Call Me

by P-P Hartnett

  “I won’t be peed on.”

  “That’s a pity, but okay.”

  The night was sultry, the hour dangerous.

  “What’s the address?”

  I was there, in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, middle class and residential, forty minutes later. A place of placid thoughtless routines and the occasional juicy bit of gossip.

  In the elevator to the third floor as instructed, I realised I didn’t even know his name. It was after midnight. He stood, by the door, silent, smoking a cigarette. Sandy hair, six foot, hadn’t caught the sun in a while. Regular features but for an extremely full mouth and a recent vertical scar by his right eye. Slightly stooped, a little pock-marked. Black leather shining. Your average scene queen begging for it.

  I walked straight on in without wiping my feet, inflicting mild abuse on the cream carpet. Pulling the REM teeshirt up, over the shoulders then off my body, hot and very slightly panting from the ride, I fell back into one of the two large institution armchairs which faced each other in the middle of the room. This seemed to surprise him. The lacey antimacassars certainly were a surprise to me.

  It was smoggy as Venus in there. He’d obviously been smoking all evening. When he shut the door behind me he smiled like Death’s welcome. Behind the smile uneven teeth, browned at the edges, spoilt the allure of the too-generous mouth, full lips waiting for a kiss.

  On a shelf over an electric fire, previous generations of the man’s family smiled into the darkness of the room. The fire effect provided a slow rotating orange glow through the room, but the bars were off. The radiators were on high, even though the night was warm to humid. In cosy little homes like this, late night callers lose their minds, antibody status and ability to breathe.

  I put my feet up on a narrow black table between a tall, thick candle veined with past spillage and a black leather jock strap. A tv flickered the pale flesh tones of a blond youth getting an efficient fisting from a masked muscle man.

  Silent by the screen, more slave than master, he licked his lips, perhaps envying the fist. Silent. The muscle man withdrew his forearm for viewers all over the world to witness the challenging length and thickness of the rubber-gloved limb. The hand was reinserted with seeming ease to root about inside the living body.

  The blond youth took a sniff of poppers as the forearm vanished. The look on his face suggested that giving good ass is not as easy as it looks. His writhing, twisting and soft murmur of complaints confirmed this. (There’s nothing funny about a prolapsed rectum.) The camera didn’t linger, cutting swiftly to the unexpressive, oozing rear orifice.

  Semi-erect, I dropped my shorts, putting on the leather jock I guessed he wanted me in. Opening all three sets of venetian blinds, he eyed me with speculation: What the fuck’s he up to? The candle flame doubled size with the slow entry of fresh air. The copulating rhythm of the universe began to pound in that room which had an unfamiliar smell, perhaps spilled poppers which joss sticks struggled to disperse. I turned to him and smiled.

  “Fancy a drink?” he asked.

  A monotone voice. Maybe behind these bland icy words was the idea of a cocktail of Irish Cream coffee and seven crushed sleeping pills. Maybe not.

  “No. No thanks.”

  Something moved in a corner—a Corgi, watching out of one eye, hoping there’d be no shouting, no slapping around. Perhaps this dog was the only warm influence in the man’s life. Perhaps not. He put on a shiny new CD of an old hit, Tubular Bells.

  “Don’t ask me any questions because there’s nothing interesting for me to say about myself. Let’s just do it.”

  He made quite a business of pulling on a peaked leather cap and large, thick motor-cycle gloves, more like boxing gloves with that heavy-duty protective ribbing over the knuckles. It was as if he were going somewhere, off on a journey somewhere special and secret.

  Removing a chair from the dining table, I spotted a gas bill in the name of a JG Cuerden who owed sixty seven pounds ninety six for the last quarter. I put the chair against one of the more heavily greased walls. He said nothing. Like a minion, I hunched before the chair. He stepped on my back on his short trip up to the seat. He didn’t know what the hell he’d let into the flat but seemed to like what was happening. Still he said nothing.

  The knife reflected candlelight upon my face as I removed the polish and brush from my pannier. The boots were brand new, they didn’t need much of a rub, but for a full ten minutes that’s what I did. Rubbed away.

  “They say the best way is with spit and polish, boy.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Yeah, use that tongue, boy.”

  He’d obviously been getting quite a diet of porn. So there I was on my hands and knees, spreading well-educated saliva over his expensive recent purchase. He started making those porno sounds, faking it at first, then getting carried away with the role play, thrusting his hips forward as he leaned against the wall.

  “How’s that, Sir?”

  “Not good enough.”

  He’d had time to think. Perhaps we’d reached a part in Tubular Bells where he felt comfortable or inspired. At home.

  “Against the wall. Now!”

  Declining the offer of handcuffs behind my back, I played along with his doggy fantasy by consenting to wear a large dog collar. The chinkle-chankle of the chain didn’t get his dog at all excited, as I’d expected. The dog knew she wasn’t the one off for walkies.

  “Crawl, you mutt!”

  Pulling of the leash made the collar uncomfortably tight as he became more excited. I was given a guided tour of the man’s one-bedroom flat, mercifully carpeted but poorly hoovered, ending up in the bedroom. Lying face-down on the man’s orthopaedic mattress, I received a mild pinking of my bottom with the flat of his right hand. Maybe he just wanted some intimate tactile contact, avoiding the embarrassment of affection seeking.

  The strokes had a kind of hard, cold softness. Then his tongue savoured the warmth before his whole face was plunged between my Immac-ed buttocks. Even in the doggy position I nearly slipped off to sleep with the slow deep rimming he gave so expertly. His tongue entered, rotating and delving, warm breath heating me up inside and out. Tongue, stroking the nerves gently at first, then harder, becoming alive. Possessed by an angry erotic passion, jabbing the prostate in a fast in-out rhythm. He soon replaced tongue with leather-clad fingers, widening and stretching until he could look in, blow, taste and sniff. At one point I think he had four fingers in (maybe a torch too). I took it blind and dumb, determined to explore, to expose myself to the allure of S&M.

  “I’ve got some rope,” he whispered. “It’s very soft rope. Would you like to be tied up a little?”

  I nearly said yes.

  I shook my head. Rolling me over roughly, disappointed I wouldn’t be a pretty little bundle, and straddling me just like in the videos, thrusting his leather crotch to my mouth like those spreads in Dungeon Master, he seemed to grow in stature. Suddenly his forehead was the colour of polished steel. It was like he had received a power surge. When his mouth went down on mine I smelled, then tasted—me. To leave his mark he gave me a love bite. Behind that tight, black leather, just beyond the zipper, his penis was straining to be released.

  He walked me back into the living room, where I returned to bootlicking while he tried to remember tips he’d gained from Interchain. Blurred memories swelled the man’s mind with desire, memories of pornography in which shining metallic tools ended the suffering of pretty boys. Violent seemed an inappropriate word for such reverential actions.

  His penis, unzipped and glistening like a cop’s rubber truncheon, was pink and separate from his leather-clad body. When the trousers lowered it bounced forth like a cage-crazy cat. His eyes were on the screen, but he was far off into himself. The video had finished. The screen was black and white jumping dots, lively as a laboratory-manufactured virus. Or a mystery one.

  “Don’t stop licking those boots, shithead!”

  I licked the heel
s, sucked the toe, then—bastard—he pushed his right foot in hard. I froze momentarily and his weight shifted on the chair as he looked down.

  My mouth was on fire, ignited by a small nail on the underside of the sole. My lip was ripped. (It swelled beautifully, looked sexy for days.) I tasted blood. He went quiet. Tubular Bells faded out. Blood welled up on my bottom lip. I could feel it gather, a heavy, fluid drop. As I raised my head it rolled in a steady line down my chin, and dropped on to my chest.

  Another drop fell on the shining black toe of his boot. A pebble drop plop. I licked it up then raised my head for him to see the blood spread over my tongue. His look told me REC and PLAY buttons were pushed and capturing what would be rewound and wanked over later.

  “I’m going to shoot,” he said automaton-like. Maybe this was his natural voice, the voice his secretary, ex-wife, children, pupils, bank manager and wide range of bleary-eyed escorts were used to hearing. He pulled the face of an ugly cartoon character who’d just tasted something sour, tongue touching nose at the peak of orgasm histrionics, then he spasmed, jolted, froze where he was and burst stringy white gobs of himself. Every drop of that man’s semen splashed down on to my unfortunate chest.

  His face drained of all animation like the power had been cut off. His pale, grey eyes stared out of the open window into the navy blue night. Breeze brought stale refreshment to the sweat on his face. He blinked.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I wonder what spectres of fantasy flick through the mind of that man during a wank. From his little stage, pelvis still thrust ridiculously forward, shoulders hunched, he watched me lying flat on my back, my wide armspan revealing hairless armpits.

  “What’s your dog called?”

  “Sherry.”

  The dog’s ears rose in an instant.

  “Sherry! Here, Sherry. Come on.”

  The dog approached slowly, wagging tail, unsure of her reception. The animal took a deep sniff into one ear, then found the midnight feast waiting on my chest. Her tongue, so much warmer than a human’s, continued licking long after the mess had gone. Which taste was she preferring, master’s cum or visitor’s blood?

  From two metres away came a thin, menacing stare. Perhaps my piss, shit, spit, spunk and vomit laid out in a neat line of separate soup bowls would have been preferable to a single lick of my arse. If I’d dropped down dead in front of him, would my body have been whisked off to the bath to be washed down then studied for days before the stinking stinking job of dismembering, facilitated by Wagner, rum, black dustbin bags and airspray?

  The mouth, not made for smiling, smiled. The candle flickered with another sudden gust as I raised myself up. The director of the nasty production in my head suggested a faint strobe effect.

  “Give me your cap,” I whispered.

  His hair was matted by sweat. His cap, his warmth, foreign on my head.

  “Suits you,” he said. “Try the jacket.”

  As he removed the jacket, I removed the dog collar.

  I stood on the chair. He was now below, wearing the collar, focusing on that black leather jock strap of his. My penis had remained resolutely flaccid throughout the slapstick, only hardening when the dog licked me. From two metres away his eyes changed colour and focus. Something from somewhere had been summoned up or, more likely, had invaded him. I was dealing with a whole new person. The eyes were sinister. An experienced force, a ferocious cold cruelty. He gave me a long, serious, social worker look.

  “There’s something missing from your life. Do you know what it is?” he asked.

  “Is it God?” I replied.

  This put him off his stride. He looked at me as though I was a hopeless case then blurted:

  “Love! Friendship! Companionship! Togetherness!”

  He stormed off towards the bedroom. Sherry was hiding under a small chest of drawers, eyes begging me to go. I heard the swish of zips and falling leather, heavy urination and a rapid showering technique. Hundreds of lurid tattoos were getting a quick soaping down. On top of the tv I saw a red biro on a cheque card on the open cheque book.

  “Tea?” The stranger asked, speeding into the kitchen in a dressing gown and tartan slippers.

  “Thanks.”

  He popped his head through a dainty serving hatch.

  “Get down from there, silly. You might fall and hurt yourself! Put a record on. You choose.”

  I heard the top of a bottle being quietly removed for a silent drink he wasn’t prepared to share.

  After stock-taking his collection I chose a single, Laurie Anderson’s O Superman, promising myself to be out of there by the time the record ended. He put the tea and biscuits down, switched off the tv, sat like a vicar about to have afternoon tea.

  The song seemed to laugh at us with its ha ha ha as the tea stewed in chipped Royal Doulton. I added milk after I’d seen him add milk to his. I swallowed after he’d swallowed. You can never be too careful.

  “O Superman. O Judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.”

  He watched me, maybe fascinated by my throat, the entrance tunnel for food, liquid and air.

  Maybe not.

  “Hi, I’m not home right now, but if you want to leave a message

  Just start start talking at the sound of the tone.”

  As he focused on me, he seemed to blur. We were both tired. It was late. His words began to slow and slur.

  “Do you have to go? It would be so nice if you stayed.”

  He looked towards his red biro on the cheque card on the open cheque book and saw me see this and winked the recently scarred eye.

  “Hello? This is your mother. Are you there? Are you coming home?”

  A tangle of moods came down. The atmosphere changed so suddenly, a power-cut transition which surged me with fear. The room became grave and quiet. I felt I was underground. I wished the velvety armchair I was sitting in would eject me home safely to bed. Tom toms started pounding slow and low in my head, their message: Get the fuck out!

  His face held a glazed expression for a minute, then his mouth smiled too much and he winked. I wondered what he’d done over the years with those wide, blunt-fingered hands. Over and over the tom toms pounded, gaining speed and volume which only I was hearing. I think.

  I wasn’t frightened but my pulse rate was fast. His eyes told me he’d just entered another mode. Large, brightly coloured, elusive butterflies of love or lust or madness released by alcohol and music were infesting the man’s head, heart and bowels. I felt he knew what I was thinking, word for word. The mist of whatever his vision was shivered me.

  I imagined the severed head of a lightly tanned barboy in the refrigerator beside the semi-skimmed milk. Two more in black plastic bags in the closet, in shorts and singlets, broken strings of beads around their bruised necks. Maybe he’d just showered with a carcass or two behind the exotic bathroom curtain he’d rushed me past.

  He didn’t smile back when I opened my eyes. He was avoiding eye contact.

  Here was a man who, no doubt, felt at home in the midst of flickering candles, incense and silent, grinning skulls, eating swans for Sunday lunch. Was he thinking that or was I?

  Did he want to decapitate, dismember, deflesh, destroy, leave me to decompose in the garbage? Best out of here, quick. Did he think that or did I?

  If he’d made a charge for me, like a soldier with his bayonet ready for anything, I might have screamed for God or my mother. (Or Ray.) I was filled with true, naked, yellow fear. As he talked, an aimless monologue which even bored him, he seemed silent. As he waved his arms and pulled a pantomime of faces, he seemed still and staring. (He’d got me there with all the skill of a salesman on commission.) Black eels invaded my digestive system. As he talked I thought I saw his hair growing, grey roots suddenly appearing under the sandy fullness. My eyes were heavy.

  The sudden barking of his dog in my face broke the mood.

  He pointed vaguely to my waist. “You can keep that,” he said. “And here’s a little somethin
g. Now go.”

  On the landing in the prickly dark silence, I stood clad in nothing but a black leather jock strap. In one hand a pannier containing a stolen knife, in the other shiny black skin-tight cycle shorts, teeshirt and cheque for £60. Payee left blank.

  I pressed the down button. The lift, it could have been fifty stories down, groaned and heaved.

  I pressed the button again. I started to count. I held the pannier against my chest and the organs that were thumping towards my throat, the scream that was jamming against the back of my teeth.

  * * *

  In my flat with the door locked behind me, just after sunrise, it was 5:13 am, the day of my birthday. I sang Happy Birthday to a man who was earning himself a pretty impressive CV. A man who was realising he didn’t know how lost he was.

  * * *

  Through the spyhole I saw the same delivery man again.

  “I’ll be out in a moment,” I shouted through the door. “Leave it on the mat, would you? Thanks.”

  When he’d gone I opened the door, still in my pyjamas.

  On the doorstep in a shallow wicker basket wrapped in cellophane with an orange ribbon tied high beside a little envelope, in front of a floral display of creams yellows and pinks, sat a pink and white teddy bear: ‘Cuddles’. What he’d missed out on for years.

  The phone rang.

  I picked up the basket with one hand and grabbed the phone with the other, for once hoping it was just my mother wanting to wish me happy birthday and check I was still coming over.

  “Hello. Is that Euan?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh hi! I’m Capital Gay ad 89.20. Michael.”

  “Mr Strut It!”

  “Well, I’m hoping you’re Mr Strut It, actually. I’m glad it caught your eye. I’m in Camberwell.”

  “Bet you’ve been busy auditioning with your ad.”