Guy
I bend my knees the way I was taught, lift the box from the floor, heave it onto my shoulder, and start tremblingly up the stairs. Sweat trickles down my face, my arm, my neck. “Why would anyone move in August?” I wonder.
I look at the guy in front of me carrying one end of Yves’ sofa. My eyes are level with his arse; he’s wearing tight, faded jeans. “God, I feel so butch!” he laughs.
When the lorry is empty he says, “I’ll drive you back if you want. I drive right past anyway.”
I hesitate.
“Get in,” he says.
His name is Guy; he talks constantly. “I intend to be living with someone by January,” he tells me. “Are you single?”
A single light flashes on a console somewhere deep down. It says, “Run away! Evacuate!”
I don’t know why, maybe too many evenings watching T.V. alone, but I choose to ignore it and swap phone numbers.
Monday he phones to ask me to dinner. I say I’m busy and end up feeling bored and depressed in front of the T.V. again.
Tuesday when he phones to ask me to the cinema, I say, “Yes.”
I want to see High Heels, the latest Almodovar film; Guy wants to see Notting Hill. We watch Notting Hill. The warning light flashes faster.
He phones me on Saturday Morning. We wander around Nice Etoile together. He seems to know a shop assistant in every store. I listen to the chitchat and feel my feet ache.
We buy CDs at the FNAC – I buy Nitin Sawhney, Guy buys Celine Dion.
I resist sleeping with him or even situations where it might happen – for a while. We meet in cinemas and restaurants and bars, I want to be sure about something, sure that there is at least some point to it, and I’m not at all sure that there is.
My friend Yves raises an eyebrow. “If you want to be sure, then shag him,” he says. “Then you’ll know right away.”
Two weeks later with a couple of drinks down the hatch, it happens. Guy covers me with slobbery kisses; afterwards he says, “I love you.”
It’s all wrong, and I know this – the warning lights are accompanied by a small siren. So why am I doing this?
He invites me to dinner, and I meet his friends. They’re all women and strangely, without exception are shop assistants. He defrosts the sauce, pours it over the pasta, and serves it on flowered plates.
I watch him being camp and pretentious, showing me off in front of them; I wonder what I’m doing here.
Guy kisses my head each time he walks past. He’s always buzzing, always talking. I find myself zoning out, unable to listen to the word-by-word, act-by-act, argument-by-argument story of his day, but slowly, surely, I get used to it. At least it doesn’t feel so empty when he’s around.
He meets my friend Isabelle. “What the hell are you doing with him?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. And it’s true, I don’t. Even so, I feel angry with her for not liking him.
In October, Guy says, “I want more, I want us to live together.”
I say, “No way.”
“If you loved me you would,” he says. “It’s all or nothing.”
I try to bluff. I say, “OK then. Nothing.”
So we split up.
I spend a week sitting alone in my apartment eating dinner with my cat. My heart’s not broken; I know that. But I miss him all the same.
“Maybe I am in love,” I think. Maybe I just don’t want to admit it. And how come the bastard doesn’t call anyway?
I wish I had two lives, so that in one I could go back to Guy, whilst in the other I would give up. At the moment of my death I’d compare the two and see which one worked out best.
I know it’s not right, but I choose to move in with him.
I see myself from the outside; feel detached from my own actions. I watch this Mark character in surprise and I don’t understand what he’s doing any more.
I watch him miserably pack up boxes, shift them out, move them in. I see him negotiating the mixing and matching of furniture.
I keep thinking, “Why are you doing this?” – I carry on anyway.
Sometimes it’s OK, sometimes it’s good. He’s not a bad man.
Sometimes he’s sad and I empathise, then I momentarily connect to him – “Maybe I do love him after all,” I think.
It’s just that there’s so little man to love, so much of his character that is superficial cliché, all cynicism and retail-queen attitude. The substance of him flakes away the more you chip at it. His opinions can change on any subject within the hour, and then change back again; it just depends who he most wants to agree with.
I hang on to the old apartment for three months. There is no logic to it, but I just don’t get around to dealing with it. I’m very busy, very stressed with my job. That’s my excuse anyway.
Guy knows. He says, “It’s empty, get rid of it.”
I say, “I just don’t feel ready.”
He says, “If you loved me you would.”
He says, “Maybe you should just move back out if that’s how you feel.”
I consider it for another month, a month of sulking and arguments, a month of dreading coming home and dreading having to discuss it again, then I hand back the keys.
“Are you sure about this?” asks the man from the agency, looking into my eyes.
I shrug, say nothing and walk away.
“I’ve been offered that job in the States,” I tell him one evening.
It’s a week after our first anniversary. I didn’t have the heart to mention it a week ago when they told me.
Guy pauses, a forked prawn halfway to his mouth – it drops back to Earth. “You’re not thinking about it are you?” he asks. “You wouldn’t.”
The weather forecast is there for all to see, storms brewing. I laugh. “No,” I say, staring at my plate.
I marvel at my own weakness. What has happened to me?
Guy sulks for a week anyway.
We look through holiday catalogues, but none of the holidays appeal to me, I really just want to go travelling in a camper van.
“You’ll like it,” Guy insists. “It’s just what you need. The perfect anti-stress: palm trees, beaches …”
I imagine the sea lapping at my feet. I look at the man in the picture, sipping a cocktail at a beach bar.
“Maybe he’s right,” I tell Isabelle. “Maybe it is what I need.”
She looks at me as if I am an alien. “Whatever,” she says.
We book it; I pay. It’s the most expensive holiday I have ever had.
But I hadn’t imagined the trilingual Italian DJ. I hadn’t imagined the shared breakfast tables, the children’s disco, the jugglers, the clowns or the Club-Med representative prodding me awake as I doze on the beach, prodding me to tell me that I’m missing all the fun.
I wander up to the pool, to see what exactly the fun is.
Guy is there – I see him lined up with everyone else. Everyone is drunk, everyone is pink and sunburnt – a couple of hundred people in a circle around the pool.
Euro-disco is blaring from the speakers – a Swedish sounding girl-star with a horrible high voice singing a Madonna song.
The Italian DJ is on a platform overhanging the pool. He’s moving his hands to the right, moving his hands to the left – he’s shimmying and rubbing his arse.
They copy him: the fat middle-aged women, the wiry old men, the six year olds, the blonde Essex girls, Guy …
I look at him uncomprehendingly as he wiggles his fingers above his head, his face distorted with childlike joy.
I am frozen, I cannot move – the flashing light becomes a whole panel of flashing lights, a stream of roaring, screaming sirens, and they have all been there forever, except suddenly now, I hear them. They fill my head and I know what they mean.
“And ready, and one two three spin!” shouts the DJ.
As Guy spins he catches sight of me, smiles broadly and beckons me in.
I force a smile and as I wand
er away the sound fades behind me. The man on the beach tells me again that I am missing all the fun.
“Fuck off,” I tell him.
“Why didn’t you come?” asks Guy over dinner.
I tell him that I hate it, that I can’t think of anything worse.
He says, “You’d have such a good time, come tomorrow?”
I shake my head.
“Just try? For me?” he says. “If you loved …”
I shake my head. I interrupt him. “I’m sorry, we’re very different. I hate it, I think it’s bollocks. I think it’s the worst holiday experience imaginable,” I say.
His face falls. He eats in silence for a while. “You’re so uptight,” he says, finally.
“Not uptight,” I say, “just different.” But in a way I think he’s right. Even if I did want to get up there and dance, I couldn’t. I’m too reserved. “Too worried about looking stupid,” I think. Too aware that I would look stupid.
“Well, if that’s the way you feel,” he says.
“Look, does it matter?” I ask. “I mean why do we have to agree on absolutely everything?”
He looks sullen; he pushes his plate away. “You have to spoil it,” he says. “I haven’t had such a good time since …”
“I know,” I say.
He stares at me. “We never have any fun together,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
“I’m sick of it,” he says. “I’m sick of you. I want more, and if you can’t give it then maybe …”
“I know,” I say. “Look, I’ve been thinking … About that job in New York …”
Julian Barclay
We first chat via Compuserve, the proprietary pre-Internet email and chat service. My company is sending me to New York for six months and though I’m happy to escape; I’m scared: New York equals death on the streets, the sound of gunshot, police sirens that wake you up in the night. It’s also a place where I don’t know a soul, not one contact.
I decide to post an ad in a New York gay forum and see if anyone wants to befriend me. Julian Barclay is the first to answer my ad.
He replies immediately and the following messages show an openness that astounds me. He’s a warehouse manager; he lives with his boyfriend, Bill. They’re bikers, he’d be happy to show me around.
After a week or so I have received other replies but they are all either weird, or as the Americans would say, after my ass. I’m quite scared enough as it is.
Julian and I exchange a few more emails before I leave. He lives on Long Island, they have a big place; I must go and visit sometime.
My own apartment turns out to be tiny, hugely expensive (for my company) but very central Manhattan, thirty-seventh and sixth.
On the second day, I call Julian from my new phone. I hear his voice on the answer-phone for the first time. It is rich and masculine. He calls me back around eleven-thirty p.m. – I’ve just got into bed. I tell him this and he asks if I am naked and laughs.
He invites me for breakfast the next morning, explains how to get to Union square; he sounds funny, clever, relaxed. When I hang up, I drift off to sleep imagining him and listening to the distant police sirens.
The coffee shop is exactly as a coffee shop should be. A long Formica counter top, chrome swivel bar stools, a girl chewing gum with an order book pushed into the belt of her apron. Like much of America it is standard film cliché and as such it feels instantly familiar to just about anyone.
A hand waves from a booth at the rear of the bar, it is Julian – he’s smiling. His crash helmet is on the tabletop.
I cross the bar nervously. He smiles broadly, shakes my hand firmly, says, “Mark! Hello!”
He’s a big guy, maybe one metre eighty-five, no doubt a swimmer or a regular gym goer.
He’s wearing leather motorcycle pants and thick biceps bulge from the sleeves of his grey t-shirt. His stubble is longer than his haircut.
He bangs the table. “Well sit down!” he says.
As I slide in behind the table, he stares at me. There seems to be laughter in his eyes. The effect on me is unexpected and immediate; I am aroused. I shuffle my feet under the table.
Breakfast goes well. We talk about my job, about New York, about motorbikes. He tells me about his parents, his brothers and sisters, nothing seems taboo. I will find out that for New Yorkers virtually nothing is taboo, but for now it simply strikes me that this man is exceptionally honest and open.
I am quite under his manly spell when he says, “I’m afraid I can’t on Friday, I have a GMSM meeting.”
I sip my coffee, chew on a pancake. Something registers but it remains subconscious for the moment. “How about Saturday?” I ask.
Julian shakes his head, “Parents for dinner, maybe Sunday? Unless you want to come with us on Friday …”
I stop chewing. “What did you say? A what meeting?”
Julian signals to the waitress for more coffee. As she swings by to fill his cup he says, “GMSM, the Gay Men’s Sado Maso Group.”
The waitress offers me coffee and moves on without flinching.
He peers into my eyes. “Hello! Is anybody there?”
I laugh. “Sure, just taking in new information …”
Didn’t I mention that to you in my mails? I was sure I did …”
I shake my head. “No, but it doesn’t matter, what happens at GMSM meetings? Dare I ask?”
Julian forks bacon into his mouth. “Oh it’s cool,” he says. “It’s in like a really big bar, and there are, you know, slaves and masters, and spectators …”
“What happens to the slaves, I mean, what do the spectators watch?”
“It’s a dungeon demo, so they’re like tied to the wall or whatever, and there are demonstrations of all the different SM techniques.”
I nod and try to do this knowingly. “Like?” I say.
“Like hot-wax and tit-torture, bondage … Everything really. You should come, you don’t have to participate in anything you don’t want to.”
I stare at my plate and cough. I smirk slightly. “I don’t think …”
Julian touches my hand. “Oh of course if you want to participate, if you want to be …” he looks into my eyes questioningly. “A slave … or whatever, then you can, you just tell them what you like; it’s all very safe and controlled.”
An image flashes through my head. I am chained to the wall, I am blindfolded, people unknown, are playing with my body, pulling on my nipples, playing with my arse … I shake my head. I laugh.
“I’m afraid I’m not really into SM,” I say. My dick throbs and I hear the lie. I realise something consciously for the first time in my life; that I could be, if I let myself.
Julian forks a potato and points it at me. “You need to let go, you need to just let it happen.”
“But do I?” I wonder. I smile. “I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”
He puts down his fork, grabs my hand and looks into my eyes again. “Have I?”
I stare him out, I nod, I lie. I say, “Yes.”
Julian waves over the waitress, asks her for the check, stands. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says.
I’m embarrassed, I still have a hard-on, but I stand and follow him holding my bomber jacket in front. He slides his hand across my arse, pushes me out into the cold October air. We pull on our jackets; he’s beautiful, glistening in his black leathers. He has a chrome ring clipped to his shoulder epaulet. I feel childlike in front of him.
He says, “This way.”
We turn and start to walk down the road; he slides a hand into my back pocket. I let it remain for a while, then pull away.
He stops, turns to face me, looks at me questioningly. He says, “I know what I forgot.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What?”
“I didn’t welcome you to New York.” With this he places his crash helmet on the newspaper distributor beside him, wraps an arm behind my back and kisses me, forcing his tongue into my mouth.
He crus
hes me towards him, then pulls away, looks into my eyes and reaches inside my jacket to pinch my nipple, grinning as I gasp. “If you’re not ready for the Dungeon Demo, you could come out and visit us at our place,” he says. “We have a fully equipped playroom … we could give you a nice, soft introduction. Just whatever you want to try.”
I run a hand across his jacket, down over his back pocket.
I have three thoughts simultaneously: that no offer has ever excited me more, that it is quite a big surprise that this excites me so, and that I am heading onto dangerous ground, very dangerous ground. I could actually end up dying in some basement somewhere or, be held captive in a cage for years. “Hey, I’ve seen pulp fiction,” I think.
Finally, I think that even if I don’t get hurt in the process, even if it all goes “fine”, that I may never get out of this thing again, that it could be like tasting heroin – the first one, as the dealers say, is free.
I pull away, but this time there is decision in the movement. Julian lets go of me, stands back, smiles at me. He picks up his crash helmet, pulls his keys from his pocket.
“If you decide you want to try something, or even if you just want to talk about it, you have my number …”
I nod; I shrug. “Sorry,” I say.
Julian shrugs. “You’ll get over it, and when you do, well you know where I am.” With this he turns and walks away, shooting me a wink as he rounds the corner.
I think about calling Julian Barclay every day that I stay in New York – that’s at least once a day for six months.
Sometimes, even now, I think I should have called him, sometimes I think that I still might, but I never do; I just never have the nerve.
Blow
He smiles. “Hi! How are you?” he says. I look at him and wonder if I know him. He is clean-cut, tall, thin, fit – short blond hair, blue eyes peering through oval Armani glasses. The light in the bar is low. I feel fairly sure that I don’t. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve …”
He holds out a hand. “Brian.” His smile bares long, white-capped, all-American dentistry.
“Mark.” I shake his hand.
“So Mark. Where are you from? You sound British.”
I scan the man’s clothes as I reply, expensive grey suit, white shirt, double cuffs, and discreet grey tie. “I am, well originally from the south-east of England, then France, and now here.”
50 Reasons to Say Goodbye Page 8