by Patrick Cash
“Nah, it was banging. But when you get the horn…”
I concentrated on the test I was setting up.
“Do you get a lot of chems users at Swallow?”
“It’s a Vauxhall club night, what do you think?”
I put on gloves and wiped his fingertip with disinfectant.
“Do you use chems for sex?”
“All the time.”
“Do you know we’ve got a chems clinic?”
He grimaced, as I pricked his finger.
“That’s for people who’ve got problems. I control my drug use. I don’t slam, I don’t do Tina. I just use meph and G and I look after myself and the guys I have sex with: I always use protection.”
I added the antibodies to his blood droplets in the dish.
“So, what does it make sex like?”
He leant forward.
“AH – MAY – ZING.”
Jesus, he was sexy.
I looked down at the test and found myself surprised. I realised I’d made an assumption.
“That’s negative,” I said.
He grinned and grabbed a load of condoms and lube.
“Cheers man!”
I watched him strut through the door leading to the labyrinth of dark rooms, booths and slings beyond.
*
Back home, I put on Freddie’s ‘Somebody to Love’ and stared at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t bad looking. I went to the gym, kept myself in good shape, even since Mark left. Sometimes it felt like there was a huge sex party going on in the city and no one had sent me an invitation. I poured myself a glass of wine, then turned on Grindr and took ‘no chems’ off my profile. As an afterthought I changed my profile pic from my National HIV Testing Week T-shirt to a topless pic at Preston Park, Brighton Pride, summer 2013. Just as an experiment, it’s not like I was going to –
Oh. One message already.
*
Half an hour later, I was on my way to my first chillout, hosted by Hot Top/Vers 32. He made me take nudes, I felt like a filthy slut and I loved it! I asked if I should bring anything and he said “your cock”, which was easy enough to arrange, but I’d brought a bottle of wine as well, just in case. I was wearing my best Ralph Lauren polo shirt, the one that Mark said made me look like a sex machine. If I saw a patient, I’d leave instantly. I was quite excited: in my head I had an image of a Roman orgy in Bermondsey.
*
Hot Top/Vers 32 offered me a line of mephedrone from a plate. I stared at the rolled-up tenner and just saw Hepatitis honking back at me.
“I’ve brought my own,” I said, patting my back pocket.
No patients were on the horizon. There were about ten or so guys standing around in shorts, as House music played.
“I brought a bottle of red.”
Hot Top/Vers 32 stared at the wine.
“Thanks…?”
“It’s Pinotage.”
“Great. Do you want a pair of shorts?”
I didn’t want to take off my polo shirt.
“I always wait until the second date.”
I was trying to be flirtatious, but he said:
“Excuse me, I’ve just got to go and stand over there.”
I poured myself a glass of my own red and then wandered through the party.
“Oh my god, I love this DJ!” exclaimed a bopping twink.
To me, nothing had changed about the relentless, lyricless beat.
“Do you ever listen to Freddie Mercury?”
“Was he on The Voice?”
“No, he was the lead singer of Queen.”
He got out his phone.
“Sorry babes, I’ve just gotta text my sister and let her know I can’t make it tomorrow – I mean, who organises a BBQ for 2pm on a Saturday?”
“Most people?”
In the bedroom there were a couple of couples fucking. An attractive man outside the door was on Grindr.
“Are they using condoms?”
He looked up.
“Everyone here’s poz. Why would they use condoms?”
“Chlamydia, gonhorrhea – super gonhorrhea –, syphillis, Hep B/C.”
The man stared at me and then announced to no one in particular:
“Oh my god, who invited Enya?!”
I felt anything but horny. I sat down on the sofa to finish my wine, as a young guy with a tribal tattoo tugged at his limp dick in front of soulless porn. I looked around the apartment and realised what it was missing: personal touches. No photos, no books, no posters. Just an abstract artwork bought from IKEA. It all felt a bit sad. Why do people use drugs? Happiness, euphoria, ecstasy. An old image of a dusty classics lesson rose unbidden in my mind. Ecstasy. From the Greek: Ek-stasis. To be outside one’s self. Why do so many gay men want to be outside themselves?
The boy next to me looked at my glass.
“What are you on?”
“Pinotage.”
“Good shit?”
“2006.”
“Can I try some?”
I offered him the glass, and he immediately spat it back in.
“That’s red wine!”
“Yes, and not a cheap one.”
“You could have fucking killed me, I’m on so much G.”
“I’m sorry, I should be going.”
“Not your thing is it?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’ve still got all your clothes on.”
I looked at him.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugged.
“It’s fun.”
“You don’t have to have sex with anybody here.”
“I only have sex with who I want,” he said. Then he laughed. “And who gives me drugs.”
He motioned to the porn.
“He was my boyfriend.”
I put the wine glass down.
“Come with me now,” I said. “Get dressed, I’ll call a cab. No funny business. I’ll put out the sofa bed, you can have a good night’s sleep.”
He stared at my outstretched hand.
“Maybe after the next shot.”
*
I was in the clinic office surrounded by rainbow flags as the team were getting ready for Pride. Someone’d already popped open the cava, although I was holding off until midday. I was having the mother of difficulties getting on the Freddie Mercury boots.
I’d finally pulled them on, when I got a call from Lizzie.
“Daniel, can I get your advice on a patient, please?”
I ran down to the third floor in my thigh-high platforms, which was quite the task. Lizzie met me at the door.
“Nineteen-year-old, HIV+ male, complaining of rectal bleeding. Chems use. He’s asked to see a male nurse.”
I opened the door.
“Hi…”
I never found out his name the night before. I looked down at his notes.
“Nameless.”
He stared at me dull-eyed.
“Nice boots.”
“What happened?”
He looked far younger in the June sunlight than he did last night. Just a child, really.
“After you left, I went under on G and I woke up and my ass was bleeding.”
I tried to keep the guilt at bay.
“So you were assaulted?”
He scoffed.
“No! I was at a sex party, it’s what happens.”
“I can examine you,” I say. “But then we’ll refer you to the hospital.”
As I was preparing the examining table, he said:
“He left me, you know.”
“Who?”
“My boyfriend. We went to sleep together and when I woke up, he was gone. He went to a chillout and he took too much G and he died.”
He looked at me through a slightly blurring of tears. “Why would he do that to me?”
I suddenly felt utterly hopeless.
“I don’t know.”
&nbs
p; Outside the window, I heard the first whistles for Pride.
Nameless Part 2
During the summer just gone, one of the magazine designers rang me on my lunch break.
“Your friend Nameless has just turned up at the office,” he said. “He doesn’t seem to be… Very well.”
I’d met Nameless when he was eighteen, two years previously, in a club in Vauxhall. He was the trophy boy of the gay scene then and we’d slept together bareback several times over the course of a two-day bender, so that I later had a prolonged and agonising wait for an HIV test when I discovered he was positive. Yet we’d stayed since haphazardly friends.
“Can you tell him to come to Soho Square, please?”
He was wandering around topless, clearly drug-fucked, asking random guys to have sex. I took his hand and he grabbed me urgently, blue eyes intent and blazing.
“Let’s go to the public toilets.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great. I’m a superstar.”
“Have you slept?”
“I don’t need to sleep.”
I quickly realised I wasn’t equipped to deal with this situation.
“Can you come somewhere else with me?”
“Where?”
“56 Dean Street.”
*
Alone together in the Dean Street lift, he pulled his shorts down and asked me to fuck him. I’d managed to get them back up again by the time we got to the third floor.
“Excuse me,” I said to the receptionist. “Is Daniel available, please?”
Daniel had helped me control my own drug use the year before.
“I think he’s with a client,” she replied.
An attractive male nurse walked past and Nameless asked him if he wanted to fuck.
“But if you take a seat in the waiting room, I’ll let him know as soon as possible.”
In the waiting room Nameless oscillated between leaning his head in tiredness on my chest to trying to shove his hands down my trousers, or get me to do the same to him. He spoke loudly and explicitly about sexual acts, as the other men pretended not to notice. I wondered when he’d last eaten and began to feed him pieces of fruit and a sandwich from my supermarket lunch. He ate it all, hungrily.
“What happened to being sober?”
We’d been meeting recently, when we’d drink only water together.
“Being sober’s boring.”
“How’s your new boyfriend?”
He scowled.
“We split up.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a bucket slut.”
Cogs were clicking into place.
“What happened?”
“He gave me chlamydia from a whore.”
“And you’ve been on chems since?”
*
“Do you want to stop doing drugs?” asked Daniel.
“No,” said Nameless. “Drugs are great.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t want to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
We’d been going around in circles. Nameless had been persuaded to put on my gym vest, but he was proving flirtatiously resistant to deeper conversation.
“Okay,” sighed Daniel. “What I can do is give you condoms and lube. Look after yourself. And when you’re ready to stop, come back and see me.”
Before Nameless and I left, Daniel spoke to me on my own quietly.
“It’s not just drugs,” he said. “It’s a dual diagnosis. There are deeper issues going on here.”
“I know,” I said.
“It’s going to be hard for you to deal with it on your own.”
I looked over at Nameless.
“Yeah, but he’s my friend.”
*
He didn’t want to go back to his, as it was a half-way house and he found it depressing and lonely. I could only imagine how tired he was as the power of the drugs ebbed away. It would be better to keep him safe, I thought, than leave him on the streets.
“You can come home with me,” I said. “But not for sex. To sleep.”
He seemed to accept this boundary, and intertwined his fingers into mine on our walk down to Charing Cross.
As modern a homosexual male I might imagine myself, I realised how unused I was to public displays of intimacy with another man within daylight hours. Yet I kept his hand in mine.
“I love you,” he said.
I smiled at his weary slur. A month ago this would have been all I wanted to hear.
“I love you lots,” I replied.
*
The train journey was excruciating. In a packed carriage of rush-hour commuters, Nameless inexplicably perked up and chose both gay sex and drugs as his sole topics of loud conversation. I’d never seen so many people so totally absorbed by the Evening Standard.
Back at mine, I gave him a bath and put his sweat-soaked clothes in the wash. He asked if we could get some drugs.
“No. Do you not want to go to sleep?”
“Can I have a glass of wine first, please?”
We only had red wine in the house, and I knew it to be a soporific.
“I guess one.”
*
Nameless didn’t drink, but gulped. He finished off the best part of a bottle in half an hour, and was staggering around the flat naked. Each time I tried to get him to sleep he began to initiate sex.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” he repeated like a mantra.
“I don’t want to fuck you!” I shouted at him. “I think of you as more than a cock and balls and ass. I brought you here to look after you.”
He smiled up at me, mischievous and gorgeous in my bed.
“Fuck me.”
Eventually the inevitable happened. I believe my initial intentions were true, but it took a stronger mind than my own to stand steadfast against his incessant need for sex. I knew he wanted it for validation, but as he spoke its words the thoughts crept into my head, and as he rubbed his buttocks against me, I felt the threads of arousal weave together in my crotch.
After I’d came, I felt the greatest wave of shame descend. I’d wanted to do one thing right, to look after something vulnerable, and I’d failed.
I lay in the bed as Nameless jumped up, blissfully happy, and went looking for a cigarette.
*
By 3am he was still up and still manic. My housemate Rose came home, and being both Northern and a lesbian, took it in her stride when Nameless appeared naked in her doorway asking her for sex. But after some time speaking with him she voiced her concern over his wellbeing. Not knowing what to do, we involved his ex-boyfriend.
“This is what he’s like when he’s not taking his meds,” he said. “He won’t calm down. You need to phone the paramedics.”
As Rose distracted Nameless trying on outlandish outfits cobbled from my wardrobe, I rang 999.
He came into the kitchen.
“Who are you speaking to?”
“The paramedics.”
His face fell.
“Why? I’m having fun here.”
We’d all been drinking by this point, and it’d been an emotional night. I suddenly began to cry.
This made him uncertain.
“Don’t cry,” he said
I hugged him fiercely to me, and kissed him on the cheek.
“I just want you to be okay.”
“I’m always okay,” he said. “I’m a superstar.”
*
It’d become clear confusion had lead us to the wrong decision, when the A&E receptionist informed me there was a five hour wait.
“But he’s got mental health issues,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “And that means he can’t leave because if he does, we’ll have to phone the police.”
“Why?”
“Because he might be a danger to the public.”
We looked over at Nameless, kicking his feet and munching on a packet of crisps.
“He’s not a danger to the public.”
/> “I’m sure he appreciates you saying that.”
We were in the hospital for forty-five minutes, before Nameless stormed out in impatience. Effectively we were now on the run in wild, wild Camberwell.
“Where are you gonna go?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were mad.
“Back to yours.”
*
At 6.30am a police car drew up outside the house with blue lights flashing but no siren. I lead two gruff male officers up the stairs to our flat where they found a tired, tousle-haired boy half-asleep in bed. He grinned.
“Are you here to strip for me, guys?”
Neither of them seemed particularly pleased by this proposition. I saw one glance around the room where his eyes alighted on the condoms I’d left strewn around earlier.
“Are you gonna… Look after him?” he said to me.
“Well, I’m going to go to sleep with him, yeah.”
I’d meant this literally rather than sexually, but it apparently sounded carnal enough to rapidly convince the policemen that Nameless was neither a threat to himself or others. They made a swift exit.
I climbed into bed and put an arm around my Nameless as I thought of all the other nameless out there in the world. I see them often, and each weekend: nameless as they collapse in clubs, and nameless as they step over the casualties. Nameless as the G takes them at chillouts, still trying to hold their phones aloft. Nameless in their orange pants; nameless in constant sex and pleasure; nameless in their rejection. And I knew that part of me was nameless, myself.
“Nameless?”
“Yeah,” he murmured.
“You know when I left you, after that weekend we first met in Vauxhall.
You remember what I said?”
“You said I was cute.”
“I always wanted to say,” I whispered, feeling the heat from his neck by my lips. “I never thought you were just cute. I never thought that, at all.”
He said nothing, but I felt him draw my arm closer around his body.
End.
attitude
Recipient of Attitude’s Community Award 2015:
56 DEAN STREET
Sexual health and wellbeing clinic 56 Dean Street has revolutionised sexual health services and become a pioneer in LGBT care and HIV awareness.
56 Dean Street, opened in 2009, is Europe’s busiest sexual health centre. 11,000 patients use its services each month, 7,000 of whom are gay men. Part of its success is in its pioneering design. Unlike the ‘Cinderella’ sexual health services of the past, shoved away at the back of the hospital near the chapel, the Dean Street clinic resembles a boutique hotel: sparkling, light-filled and modern. But, as many of us on the gay scene will know, however good something might look means little without a supporting personality.