Sottopassaggio

by Nick Alexander

Déjà Vu

  As I doze on Owen’s couch, my right-brain reasons my left-brain into submission. Logically, it argues, I need a friend, even a friend with an Italian boyfriend, as much as I need a lover. I’m probably not ready for any other kind of relationship anyway, it says.

  And an evil, bad, bad, bad part of my mind that I do my best to silence, agrees I should go for a drink with Tom tonight, but for completely different reasons. It’s best to know as much about the enemy as possible, it says. Who knows how solid Tom’s relationship with Antonio really is, it snidely points out. To prove its point, it has sieved through my conversation with Tom separating out one particular phrase.

  “I go to Genoa a lot,” he said. “Or I used to.”

  “I used to.” Now what does that mean?

  My headache has gone, but the hangover has left me feeling tired and irritable so it’s hard to motivate myself. Eventually I drag myself from the sofa, splash cold water on my face and head off to the rendezvous.

  It’s a warm overcast evening, and as I approach the Amsterdam, I see Tom sitting in a window seat.

  It has almost the same layout as Legends where we first spoke, and it’s only a little further down the seafront. But tonight, at least, it’s much emptier; only one other table is occupied.

  Tom has changed into baggy hip-hop jeans and a blue, seventies tracksuit top. His beard is waxed into pointy perfection, and he looks younger and fresher than this morning. He’s looking good.

  I offer him a drink but he shakes his head and waves a full glass at me.

  When I return with my drink, I sit opposite him, pulling my chair to a respectable distance.

  “So what did you get up to?” he asks.

  I smile. “Ab-so-lute-ly nothing!” I say.

  “I went to the gym, but other than that,” he rolls his eyes and continues shaking his head, “God, there’s these two guys at the gym, they’re so annoying.” He rolls his eyes and then blows through his lips.

  “They’re just constantly there, you know?”

  I shrug.

  “It’s like, whatever machine I’m on, whatever I’m doing, at some point I look up and there they are, either side of me.”

  I wipe the foam from my lips.

  “Maybe they like you,” I say. “Maybe they want a threesome?”

  Tom nods. “I expect so, but they’re just so …” he shakes his head and sips his own drink. “They’re actually gorgeous,” he says. “I mean they have nice haircuts, lovely bodies, little matching goatee beards, lovely clothes …”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I take it there’s a but?”

  Tom nods. “Yeah. The but is the conversation! They just constantly talk through me, and it’s all BT you know?”

  I shrug. “BT?”

  “Bitch Talk. You know, she’s a bitch, and he’s a bitch, and I’m a bitch, and you’re a bitch and ha, ha, ha, isn’t it fun being a bitch!”

  I laugh. “Maybe you need a walkman?” I suggest.

  Tom nods. “I already decided to get one, just so I don’t have to listen to it anymore. It’s unbearable!”

  We chat a little about life in Brighton, and inevitably Tom asks me about myself. I tell him that I’m single, that I split up with my ex last December, conveniently dropping Steve from my history. Poor Steve – he didn’t deserve that.

  I move quickly on by asking Tom about Antonio. It takes mere seconds for me to start to hate the dark swarthy Italian – the time for Tom to produce the photo. And it takes less than a minute for me to hate his Carmen Ghia, his villa, his swimming pool, and his rich publishing magnate parents.

  Yet it’s funny, because despite Tom’s clear respect, his obvious love for Antonio, and his eyes do twinkle as he tells me about him, his body language strikes me as confusing.

  Maybe it’s just the alcohol, we’re on our third round already, or maybe it’s the music which is getting louder and louder, but he seems to be sitting closer than before, leaning in towards me ever more, and he seems to be missing no opportunity for contact. A poke with a finger here, a slap on the shoulder there, a pinch of the cheek …

  “Didn’t you say you don’t go to Italy so much now?” I ask, as casually as possible.

  Tom nods, but his face changes, becoming instantly taut and pale.

  “Yeah,” he says. “A bad thing happened.”

  I frown.

  “A terrible thing,” he says shaking his head. “I haven’t been able to go back since. But I will, eventually.”

  I nod. “A bad thing you don’t want to talk about, I take it.”

  Tom sighs heavily and swallows hard, apparently with some difficulty. “I just can’t,” he says with another shake of his head. “Sorry.”

  The bell rings. Last orders.

  “OK, so!” I say, purposely moving on. “What now?”

  Tom looks up. He forces a smile but his eyes look terribly sad.

  “D’you want to go to a club?” he asks.

  Revenge seems instantly familiar, so much so that I keep looking around trying to work out where it reminds me of. We order more beer and stand at the edge of the dance-floor watching the carnival crowd dance to the fun-but-tacky music. When I need to go to the toilet I correctly guess where it is, which only emphasises the strange feeling of déjà-vu.

  By the time I get back, Tom is on the dance floor, blending into the carnival laughter, the jumping, waving madness of it all, so I go and join him, but someone else has spotted him. She’s 6’4”, has shoulders you could hang a marquee on, legs like Joanna Lumley and is wearing a very tight, very short red PVC dress.

  I linger behind her looking at Tom, watching him as she pulls on his beard. He catches my eye and breaks into a grin.

  “I like this,” she says, her deep voice destroying any remaining doubt that she represents the T in LGBT.

  Tom runs a hand over her arse and says, “And I love your outfit.”

  As Sophie Ellis Bextor’s nasal, Take Me Home slips from the speakers, PVC-lady begins to shift her hips and flop her ironed blond hair from side to side.

  She raises a finger and chews a cuticle. “Oh this old thing?” she says, running a hand over her dress. “I’d rather you loved me.”

  “And so say all of us,” I think.

  Tom laughs, flashing white teeth. “That really is a great dress though,” he says, imitating her groove.

  She laughs madly, runs a hand over his hair, then spins on one heel and heads off across the floor.

  Tom steps up to me smiling. “Isn’t she great!” he says.

  I’m impressed at his reaction. Warm, friendly, amused, unthreatened. Personally, I have always been a little scared of big trannies.

  “But shall we go downstairs?” he adds. “I hate fucking Sophie Ellis Bextor.”

  On the ground floor the atmosphere is much more chilled.

  The music is louder; they’re playing rhythmic trancy Goa, and the men – for here there are only men – are younger, more masculine, better built.

  The feeling of familiarity is even stronger now; in fact if I didn’t know better I would swear that I actually have been here before. I decide that it must look a little like Le Klub in Nice.

  The dark dance-floor is packed with sweating steaming male flesh; half of the guys have their T-shirts in their pockets.

  We get fresh drinks from the bar and move to a raised side area. We look down at the dancers.

  In front of me – I could actually reach out and touch them – a group of muscular bearded boys are dancing badly. Body builders are always so stiff and I wonder briefly why that is. Do their muscles actually prevent them moving properly? Or are they just so body-conscious that they can’t let themselves go?

  The one nearest me has huge hoops hanging from his nipples, which gyrate and glitter temptingly as he moves rigidly from side to side.

  Tom stands to my left and occasionally points someone out, saying, “Wow! Look! He has better tits than the tranny,” or “Now that! That is nice.”

>   When he speaks, he leans in making my ear vibrate, which, with the beer, the tribal rhythms and the smell of testosterone, is giving me a heady, horny, hard on. I lean on the shelf separating me from the dance floor to conceal it, but it actually makes things worse. Tom now lays an arm across my back as he speaks to me.

  “Anything you fancy out there then?” he asks, his lips actually touching my ear lobe.

  “You,” I think. “How about all of them?” I shout.

  A humanoid synthesizer starts to soar above the rhythms and the dancers start to raise their arms. Tom leans in again.

  “You should get out there,” he says. “You might get lucky.”

  I shrug.

  I realise that if I don’t get away soon I will end up kissing him, so I grin, down the third of a pint remaining in my glass, and trippingly descend the stairs into the heaving mass.

  A spotlight is sweeping across my face. One guy is dancing behind Mr Pierced Nips, rubbing faded denim to faded denim, whilst another dances in front stroking and playing with the rings.

  I look beyond them at Tom and nod at them eliciting a grin. He lifts his T-shirt to indicate that I should take mine off, but I feel a little out-pecked, and anyway, I’m more interested, actually captivated would be the word, by the glimpse of Tom’s chest, by the swirling river of hair trickling down his chest, disappearing into his belly button.

  The beat speeds and the dancers become more frenetic; the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

  Tom disappears from the raised walkway and surfaces at my side grinning madly. I smile back and we start to move together.

  The DJ slowly pulls out components of the music, gradually deconstructing the sound, leaving it ever more desolate, hard-edged, industrial, and then, as the beat reaches its climax, he whacks it all back in. The dance-floor goes wild; Tom pushes out his lips, rips his T-shirt over his head and waves it above him.

  The crowd pushes us together and I let it happen. My arms rub against the hairs of his chest. A strobe blinds me and I step back and watch Tom’s stuttering disjointed movement beneath the on and off flashing of the light.

  After a minute or so the beat fades and then ceases, leaving only a drifting synthesiser. The dancers raise their arms in the air; Tom steps towards me, grinning and, when someone bumps him from behind, he falls forwards.

  I catch him, savouring the contact, the warm sweatiness of his body. He smiles and lets me support his weight. Then with mock effort, he finds his feet and stands. I lean in until our faces are mere centimetres apart.

  An orange spotlight sweeps across my face and I close my eyes and lean towards him, opening my lips, smiling beatifically.

  The synth gets louder, higher, more insistent. The moment of the kiss is upon us, the music shifting and changing, now sounding weirdly sub-aquatic. I can feel the heat of Tom’s face only millimetres away. The movement of the lights penetrating my eyelids, the swaying bodies around me, it all makes me feel dizzy, so I open my eyes again and smile salaciously.

  But Tom has pulled back. He’s stopped dancing and he’s frowning at me and shaking his head.

  My smile fades and I lower my arms.

  Tom shakes his head again.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I’m going to go get a drink at the bar,” he says.

  I nod, and start to follow him.

  “You stay!” he orders. “Enjoy!”

  Now this feels really familiar. This rejection, this dance-floor, this very moment is so familiar I could swear …

  And then it comes to me. I have been here before. This is the very club I came to seventeen years ago, the club where Dirk, my lanky American obsession refused to kiss me, the very room where I learnt that we were, “just friends.”

  Dazed, I turn and study the room. The décor has changed, sure; but it’s definitely the same building.

  People are still swaying, their arms in the air.

  “This is where Dirk danced,” I think. “And over there …”

  I see Tom standing at the bar. It’s the very spot where I stood watching Dirk.

  So this isn’t déjà vu. I have been here before. I have been exactly here before.

  The DJ whacks in the bass and people whoop, bursting into dance again. Everyone, that is, except me.

  French Pickup

  I spend a week pottering around Owen’s house.

  I receive my forwarded post from Isabelle. Thankfully she has left out the invitation to the remembrance service but it’s almost as powerful by its absence. I actually wish she had sent it so that I could read it and bin it once and for all.

  I log on to Internet sites and post cheques to pay my French bills hoping that once it’s all done France will again fade away. To help it on its way, I think about Tom.

  It’s obvious that this is a pointless exercise, but it’s like a sore tooth, and I can’t help but run my tongue over it; the gentle pain of impossibility infinitely preferable to the repetitive mantra of the accident, of Steve’s death.

  One Thursday morning, I decide to treat myself to breakfast at a café I saw at the end of the cycle path.

  It’s a sunny optimistic morning, one of those days when everything from the air in my lungs to the smiling joggers to the bouncing, droning jet-skis reeks of better days to come.

  By the time I reach the Meeting Place I am feeling relaxed and ravenous. I chain Owen’s bike to the rusting railings, order a full vegetarian breakfast from the ginger-haired German girl behind the counter, and carry my steaming coffee over to a table at the sea’s edge.

  I sip the boiling coffee and stare at the sparkling horizon and wonder why some days are good days, and some days are heavy and sad.

  The guy next to me is reading a French newspaper – Libération. There is so little news about France in the English media. Were it not for the constant menace of those evil Eastern Europeans taking all our jobs, one could forget that continental Europe exists at all. I decide to keep an eye open in case he leaves it behind when he leaves.

  I eat my breakfast and watch as a fishing boat cuts a glimmering scar through the smooth surface of the sea, the sound of its engine drifting in and out of earshot.

  When, with a conclusive movement the man shuts his Libération, I glance over.

  He smiles at me. “Bonjour,” he says.

  I blink in surprise. “Bonjour,” I reply.

  He laughs. “You don’t remember me?”

  I shrug and blush. “Sorry, I …”

  “I’m a friend of Jean, I saw you the other night … In Legends.”

  I have a vague impression I remember him, but it’s hard to be sure.

  He nods at the chair opposite me. “May I?” he asks.

  I nod. “Sure,” I say.

  “Benoit,” he says, holding out a hand.

  I smile and shake it.

  “You missed a great party the other day,” he says. “You should have come.”

  I blush slightly.

  “John told me you know,” he continues.

  I frown.

  “About your little suspension experiment,” Benoit smirks.

  I open my mouth in outrage. “Hey, they shouldn’t have told you …” I protest.

  Benoit shrugs. “You should let them have their fun you know,” he says.

  I wrinkle my nose. “I guess I’m just not ready,” I laugh.

  “They’re very safe,” Benoit says. “And actually very good.”

  I blush again. “I’m tempted I guess,” I say. “But, well, as I say …”

  I think again about John and Jean’s dungeon, and a brief flash of Benoit strapped up in their harnesses appears in my mind’s eye. I feel instantly aroused.

  Benoit nods. “Well, never rush yourself,” he says. “Chaque chose en son temps.” – Everything in its time.

  “And now it’s time for more coffee,” I say.

  Benoit nods.

  “Not here though,” he says with a grin.

  Pavlov’s Terror


  Benoit’s flat is lovely and not at all what I expected.

  For some reason – probably his general neatness – I saw him as a Habitat and steel man. But as I look around, it’s more junk shop bonanza than industrial chic.

  A vast grey sofa occupies one wall, worn comfortable chairs fill every corner, and the wall space is filled with huge photographs.

  In the hallway Benoit has a huge trestle desk covered in piles of photographs. I nod appreciatively and look around.

  “Great photos,” I say.

  Benoit looks up from the espresso machine – proper coffee being the official reason we are here – and smiles.

  “It’s what I do,” he says switching between languages. “Je suis photographe.”

  He finishes setting up the machine, flicks a switch and moves to the window.

  “It takes time to get hot,” he explains, turning the catch and sliding up the huge sash window. “If you lean right out, you can see the sea,” he tells me proudly.

  I cross the room, inevitably remembering the last time someone told me to lean out and look at the view. The lean had turned into a kiss, and the kiss had turned into a nightmare.

  I grip the windowsill and lean out, glimpsing the café where we just met. When I turn back, sure enough, Benoit is standing so close that I can barely focus on his stubbly chin.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asks seriously.

  I nod.

  “Can I kiss you?” he says, earnestly.

  I blush and grin simultaneously. “Um, well, I suppose,” I say. “Yeah.”

  The front of my jeans starts to fill.

  Benoit takes the remaining half step towards me, rests a hand on my arse and brushes his lips against mine.

  “Good,” he says, pausing. “It is what I have been wanting since I saw you.”

  I half open my mouth and he sucks at my bottom lip, then, slipping an arm behind my head, pushes into my mouth.

  We kiss for a moment, rolling our tongues around. It feels warm and welcoming. He tastes sweet.

  “Mmm,” I say. “Chocolate?”

  Benoit pulls away and laughs. “You can taste?”