by P-P Hartnett
* * *
While Allan was getting a wrong number, I was playing Minor, Seventh and Minor-Seventh chords in the SINGLE FINGER mode (Cm-C7-Cm7), forgetting about myself for a while, lost in the easy manipulations.
* * *
Like a fool, I was up and waiting for the postman. I was sitting naked on the sofa, watching breakfast tv with the sound down low, listening out for the familiar flap of the letter-box. I’d been frustrated by the lack of mail at eight thirty, wondering if he had been delayed by the rain. Before deciding to make some tea and watch telly for a bit, I just stood there, staring at the letter-box, then peeping through the spyhole.
A tv presenter I didn’t like the look of was reeling off percentages with a smile on her made-up face.
“…and another survey of four hundred lesbian and gay teenagers revealed that thirty eight per cent felt isolated, thirty two per cent had been verbally abused, nineteen percent had been physically abused and…”
I gave the presenter a good middle finger when I heard the heavy plain brown envelope finally drop, switching the BBC bitch to a blank screen.
More mail, more dreams. My fascination with stationery and handwriting had gone. I just wanted to see those pictures and feel the longing.
Hi!/Hi there/Wow!/Sir/Dear Sir/Master/Dear……/Dear Whoever/You’re the answer to a cocksucker’s dream/Bike Boy/Dear Bike Boy/HI MATE!/Dear Boyz advertiser/Good Morning/TRY THIS FELLA!/Feeling horny?/I hope you’re not a time waster…
I skimmed through the letters like someone conducting market research. The repetition of desire was boring. I had no compassion for these people playing the contact game. My personality had evaporated, had been filed away incorrectly or mislaid for a while. I didn’t feel like me.
Seven floors down a line of grey-haired company types in navy blue business suits walked along the Goswell Road like schoolchildren in a crocodile.
* * *
Thursday again.
I’d lost interest in the Bike Boy replies which pumped my way. The joke wasn’t funny any more. I no longer set my alarm to read it all avidly upon arrival. Enclosed photographs were not returned in the stamped addressed envelopes provided, but formed a spreading collage above the kitchen sink. A herd staring forward.
I unboxed some of Ray’s things, searching out his smell in the blackwatch tartan of his Aero Star jacket. Going through his old records, a photograph slipped out from between a Kraftwerk and a Joy Division sleeve. A 10×8 of him in a tweed coat with a question mark badge, neither of which I’d ever seen, a not so bad print on fibre paper. Only the coat was in focus. Ray’s face was a blur. He must have moved at the last moment. Maybe he’d been shaking his head, not wanting to have his photo taken. Strangely, the background had been carefully cut away, body mounted on white card. Ray, with a fluffy kind of suede-head look. Sexy. (Who took that picture? Where? When?) It was a Ray I’d never met, handsome and full of life. Ray, part pushy bastard with a head full of awkward questions and a pocketful of Rizlas, part slave to the rhythm. Complete opposites—bound to get on. I’d never been aware enough of what I stood to lose. Cock, tongue, the smell of him. His laugh. Not savoured enough. That smell, once all over my body—then only deep in the mattress, his clothes. The paintings he threw together in an hour, the measurements pencilled on the back of picture frames he’d built out of salvaged wood. His cooking. Ray. It was nice when I reached over to touch him and he was there, night after night. Nothing casual. Ray and me. Together.
I put the picture back where I found it.
* * *
Unplugging the phone for a week intensified the silence in the flat. I’d eaten the cupboards bare. I faced a mirror for the first time in a long while to shave and make my surfaces presentable to shoppers and staff at Sainsbury’s. Unbrushed teeth were starting to fur. I didn’t like my hair at all and a shave became the first bath in days and a good hairwash.
Just as I was locking my bike up next to the Big Issue man, rain came down in heavy drops from invisible clouds. The weather forecast had said dry with sunny spells.
More than anything else I felt stupid. Behind my placid face was an aching head with hysteric sobs on cue but never released, a matter-of-fact feeling that I was about to implode, bursting blood, splashing the check-out girl.
Back at the flat I opened the morning mail. Faces smiled up at me from photographs in parks, bedrooms, shower units, final days of a trip somewhere sunny. I spread them out over the living-room floor like tarot cards.
My usual cropping of photographs for the sick joke collage growing like a mould above my kitchen sink turned into a hacking mutilation for one young man named Ben. His chest, pectorals, waist and thighs were perfect—I cut off his ugly head in a snip, mid neck. Hairy forearms were chopped off at the elbows, legs just above the knees. I ate dull flowers of popcorn, getting very hard.
Coming into an ankle sock I realised my hair could do with more than a wash and dab of gel. I needed another haircut, something closer to the scalp. I turned up at Rox, without an appointment. Shaun gave me a variety of smiles and a number two at the back and sides, leaving the top only inches long, gelled tilting forward at a precipitous angle. I looked like your average London faggot. (Wahey!) The haircut drew attention away from my eyes, vulnerable to detection in the cleanshaven mask.
* * *
Before opening the envelope, brown and plain as ever, I stared and stared at a scribble which went round and round in a big blue loop over the second-class stamp. I wondered who’d put it there, what significance it might hold. Opening the envelope I lazily wondered what the people I went to school with had ended up doing. What had become of those boys I was crushed alongside in organised, memorised rows? Philip Blackmore, Dennis Burke, Christopher George.
Counting the envelopes, only nine, totalling up in my head, fifty eight replies, I thought of my polyester postman. I’d come to recognise the sound of his feet catching grit with a lazy shuffle, the dragging gait he’d probably been chastised for as a child. I resolved to bleach both lift and stairs in silent thanks for his deliveries which had brought a break from being me. Once I did jury service at the Old Bailey, on a rape case for two days. The incident had occurred on a staircase just like mine. Her screams had gone unheard.
No photos that week, so I added the blue biro looped stamp to the bottom right of the collage, like a giant full stop. Looking at the collage I realised I’d forgotten all their names, their normal names. Names you’d hear paged at an airport, names which sign school reports, names of husbands and missing sons. Maybe one or two figure in Spotlight or Debrett. Maybe a few that will crop up in a cellar one day, some rubbish dump or drain, recognisable only through dental records. I scanned the letters with an unvarying pulse then binned them.
Kenneth Williams dragged a rare laugh from me, camping it up on the afternoon film as I sifted through past Bike Boy replies. Men named Stan, Anthony and Costas were all tuned in to the same channel. Existers of London, united by the same pathetic B-movie. Their particulars entered into my diary I binned the lot, returning to my seat by the window to watch lights pop on over London as the sky darkened early.
* * *
The day was hot and grey. Windless. The glare in the sky cast no shadows. In the small tree-lined street of desirable residences of six to seven floors lived an obese sissy named Stan, one of the maybes. Towering up beside me as I cycled lazily, these were just the kind of buildings to gladden the hearts of the Royal Family and visitors from abroad. The day I cycled down that respectable street, it had a Sunday lunch stink to it. Well-wiped neo-Georgian windows reflected my brand new false self gliding by. For a moment I really enjoyed the way I was inhabiting my body.
Recognising the confident, rounded shapes of his below the buzzer for flat F, I waited for another door to open, welcoming me in. About to ring the bell a third time, half suspecting a practical joke at my expense, I heard the weight of another Bike Boy enthusiast plonking down the stairs.
My pulse th
udded steadily and deeply as I switched into Bike Boy mode. As a Yale catch began to turn, I half-removed my Erasure teeshirt. Holding my stomach in, shoulders back, legs apart, moving from flaccid to semi-erect with the theatrics, my first impressions were ready for delivery when the door opened. Arms raised upwards, armpits and torso exposed, otherwise beheaded.
Through the thin white cotton teeshirt I could see the eyes in his sizeable face paying full attention to the lycra shorts. The silence of concentration made me smile. Then the situation made me start to laugh. The air felt cool when I’d finished my tease, exposing my cheerful-seeming face within a metre of his.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” my other voice said straight into his eyes, like a regular delivery boy.
Far worse than the greying wild guitar-string hair slipping through his string vest, more horrible than the dyed boomerang moustache and tight little black shorts, were his nipples. Poking through the aforesaid string vest, they resembled those pinky bits you get in uncooked mince meat. They protruded proudly from D-cup breasts with an above average rate of juggleosity; a body guaranteed to empty public swimming pools. An ideal specimen to tick off as another human experience.
“Hell-o,” he said. “Come on in. Straight up.”
He wanted to watch my arse in motion up the stairs. I ascended in threes. He had to race to keep up floor by floor with the vision of maximum crack.
In the converted attic I smelled nose-bleeds and toffees. Green walls were covered with pictures of fattening years scientifically documented on glossy photographic paper. Narcissism gone mad. Group shots galore taken at Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and a variety of nudist beaches. While he got busy with the kettle, red in the face and panting, I went to the loo, taking my pannier in with me. Lowering the toilet seat I just sat there, eyes drifting from tanning pills to Fruits of the Forest air freshener and Body Shop seaweed-and-pomegranate shampoo. It was nice to be away from the rumble of the Goswell Road. Assorted seashells were scattered by the bath and many new-age crustaceans awaited discovery in the shagpile. The bidet taps seeped; twisting both off at once I detected oil or lubricant on them.
Above and around the well-splashed full-length mirror, pin-up boys from wank mags stared. Others came from teen zines: Take That, Bad Boys Inc and East 17 were all there—prime, pumped, waxed, tanned, moisturised boy-flesh giving their best knowing smiles and very convincing big thick dick looks. I raised a pistol-shaped hand and aimed between my eyes. From the back of my mouth a slow gust of breath hit my teeth, an attempt at a slow-motion bang. My breath steamed the mirror.
I took centre stage in the kitchen as the kettle steamed. I was still only guessing but my guess was that this sissy fairy had been a plump but pretty little poofter at school, always saying the wrong first words. Always planning how to get to school safely, arriving on the bell. Master-minding how to get through break, questioning teachers on the finer details of homework just set, making the librarian feel wanted at lunchtime with fastidious questions and cute vulnerability.
He looked neither cute nor vulnerable during the food orgy. He’d made the scones himself, jam too. Crumpets and muffins came out of wrappings he tried hard to conceal. Cheese, fruit and a tin of butter biscuits awaited incisors, molars and the internal squeeze. He clearly had a tendency to consume far more than he could metabolize.
Chewing in time to the second hand of his very new old fake Rolex, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Fancied a taste of me, too. For half an hour I nodded drowsily to everything he said and he had a lot to say. He obviously read newspapers and the occasional bit of queer theory on Cassell. Long rows of thin-spined paperbacks, lined up by the kitchen window, made interesting head-turned-sideways reading as he droned on about Bosnia, Clinton and the age of consent.
“I don’t usually reply to ads, you see. I prefer to be on the receiving end, if you know what I mean.”
“Right.”
“My interest mainly lies in shorts and…”
“Go on.”
“Well, my ad went something like, Jewish Y-fronts enthusiast WLTM discreet non scene young guy (18-35) wearing white Y-fronts. ALA. London/Anywhere.”
“Uncut particularly welcome!”
“Oh, you’ve seen it. What a good memory you have. I’ll have to watch what I say.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Shall we…” he said, standing.
An old record Liza Minelli had made with The Pet Shop Boys was all cued up. PLAY was pressed. A short walk away at the other side of the long sitting-room (turquoise pencil-shaving pot pourri ad infinitum) another PLAY button was activated with the same index finger. A video featuring Dutch boys in pre-virus action had been carefully selected and lined up to a favourite section. No pre-plague moaning or groaning was to be heard. I sat by the window on a decorative stool between curtains (with heavy emphasis on flounce) that pooled down to form two dusty heaps. It probably wasn’t intended for sitting on but it was the furthest seat from him.
“This is nice,” I lied, running a hand over carved legs.
“Moroccan. Went there years ago, in search of boys. Well, got so sunburned the first day I couldn’t move from the balcony for a week which only left three days for trade, peeling. Should’ve seen the blisters. My dear! Two boys I ’ad. Got pickpocketed and crabs.”
“A frequent combination.”
The video, badly transferred, was in shades of cobalt. A boy, probably seventeen, maybe sixteen, fair skin turned blue, strolled out of a blue bathroom with a pale blue towel around his blue neck while unbuckling the big black belt on his torn jeans, ignoring an almost identical (skeletal) blue boy on a blue bed wearing tight blue-white Y-fronts. The boy on the bed began jerking off with a weird sense of loss, acting like the bathroom boy wasn’t there. No newcomer to videos, masturbating nice and slowly, getting it right for the cameras. Then the bathroom boy, inexperienced, rushed in, lowering those blue jeans and undies too quickly for the cameras to savour. For Stan the dressed moments were the most erotic though he did his best to look genuinely bored. No inch to pinch on either of them. Nice. There was a bit of kissing, gentle fondling and much made of a bit of blue pre-cum on one of the blue cocks, then the lovely skinny back of the bathroom boy stretched long as he entered the bedroom boy’s blue buttocks. I like that area around the kidneys when it’s totally fat free, without moles or hair. The boys seemed to share an evenness of inhalation and exhalation.
I bet Stan’s thumb had blistered with the picture search of his remote, rewinding, fast forwarding and viewing frame by frame. £20 of VHS, worth every penny. Liza sang, the boys fucked. A dark line of sweat defined the crack of Stan’s fat arse as he minced off towards the bathroom. Baggy old arse, arse like a windsock. The only way to treat such an arse is to fuck it hard, making it tighten up, providing an adequate amount of internal friction to get off.
Through the half-closed door I saw him take a leak, shake his cock. He farted loudly and then, like a dog, moved his head a little to sniff. I think he smiled. By the mirror he paused to check the pores of each nostril, then his breath. He was back in the room after the briefest gargle.
Confident as to the state of his nose and breath he walked straight over to me (I thought he was going to open the window) and put his hands around my neck very fast, squeezing deeply but gently. A strange sort of massage. His crotch was at eye-level, horrid and faintly smelly. Hands moved to the top of my shoulders, kneading like a hausfrau. Then he lunged, the horrible mouth on mine, sticky lips glistening like fly-paper spreading up and over mine.
His mouth was very soft and with my eyes closed the feeling transferred into a very dull crimson. The inside of his mouth was too roomy, his sloppy tongue attempting to refill dried-up emotions by licking my front teeth. That same tongue had probably disappeared into arseholes, savouring body juices from paid-for bodies. When he took a step back to assess the situation, I must have flashed an expert vile smile because he popped off back to the bathroom with the air of a thirteen-ye
ar-old playing Cleopatra, shutting the door behind him with the hint of a bang, all feelings concentrated upon that which is detached, outwards and outgoing—his sunrise circumcised winkle.
His diary, stupidly left beside the phone, went into my pannier beside a knife taken from the magnetic frame. If I’d known he was going to get the Accu-Jac kit out I’d have pinched a paperback or two or made for his CD collection.
I listened at the door. All was quiet. I imagined him at the mirror brandishing a small but tremendously thick purple-headed erection, wanked to excess in pre-obese teenage years. A dick which had helped him forget the distress of days alone, brightened with jerking off in tree-houses, basements, attics, toilets. I could almost smell the sweet counterfeit orgasm, the swimming-pool chlorine, locker rooms of rugby boy smell and those dreaded showers.
I heard his ‘aah’ steaming up the looking glass in that final moment behind the bathroom door, the room becoming an echo chamber for just a moment. In the dark he’d been called beautiful. In the dark he’d been loved.
When he came out I was merely the relic of a mood to be shot of asap. I declined his offer of one last cup of tea. The weather had changed. It had turned out to be another boiling hot day.
Fat Man Stan’s diary got splashed in the bath but that didn’t matter. He had nothing special to say either to me or his diary. Royal blue ink stained the water as the diary submerged.
Dreary day, tiring day.
* * *
I sent Costas a DIY Polaroid, sealing down a recycled first class stamp with a smile. I didn’t give my number or anything, just wrote, in capital letters:
WILL PHONE SOON—BIKE BOY.
This was executed with a black biro, pressing hard.
I’d phoned him up and he sounded worth investigation. A photo was his one stipulation. He got what he asked for. He sounded different. A different type. Somewhere between innocent, naive and stupid. Sexy.