The Man He Needs

by Sarah Masters

  Had I said the right things?

  “How do you know what I’d want?”

  He opens his eyes a bit more, staring at me with a gaze so full of pain I’m hard pressed not to get up and touch him, give him comfort. I don’t want to spook him, don’t want this going wrong now I’m out of that damn cellar.

  “I don’t,” I say. “Just guessing. No one’s wanted me that way before, so why should you be any different? This”—I gesture around the room, the cable tie around my wrists chafing—“this situation we have, me thinking we could have a thing going, well, it’s all wishful thinking, isn’t it? Stupid of me to think otherwise.”

  “You’re fucking with me. Don’t do that. It isn’t nice.”

  “I’m not! Seriously, I’m not.” I sound like I’m pleading, sound like a girl, but I don’t give a shit. Time to care about that later when he takes me back into the cellar and I have nothing left but time to think. “You want to hear why I could do with staying here with you? You want me to tell you why you don’t frighten me when maybe you should? Why I don’t get up right now, give it a good go at kicking you in the fucking head and getting the hell out of here?”

  He nods, a slow movement, eyes wary as hell, hands bunching into fists.

  “All right, I’ll tell you. Then maybe you’ll believe me.”

  One way or another, this is the beginning of the end. Either he’ll believe what I have to say and put a stop to the shit I’ve been through, or he’ll do what every other abductor I’ve read about does and end it in another, entirely different way.

  Chapter Two

  Goodbye, Mr Christian Simmons, you’re not wanted here either

  “So you reckon you can live without me,” I said to Ted. I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Finally.

  He stood behind me, breathing on the back of my neck, face so close I could smell coffee mixed with the carrot cake we’d recently eaten. My face, pressed up against the wall, ached with the pressure Ted was applying.

  I wished he’d stop holding my hands behind me, between us like that. My shoulders strained from the angle my arms were at, and his fingernails bit into the soft skin of my wrists. He got like that every so often, mean and nasty, and it extended to the bedroom too.

  Ted laughed, spite infusing every note of it as his chuckle grew in volume and heartiness. It churned my stomach. I didn’t love him anymore—wonder if I ever did really. His recent act of unkindness had been an epiphany—it had been the last straw, showing me what he was really about. Not that I needed telling. I knew what he was about all right, just refused to see it. To think about it.

  He was one mean son of a bitch, and it begged the question—What the hell am I doing here?

  “Of course I can,” he said. “Why the fuck would I want to saddle myself with a prick like you for the rest of my life?”

  He knew how to hurt, to wound, his barbs going so deep they gouged out great chunks of my emotions, putting them through the wringer. I wondered why I’d stayed so long, why he said things like that yet kept me here. If he could live without me, what was the fucking point?

  “No idea,” I said, squirming to free my hands from his grip. My cheek throbbed. A bit of anger bubbled inside me at the unfairness, the way my life had turned out. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was meant to find someone—and I thought it had been Ted—who cared about me above all others, put me before them. Understood me, wanted to take all the hurt away and make me smile every day, even when things were shit and I had nothing to smile about.

  “Me neither,” he said. “You’ve got a fine arse, I’ll admit that, and you give a good blow job. You’re cute, great-looking, but other than that? Fuck knows. I mean, come on. You were brought up on a council housing estate amongst the dregs. Not in my league. Me, on the other hand… Well, it stands to reason why I shouldn’t even have you here. We’re classes apart. Need I go on?” He paused, then, “Yes, I think I will. I have prospects, you have none. I’ve got power, respect, you get none. I’m rich, you’re shit poor—”

  “I wasn’t until you lost me my job.” I shouldn’t say shit like that, shouldn’t say it out loud, but tonight his mean words had tipped me over the edge. Those and his hard fist. He’d thumped me one in the gut just now. The ache it had left behind hurt more than just my stomach. Kind of gets to your heart too, you know? Your emotions.

  “Yeah, well, you did that to yourself. I only told them what you are to teach you a lesson. To show you that being gay isn’t acceptable to everyone, that you really shouldn’t flaunt the fact you’re living with me. I told you not to do that. My reputation can’t stand the flack. I told them you’re a gay prostitute who only thinks I’m his lover, and also that you’re a thief, that they’d be better off letting you go. Because you didn’t play by the rules, did you? I wanted you to see you need me and only me, that you’ll do as you’re told, exactly what you’re told, and stay even though I don’t want you here because you’ve got nowhere else to go. I crave control, Christian, things in order.”

  Like I didn’t know that? Like me being his cleaner hadn’t earned me a few swift kicks up the arse because I hadn’t done it right? Like I hadn’t suffered being kicked out by Mum, shunned by the people I’d grown up with after she’d spread the ‘foul news’ that I was gay? Jesus. I knew all about people craving control and order, not accepting gays, all right. Knew very well the sting words could cause. How they made me turn in on myself, wish I was dead rather than the freak they thought me to be. Knew that no matter how many times I told my boss—former boss—that I hadn’t fiddled the books, he wouldn’t believe me. Who would, given the fact I was a skinny twenty-something who looked a bit rough around the edges, with my short hair and stubbled face? Someone whose appearance made it seem as though I was a bad lot. And with Ted telling them just that… Ted, so clearly a man of importance, a man to be believed. He owned the solicitors, for God’s sake. Cranley & Partners. Who in their right mind would disbelieve a lawyer?

  Ted had picked me up after I’d walked from Mum’s to the little corner shop, a holdall the only thing I’d left home with. Pulled up in his black car, he had, asking me if I wanted a ride.

  I wasn’t sure what kind of ride he meant—one in his car or his cock in my arse—and it didn’t much matter. I was too distraught over the way Mum had changed from the caring woman I’d always known her as to the harridan she’d turned into when I’d dragged up the courage to tell her who I really was.

  I’d thought she’d understand.

  She’d raged. God, she’d raged. On and on about why did it have to happen to her twice, how I was just like my father, a man I’d never known. How he’d pretended he loved her when all along he’d been fucking the bloke who ran the butcher’s down the road. And hadn’t I done the same? Loved her, all the while thinking about fucking men?

  I dared a little more now, asking Ted, “If you cared about me you wouldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t do all the things you do.”

  “Ah, that old chestnut. You sound like a fucking girl, you know that?” He tightened his grip on my wrists, dug his nails in deeper, pressed me closer to the wall, if that was even possible. “Who said I cared about you? Have I ever said that? No, I think you’ll find I haven’t. I took you in, used your arse, and you’ve been here a few years too long.”

  “So I’ll leave.” I had no clue where I’d go, what I’d do for money now my income had ceased to exist, but I didn’t care. Not right then.

  “Go then!” he screamed in my ear.

  I winced from the loud assault, my eardrum bulging to the point I thought it might pop. My stomach rolled over—fear was a right wanker—but I was determined to get out of this shit, to make a better life for myself.

  “Go, you ungrateful little bastard!”

  He’d said that quietly, his voice chilling. Goose bumps spread all over my body, and I swallowed to make the sudden nausea go away.

  He spun me to face him, shoving me back so hard my head hit the wall. What was
another bit of pain in the grand scheme of things? I’d suffered worse at his hands. He raised one leg, jabbing his knee into my groin, and pressed—pressed so damn hard I almost cried out in pain. My cock—he’d trapped it between his knee and my thigh. The pain was excruciating, my bollocks aching, but I didn’t move. I knew better than to do that. Knew better than to argue with him. So why had I started this?

  It was time to break free, that’s why, to stand on my own two feet, and although it scared me, what lay ahead and all that, I couldn’t stay with someone who didn’t give a toss whether I was there or not. He’d miss me as his punching bag, I had no doubt about that. Miss me for my ‘talented’ mouth and ‘greedy’ arse, but other than that? He’d find some other trusting prick to take my place. The fact that he had money drew twinks to him all the time, young blokes after a sugar daddy, someone to take care of them and treat them right.

  They wouldn’t find what they were looking for with Ted.

  “You,” Ted said, “are going to regret this.”

  I thought he meant me saying I’d leave, but he didn’t. I knew what he meant the minute he stepped back, released my wrists, and gave me an uppercut to my nose. I felt the bone crack, heard it, I think. Pain exploded in my head, and for a moment I wondered whether he’d done that thing where the nose bone spears the brain and kills you. The blinding, excruciating agony was enough to make me think I was on the way to the pearly gates, and the blackness that seeped into the edges of my vision only proved to cement my suspicion even more. Silver dots mingled with red ones, dancing in the air between me and Ted. I lifted one hand to my nose, thinking it was one of the last actions I’d ever make before I fell to the floor and died.

  But I didn’t. Die, I mean. He hadn’t sent my nose bone into my brain. He’d just broken it and moved back to admire his handiwork. Blood spurted from my nostrils, and by instinct I cupped my hand to catch it, hoping nothing landed on Ted’s pristine cream carpet.

  He didn’t like a mess.

  Sadly, quite a bit of blood trickled over the edge of my palm, and Ted stared down to watch it fall. It landed with a dull splatter, and like the girl he always accused me of being, I whimpered.

  “Well,” he said. “You’ve gone and stained the fucking carpet. May as well stain it some more before getting the cleaners in, seeing as you won’t be here to do it.”

  I knew what was coming and took my hand away from my face in order to hold both arms up, crossed in a defensive gesture. I’d found if I could shield my face it wasn’t so bad. He usually littered me with punches to my gut, my groin, my ribs, places where the bruises didn’t show. He didn’t let me down at first, raining thumps on me, his face contorting, mouth a skewed line, teeth bared. Words, wanky, horrible words spewing out of him. If anyone heard him they’d think he was homophobic.

  Dirty poof. Nasty little shirt lifter. Fucking faggy cock-sucker.

  I did what I’d always done, held him off as best I could, endured the beating. I crumpled to the floor and hunched into a ball. He kicked my back, my sides, even a swift roundhouse up the jacksie, yet still I didn’t lose consciousness. I held on, crying out as the kicks and jabs got harder, as his words grew crueller. He managed to smack me in the face a few times despite my efforts to ward him off, and when I covered my face and he couldn’t hit me there anymore, he returned his attention to my body.

  Until he’d worn himself out and sloped off, flinging himself on the sofa, his breaths short and ragged, his mean gaze telling me it was my fault.

  All my bloody fault.

  “When you’ve composed yourself,” he said, “you can fuck off. For good this time.”

  It took an hour to do just that. An hour before I could get up, body screaming with pain, mind working out just what the hell had happened. Again. Where I’d go, what I’d do. I glanced at the clock—just after midnight—and saw myself sleeping in a damp alley, my bag a pillow, spare coat a blanket.

  A tramp, that’s what I’d become.

  With great difficulty, I packed my bag—the one I’d arrived with—and re-entered the living room to find Ted fast asleep, my blood on his hands, a great fuck-off stain of it on his precious carpet, spatters up the cream wall. What would he tell the cleaners?

  Why did I care?

  I put my keys on the glass coffee table, quiet as I could. The glass on that thing had been replaced a couple of times since I’d been there. Hurts like a bitch when you’re rammed into it. Heads are pretty damn hard if they can break glass like that. The crackle-glaze effect looked pretty, though.

  I pushed the memories away. Of course, tears stung my eyes. I’d lived there since I was nineteen years old, stuck it out because I thought maybe I could make Ted love me, make him want me to stay, but it hadn’t worked out like that, had it? So yeah, I cried a bit. Who wouldn’t?

  In the hallway, I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

  I didn’t recognise myself. Who was this bloke staring back at me, black hair matted with blood already drying it to hard tufts? How could I see out of eyes that had swollen to slits? When would I breathe through my nose again, what with the rapidly drying blood clogging it? A nasty split on my lip oozed fresh blood, and as I hefted my bag onto my shoulder, I cringed at the tenderness in my ribs.

  He’d not only broken my nose, then.

  I left Ted’s. Walked down the steps to the pavement and let my feet take me wherever. It wasn’t as if I had a destination in mind, was it? I thought of a million things on that dark walk. Mum. The way it used to be before I… My old mates and what they’d said after they’d heard the news. You’d think years of friendship would count for something, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. Ted and what he’d said and done. Why me? I wasn’t a bad person. I didn’t deserve the bollocks they’d all given me.

  I found myself standing outside St Helen’s, the huge, sprawling white hospital on the outskirts of the city. I went inside the A&E, getting looks from people in various states, from broken arms to pieces of glass jutting out of heads and legs. Black eyes, like mine, but on a woman and her kid. Some bird on a stretcher, groaning in pain, her belly swollen, the baby inside clearly giving her some gyp.

  At the desk, I booked myself a place to sit for hours and later endured a barrage of endless questions as to how I got to be in this mess. I lied, said some cunt had jumped me as I left the pub, a gay attack I didn’t want to report to the police. The nurse, she cleaned me up, strapped my nose and bandaged my ribs. Gave me painkillers that wouldn’t do jack shit in making me feel better—they weren’t anything I couldn’t get for sixteen pence in the supermarket anyway.

  Lousy, cheapskate NHS.

  Still, it killed a few hours, me being in the hospital, and at four thirty I left the building, ribbons of pale sunlight streaking the sky, ready to spread and bring on full daylight. A new day. A new start.

  A visit to the local council office.

  I whiled away the time between then and nine, situating myself outside the council, sitting on my bag full of clothes and thinking about the way my life was one complete and utter fuck-up. Something had to give. Someone out there had to give a shit.

  Once the council doors swung open, I creaked to standing and went inside, stating my business only to be told they couldn’t help me. I’d made myself homeless, they said, walking out of Ted’s like that. What a bunch of fucking tossers. It was obvious I couldn’t have stayed at Ted’s, and they knew that, judging by the way they stared warily at my war wounds.

  Like everyone else in my life since I’d come out, they didn’t give a fuck.

  Didn’t want me there, didn’t want to help.

  I left that place with a leaflet about some hostel clutched in my hand and made my agonising way there. It took an hour just to walk the short distance, and I stopped several times to catch my breath, to give my body a rest. I wanted nothing more than to just fall down and sleep, to wake up in a nice bed with a bloke who cared about me and didn’t want me to leave. A bloke who wanted me there. But
that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Not with the state I was in anyway.

  At the hostel, the woman who interviewed prospective residents gave me one of those looks that spoke a million words. You’re not welcome here. Your type, we don’t need them. Still, she showed me to her office, told me to sit on the hard grey chair in front of her desk, offered me a coffee—and a straw to drink it through. She had a heart, then, even if it was small and incapable of fully feeling for someone like me. Oh, I knew she’d probably seen all sorts in her line of work, had hardened her heart in order to get through her days. I was just one of a string of bums who hadn’t quite got a grip on life and how it should be led.

  Shit, I hadn’t been given the chance, really.

  There was no place at the inn—what a damn surprise—but she did find me a bedsit and made sure my unemployment and housing benefit forms were filled out properly. She also gave me a cheque for a deposit made out to the landlord of the bedsit, and a twenty quid note to see me through until my benefits were sorted—that was a fucking joke, considering benefits took up to six weeks to be worked out—then sent me on my way.

  Off her hands, out of her hair.

  Goodbye, Mr Christian Simmons, you’re not wanted here either.

  Chapter Three

  Time to let go

  “So how long ago was that again?” Alfie asks, standing from the ladder-back chair and rasping his palm over his chin.

  “Four years ago.” I sit up, crossing my legs, making it clear I have no intention of trying to get up. To run.

  “And you still live in the same bedsit?”

  He stares into the flames, and I watch the reflection of them dancing over his irises. He looks thoughtful, as though he’s trying to work out what to do next. Whether he believes me.

  God, he’s sexy as fuck. I could just do with shifting over there and snuggling up to him, lifting my face to his and giving him a kiss he’s not likely to forget in a hurry. Now isn’t the time for that, though. He’s still on tenterhooks, I can tell. Nervous, his muscles taut, his mind working overtime, alert to any sudden movement I might make. Doesn’t matter whether I’d make it clear my approach wasn’t threatening. That I was crawling over to him with the intent to kiss his fears away. To hold him to me and stroke his soft hair, make love to him the way he has to me these past weeks, my intention to bring him pleasure and forget about my own. He’s done that, you know. It’s all been about me. He has so much love to give. It spills out of him when we’re naked, shines off him, a big old ball of devotion. How can I deny that? How can I want to be anywhere else, with anyone else?