by Patrick Cash
“And that’s the time my Dad took me to Disneyland…” he was saying. “Sorry, I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“No, it’s nice to see you happy.”
“You saying I’m not happy now?”
He was grinning and shimmering. I tried to focus my eyes.
“Everyone’s happy on G.”
He laughed.
“I feel, like, a real connection with you.”
“Me too.”
“But it’s probably the drugs.”
I put my finger on his lips.
“Don’t say that.”
He kissed my finger gently, and then moved his mouth to my lips. Until an American voice suddenly boomed:
“So Saint Sebastian, is this your new boyfriend?”
I wished we could say yes.
“Nah, we just met tonight.”
“Because he is monopolising you!” exclaimed Old Mother Meph, grinning like a wolf in a fairytale, and grabbing Saint Sebastian’s hand. “Now come with me, the boys are arguing about what porn to watch and you should advise on one of yours.”
I left to go to the bathroom.
*
There was a knock on the door.
“We’ve got to be quick,” he whispered, locking the door behind him. “And not make much noise.”
He dropped to his knees and sucked my cock until hard. After he slipped a condom on it, he pushed me onto the seat and straddled me. He placed my hands on his butt cheeks as he positioned the head of my cock at his asshole.
I looked into his eyes as I felt his heat slide down around me. I moaned and he put his hand over my mouth, shook his head and murmured in my ear: “or they’ll want to join in.” I licked his palm tasting of a salty tang, as he began to buck his hips and flex his thigh muscles. He took his hand away and we kissed silently, passionately, as I wrapped my arms around his toned back and began to fuck him harder.
“Tell me I’m your boy,” he whispered.
His pupils almost consumed his irises.
“You’re my boy.”
I took his nipple in my mouth and he bit at my earlobe as every nerve in my cock pinged like electric wires inside him. Until he stopped me, and said they might notice us being gone.
“I’m going to have sex with them later,” he said, pulling up his shorts.
“Why?”
“So you don’t have to.”
“I only have sex with who I want.”
He frowned.
“It’s only polite,” he said. “We’re taking their drugs.”
“Why don’t we just leave now?
” He looked at me.
“There’s nowhere to go.”
*
Back in the living room, it was G o’clock. I was feeling a bit K-Stew, like I should leave, but thought I’d take the next shot. On the G everybody looked hot, but I didn’t want to have sex with anyone except Saint Sebastian. And now it was like he was ice.
“Fuck!”
Daryl was staring at Saint Sebastian, who was holding an empty glass.
“You just took the G I’m pouring from!”
“How much was in there?”
“Twenty fucking ml!”
The whole chillout swarmed around a pale, scared Saint Sebastian, as behind them this golden Saint Sebastian moaned ecstatically on a high-definition Apple TV. People were arguing about the best way to make him sick, but I knew the G was too fast. I saw him look at me, and I took out my phone.
“What’s the address?”
I cornered Old Mother Meph, who stared at me totally wild.
“Who are you talking to?”
“The ambulance.”
“We can’t have an ambulance here!”
“He’s just overdosed!”
“There are hundreds of fucking pounds worth of drugs!”
“Baby -” said Daryl, rubbing Old Mother Meph’s back.
“No, I’m not flushing them!” He turned back to me. “You’ll have to go out on the street with him.”
Suddenly I was in a real, dark shadow: what if this gets back to my parents?
“I don’t know if I can go with him.”
The emergency services asked for the address again.
“Well, who else is gonna go with him?”
Saint Sebastian’s eyes were beginning to roll back into his head. Fag Hag Cath caught him as he staggered. The chillout was silent, apart from the shuddering cries of increasingly orgasmic porn.
In this weird moment of like utter clarity, I saw outside the window that it’d begun to snow.
“What’s the street name?” I asked.
*
We were shivering as the ambulance raced through London. The paramedics were struggling to keep Saint Sebastian on the stretcher, who was lashing out and kicking. I was coming up on my own G, and just rubbing his shoulder, saying “Sebastian, it’s gonna be alright!” as if he would listen. His wings grew and filled the cabin. When we got to the hospital, as they were preparing to unload him, he burst up and ran wildly, still naked but for shorts, across a field of white.
I ran after him, my feet freezing. I ran so fast I thought my flesh might turn into spirit, and I caught him and tackled him to the ground. His face was contorting in the strangest ways, as his eyes rolled all stallion-loco.
He was screaming:
“I miss my Dad! I miss my Dad!”
I grabbed him to me fiercely, as the paramedics chased toward us, and I lullaby rocked him in the cold night snow. His twitching fingers clasped around my upper arm and clung.
I whispered fiercely in his ear, over and over again, like a Rihanna tune:
“I’m with you.”
Fag Hag Cath
I was heading to where Steve’s crashing for our annual Anti-Valentines. We’ve done it every year since we were 16 when he dragged me to G-A-Y Late – “not because I’m gay,” he said, “it’s just the only place in London that plays Mel C” – and we got on the 99p black sambucas and it ended with me being sick into my kebab as Steve noshed off a Spaniard called Pablo behind a bin. Friends who bond classy, stay classy.
I’m proper excited, I’ve got so much to tell him about Gracie – she’s two this year, look at how beautiful she is – and what happened with Mike – another prick bites the dust – and I ring the intercom buzzer, buzzing.
“Who is it?” croaks an American voice.
“Hey Old Mother Meph, it’s Cath!”
“Are you from the council?”
“No, I’m here to see Steve!”
The voice appears distant.
“Who the fuck’s Cath?”
There’s a mumbled conversation.
“Steve says can you get him a bottle of fake tan from Boots?”
I pause.
“Sure!”
Steve’s always loved his fake tan.
*
“Happy fucking Anti-Valentines! I got us a M&S meal deal for two, classy, and a bottle of Sainsbury’s Basics vodka to wash it down, not so classy.”
I’m stood in the bathroom doorway and Steve looks at me with wide eyes from the mirror, as he rubs in the fake tan.
“I’ve already started on the G, babes.”
I keep my grin fixed.
“I thought we weren’t doing drugs tonight.”
“I haven’t slept since Wednesday.”
“But I got you your favourite: Gastropub duck a l’orange.”
He stares into his reflection, as he pours more tan into his hands.
“I was doing it for you, babes,” he says. “I would have crashed out otherwise.”
“Do you need me to do your back?”
“Please.”
He’s wearing only a pair of greying Calvins – Steve’s never learnt not to mix white and coloured clothes in the wash – and as I place my hands on his back I notice how scrawny his body has become.
“Are you eating enough?”
“Takeaways.”
“I can’t get fucked, I’ve got to pick Gracie
up from my parents tomorrow.”
For the first time, he smiles.
“How is Gracie?”
“She misses her Uncle Steve.”
“I’ll come round see her next weekend.”
I know he won’t, but I nod.
“I split up with Mike.”
“Good. When I heard he hit you -”
“He misjudged his gesticulation.”
“– I was gonna come round and beat the shit out of him.”
The thought of little Steve taking on big rugby-playing Mike is a proper LOL, but I’m filled with an impulse to hug him. Only he’s covered with fake tan.
“All done!”
He turns round, glowing tangerine like Joey Essex.
“Honestly Cath, how do I look?”
Before I can reply, Old Mother Meph appears in the doorway:
“Steve, the dealer’s on his way. Does Whatshername have any money for drugs?”
*
“So I used to work in a salon,” I’m telling Old Mother Meph, who hasn’t looked up from Grindr, and the Dealer Adonis as he counts out the bags. I’ve had a small line of mephedrone and 0.8 of G, and I’m beginning to feel quite chilled. “But then Steve turned up after the Love Club in Vauxhall and the manager walked in on him using one of the showers in the back as a douche.”
“Cath! I told you – somebody in the club gave me K!”
I pat his arm.
“Don’t worry, babes. Freelance is going great. Anyway, now I’ve decided to go into gay club promoting. I’m setting up a night called Swallow.”
The Dealer Adonis says:
“Like the bird?”
“Yeah. And like swallowing.”
“Oh.” He thinks. “Good name.”
“I came up with it,” says Steve proudly.
“You should definitely come and, like, sell drugs.”
The Dealer Adonis says he’ll note it in his diary.
“Steve,” I say. “Do you remember last year’s Anti-Valentine’s?”
I’m on a roll now, the stories are just spurting out of me.
“So I was in the club toilets waiting for Steve to nosh off some guy in a cubicle, when I say to this guy dressed as a sailor, just to be nice and make conversation, “why are you dressed as a sailor?” and he looks me up and down and says “why are you dressed as a whore?” and at that exact moment, Steve whips open the door to the cubicle and says to him, one hand on his hip: ‘Because attractive people don’t dress as sailors, babes.’”
I take his hand.
“I love you, babes.”
He squeezes my fingers.
“Love you too.”
Then he adds:
“Have you got a cigarette?”
*
Within a couple of hours a load of other guys have turned up and everyone’s started fucking. I sit and have a fag and think ‘I hope that sofa’s wipe clean’. The chillouts used to be proper fun but recently they’re a lot more about the sex. Old Mother Meph’s still on Grindr whilst with his other hand giving someone a handjob. I know where he’s coming from: when I was wanking Mike off I’d plan out the whole of my shopping list from Tesco waiting for him to cum. I do some small lines of meph, and post a selfie on Instagram with the hashtag #superfuckingexcitingthingshappeninginmylife which is vague enough to make all the haters worried I’m having a great time.
*
Everyone’s taken a break for G o’clock, except I can’t find Steve. I leave the naked guys chatting and caressing in the kitchen, and wander down the hall to Old Mother Meph’s room, where the door’s slightly ajar. I’m about to burst in, when I hear an American voice say:
“Why is she here?”
And Steve answers:
“She’s my walking-talking fag machine.”
Wow. Every ex-boyfriend who ever treated me like shit is there in that line. Thanks Steve.
“Can you tell her to shut up about Valentine’s Day?”
“I’ll try.”
“After Daryl leaving to ‘sober up’ and losing the job, I don’t wanna hear that happy-clappy shit –”
I put on my best fake smile and throw open the door:
“Hiya guys –”
But I stop when I see the needle in Steve’s arm.
*
Steve and I are talking in the kitchen, as he agitatedly reapplies the fake tan.
“You said you’d never do it.”
“We’re really careful, I use colour-coded needles.”
“You could get HIV, Hep C.”
“Don’t be so judgemental.”
“I’m trying to care for you!”
“I can care for myself.”
“What are you even doing here? Is he selling you?”
“No! We have an agreement.”
“Your ass.”
“Shut up Cath.”
“I think you should leave.”
He laughs and begins racking up lines of meph on a plate.
“Where else am I gonna go?”
“Is it money?”
“Of course it’s fucking money!”
“Does your Mum know?”
“Don’t tell her! She won’t understand.”
Across the room Old Mother Meph has begun wanking off to a porno. Both Steve and I stare at it blankly. I recognise the blonde bottom moaning on the screen.
“Where’s Saint Sebastian these days?”
Steve looks at me.
“Didn’t you hear?”
I know what he’s going to tell me.
“He died a couple of weeks ago. It was all over Facebook.”
I feel this strange wrench.
“But he survived at Christmas!”
“Took too much G again.”
We continue to stare at the porn.
“It’s a shame,” says Steve, snorting the meph. “He was so hot.”
I surge forward into the middle of the wanking men and point at the screen.
“He’s dead!”
Old Mother Meph looks up at me, huge purple penis in hand.
“He looks pretty alive to me there.”
“You’re wanking over a boy who died!”
Old Mother Meph looks at Steve.
“Steve, your hag is being a real boner-killer.”
“Cath! Stop embarrassing me!”
I look at Steve, streaked in fake tan, staring at me in mephed-up consternation across the room. I realise he looks terrible. His eyes are bloodshot and lost in death-like sockets, his skin lacklustre and pocked with spots.
“Wake up, Steve,” I say. “I just want you to wake up.”
Then a large, naked shadow looms over me, as Old Mother Meph says:
“Darling, I think it’s time you ordered an Uber.”
*
I’m cuddling Gracie on my knee and planning out the guestlist for Swallow, with a mug of Lemon & Ginger, when Steve texts to say he’s outside. I put Gracie in her creche and meet him at the door.
He looks so forlorn, standing there with his bag almost bigger than himself, but I block his way in.
“I’ve got a kid, Steve,” I say, looking him in the eyes. “You can’t bring drugs into my flat.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Cath.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
We stare at each other for a moment on the doorstep, before I make way for him. He waves at Gracie, who stares back at him guardedly. I don’t think she recognizes him.
“Do you want a Lemon & Ginger?”
“Oh, that’s my favourite, Cath.”
“I know.”
As I’m making the tea, I watch Steve trying to squirt the last remnants out of an empty fake tan bottle into his hands. He swears in frustration. I get my own fake tan from the bathroom and, without saying a word, I begin to contour the bronze shine into Steve’s face. He closes his eyes as I softly pass my oiled fingertips and palms over his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his brows.
“How do I look?” he ask
s.
“You look great, babes.”
Daniel the Sexual Health Worker
It was the night before Pride and I was on my way to a Vauxhall sauna. I had Bohemian Rhapsody pumping in my earphones, and the last part of my Freddie Mercury costume for tomorrow’s march had arrived: the boots. Things were going hunky-dory until I got down to the platform and saw a Victoria line train had just pulled in at Oxford Circus. I ran like the proverbial wind, and shot through the doors just before they closed feeling like Usain Bolt, before my bag broke and cascaded hundreds of free condoms and lube packets across my fellow commuters.
The whole carriage stared at me.
“Sorry!” I said, as a ninety-year-old grandmother handed me some Liquid Silk that had landed on her lap. “I’m a sexual health worker!”
I scrabbled through the floor of carriage, grabbing fistfuls of condoms and shoving them back in my treacherous satchel.
“In for a good night, mate,” chuckled a joker lad.
“It’s for community outreach!”
“Yeah, you’ve definitely done that, mate.”
My face was burning as I collected the rest of the NHS’ finest protection, and thought, not for the first time, that I would volunteer less for extra shifts next time.
*
Inferno Sauna billed itself as “the hottest sauna in town for men and their menhood.” As I descended into the crimson-lit Hadeyan gloom, I thought at least they’re playing Kylie. I set myself up in the bar area where they were playing old re-runs of Neighbours and an elderly gentleman in a towel was flicking through a copy of QX.
“Free HIV test?” I asked him.
He peered at me in surprise.
“Oh darling. I don’t come here for the sex, I come here for the social life.”
*
Around 1am, things began to pick up. I’d done a couple of tests and handed out a load of condom-and-lube packets, before this attractive man in his thirties, wearing a cap, with the most brilliant body, walked up.
“Robbo,” he said, shaking my hand enthusiastically.
“Um – Daniel,” I replied. “Would you like a –”
“HIV test. Gotta keep check.”
He winked as he sat down, and I realised he was clearly high.
“How’s your night been?”
“Just left Swallow.”
“Not any good?”