by Paul Burston
He giggled at the thought—the world was flat after all. Maybe if he wandered over to the edge, he would fall off. But where was the edge? He had no sense of distance, no way of gauging the physical space between himself and his immediate surroundings. He was like a partially sighted man feeling his way in the dark, vaguely aware of obstacles in his path but unable to determine their exact size or position. He walked into a pillar and held on to it with both hands. He stood there for a moment, trying to get his bearings. How far away was John? A few feet? A mile? He couldn’t tell. And the dance floor he was walking on—how far down was it? He had no idea. He was still standing upright, so presumably his feet must be on the floor. But there was none of the familiar feeling of walking, no sense of his feet making contact with anything solid. It was how he had always imagined it must feel to walk on the moon. He felt weightless, as if every muscle in his body was being pulled upward by some strange force of gravity. Maybe if he let go of the pillar he would just float up into the air, past the lighting rig and through the roof of the club and high into the sky above. Houston, we have a problem.
It was weird, this drug. It was like seeing everything from a completely different angle. The hands held out in front of him were attached to his arms, so presumably they must be his. But they didn’t feel like his hands. And the pillar they were clinging to—was it the same pillar or a different one? He wasn’t even sure which club he was in anymore. Was it the Fridge? Or had they left there already and gone to Crash? He couldn’t remember leaving, but then he couldn’t remember arriving, either, so who could say for sure? Maybe they had been beamed up by aliens, or had climbed into some kind of teleporter and been transported to another club, in another dimension. Anything was possible. Perhaps they were at Trade. At least that would explain why everything looked so unfamiliar. He took a good look around and eventually spotted a few faces in the crowd he recognized—not friends exactly, but faces you saw regularly enough when you were all part of the same gay-clubbing fraternity, faces that reassured you of your whereabouts, faces that told you where you belonged. He heaved a sigh of relief. It didn’t matter which club he was at so long as there were a few familiar faces, and something to hold on to.
And then everything shifted. Was it just a trick of the lights, or had the world suddenly changed color? Everything was tinged with a haze of red and green, just like in one of those 3-D movies from the ’50s, only flattened out, the way the film looked when you took your 3-D glasses off. Even the people were flat, like paper cutouts, or that moment in Tom and Jerry where Tom is crushed by a steamroller or an anvil lands on Jerry’s head. And those muscle boys dancing in front of him with their shirts hanging from the backs of their trousers—was it just his imagination, or had they mutated into giant peacocks? He stared at them and gradually the image sharpened, like a film coming into focus. Sure enough, there they were—giant peacocks puffing out their chests, resplendent with red and green feathers, shimmering under the disco lights. So this wasn’t Tom and Jerry after all—it was Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. And suddenly they weren’t peacocks anymore—they were flamingos. Any minute now, the Queen of Hearts would appear and they would all play a game of croquet.
Oh, but hang on. It was all changing again, blending back into some semblance of what it had been before. The muscle boys were boys again, only now they were dancing in slow motion. They looked almost as if they were suspended in treacle. And the music had stopped. All he could hear now was the sound of his heart beating and the laughter of the boys as they danced in time to his heartbeat. And the slower they danced, the slower his heartbeat became, until finally he was convinced that his heart was about to stop. Shit! It was getting scary now. His vision was reduced to a tiny circle, like the beginning of a Bond film or the view through one of those peepholes people put in their front doors for security. He could just make out the shape of John, disappearing into the distance. He tried to walk, but it was like walking waist deep in water, or running from the monster in a nightmare—two steps forward, one step back. He wanted to shout out, to tell John to wait for him, but he seemed to have lost the power of speech. His whole body felt numb. He turned around, searching frantically for a familiar face. He tried telling himself to stay calm, but it was no use. He panicked.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. John’s disembodied voice bubbled into his ear. “There you are, daughter!” it said. “You had me worried for a minute. Come on, I think we’d better get you some sugar.”
It was 1:00 A.M. and Caroline was lying in bed, studying the cracks in the ceiling. Since arriving home just over two hours ago, she had drunk the best part of a bottle of red wine and taken two herbal sleeping tablets and half a dozen melatonin in an attempt to knock herself out. But it was no use. Her body may have been ready for sleep but her mind certainly wasn’t and stubbornly refused to be tricked into a state of stupor by any amount of chemical inducements she pushed its way. Of course not all of the chemicals she had pumped into her body this evening were conducive to a good night’s sleep. The minute she walked through the door, she had Hoovered up the remains of her coke in one enormous, fat line. But needs must, and after the night she’d had tonight, Caroline’s need for an invigorating, confidence-boosting line of charlie was greater than it had been since . . . well, since she had walked into the Sanderson and Dylan spilled his drink down her dress. The reminder of that little mishap was now safely hanging in the wardrobe, awaiting a visit to the dry cleaner’s. The money was still in her handbag, awaiting a phone call to her coke dealer. As for the other physical reminders, they had been soothed away by a long soak in the bath. It was just a pity she couldn’t get Graham out of her system quite as easily.
How could she have got it so wrong? How could she have jumped to the conclusion that Graham was gay, and driven him into the arms of another woman? It was like a bad joke, too pathetic for words. Having gone over it in her head a dozen times in the last half hour, she was convinced that she would have felt better had she spotted him kissing another man. At least then she would have had the consolation of knowing that she’d been right all along, and that their relationship had no real future. Seeing him with that woman only reminded her of what she was missing, what she had been missing for the past three months, and what she needn’t have been missing at all if she had only known when to keep her big mouth shut. It was like being shown a glimpse of the future she and Graham could have had together, then seeing it snatched away. This was her punishment for being so stupid, and for ignoring the advice of her friends. Martin had told her she was jumping to conclusions when she let it slip that she suspected Graham was leading a double life. If only she had listened to him.
She looked at the bedside clock: 1:20 A.M. Martin would be at Love Muscle or at the Fridge now—at least that was where he had said he was going when they spoke earlier this evening. He had invited her to join him, only she had made up some story about meeting up with an old girlfriend, fearing that he might have disapproved of her date with Dylan. Martin may be gay, and gay men may be reputed to have more sex with more people under a wider variety of circumstances than any other species on the planet, but there were still some things a girl didn’t even share with her best gay male friend, and calling up an old flame because she was dying for a fuck was one of them. Aside from anything else, it looked desperate, and desperate women generally didn’t go down too well with gay men, who preferred their female companions to have balls—in the figurative sense if not the literal (although judging by some of the drag acts Caroline had witnessed over the years, a pair of balls was all that was required for a talentless twat in a dress to inspire a level of devotion few biological women could hope to achieve if they spent the rest of their lives surrounded by gay men). She realized of course that there were probably a lot of gay men out there who felt just as desperate as she had felt today. But the difference was, when they were desperate for sex, they didn’t call up an ex-lover and reopen a can of worms that ought to have been seal
ed and properly disposed of years ago. They took the far more sensible option and went and found someone new and exciting to have sex with.
Caroline threw back the covers, hauled herself out of bed, and padded into the darkened living room, stubbing her toe on her handbag as she fumbled for the light switch. She yelped with pain and hopped over to the sofa, gripping her toe and cursing the fact that every handbag she came into contact with tonight seemed intent on causing her injury. The little Tiffany pouch was where she had left it, lying flat on the glass coffee table. Empty, it reminded her of a man’s scrotum after sex—no longer plump and full of promise, but limp and sagging, a shadow of its former self. The only difference was, in her experience men’s scrotums had a habit of refilling themselves, sometimes in as little as twenty minutes. It was a pity Tiffany hadn’t come up with a pouch that could do the same. Still, maybe there was a bit of coke she had missed, an old wrap from another night, a line or two she had put aside in case of an emergency. She picked up her handbag and emptied its contents onto the table. There were no old wraps, no emergency lines, no coke crumbs mysteriously concealed in a fold in the lining. Instead, there were the usual items of makeup, plus the evidence of this evening’s transaction—a damp pair of panties and five crisp twenty-pound notes.
It was too late to call her dealer now. Even coke dealers had to sleep sometime, though how they ever managed it with so much coke in the house was something she would never understand, just as she would never understand people who did one line of coke in an evening and insisted that it was enough. Still, all was not lost. It wasn’t that late, and she obviously wasn’t about to fall asleep anytime soon, so she might as well go out and have a good time, preferably where there was a chance that she might bump into a few friends and maybe even a dealer or two. Nobody need know what she had been up to this evening. Desperate she may have been, but with a bit of makeup and the right bra, Caroline knew she could impress those gay boys as much as any drag queen.
She picked up the phone and dialed the number for Martin’s cell. A woman’s automated voice told her that the phone she was calling was switched off. She hesitated for a moment. Then she replaced the handset before lifting it up again and ordering a cab to take her to the Fridge.
With the help of a large glass of Coca-Cola, a large line of cocaine and a few well-chosen words from John, Martin had emerged from his K hole and was now dancing happily in the middle of a group of muscle boys, stripped to the waist and high on his second E of the night and the remnants of whatever other substances were still coursing through his veins. He hadn’t seen John and the others for quite some time, and had no idea where they were, but that hardly seemed to matter. One of the boys smiled at him, and he smiled back in what he hoped was a friendly yet casual manner, fearing that looking too eager would scare his admirer off. It must have worked, because the next thing he knew the boy was dancing right up close to him and was whispering in his ear.
“What was that?” Martin asked. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“I said, do you like my body?”
Martin looked down at the boy’s smooth, muscular torso and nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “It’s very nice.”
The boy grinned and leaned in even closer, till his groin was barely an inch away from Martin’s own. For a moment, it looked as if a smooch might be in the cards. Then the boy turned and pointed toward another muscle boy with an equally smooth, equally muscular torso dancing a few feet away. “What about him?” he said. “Is my body better than his?”
Martin wondered if he had heard correctly. “It’s very nice,” he said again, hoping that this would satisfy his new friend and avoid any embarrassment.
It didn’t. The boy scowled. “But you think his is better.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, well, it was nice meeting you.” And with that, the boy stomped off and disappeared into the crowd.
Martin considered running after him, then thought better of it. Someone that vain and that fiercely competitive could only mean trouble, and he was having a perfectly nice time where he was. He was surrounded by beautiful boys, more beautiful boys than he had ever seen before. He was in the ideal spot. What possible reason could he have for moving away? Still, there was always the possibility that the other boys had witnessed what had just happened and had decided that he wasn’t someone worth knowing. Things like that went on all the time in gay clubs. If people in a gay bar or a gay club saw you being rejected, they didn’t feel sorry for you. At best, they felt that there must be some good reason for it. At worst, they derived some perverse pleasure from your public humiliation and couldn’t wait for an opportunity to reject you, too. All things considered, it was probably time for a change of scenery.
He left the dance floor and headed back to the café-bar, half expecting to find John and the others sitting at their table. There was no sign of them, so he turned and walked the length of the club, past the main bar and the groups of latecomers frantically searching for a dealer until he reached the stairs that led up to the chill-out room and the upper bar. That was where he needed to be. If he went to the upstairs bar, he’d be able to look out over the dance floor and hopefully spot the others. But first he had to climb the stairs. Could it still be the effects of the K, or were the stairs carved out of marshmallows? They didn’t look much like marshmallows, but every time he placed a foot on the stairs, it seemed to sink into the polished surface. Still, at least he could now feel his feet, which was a vast improvement. Finally struggling to the top of the stairs, he pushed his way through the double set of fire doors and stumbled into the bar, immediately colliding with two girls in matching shiny bra tops and tiny backpacks shaped like koala bears. The Fridge had always attracted its fair share of straight girls, and for some reason the majority of them seemed to hail from Australia.
Apologizing to the giggling girls, he made his way over to the balcony and was suddenly overcome by the urge to pee. Spotting a sign in the far corner, he turned and headed straight for the toilet. Clearly he wasn’t the only one desperate for the bathroom because there was already a queue of men so long it stretched right back out the door. He waited patiently for five minutes or so, until two men emerged from the toilet dripping with sweat and proceeded to squeeze their way through the waiting hordes. As they slid past, Martin felt a sudden surge of movement, not dissimilar to a rugby scrum, and a tide of tightly packed bodies lifted him off his feet and carried him through the dimly lit doorway ahead. The first thing that struck him was how dark it was. The next thing he noticed was just how many men were squashed into such a small space. There must have been thirty of them at least, all crammed up against one another in a shadowy mass. Surely they couldn’t all be waiting for a stall? Pushing through the crowd, he felt his way to the urinal, unbuttoned his fly, and began to pee. The sense of relief was so great, he rested his head against the wall and heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
Someone’s hand slid down the back of Martin’s trousers. His first instinct was to pull away, only he had his nose pressed to the wall and was flanked on both sides, making any sudden movement impossible. Looking down out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the men on either side of him were holding their penises in their hands, and that neither one of them seemed particularly intent on peeing. Frantically buttoning up his fly, he reached behind him to remove the hand that was now busy massaging his buttocks, only instead of finding an arm to latch onto, his fingers closed around someone’s penis. Someone’s very large penis. Someone’s very large, very erect penis. In spite of himself, he felt his own cock stiffen, and slowly turned around to face his seducer.
He had a great face—dark hair and eyes, a strong nose, full lips, swarthy-looking, possibly Brazilian. He had a great body, too—a broad chest, damp with sweat and a scattering of curly black hair, tapering down to a six-pack stomach. And below it, poking out through what felt like leather biker’s trousers, there was that enormous cock. It must have been eight inch
es at least, possibly even nine. Even allowing for the poor light and the distorting effects of the drugs, that was a pretty impressive package by anyone’s standards.
Martin couldn’t believe his luck. “I can’t do this in here,” he whispered. “Do you want to come home with me?”
Much to his surprise, Mr. Big Cock Brazilian smiled and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
Twelve
Caroline’s taxi pulled up outside the Fridge just as the unlicensed minicab containing Martin and Mr. Big Cock Brazilian sped off down Brixton High Street. Oblivious to the fact that her one link to the world behind those doors had just left the building, Caroline paid the driver, stepped out of the taxi, and joined the dwindling queue of men in skimpy T-shirts, shivering stoically in the early-morning fog. She couldn’t help but be impressed by the way gay men stubbornly refused to acknowledge the passing of time. It wasn’t just the years they chose to ignore—it was the seasons, too. It didn’t matter what time of year it was—if you were gay, it was always summer, and you dressed accordingly. It was a very un-British attitude to have, and she admired it immensely. She smiled to herself, thinking what her mother would make of it all. “Just look at them,” she would say if she were here now. “They’ll catch their death of cold dressed like that. Still, I’ve always said it wasn’t natural, two men together. Flying in the face of nature, that’s what they are.” Her mother, bless her, had never fully recovered from the news that Rock Hudson was homosexual. To this day, she refused to accept that any of the fey young men who hosted her favorite television shows might be anything less than 100 percent straight. She was probably the only viewer in the country who still thought that Graham Norton was a red-blooded heterosexual and that Edna Everedge was a woman.