worry. We’re not posh here, are we, love? You should see his dad eating. Food all over the floor, chewing, talking, laughing. But that’s who he is, and I love him for it. It’s what’s in here, I reckon.” She tapped her heart. “Not if you know which knives and forks to use or how you hold them.”
I shrugged. “We don’t normally have these.” I held up my napkin.
“He’s right, you know. They’re just kitchen roll, but I thought I’d best have them since you’re from Turnham Green. In Brockley, we’re a bit different.” She smiled.
Paul said, keeping his food on his fork this time, “Mum wouldn’t know a roast potato or a Yorkshire pudding if it landed in her lap. She discusses the menu with the maid and that’s as far as she goes into the kitchen.”
“Well, I do declare!” Mum’s eyes widened. “Sorry, you’ll just have to make do with us, take us as you find us, I’m afraid.”
“At least you’re here to find each other.” He swallowed another mouthful.
Silence descended across the table. I reached underneath and squeezed his knee.
“Poor me, poor little boarding-school, trust-fund boy. I know it’s stupid. Ignore me. This is family, not some French au pair who got fired one day after my parents’ arguments went from frequent to regular. Mother told me the au pair was bad, and then a much older woman started looking after me. Then boarding school. Prison with blazers.”
Mum raised her eyebrow at me, obviously not knowing w
hat to say. She went with, “I could show her if she liked, a few bits. How to get the roasties crisp, some basics, you know? For your mum.”
Paul shook his head. “Getting to be in the same room…” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “Sorry. I’m a bit… Ignore me.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “Tired, that’s all.” He sniffed.
Mum rubbed his arm across the table. “It’s all right, love. Eat up and we’ll say no more about it.”
Paul explained what his parents did after Mum asked. His dad was in the property-rental business, owning much of certain streets in West London; his mum was a woman who didn’t have to work and enjoyed that.
“So, Paul…what’s your surname, I don’t think Tom’s told me.”
“Stockton.”
“So, Paul Stockton, I need to ask what your intentions are for my son.”
Paul shot me a look of pure, undiluted terror, eyes wide open, lips pursed.
I said, “She’s joking.”
“I bloody well am not. I want to know what you intend to do with my son. Is this serious, or are you just, you know, messing about? Don’t mind if you are. Trust me, in the seventies, I was very good at messing about. I could have taught an Open University course in it, blokes before your dad, and then eventually between me and your dad. But if it’s not that, if it’s more, then I’d like to know.”
“Mum, behave would you?” To Paul, I said, “Take no notice. She’s joking.”
“I told you, I am not bloody well joking. I’ve not met any of his other men before. Not that I minded, if it was just messing about. But I’m assuming, since you’re here with me, meeting the mother-in-law, you’re aiming for something a bit more than just messing about. Or am I wrong? Who knows how you kids do things these days, I can’t keep up with it all. It’s hard enough knowing about the new music, the new clothes, the new parties, not to mention the new drugs, never mind what you do for relationships now.”
Paul looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
“She knows. We had the drugs talk years ago. She knows.”
Mum adjusted her bra under her top. “And she’s sat here in the room with you, so she would prefer it if she wasn’t referred to as she if that’s all right with you both.” Mum helped herself to another serving of roasties.
“I said she was laid-back, didn’t I?” I offered.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you meant this laid-back.” Paul sipped his water. “This is, I don’t know, this is…”
Mum laughed. “Fucking horizontal!” She assembled herself, then said, “Look, there’s no point pretending it’s not happening. You’re young, you live in London, you’re into clubbing. I know all you lot don’t stay up all night on water and fresh air. Cos neither did I when I was your age. Only it was different stuff. Same, really, I suppose. Broadly the same. Anyway, I think it’s best to be open about it, not make it something forbidden, cos soon as something’s forbidden, it’s all kids ever want to do. It’s like swearing.”
Paul said, “Yeah. Tom was starting to explain it was like swearing, but we never got round to finishing that, did we?”
I shook my head.
Mum continued, “Swearing, if you ban children from swearing, it’s all they’ll want to do when you’re not there. If you’re grown up about it, explain it’s part of language and is used appropriately, it’s not this magical forbidden thing. Same with alcohol and drugs and sex. No point me pretending you’re not gonna do them all. Fuck me, I did. I got right involved when I was your age. But any more of that’s not for now. I knew he was gonna be into the music and the clubbing. Ever since we bought him his first record player when he was eleven, he’s been dancing in his room.”
“Wish my parents had the same idea. It’s not talked about. They must know, the number of times I’ve come home totally banjaxed as they’ve got up the next morning. Once, I was dancing on my own in the living room, facing the hi-fi system and doing big fish, little fish, cardboard box to some track I’d bought from work and had been playing nonstop. Mum walked in and asked if I could keep the noise down as they were going to make breakfast and did I want any.”
“That’s what she said, your mum, faced with you doing that?”
“My eyes were like bin lids, I tell you. I was chewing the Juicy Fruit like my life depended on it. In fact, I think I’d dropped another one just before she got up. I was flying. I was having my own little party. A one-man party. Didn’t want the night to end.”
I briefly reflected on how sad that was, but didn’t mention it.
Mum put her knife and fork down. “See, that’s a conversation. Here, that’s a mum-and-son talk. If it’s not forbidden and off-limits, then there’s no risk with it getting out of control, becoming a big thing. Between five and ten percent of people take drugs every weekend and carry on with a normal life in the week. Getting on it at the weekend with a few pills and some pot is very different from injecting heroin or smoking crack. Against what the papers and the news says, all drugs aren’t the same. People die of alcohol and smoking all the time, but we carry on selling that. And do you know why?” She paused, as Paul shrugged, then went on, “Because the government tells us it’s all right.”
“And they can tax it,” Paul added.
We’d finished eating now, so Mum offered pudding—trifle or nothing. “Them’s the choices. Take it or leave it.”
Sitting back in his chair, stroking his full stomach, Paul said, “Trifle please.” He looked at me. “Wicked.”
Wicked, indeed.
We finished eating, both much more than we’d anticipated being able to eat. “Told you once we started it’d slip right down.”
“You can clean this lot up,” Mum said. “I’m going down Lewisham to meet your dad, see how he’s getting on. He said he’ll be back at the depot so I’m taking him a flask of tea.”
I stood and started collecting plates together. “Shall we come too?”
“Na, don’t be daft—sure you’ve had enough of parents. I’ll be out for a while, so if you want to go back to bed and really let yourselves go, be our guest. Empty house, see. ’Spect last night we cramped your style a bit, didn’t we, sleeping next door to your room?” She kissed my forehead, then Paul’s, and left the room.
Paul leant forward. “She having a laugh?”
“She wouldn’t joke about that.”
“Wicked.” Paul rubbed his hands together. “Best get this lot cleared and then nip back upstairs.”
“Oh yeah, bloody right too.”
We’d cleared everything within twenty minutes of Mum leaving the house, ran upstairs to my room, and once the door was closed were naked again in thirty seconds flat.
Paul looked me up and down, then pulled me towards him, skin touching skin. “What have I done to deserve you? To deserve all this fun?”
“What have I done to deserve you?”
And we stayed in my room until the front door banged with Mum and Dad returning and Mum shouting upstairs if we’d finished yet and was Paul staying for his dinner. I shook my head.
“Unbelievable. Wicked, but unbelievable,” Paul said, nuzzling into me.
“You staying or what?”
“I’d best go home.”
***
I did meet his parents. After much to-ing and fro-ing of dates and noncommittal noises from his end, we finally arrived at a midweek nibbles-and-drinks meeting.
“You sure you want to meet them?” Paul had said after I’d insisted he arrange it.
It felt like the logical next step of us being together. “You’ve met Mum, so I’ll meet yours.”
“Can’t we stick to just us two? See how things go?”
I was starting to think he was embarrassed about me, which reconfirmed all my beliefs about myself, so I’d stopped mentioning it for a while and gone quiet, until Paul had announced he’d arranged it, adding, “It’s nothing. I’ve had a few offers of other things to do that night, so we can see what else is happening.”
It had felt lik
e a reasonable compromise.
Now, the four of us stood in the conservatory, the sun streaming into our eyes, the immaculately manicured garden drifting off outside to a large outdoor pool and pool house, us holding champagne while a bemused-looking French au pair circulated with trays of tiny smoked salmon, mushroom and ham nibbly things.
Paul’s father, never ‘Dad’, Roger shook my hand awkwardly. “Sorry it’s taken so long to get round to this. It’s been absolutely manic with work. I’ve been flying off left, right and centre. Some weeks I’ve been in three time zones before breakfast.”
I eyed him up nervously, taking a sip of champagne to give myself more time to consider my response, knowing I would, no matter how good I was, never live up to their expectations of a suitable partner for their son, specifically because I was male, and because of a whole host of small reasons I could do nothing to change about myself or my family.
“What is it you do?” I asked Roger.
He began to explain about asset management and liquidation and leveraging all sorts of things, and he’d been chatting away reasonably well until his wife, Marilyn—a vision in an aquamarine cocktail dress and shiny aquamarine six-inch heels—sailed over to us with a wave of her green-nailed hands, bracelets jangling.
“Do please ignore him. He’s so tiresome once he gets going on his little projects. Now, Tom, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for me to indicate that was my name and ploughed on, regardless, with, “This is all new to us. Quite the novelty.”
“What is that?” I frowned.
“Getting to meet one of his friends. He usually keeps them to himself, only casually mentioning names at dinner sometimes. But with you, it was quite different. The same name kept popping up at dinners over the months. The same name. I thought to myself, this can’t be the same person he’s still talking about. Most uncharacteristic behaviour.”
Paul shook his head and mouthed ignore her to me.
Maybe things aren’t as casual as Paul says…
Fingering a dangly diamond earring, she went on, “I said to Roger, I said there was something that’s shifted with Paul. Something different I can’t quite put my finger on.” She looked me up and down, licked her lips, then took a sip of champagne. “So, here you are.”