by Paul Mendez
He recognised that he had thought of himself as a blond white boy all his life. He’d never thought of himself as a black boy, or compared himself to other black people. He’d known so few black people, and those his mother knew she often derided for being too black, doing things in too black a way, being late because they were too black, being disorganised because they were too black, being rough and uneducated because they were too black. He wouldn’t have been treated so harshly if he wasn’t too black. He wouldn’t be cooped up in a prison cell, an exile within the family home, too embarrassed to accept any of his workmates’ invitations to spend Christmas with them and their families, if he wasn’t too black. He knew he would have to spend the rest of his life convincing people that he wasn’t too black.
He managed to keep himself together until Easter, when the Witnesses, separately from the main branches of Christendom, mark the Passover, which Jesse refused to attend. He came home from work that night, stoned, just as Graham was closing down the house to go to bed. They looked at each other. Jesse, unexpectedly to himself, started to cry. Sorry, he said. I’m sorry. He kept saying I’m sorry. He moved towards Graham and put his head on his shoulder. Graham remained unmoved, hands by his sides. All Jesse wanted was some love. He hugged him, squeezed him, grabbed handfuls of his flesh, smelled his neck, kissed him, leaked tears into him. Graham, firmly, grabbed Jesse by both arms and held him away from himself. Through his teeth, he said, You have to get out of this house.
Chapter 5
MAY 3, 2002
Jesse’s alarm went off at seven, but he’d barely slept. He was excited, if nervous; he’d been scared of London all his life but he was a man now and after a few months saving up, he was ready to do it. He’d found a hostel on the Internet, in Earl’s Court, for twelve pounds a night. He had three hundred pounds in his bank account and no responsibilities to anyone; he packed only what he absolutely needed—his best clothes, some underwear, ten or so CDs, his Discman, the James Baldwin novel Another Country. He left his key and Bible on his pillow. The Bible was supposed to have an answer for everything but did not have guidance for sons whose families had betrayed them and turned them out. He wanted to tuck its ribbon at a verse that would show his parents what they had done. The New World Translation’s fathers, do not be irritating your children did not go far enough, and he eventually decided he didn’t want to waste any more time inside a book that had made him literate but told him everything he did and stood for was wrong. He stared at it, closed, leather-bound and gold-leaf-trimmed, for an indecisive moment before he ran downstairs and out of the front door without leaving a note. He ran until he’d turned the corner. His mother wouldn’t have been quick enough out of bed to see which direction he’d gone in. Perhaps, actually, she was sleeping easy. He’d been to the Carphone Warehouse to change his phone number again. He intended it to be a dramatic disappearance, that would leave even his McDonald’s colleagues wondering where he had gone.
He pounded through the estate, already forgetting the scruffy dark-brick semi-detached houses with mattresses and wheel-less cars on their driveways, that kids he went to school with, or householders who’d accepted his literature, lived in, and caught the 74 from Swan Village bound for Birmingham. He looked out of the window but saw nothing. There were clock towers and fancy buildings in London, much greater than these, he thought. He did not care if he never saw this part of the world again.
Birmingham was big. It had tall buildings and busy roads, a national train station and a shopping centre with all the top brands. Though he’d grown up with a Birmingham postcode, he hadn’t visited the city centre that often; usually, when he was a kid, shopping with his mother and aunts, waiting around hungrily, thirstily, needily while they tried on a hundred dresses, jeans, coats, boots, coming home a little fatter and frustrated having been all the way on the bus and bought only a Kentucky Family Bucket, leaving him the boniest bits (which had the crispiest, tastiest, best-seasoned crumb).
But Birmingham was not his destination. It wasn’t far away enough. He’d only been to London twice, on the Witness trips to the British Museum, but he knew it was for him; he knew from the length of the coach journey, the size of the place, the variety in every direction he looked. He saw black girls with long braids; African women in wrappers; young punks and old dandies; City men with their briefcases; model-like white girls with cute little dogs; feminine-looking men walking, outrageously, frighteningly, hand-in-hand; black boys wearing trainers that weren’t for sale anywhere in the Midlands.
Maybe now he could go to college after all. He felt it a shame that his disfellowshipping happened just weeks too late for that academic year. There was so much he could now put right. He wished he hadn’t listened to Sister Doreen Charles, whom he’d treated as an elder, an authority, even though she was a woman and women weren’t allowed to be considered elders or authorities. He could still hear her words:
Nuh bodda go college when you kyan preach di good news of God Kindam from ’ouse to ’ouse han daah to daah, servin’ di need of di canregiashan! Hif me did your hiage han a man, dat what me would do!
What you need from your hedukiashan other than fe read good ah write ah count ah praise Jeoviah, for you a go get heverlastin life fe look up at di star ah hundastan all dem ting bout the huniverse an dat?
Council flat dem kyan rent fe fifty pound a month, so why you nuh jain your daddy pan di rubbish tip? Fe God imself a go sustain you wid heverytin y’a guh need!
We in di last day, now sah! Mi bet you nuh reach twenty-one fore Harmageddon appen when you fass hasleep inna yuh bed!
Nuh bodda go college, Jeoviah him wah you!
* * *
—
At New Street station, he baulked at the cost of a train ticket but the attendant explained it would be cheaper if he waited until ten o’clock when Super Off-Peak kicked in. So he bought himself a McDonald’s breakfast, with a cup of coffee, and ate it on a bench to the sound of constant tannoyed announcements. He went into WHSmith and bought a London A–Z and a large pack of Duracell AA-size batteries for his Discman, as well as The Face, with Eminem on the cover wearing a pink vest and lip balm, looking quite gay. There was an article in it about the Sugababes and their new member. He’d already bought their new single, “Freak Like Me,” hoping it was going to Number One, and had been listening on repeat to the “We Don’t Give a Damn” Mix—a mash-up between Adina Howard’s lewd “Freak Like Me” and Gary Numan’s dystopian “Are Friends Electric”—sung by three girls who could’ve been his schoolfriends.
There were men everywhere. Would any of them do what Fraser had not, and let him suck their dick? Businessmen, construction men, security men. Black, white, brown, in suits, tracksuits, workwear, wearing flat caps, baseball caps, helmets. All seemed to be heading—the interesting ones anyway—to the station toilets.
There were eight cubicles, and he ducked nervously into the sixth and locked the door. He was already hard, so had to bend his knees and tip his body forward to piss straight into the pan. He noticed movement to his left-hand side. There was a puddle on the floor, in between the two cubicles, and in it he could clearly see the reflection of a man wanking, and in a manner that meant the puddle wasn’t coincidental, the result of a leak, but was a kind of mirror, created by the man pissing on the floor to make the two occupants visible to one another.
His neighbour’s dick emerged from his clenched fist long, thick and upward-curving. Unsure as to whether this man would see his reflection in return, Jesse shook his dick of piss and started wanking himself over the puddle. In acknowledgement, this man knocked twice on the thin cubicle wall between them. Jesse knocked twice back. He heard his neighbour unlock his door, and knock twice again. Buttoning his hard-on back in his jeans, Jesse unlocked his, peeped out into the corridor to make sure there was no one standing at the sinks opposite, or that no one at the adjacent wall of urinals would notice, and made his mov
e, completely unable to believe what he was doing; right away the man stepped back to give him space, and Jesse shut and locked the door behind him.
The man was probably in his late thirties, stocky, with dark brown, receding hair; he wore construction worker’s boots, jeans and a pair of Calvin Klein trunks suspended around his knees, a light blue office shirt with the sleeves rolled up revealing meaty, furry forearms, and a thick silver watch. He smiled and nodded, and kissed Jesse wholly on the lips, his stubble grazing his fine skin. Jesse clutched the man’s dick in his hand—a dick! The heat and weight of it thrilled him—and drew his thumb over its slippery contours, which made the man grab and wank Jesse in return. Nice cock, he said, looking down in a manner that forced Jesse to crouch down before him. The man’s dick was intimidating, urinous and pungent, twitching up and down in front of his face; he smarted a little at the strength of its smell.
The man put his hand over the top of Jesse’s head and for the very first time in his life, Jesse took a dick into his mouth, held it and felt it pulsing, and sucked, helped by the man’s pelvic thrusts, until he could feel the tickle of pubic hair in his nostrils. He was hard, thick and heavy, catching on the soft flesh just where dry lip became wet mouth. Jesse pulled his head back, licked his lips and took the man back in as deeply as he could. He felt invaded, taken over. The man put his warm, clammy hands around Jesse’s ears, pushed into the back of Jesse’s head and whispered, Oh my God, you’ve got no fucking gag reflex. Jesse felt the man’s nuts on his chin, held on to his arse, pulling him in deeper, feeling him stretch his throat and the back of his nose.
He’d been waiting for this all his life, and when the man pulled all the way back out, Jesse licked his balls, reaching his hand up his stomach and tweaking his nipples, making sure the whole man was all there, before the man pushed his knob back between Jesse’s lips and fucked his head. Jesse closed his eyes and imagined any one of those men from the landfill site, the ironworks or the warehouses in their dirty jeans and muddy boots, fucking his mouth like this man was, giving him no time to breathe or wipe his streaming eyes, grabbing his head and fucking it any old way; he thought his left eye might pop out; somehow Jesse knew that he should try as best as he could to keep his teeth out of the way, unless he liked it? Some people did, didn’t they, like pain?
Not long enough a time seemed to pass until the man’s eyes scrunched shut and his face reddened as he grabbed Jesse’s head in both hands and spunked six or seven jets in the back of his throat. Letting out a controlled, discreet hiss, he pulled out, and held Jesse’s face in front of himself; he pulled his eyeballs down from the back of his head; he was almost laughing, puffing; a rope of spit hung between the underside of his knob and the inside of Jesse’s bottom lip; a new pearl sprang forth inside his pisshole; the man’s arms weakened, and Jesse plunged back down on him to get it, making the man shrink back; Stop! he whispered. He quickly pulled up his pants and jeans, and ended the moment with the hasty buckling of his belt.
“Can I ’ave ya number?” Jesse whispered, shuffling up from his crouching position, his thighs and knees aching.
“Nah, mate,” the man said, and showed Jesse his wedding ring. With that, he kissed him on the mouth, said, “Lock it behind me and give it a minute,” squeezed himself around the door and disappeared right out of the toilets without washing his hands.
Jesse, as instructed, locked the cubicle door, still trying to swallow the cum in his throat, as if he’d caught a slight cold, the man’s nether sweat all over his face. He licked his lips, inhaled through his nose, closed his eyes and imagined the man still inside him. He swallowed, and swallowed, as his train was announced.
EARL’S COURT
Chapter 1
MAY 4, 2002
His jeans were too tight, constricting his gait, and sat low on his hips. It was the first time he’d ever walked down a street without underwear. Sightings of gay-looking men were more frequent round here, and one or two of them looked him up and down as they passed by, but Jesse kept walking and listening to his music, becoming more nervous with every step.
Every time he’d been to a rave with the McDonald’s lot, he wished he’d had the space and freedom to peel away from them and go to a gay bar. Even so, he made the most of those pumping U.K. garage and R&B sound systems, the scene still buzzing from the moment it tangibly crossed over into the mainstream. So Solid Crew had performed their Number One hit “21 Seconds” in sweatbands and wolverine contact lenses on Top of the Pops, scaring the life out of the producers, who must’ve feared a riot would break out on national television and swallow up the white girls at the front singing along with Lisa Maffia. In the clubs, he enjoyed the dancing, the boys, on a couple of Bacardi and Cokes and maybe half an E, showing their tender sides, flirting with the girls. He applauded the PAs from the boyband Damage, performing “Ghetto Romance,” and Mis-Teeq, performing the “Ignorants Remix” of “All I Want.” Everyone went to see Destiny’s Child perform in pink bikinis and rhinestones at the National Indoor Arena, just as “Independent Women” was about to be released, with a rare line-up of Beyoncé, Michelle and Kelly—who had sprained her ankle and sat singing on a stool—completed by Solange, performing Kelly’s dance moves.
But none of those nights was ever going to end with the taste and feel of a dick in his mouth, maybe only a fist or a foot if he ever tried it on. Now he happened to be walking behind a red-haired boy in too-pristine sportswear—looking as if he didn’t usually dress that way and the transformation wasn’t working for him—who kept looking over his shoulder, at Jesse, nervously. I’m not actively following you, Jesse wanted to call out. He was simply walking in the same direction, having left the hostel and turned the corner onto the Earl’s Court Road perhaps a few seconds too late as far as this pert-arsed stranger was concerned. He considered and rejected the idea of crossing the road, as if to turn left, only to then turn right (it would look like a distraction tactic) or of quickening his pace to overtake the boy (an aggression). He looked down at his own feet as he walked so as to not be caught checking out the boy’s inviting arse, and wondered whether, if he had been looking up as usual, he would have skidded through the smudge of dog shit he consequently missed. The boy stopped, watched Jesse pass by, and when Jesse peeked round a moment later, he saw the boy had swung round and was walking back the other way.
Jesse hooked a right onto the Old Brompton Road and jogged between passing cars to the other side. With his hands in his pockets, he pulled his jacket tighter round himself as the undulating rainbow flag that advertised his destination—more confidently than he was prepared for—confirmed the change of pace the weather had taken. A shaven-headed doorman with a wide stance and clasped hands blocking his crotch stood at the corner door. Jesse looked up at the building, “The Coleherne Arms 1866” inscribed high on its façade. He couldn’t see through the reflective window panes, but a group of men drinking and smoking on the pavement acknowledged his arrival with expressions ranging from winks of approval to nudging smirks and blinks of fear or indifference. The odd blast of strident house music—chopping and twisting the music in his earbuds—let out by the opening and closing door hyped the atmosphere within. He pulled down his baseball cap, flicked an instinctive final glance round to make sure he was unseen by anyone from the hostel, and smiled guardedly at the doorman, who took a step to his right, blocking the door.
“Pardon?” said Jesse.
The doorman gestured he remove his earbuds and stared out into the distance.
“See some ID, please, mate.”
Jesse squeezed a hand into his back pocket and pulled out his provisional driving licence, bent and slightly softened against the football curve of his arse. He looked young, even at nineteen. The doorman studied it with interest. Jesse looked down. The front of the doorman’s trousers was completely flat, unlike Graham’s in his grey tracksuit bottoms. Disappointing.
“You do know t
his is a gay venue, don’t you?” he said, rubbing Jesse’s picture card between his thick, dry fingers and thumbs, with a hint of a sneer, before handing it back.
“Yeh,” said Jesse, indignantly. He hadn’t come this far to have his hard-earned self-acceptance questioned at the door of an actual gay bar.
“Thank you. Enjoy,” said the doorman, as he stood out of the way.
A tall, blond man with blue eyes, whom Jesse felt he’d seen before—on TV or in a film, perhaps—hung over him, coming out as he was going in. He stepped back to watch Jesse pass. Aww, cute! he said, but then another man, darker and with a less friendly, somewhat cynical face, followed him and pulled him away. The blond man smiled over his shoulder as if to say, See you later, making Jesse’s mouth start to water, but the doorman said, Keep the door closed, please. Local residents.
The bar was packed, full of rotating light beams and middle-aged men in jeans and T-shirts, football and rugby shirts, baseball caps and leather hats, leather jackets, studded wrist-cuffs and chaps over jeans, drinking pints and shouting over each other, the warm beats, thick bass and effortless female vocalist. Feeling exposed, he thought he would pop his earbuds back in, for now.
He wanted to feel like Mutya in the video for the “We Don’t Give a Damn” Mix, as she sang in his ears, strutting nonchalantly through the club as everyone turned round to notice her. Here, some men wore moustaches like Graham’s in the eighties; some had beards, some were clean-shaven; some had hair, some were bald, some were voluntary skinheads like the doorman; some didn’t look gay at all; some looked straight, at a glance, but made effeminate gestures as they spoke; others wore harnesses that reminded Jesse of a toddler’s reins; some men had handkerchiefs hanging out of their back pockets—what sort of trend was that? The room smelled of beer, piss and aftershave, and sounded, beneath both layers of music, like laughter, clinked glasses and heartbeats.