Kiss My Name

by Calvin Wade

  “Of course it’s alright with me!”

  “Good.”

  “Simon.”

  “What?”

  “There are a few things I need to say.”

  “Go on.”

  Simon pulled his chair closer to the table.

  “Firstly, I’m glad you mentioned how you felt. We’ve always been honest with each other and I wouldn’t want you to be hiding your feelings from me. That would have just been wrong. In a way, I’m sorry you didn’t tell me earlier about how you were feeling. Anyway, don’t be embarrassed about it, I’m not. In fact, I’ve given the whole thing a lot of thought and although I don’t have those same romantic feelings for you, I think I could grow to have them. I’m not promising a happy ending, but I’d like us to give a relationship a go. See how it works out.”

  Simon looked as stunned as a lottery winner who had forgotten he’d bought a ticket.

  “Really?”

  “Really, but on three conditions.”

  “OK.”

  “Condition one. You understand Will comes first in everything I do.”

  “I would expect him to.”

  “Condition two. Can we just try this relationship thing out discreetly, without Will, Dad or even bloody Jason knowing anything about it? That way, if it doesn’t feel right, then we can just revert back to friendship without Will being hurt or Dad and Jason saying ‘I told you so’.”

  “I understand. That’s fine.”

  “Condition three. Don’t ever cheat on me.”

  “Nicky, I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t.”

  “Simon, you may think that at the moment but sometimes once things become more routine, people take each other for granted. I know how you feel about yourself, that you think you aren’t the best looking man in the world, but I reckon as we get older, women stop judging men on looks alone. You only have to switch the TV on and there’s some beautiful woman with an older, funny looking bloke.”

  “That’s because they’re rich. Window cleaners aren’t often millionaires, Nicky.”

  “Some might not be rich, they might just be confident. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you Simon, are a lovely person and as we get older if women start to realise that and make a bee line for you, I don’t want you cheating on me. I’ve had one of those types of blokes and one is enough, thank you very much.”

  “I will never cheat on you, Nicky.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “Nicky, you don’t have to keep warning me. It won’t happen!”

  “OK, that’s all sorted then. Right, are you going to come back to mine with me? Will’s dying to see you.”

  The arrangement had been made and everything from my part had been done in a very clinical way.

  “OK, let me get some shoes on my feet and then we’ll go...oh and Nicky...I don’t mean this in a sloppy, gushy, fingers down your throat way but...I love you and I love Will too, so I will never, ever let either of you down.”

  I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. If I’m honest, my expectations levels were low. I didn’t love Simon, not in a romantic way, but I knew he loved me and just as importantly, Will loved him. I just hoped things would work out well and that one day, I would feel the same about Simon as he did about me. Initially though, I wasn’t doing this for me, or for Simon, I was prepared to try this for Will’s sake. I knew Simon being around would make Will happy and in my life, his happiness meant more than anything else.

  NICKY – March 1996

  I always wanted my relationship with Simon to work out. Originally I just had my doubts that it would. I can totally understand why some cultures have arranged marriages, as a decision about who to engage in a relationship with is made based on logic and not based on love. An intense love that is all encompassing will always fade out, so friendship should always rank above passion when choosing a partner. This is my opinion anyway, but perhaps I was just lucky.

  My relationship with Simon stuttered along at first. I guess for Simon, it was a confusing start. He was in love with me, but he knew that love wasn’t reciprocated, so how to act, especially as I wanted to keep the relationship secret, must have posed serious questions of him. Simon opted for clumsy and awkward at first, which didn’t do him any favours, but after a few months he started to gain in confidence and gradually, very gradually, I started to fall in love with him.

  One thing, more than any other, made me fall in love with Simon and that was his relationship with Will. They have always adored each other. Bizarrely, even before Simon ever lived with us, if Will ever woke up in the night and shouted for someone, he would shout for Simon. They played sport together, built things together (although from the age of two, Will was more talented than Simon at making things), read together and often ate together. Simon was a man who had spent a lot of his childhood feeling the loss of his brother and I always felt to some extent his relationship with Will filled that void.

  My intention had been to keep our relationship secret, but for six months we didn’t have to try, as there was nothing to hide. I’m not sure if we would ever have kissed if it wasn’t for The Shawshank Redemption. For six months, once a week, Dad would look after Will for the evening so that I could go to the cinema with Simon. My Dad needed re-assuring that they weren’t ‘dates’ that he was covering for, but when he was told it was just two film lovers going as friends he was fine about it. As I’ve said, until The Shawshank Redemption there was no relationship to conceal.

  Most of the Western world must have seen ‘Shawshank’ now, it has been rated in many polls as one of the greatest films of all time. We went knowing it kept re-launching at the cinema because it was meant to be good, but not really knowing the story of Andy Dufresne, Ellis ‘Red’ Redding and their fellow convicts. Both Simon and I were blown away. It was a story of friendship, laughter, injustice, loss and ultimately about overcoming any hurdle life throws at you. When Simon switched his engine off on our road after the film, romance was definitely in the air for the first time ever. We had chatted constantly the whole way back about the film, Will and about making the most of our lives.

  “Thanks very much for coming with me tonight, Nicky,” Simon said as pulled his handbrake, “that has to be the best film I have ever seen. I’ll always be glad that I got to see it with you.”

  “Creep!”

  “No, it’s the truth. I’m glad we went to see it together.”

  “I know. It was amazing.”

  “Do you feel really weird? Like your eyes have been opened up to something fantastic?”

  “I do. Brilliant films heighten your emotions like that, don’t they? Have you seen Cinema Paradiso?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll have to get the video out then and watch it together. That was the last film that made me feel like this. What about Il Postino have you seen that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh my God, we have to watch that too. That is heartbreaking though as Massimo Troisi who wrote and starred in it died the day after filming finished. Right, what we need to do is keep a look out at the Cornerhouse in Manchester to see when Il Postino is next showing and when it is, we’ll go over. Also, one night shortly we need to rent out ‘Cinema Paradiso’ and you can come here with a bottle of wine, popcorn and maltesers and we can snuggle up under my duvet and watch it.”

  “Thanks Nicky.”

  Spontaneously, perhaps emboldened by the ‘under the duvet’ invitation, Simon just leant over and we started kissing. There was no awkward pause, no clunking of teeth or necks turning the wrong way, it all just happened very naturally. Stupidly, as Simon isn’t the best looking man in the world and also because his co-ordination when it comes to dancing is just horrendous, I imagined he would be a hopeless kisser too. He wasn’t. Simon was a perfect kisser, passionate but tender, sensual but not sloppy. It is important to have a good emotional connection when you share a kiss. Kissing is the doorway to physical intimacy, so I was relieved to know Simon kissed well. I literally ski
pped along our front path. There were positive signs that I was falling back in love, but this time I knew I was backing a winner.

  SIMON – April 2002

  It was a Spring Sunday morning and Will and I were on a windy Formby beach. Since Christmas, I had been promising him that once the weather improved, we would take his new kite over to the beach. I had woken with a banging headache but opened the curtains to a cold, clear day, so wasn’t surprised to hear Will pleading for a trip to the beach as soon as I ventured downstairs. I had managed to delay this inevitable trip for three months, so felt it was time for the kite’s virgin flight. Three hours later, we had managed to get as far as Formby beach, but could we get the bloody thing to fly? Could we heck!

  I had always been hopeless at anything to do with DIY. In our house, if shelves needed putting up, electrics needed re-wiring or tiles needed grouting, Nicky would be the one who would give it a go. Even when Nicky had been heavily pregnant with Chloe, the year before, she was assembling cots and drilling holes in the nursery walls. Anything practical I was hopeless at. I hadn’t thought these inadequacies would extend to kite flying, but my optimism was misplaced. The failure of our kite to fly in any of its thirty or so attempts was annoying in itself, but the fact that every other parent and child on the beach were joyfully flying their kites, as if it was as easy as walking, only added to the misery.

  The kite flying fiasco was not lifting my sombre mood. I had been hoping that the fresh air would have lifted my spirits, as I was dealing with the hangover from hell. Over the years, I had come to realise that my opportunities for sexual contact were enhanced by Nicky’s alcohol consumption, so when she suggested we open a second bottle of Sauvignon Blanc whilst watching ‘A Beautiful Mind’, I did nothing to dissuade here. Nicky isn’t the best at maintaining her sobriety once a glass or two of wine hit her pallet, so I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise for me to discover her sleeping soundly shortly after the film finished and two minutes after announcing she was ‘just nipping for a quick wee’. Feeling sorry for myself at missing a sexual opportunity, I stupidly decided to polish off the second bottle myself and now on Formby beach with a kite that wouldn’t fly, eyelids that felt they had been sandpapered and a head that felt like it was balancing a cannonball on it, I was feeling sorry for myself once again. Some kids, in similar circumstances, would stomp their feet and cry, but even at a mere nine years old, Will was a gentleman.

  “Don’t worry Dad, if the kite isn’t working, I don’t mind. Would you like to go home and have a coffee?”

  It would have been easy just to say ‘yes’, but I didn’t want Will to think I was a quitter.

  “Not yet, Will. We need to have a few more tries. This time, if you can run as fast as you can along the beach, when I shout ‘now’, let go and I’m sure this little kite is going to fly like a bird!”

  “Dad, you’ve been saying that all day!”

  “And this time, Will, I’m going to be right!”

  Sixty seconds later, Will was running full pelt along the wide, windy, open sands with a large diamond shaped kite in his left hand. I was trying my damnedest to keep up, but was never the fittest or quickest, so was dropping increasingly further behind.

  Whilst he was just in earshot I yelled, “Let it go now, Will, let it go!”

  Will let it go and the wind took the kite upwards and for a few seconds I watched in awe, as the kite did patterns in the sky as I tried to catch up. I’m not sure whether there was uneven ground beneath my feet or whether it was just the result of running over a hundred metres for the first time since my school days, but all of a sudden my knees buckled and I collapsed as if a sniper had targeted me from one of the nearby sand dunes.

  When you fall unceremoniously, you hope you can clamber back on to your feet quickly, dust yourself off and hope no-one noticed. That wasn’t what happened. Formby beach welcomes the Irish sea to its sandy shores every day when the tide rushes in, but when it retreats, it leaves lonely pools of salty water behind. My body decided to keep one such pool company, belly flopping into its cold, crab filled waters. Not wanting the humiliation of drowning in two inches of water, I swiftly flipped over onto my back, just as Will’s kite decided it longed for terra firma and swooped downwards like a pelican that had spotted a school of fish in shallow waters. I didn’t have much time to brace myself. It struck me full on, below my left eye. I knew I was about to pass out and just as I drifted away to another state of consciousness, I remember a sense of panic about leaving my nine year old son stranded alone on a beach.

  I’m not sure how long I was out for, Will says it felt like hours, but it was probably no more than a few minutes. When I came around, it felt like a scene from ‘The Champ’, Will was on top of my chest, sobbing his little heart out, smeared in my blood. Not really knowing where I was, seeing Will covered in blood, both scared and confused me.

  “Oh my God, Will, what have you done to yourself?”

  “Dad, it’s not my blood.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Yours.”

  “Are you OK mate?” said a Liverpudlian male voice.

  I looked beyond Will and there were twenty or so faces gathered in a circle around me, as I still lay on my back on the floor. The kite attack started to come back to me.

  “I’m fine, just a bump,” I put my hand to my face, to where the pain was emanating from, when I withdrew it, a mass of thick, red blood covered my palm.

  “I’d just lie there until the ambulance comes,” another female voice suggested, “you took a hell of a whack.”

  “Honestly, I’m fine,” I replied. “It’s daft calling an ambulance for a graze Will, do you want to just get off me, please? Just so I can stand back up?”

  “”It doesn’t look like a graze to me mate,” another random onlooker piped up, “you aren’t fit to be left alone with your lad, your face is a bit knackered and you’ve been out cold. Just take it easy, stay there until the paramedics get here.”

  “How are they going to get an ambulance onto the beach?”

  “That’s not your problem mate, let them work that out. Just have a rest for a few minutes. I know what it’s like with kids, you hardly ever get a few minutes to chill out, just lap it up!”

  An uncomfortable few minutes passed of lying still, on my back, in a shallow pool of sea water and blood, with Will sitting on my chest, trying to be brave but with panic written all over his little face. It was a great relief to see, out the corner of my eye, an ambulance cautiously approaching along the beach. The paramedics were great, they checked me out, patched my face up, put me in a precautionary neck brace and stretchered me into the back of the ambulance, making sure Will and his kamikaze kite were alongside me. As we drove towards the hospital, I was comforted by the fact that our siren wasn’t blaring. It obviously wasn’t a life or death situation.

  “Are you going to be OK, Dad?” Will asked, leaning over my face.

  “I’m sure I’m going to be absolutely fine, Will.”

  Will started to get a little tearful.

  “What’s the matter, son?”

  “It was my fault. I didn’t steer the kite properly.”

  “Don’t be daft, Will. If I hadn’t been such a fat waste of space, I would never have fallen over and then the kite would never have hit me. It serves me right for being so clumsy and so heavy. I’m going to start a new diet, this minute. No more Mars bars for me!”

  Will seemed to calm down a little, sensing I wasn’t just trying to put a brave face on things and my injuries really weren’t all that serious, despite all the blood. I saw him pull another face though, which indicated that he identified another problem.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes, son.”

  “How will we get our car back from the car park?”

  “Mum and I will get it later.”

  “Does the sea not come in that far?”

  I had been explaining to Will about the tides and how the water comes right in at certa
in times of the day.

  “No, we are parked the other side of the sand dunes, our car is perfectly safe.”

  “Good...what about parking costs? We only paid for two hours.”

  “Will, stop stressing, if we get a ticket, I will write the boss of the car park a letter, explaining what happened and I’ll send him some photos of my face. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  “Dad.”

  “What?” I snapped back a little too irritably, none of this was Will’s fault.

  “You look like something out of a horror movie!”

  “When have you been watching horror movies?”

  “Around at Harry Moulton’s!”

  Harry was Will’s friend from up the road. He was thirteen, four years older than Will.

  “Well, I shall be telling Harry’s Mum and Dad that you are only nine and you should not be watching horror films.”

  “I’m an old nine though, Dad. I keep hearing you say that, ‘Will’s an old nine’.”

  “You’ll be wanting to drink beer next year too, I suppose?”

  “Not next year, Dad. Wine next year, beer the year after!”

  We both smiled, one thing was for certain, Will was growing up fast.

  SIMON – April 2002

  Will and I were sat in Casualty at Southport and District General Hospital. We were in a tiny bay along with a friendly, young male nurse who was putting a fresh dressing on the cut just below my left eye.

  “That looks really nasty, Mr.Strong. How on earth did you do that? Did this little fella clock you one with a knuckleduster?”

  “No, I was on the Pamplona bull run and one of the bulls was about to spear a young, beautiful University student, so I put my head down and charged at it. You think I look bad, you should see the state of the bull!”