“So what did you say?”
“Naturally I played along and said Gilbert would be grade A by then, but am I promising more than we can deliver? I’ve been so busy starting up my new group that I haven’t had time to view the most recent tapes.”
I wonder if I can save Gil by talking down his performance—yet at the same time I know I can’t lie because the tapes are there to show exactly what grade he’s reached. Cautiously I say: “He’s improved, but let’s face it, he’s never going to set the fruit on fire. He’s just a nice bloke who likes some conventional gay fun, so if Asherton’s hoping for a pornstar-is-born performance he’s going to be disappointed.”
“Luckily all we promised Asherton was an improvement, but let’s try and make Gilbert as improved as possible in the time we’ve got left. Why don’t I slip him a couple of extra sessions? If you were to see him next weekend—”
“Forget it! This weekend’s a gay-free zone!”
“It’s all very well for you to get huffy, pet, but our best hope of keeping on good terms with Asherton and defusing his nasty suspicions of you is to deliver Gilbert to him as prime meat!”
“I’m not saying I won’t do the extra sessions. I’m just saying I’d rather do overtime next week than have gay sex this weekend,” I argue, and she lets me have my way, but I’m feeling polar-cold at the thought of Gil being delivered to Asherton as prime meat. How can I possibly serve up Gil like this? But I’ve got to, haven’t I? Otherwise I’ll be the one who winds up at the Pain-Palace. Unless . . .
I suddenly get the glimmer of an idea.
The key factor is that Gil’s a clergyman, and everyone knows that clergymen aren’t supposed to hang out with people like me. So if Gil were to say his God’s come through on the spiritual mobile and told him to give me up, no one would think it odd. It’s the kind of thing that would happen to a straying clergyman with a conscience, and best of all I’d be blameless, specially as I’ve already promised to improve him by doing overtime.
So what I’ve got to do is pick a quarrel and lay so much guilt on him that he snaps. I know I’m going to hurt him, but I’ve no choice. He’s got to be saved.
Wednesday morning arrives. Elizabeth’s decreed that six of the clients who had to be cancelled during my past two days off have to be fitted in during the rest of the week, so I’m doing two extra sessions a day. With one exception these punters are the important clients, the rich ones who slip me expensive presents and lavish tips to show how easily they can pay my fees. The exception is Gil, who probably has trouble affording me even at a heavy discount, but since he’s the most important client of all at present he’s up there among the high rollers. He’s due at three, normally the end of the lunch-time shift.
The fact that I’m doing more work than usual means I have to pace myself very carefully to cope with the extra stress. We’re talking loads of sexual fakery here, and to guard against a disaster with Gil I’ve filled a syringe with the drug that guarantees an erection.
The worst thing, psychologically, is the fact that the performance with Gil has to be filmed. I can get away with not bothering to film anyone else today—there are no newcomers and all the punters are already on tape. So if I have a failure with anyone else it won’t matter, I can offer them plenty of other fun routines and make sure they leave satisfied. But if I fail with Gil and the cameras are turning I’m in deep shit. Better the needle than that.
The crucial problem is when to inject myself. The stuff takes time to work so ideally I should inject it halfway through the previous appointment, but if I already have an erection then I could be injecting myself into a nightmare. On the other hand if I leave the shot until just before Gil arrives I might be limp as a wimp for far too long. In the end I decide to wait to see what kind of state my equipment’s in halfway through the prior appointment, and in fact it looks as if it’s been nuked—the stress has taken its toll. Fortunately this isn’t crucial as this client likes to do all the work, but unfortunately he’s going so strong that I can’t escape to the bathroom to jab myself. I try every trick I know to get him to finish but he just yowls and dribbles and keeps juddering. God, sex is bloody hell sometimes, it really is—and that’s the great state secret of our sex-berserk culture. Sex can be absolutely—bloody—
The client finally finishes. I scoot to the bathroom and stick the needle in my equipment. Revolting. Everything’s revolting. Why the fuck am I leading this bloody revolting life? Because it’s all I’m good for, that’s why. Yet when I went to St. Benet’s they treated me as if—
No, wipe all thought of St. Benet’s. Just focus on the present. Focus and survive.
Off goes the bugger with the climax problem. In comes the clergyman offering himself up to be trashed.
“Gavin!” He’s so pleased to see me. If he were a puppy he’d be wagging his tail so fast it’d be invisible.
Out of sheer biological perverseness my equipment stages a recovery even before the drug starts to work—which means that once the drug kicks in I’m in a good deal of discomfort. Fucking hell! I can hardly wait to lock myself in the bathroom and cool off. The relief, when I finally turn off the cameras, is cosmic.
Five minutes later we’re sitting on the barstools at the kitchen counter and sipping Chardonnay—or at least he is. I’m OD-ing on OJ as I prepare to pick the quarrel which’ll save him.
But before I can get stroppy he says: “Gavin, I hate to ask, but . . .”
He’s run out of money. Could I have a word with my manager and persuade her to allow him credit?
With another surge of cosmic relief I realise I’ve been presented with an alternative way to save him.
“Sorry, mate,” I say. “No credit ever allowed except via regular credit cards,” but to my horror the silly bloke says: “Okay, I’ll borrow the money from a friend. She won’t ask any questions.”
Oh my God. He can’t mean—he couldn’t mean—
“Shit, Gil, are you talking about Carta?”
He looks embarrassed. “That needn’t concern you,” he says, trying to stand on his dignity, but the trouble is he’s got no dignity left. I’ve shredded it.
“Look, chum,” I say, even forgetting the ache in my equipment, “are you out of your clerical mind? Carta’s my friend and I’m not having her ripped off by an out-of-control cleric who’s deep into a mid-life crisis!”
“It’s not like that!”
“Oh yes it is! Look, if you want to screw around good luck to you, I’m no puritan, but stop being a clergyman first, okay? You’re paid to be a moral leader, someone in this filthy, putrid world who isn’t wallowing around in the shit, and people don’t like it when their moral leaders smash their hope that life’s not quite such a dump as it seems to be!”
He looks stricken. Brilliant! This quarrel’s going really well.
“Okay,” he mutters. “I won’t borrow from Carta. But I’ll find the money somehow.”
Horror slugs me all over again. “What about your job?” I yell in a last-ditch attempt to blast him back to sanity.
“That’s between me and God.”
“God? Shit, what kind of god can you possibly worship? What kind of god gives you a green light to get fucked by a leisure-worker—A PROSTITUTE—and pretend it’s some kind of romantic affair?”
“Gavin—”
“You know what I think? I think all this gay rights crap has done your head in! You’re floating along in an idealistic dream which is totally unconnected with reality!”
But now Gil starts to fight back. He’s no pushover, I’ll say that for him, and although he’s allowed me to bad-mouth him, I’m not to be allowed to slag off his sacred cause.
“Nothing can be more realistic,” he says strongly, “than working to ensure gays are treated as human beings and accepted into mainstream society.”
I decide I’ve no choice but to keep the quarrel stoked up. I’ve got to save this heroic idiot, got to. “Oh, puh-leeze!” I exclaim offensively. “The real
ity is that even if gays are formally accepted into the mainstream, people will still pity them as handicapped or reject them as revolting—and if you weren’t gorging yourself on gay dreams in the gay ghetto, you’d see that as clearly as I do!”
“But things do change eventually as mankind’s moral and religious sense evolves! A civilised society now accepts that discrimination’s wrong, whether it’s against women or Jews or blacks or gays or any other group, and we have to make sure our society practises what it preaches!”
“By bouncing around being an activist? Oh, grow up!”
“That’s the kind of put-down men used to use when dealing with the suffragettes, but look where women are today!”
“Yeah, just look at them—overworked, underpaid and still getting slagged off by men! Do you seriously think anything really changes deep down? Anyway you’re kidding yourself if you’re equating the women’s cause with the gays’—”
“I don’t think so, not on the most fundamental human level. The fact is that gays, like women, are oppressed and made to suffer—”
“Oh, stuff that victim spiel! Take responsibility for your actions, for God’s sake, and stop whingeing around boring everyone rigid! If gay activists would spend more time keeping their bloody mouths shut—”
“If gay activists spent more time keeping their bloody mouths shut, the same old prejudice and discrimination would just keep going! Don’t you understand, Gavin? Someone’s got to speak up! How can the world ever progress if we all accept the status quo and do nothing? How can we live in this broken, suffering world, which is still in the process of creation, without busting a gut to help our Creator redeem it all so that everything finally comes right?”
I open my mouth. But then I shut it again.
I find I’ve nothing to say.
So much for the quarrel I’m supposed to be picking. I’m still beating my brains out to dream up a new way to save him when he says: “I think I know why you’re so cynical. It’s because you’re a gay man who’s oppressed and made to suffer but no one comes to your rescue.”
Genuine rage floods through me. “Oh, sod off about the fucking gays, for God’s sake, and stop implying the fucking straights can’t have it just as difficult as they do! I’m a straight and life’s been bloody hell and don’t you ever, ever tell me I’ve had it easier than any gay!”
He stares at me. “You’re not straight,” he insists, obstinate as ever. “You’re just saying that to put me off.” Then some kind of penny drops. “You’ve staged this whole quarrel because you think you’d be doing me a favour by breaking up our relationship!”
“Oh, piss off!”
He slips away without another word, but I know he’ll be back.
Disaster.
I get home to be greeted with the news that Gil’s credit card’s been negged. Susanne tried to run it to cover his next session which this week has been scheduled for Friday.
“That’s a complication we certainly don’t need,” says Elizabeth crossly. “I don’t want him to miss a session, but we can’t keep him on when there’s no money. It would look too suspicious.”
“Maybe now he’s broke he’ll quit.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll do that, pet! He’s well and truly hooked . . . No, what I’ve got to do is encourage him to find the cash. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow, say Friday’s slot will have to be cancelled but we’ll fit him in on Monday if he can wire the money before the weekend.”
“Any word from Colin?”
“None, so I’m sure we’re safe, but when you see him on Friday take care to lull any suspicions he might have—dole out the ecstasy in cartloads.”
I begin to worry again about my equipment going on strike. Life’s suddenly nothing but a nightmare . . .
The next day’s Thursday and after the wake-up shift I call Carta. I’ve spent half of last night working out that I have to make this call. I know I let her down by backing off when we last spoke. It’s true I can’t give her the information she wants, but she’s got to know I’m not just a shit who doesn’t give a damn.
“Hey, it’s me,” I say when she picks up. “Just to say I’m sorry I flaked out on you like that. I’m not good when women get upset but that’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I care so much I can’t handle it.”
She seems stunned by this admission and I’m not surprised. I’m stunned by it myself. I rehearsed it over and over again while I was lying awake last night, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to say it to her. It makes me sound a real wimp, but I feel only the truth has a hope of working here.
And it does work. She says slowly: “I’m sorry too, sorry I got upset. I shouldn’t have tried to download all that stuff over the phone.”
She says nothing else on the subject and neither do I, but I know everything’s been put right and we’re still friends. Hurrying on in a rush of relief I ask: “Any word from Colin?”
“Zilch.”
“Shit.” But suddenly I see how I can make amends to her for my broken-reed performance the other night. “Look, Colin’s got a visit to Austin Friars booked for tomorrow at the end of the day. Stop by at six-thirty and I should be able to tell you more about what’s going on.”
She’s delighted. “Great! I’d really appreciate that!”
“On second thoughts make that six-forty. I don’t want the two of you meeting on the doorstep,” I say, and blow a kiss into the phone. “That’s platonic,” I add hastily before ending the call.
Then I sigh and start fantasising again about the magic shag. It’s a waste of time, I know it is, but I need a fantasy or two to keep me going at present when life’s such a bloody nightmare.
If only there was some way of saving Gil. But there’s no way now. No way at all.
I’m so stressed out that on Friday morning I eat too much cooked breakfast after the wake-up shift and start to worry seriously about my weight. I can’t afford to put on a single pound. Got to look perfect. I have no control over so much of my life at present but at least I can control my body.
Later, as I flush away the vomit in the lavatory bowl, I remember Nicholas talking of wholeness, of how body, mind and spirit should be one. My body’s in perfect health but the rest of me’s cut off from it and strung out on a rack. What’s my spirit anyway? I suppose it’s got to be my real self, Gavin Blake Me, but is the spirit just the fundamental “I” of personality or does it exist above and beyond all that? And most baffling of all, who’s that mysterious Other, the one who’s not “I,” the one who’s not any of my roles, the one who keeps whispering through the closed doors of my mind: “Help Carta. Save Gil. Help Carta. Save Gil . . .”
The buzzer sounds. I’m still standing stark naked in front of the bathroom mirror where I planted myself for a fat-cell check. Wiping all dotty thoughts about an Other from my mind, I vault into my jeans and sprint off to face the next client who wants to use me.
Colin fails to arrive on time for his double-slot which concludes the late-shift. I wait and wait, fearful that he’s sussed the link with Asherton, yet when I finally call Elizabeth she’s still sure he’ll show.
At six o’clock, just when I’ve written him off, the buzzer sounds and I let him in.
“Hi!” I say concerned as he stumps out of the lift. “You okay? I was worried.”
He grunts, offering neither an apology nor an explanation, and suddenly I’m remembering our first meeting when he was upset but concealing his feelings behind a mask of bad temper.
“Can I get you a drink?” I ask, keeping calm.
He shakes his head, hangs up his coat with a savage swipe of his arm and starts to plod upstairs.
If he wants to unnerve me he’s succeeded. In fact I’m so unnerved that I activate the cameras. There’s no need to record the scene now Asherton’s no longer interested in him, but if there’s trouble I can at least film it so that Elizabeth can see I wasn’t at fault in any way.
I decide to tackle the problem head on
. “Hey!” I say, closing in behind him as he stands staring out of the window. “What’s up?”
Swinging round he slaps me so hard on the cheek that I reel backwards and sprawl across the bed. Adrenaline floods through me. I’m on my feet in a flash, every muscle tensed, all my self-defence lessons slotting into sequence in my brain. Thank God I switched on the cameras! Although he’s never been violent before, his buttoned-up emotions and filthy temper make him a prime candidate for the meltdown scenario— but what’s triggered this meltdown? He’s got to have uncovered the connection with Asherton, there’s no other explanation.
“Okay,” I say rapidly as he stands panting and glaring at me. “Okay, okay, okay, whatever I’ve done I’m sorry, but can you tell me what it is? Honestly, Colin, I’m in the dark here—” I’m in pain too. My face is still throbbing.
“You’ve lied to me!” he says, his voice shaking with rage. “You’ve deceived me about a most fundamental aspect of your true nature!”
“Huh?” I’m so relieved that he hasn’t uncovered the Asherton link that I’m not as quick on the uptake as I should be.
“You fuck women!”
Oh my God. How did he—
“No, don’t you deny it—I’ve had enough of your bloody lies! I know you’ve been seeing a woman! I’ve had you watched!”
“Watched? But for God’s sake why?”
“I didn’t like the way you looked at that woman last weekend. I suppose you thought I was so infatuated with you that I wouldn’t notice!”
“Well, I may have flirted mildly with her but that was nothing, just a bit of social role-playing—”
“You bloody liar, you were having an affair with her and she asked you to help her get money out of me for St. Benet’s!”
“Colin, I have never—repeat, never—had an affair with Carta Graham! Why should you think—”
The Heartbreaker Page 36