by Paul Burston
He was about to shut down the computer and dig out a porn video when a message flashed up. “Hi,” it said. “How r u?”
John looked at the screen name—“CuriousCute28.” Interesting. He clicked open the profile. The guy described himself as straight and in a relationship, but looking for “discreet fun with other straight-acting lads.” John had met this type before. More often than not, they turned out to be the sort of screaming queens who thought a bit of sportswear was all it took to transform them from the bitchy window dressers they were into the butch manual laborers they fantasized about being fucked by. But there was something about this one that seemed genuine. Maybe it was the wording of the profile, or rather the lack of it. There was no name given for a start, which made the emphasis on discretion sound authentic. There were no detailed statistics, either, just a line that read “Tall, dark and told handsome.” A queen would have given himself away with a detailed description of his gym routine. And while most people in the chat rooms had spent hours pondering over a personal quote that summed up their attitude to life and made them sound like a really interesting person, this guy had left the quote box blank. This was a refreshing change. There were far too many people on the Internet claiming to “Live Life to the Max”—not an easy thing to do when you clearly spent half your life in front of a computer screen.
Yes, this was definitely one worth pursuing. John typed in a message reading “Nice profile,” added the word “mate” for good measure, and clicked on the reply box.
“You poor thing!” Caroline said, clutching Martin’s hand across the kitchen table. She cleared a space in front of her, reached into her handbag for her compact and the little Tiffany pouch containing a wrap of coke and her silver-plated cocaine straw, and proceeded to chop two fat lines. “Come on, this will soon perk you up.”
“Isn’t it a bit early for that?” Martin replied, pulling his hand away and pouring himself another cup of tea. It was barely an hour since Caroline had arrived, coked to the eyeballs and playing havoc with his entry phone. Somebody must have taken pity on her and let her into the building, because the next thing he knew she was hammering at his front door. He had stumbled out of bed in a daze, half thinking that the building must be on fire, but too hungover to even care. He’d had a terrible night—dreaming that Christopher had given him some dreadful venereal disease, and waking up at regular intervals to throw up. He still had that stale sickly taste in his mouth. And since when did Caroline start doing coke at five o’clock in the afternoon? He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her so wired.
“He hasn’t even called,” he said. “Though after seeing him and his hooker looking so cozy together last night, I don’t care if I never hear from him again.”
“But you have to tell him exactly what you think of him,” Caroline said, pressing a finger to her nostril and Hoovering up a line in one swift, smooth action. “The best thing that could happen now would be if he called. At least then you could tell him to crawl off and die somewhere. Unless you still want him back. Oh, Martin, you don’t still want him back, do you?”
“Of course not!” he snapped, sounding far more defensive than he’d intended. “Sorry. It’s just that this has all happened so quickly. Three days ago, I wasn’t even aware that there was anything wrong. Now I’m left with a flat I can barely afford and an ex-boyfriend who’s off playing happy family with someone who gets his cock sucked for a living and probably earns more in a week than I make in a month. It’s like a bad dream. I still haven’t got used to the idea of him not being here. I keep expecting him to walk through the door at any moment.” He could feel himself welling up as he spoke, and fell silent, embarrassed that he might start sniveling.
“Have a line,” Caroline said gently, sliding the compact across the table and handing Martin the straw. “I know it’s not really your thing, but nobody died from a little line of coke. Believe me, you’ll feel a lot better than you do now.”
Martin hesitated for a moment. Snorting cocaine in the afternoon definitely wasn’t his thing. In fact, he’d only ever taken coke once before, at a party with Christopher one New Year’s Eve. He couldn’t really remember what the effects were, except that he drank an awful lot more than usual that night and talked nonstop about things he normally had very little interest in. Still, coke on its own was probably no worse than alcohol. It certainly didn’t appear to have done Caroline any harm. And God knows he had just cause for getting out of his head if that was what he wanted. He took the straw from her fingers.
“You’ll be okay,” Caroline continued, watching as he struggled to get the crumbly white powder up his nose with short, clumsy sniffs. “And don’t worry about the rent. I can always help out if you’re stuck, you know that. The important thing is for you to concentrate on getting over him. Deciding you don’t want him back, that’s the first step. The next step is to make sure that he knows you don’t want him back. That’s why it’s best if he phones you. It’s all about power. He dumps you, so you feel powerless. You have to find a way of taking control of the situation; then you won’t feel so bad. Well, that’s the theory anyway. I think it probably works for men better than for women. It’s a macho thing. Men are so much more competitive. It’s pathetic really.”
Martin snorted, scattering the remains of his line across the table. For all her feminine ways, Caroline was one of the most competitive, macho people he had ever met. “So how are things with you and Graham?” he asked, sensing that Christopher wasn’t the only specimen of manhood Caroline was thinking of. “Are you seeing him tonight?”
Caroline shrugged and lit up a Dunhill International. “I don’t know. We had a bit of a row yesterday, and I haven’t heard from him since. To tell you the truth, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen for a while. There’s something going on, something he isn’t telling me.”
“What do you mean?” Martin asked, sniffing hard until he felt the coke hit the back of his throat and the tip of his tongue go numb. “You don’t think he’s cheating on you, do you? No, not Graham. He’s crazy about you. Anyway, he’s not the type.”
“I’m not sure what type he is,” Caroline said, dabbing her finger on the few remaining crumbs and rubbing it against her gums. “I feel funny just talking about it. The thing is, I’ve got a feeling that he might actually be gay.”
Martin laughed. “Caroline, you have always had a feeling that Graham might actually be gay. Besides, I thought that was what attracted you to him in the first place. Isn’t that what you said, that you had always fantasized about having a gay man for a boyfriend and that now you finally had one?”
Caroline scowled. “Yeah, well, obviously I didn’t mean it literally. I just meant that he had the qualities I look for in a man, and which most of the straight men I meet lack in abundance. You know. He’s gentle. He’s sensitive. He isn’t afraid to show his feelings. He knows how to dress properly. He loves shopping. And he can dance. He’s like a gay man, only straight. Or at least I thought he was. Oh, you know what I mean.”
Martin knew exactly what she meant. Graham was one of the gentlest, most sensitive, most “gay-acting” men he had ever come across. In fact, Graham presented a far softer front than a lot of the men you saw on the gay scene these days, who to all intents and purposes were just like a straight man, only gay. The irony of this wasn’t lost on Martin. He wondered if a straight woman fancying gay men was the same thing as gay men fantasizing about sex with straight men. Did it involve a certain element of self-loathing? Was there even such a thing as “internalized heterophobia”? He did find the whole thing rather confusing. Most of the women he knew seemed to spend half their waking hours complaining that men were insensitive, selfish animals who didn’t know the first thing about personal hygiene. And then when they finally met one who wasn’t like that at all, they invariably found something else to complain about. He was too fussy, or too vain, or just not manly enough. It did make you wonder if straight men these days weren’t g
etting a bit of a raw deal. No wonder some of them were envious of the gay lifestyle. You rarely heard a gay man complain that somebody was “too macho.” On the contrary, most of them would give their eyeteeth for a man who acted the way straight men were supposed to behave. And thinking of teeth, he had heard it said that gay men generally gave far better blow jobs than women. All things considered, there were quite a few advantages to a straight man choosing to have sex with other men. Even a straight man with a girlfriend as gorgeous as Caroline.
“People are always assuming that Graham is gay,” he said eventually. “It doesn’t mean anything. You know that.”
Caroline reached for the compact and began chopping another line. “I don’t know what I know anymore. I told you how he never talks about his family.”
“So? How often do you talk about yours?”
“Come on, Martin! You’ve met my mother. You know what an embarrassment she can be. It’s different with Graham. I get this feeling that his family know something about him that I don’t. And he’s been acting very strangely lately. I told you he joined a gym recently. And he went to a tanning salon the other day. He’s even started reading Men’s Health.”
Martin laughed. “Oh well, in that case he must be gay. No question!” He paused and quietly scolded himself for being so insensitive. “I think you’re being just a little bit paranoid,” he continued in a softer voice. “Reading Men’s Health does not prove that a man is turning homosexual. Not conclusively anyway.”
Suddenly the phone rang. “If that’s Christopher . . . ,” Caroline shouted as Martin bolted into the bedroom. She heard the door click shut behind him, then turned her attention back to the little fold of paper in front of her. Not for the first time, it struck her how much she loved the rituals involved with taking coke—the positioning of the mirror, the careful unfolding of the wrapper, the precise arrangement of the lines of pure white powder on the glass. There was something so satisfyingly methodical about it, so neat and orderly, like a well-planned shopping list or a two-page presentation complete with bullet points. It wasn t a drug she associated with people whose lives were spiraling out of control. There was nothing remotely messy about it, nothing that fitted with the popular image of a drug addict. It was all so clean, so tidy. It was, she decided, a very minimalist chic kind of drug, and one which suited her lifestyle perfectly. Once she had finished chopping two of the neatest lines she had ever seen, she poured herself another cup of tea, lit another cigarette, and sat tapping out the seconds with her coke straw.
She was on her third cigarette by the time Martin reappeared, looking decidedly flustered. “Sorry about that,” he said, reaching for his mug and gulping down the lukewarm tea.
“Well?” said Caroline impatiently. “Was it him?”
“No,” Martin replied. “It was my dad. He’s coming to London next weekend, and he wants to stay here. Says he’d like to spend some quality time with his favorite gay son, or words to that effect.”
“How many gay sons has he got?”
Martin smiled. “Just the one. My brother is so straight, it hurts. That’s just Dad’s way of letting me know I’m not a disappointment to him.”
This was typical of his father. While most of the gay men Martin knew complained of fathers who flew into a homophobic rage at the mere mention of their offsprings’ sexual leanings, his own father had always been fine about him being gay. In fact, he had handled the news far better than his ex-wife. Martin’s mother meant well, but she spent far too much time worrying about what the neighbors might think. This wasn’t something ever likely to concern his father, who never stayed in one place long enough to develop more than a passing acquaintance with the neighbors. This pattern had been set years ago when Martin’s mother filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and his father moved out of the family home and into the first of a string of temporary abodes. Much as this had upset him at the time, the only thought Martin gave to his parents’ failed marriage now was trying to work out how they ever got together in the first place. These days, the differences in their outlook on life were more pronounced than ever. His father saw himself as a free spirit. His ex-wife saw him as just another victim of male menopause.
Caroline had met Martin’s father once before and found him rather sweet—a bit of an old hippie perhaps, but a damn sight more fun than her mother. She was certain he didn’t keep old photos of Martin around the house, just to embarrass him. Plus he had probably experimented with more drugs than his son. She could think of worse people to have as a houseguest. “Well, I think it’ll be nice for you to spend time with him,” she said, Hoovering up her line.
“Are you mad?” Martin said. “Next weekend is Gay Pride. I tried telling him that, but it only made him more determined. He said it would be the ideal opportunity for him to get to know my people, whoever they are. The biggest gay party of the year, and I’m going to have my father in tow. What am I going to do?”
Caroline laughed. “Finish your dinner,” she said, pointing to the one remaining line of coke. “Then get dressed. I’m taking you out.”
Four
No, not there,” Caroline said, grabbing Martin’s arm and steering him toward an empty table at the opposite end of the bar. On a video screen above their heads, Ricky Martin was shaking his bonbon for what was probably the third time that evening. In the middle of the room, a man with terrible skin was dancing with a fat girl in a fuchsia-pink party dress. Brightly colored drinks in hand, they sashayed between the tables, doing their best to imitate Ricky’s moves and failing miserably.
“The lighting is terrible over there,” Caroline explained as she and Martin sat down. “Look at that girl at the far end, the one in the yellow top. She’s probably fairly attractive, but she looks awful in that light. I just can’t understand girls like that. You’d think someone would have told them by now. What’s the point of going to all that trouble with your hair and makeup and then ruining the effect by sitting under a bad light? She might as well go home. There isn’t a man here who’ll chat her up while she’s sitting there.”
Martin smiled politely. He had heard Caroline’s theory about good lighting many times before, and he was still no closer to understanding it. To him, the girl in question looked perfectly presentable. And if the men weren’t exactly queuing up to talk to her, that was probably because most of them here happened to be gay. They were in Soho after all, albeit a short walk from the gay stronghold of Old Compton Street. Martin preferred slightly more mixed venues like the Escape Bar—places where straight women and even some straight men came to hang out with gay friends, and everyone appeared to have a good time, even if they were sitting under the wrong kind of light. It was so much more relaxing than standing around in a bar full of gay men where nobody really talked to each other and you were left feeling like a piece of meat. He could still remember the first time he took Caroline to a gay bar—the Brief Encounter on St. Martin’s Lane. Some old queen in a tuxedo who had stopped off for a swift drink on his way to the Coliseum announced very loudly that he could smell fish in the room and that it was making him feel sick. Martin had felt sick, too, not to mention angry that another gay man could even think like that, let alone talk like it. Of course that was in the days when he still believed that the gay world was one big happy family, rather than a vipers’ nest full of people waiting to ruin your one chance of happiness by stealing your boyfriend.
“You okay?” Caroline said. “I thought I’d order a bottle of champagne to get us in the party mood. My treat. What do you say?”
Martin looked up. “Sorry? I was miles away. What are we celebrating?”
“I’m sure we’ll think of something. That’s the great thing with champagne. A few glasses and you feel like you’ve got something to celebrate even if you haven’t. Anyway, it’s the only thing to drink with coke. I’ve got another gram somewhere. I was going to save it for later. Sex on coke is just the best, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing Graham
this weekend. And you know me. I can’t sleep if there’s a gram of coke in the house.”
Martin forced a smile and wondered if he was the only person in London who hadn’t experienced sex on cocaine. He wished Caroline wouldn’t insist on ordering champagne every time they went out together. He always felt so conspicuous drinking champagne in a gay bar. It made him feel like one of those aging queens you saw hanging around the clubs, flashing their money about in a desperate attempt to impress the younger pretty boys. Still, there was no point arguing with Caroline when she was in this mood, and it was kind of her to offer to pay. “Right,” he said brightly. “Champagne it is.”
They polished off the first bottle in less than an hour, punctuated by frequent trips to the toilets for what Caroline liked to describe as “cheeky little bumps” of coke. By the time the second bottle arrived, Martin didn’t care how naughty he looked. He was feeling more confident than he had felt in a long time. He was also beginning to understand how Caroline managed to stay so slim, despite her aversion to exercise and a job that seemed to revolve around boozy business lunches. He hadn’t eaten anything except a slice of toast all day, and he had no appetite whatsoever. A few more nights like this and he could soon stop worrying about the love handles. What’s more, he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so horny. So this was what Caroline meant about coke being the best social and sexual lubricant there was. Not only did it keep you slim and give you the confidence to chat people up, it also turned you into some kind of sexual athlete. He felt like he could fuck for hours. The only problem was, at this precise moment in time, he didn’t have anyone to fuck with. Images of Christopher engaged in a variety of sexual positions with Marco flashed before his eyes like the trailer for a particularly bad porn movie, and he felt his confidence begin to drain away.