Men I've Loved Before

by Adele Parks

  The moment Matthew put down the glasses and wine, Nat excitedly said, ‘Hey, isn’t that Disney’s Fantasia playing? You know, the part where there are volcanoes erupting, lots of boiling lava and earthquakes, and a large carnivorous dinosaur attacking another dinosaur.’ She started to nod her head to the tune bursting through the sound system. She’d recognised the music from an afternoon when she and Neil had visited the niece and nephews last month. Angus had played the DVD on repeat for about three hours, mostly to scare his younger sister. Nat had thought the DVD should come with a certificate classification, she thought she might get nightmares, let alone Sophia. But now she was thrilled that she’d heard the music and made the link. She thought it was an impressive conversation opener.

  ‘I think it’s more commonly recognised as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, a condensed version of the natural history of the earth from the formation of the planet, to the first living creatures, to the age, reign and extinction of the dinosaurs,’ said Matthew. ‘I’m gay.’

  For a moment Natalie was too struck by the depth of his general knowledge to fully take in what Matthew had said, and when she did, it took all her self-restraint not to laugh out loud. She wasn’t able to entirely suppress her amusement, though. A grin started to seep across her face.

  ‘Always have been,’ he added.

  ‘That’s usually the case,’ she said, now chortling slightly.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he asked, nervous and offended.

  ‘I am funny,’ said Nat. She poured the wine and clinked glasses. At least now she was sure she’d enjoy herself.

  18

  The pink brick building stood on the outskirts of the town centre, nestled next to respectable residential streets. Neil wondered what the neighbours thought about living cheek by jowl with a strip joint. He decided they probably didn’t care; it was part of London’s rich tapestry. The residents were only likely to complain if the girls were irresponsible about their recycling or if they did not scoop poop deposited by small pets. Besides, it was quite a discreet strip joint. The windows were blackened and there were no neon flashing lights advertising the activities that took place within. The thin blue canvas canopy that poked into the street and the roped-off doorway, complete with a substantial-sized geezer checking the suitability of punters, could have signalled a private casino or even a smart restaurant. As Neil squeezed past the greasy, hefty guy, he wondered what the bouncers were looking for. Who wasn’t suitable to pay fifty quid to take a look at a stranger’s snatch? Who was?

  The friends stood in the small reception for a moment, waiting for access into the inner sanctum. Karl looked relaxed and confident. Tim looked wasted. Neil tried to hide behind a yucca plant, a plastic one.

  ‘Look, Tim. They say, “Fully nude table dancing”, no half measures,’ Karl said, pointing to a notice Blu-tacked to the wall.

  ‘Is it possible to be partially nude?’ slurred Tim.

  Neil thought that it probably wasn’t. Nude, by definition, meant naked, didn’t it? Bare. Undressed. Exposed.

  ‘Look, here in this leaflet, they claim to have a “worldwide reputation”,’ Karl added.

  ‘Right up there with the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids,’ mumbled Neil.

  Karl ignored him and continued talking to Tim. ‘You’ll like it in here. There’s an incredibly friendly personal service.’

  ‘Yup. That’s guaranteed, providing you have a wad of cash,’ added Neil.

  ‘Why can’t you just be cool?’ snapped Karl, exasperated. ‘Just relax. Try and get in the mood.’

  Suddenly, a woman in her twenties appeared from behind a crimson curtain like a genie in a panto. A genie with bleached hair and two fantastical orbs. She looked as if she had a couple of goldfish bowls surgically attached to her rib cage. Despite his best intentions, Neil couldn’t take his eyes off them. E cups, at a guess. The woman caught him looking and winked lasciviously. He wanted to explain he wasn’t admiring them so much as staring in genuine amazement but he stopped himself. It was hardly a compliment. She was wearing a clingy, glittery red dress which plunged to her waist at both the back and the front and split to her upper thigh, both left and right. Neil wasn’t sure it would be absolutely necessary for her to take the dress off later as very little was being left to the imagination anyway. The dress put Neil in mind of making Christmas decorations with little Angus and Sophia last year. They’d taken a circle of white paper, folded it into eight and then hacked away chunks of the paper. When they unfolded the circle, they’d been left with tremulous, dainty snowflakes which were more space than substance. This woman’s dress was the same.

  She smiled at them. It was a cursory, efficient smile but Neil couldn’t blame her for not putting her heart and soul into the smile. When Neil had first visited a strip joint with Karl, many years ago, he’d imagined the strippers would all be pitiful eastern Europeans with endless degrees but no legal right to work in the UK. He had expected that they would all be the sort of girls who sent their earnings home to poor, sick mothers. Unfortunates. In fact, the strippers were mostly hardened London girls who knew they could make more money taking off their clothes than either serving coffee in a greasy spoon or laundering hotel sheets. Most of them pitied the punters, not the other way round, and few managed to entirely hide the fact.

  The hostess waved her arm in the direction of the club and wished the guys a pleasant evening.

  ‘Will do, babe,’ said Karl with a leer.

  ‘Absolutely,’ enthused Tim.

  Neil wondered which one of them sounded most embarrassing. They scooted through numerous red lace sheets and curtains of dangling beads which glimmered and shone like tears. They passed purple walls and plastic plants in pots and headed towards the bar, where Neil walked directly into the arms (or more accurately, the tits) of another hostess. This one was also wearing a snowflake dress, a couple of goldfish bowls and a professional smile, but she had dark hair, not blond. Her face was very shiny as she had glistening eye shadow, diamanté stones on her eyelashes and her plump red lips were wet with gloss. In fact everything about her glimmered: her earrings, dress, shoes and nails all sparkled and glinted so that it was almost painful to look at her. She was holding a glass of champagne. She dipped her finger into the bubbles and then placed her finger in her mouth. She sucked on it, hard, while trying to establish eye contact with Neil. He thought he might giggle. He thought of Nat. It was the sort of thing she did when licking out baking bowls on the rare occasions she made a cake. Nat swore nothing else tasted as delicious as uncooked cake mix.

  Neil shook his head. Hell, that thought wasn’t going to help him get a hard-on. Nat baking! Could things be any more domesticated, any less erotic? Although, thinking about it, they usually did make love after she’d baked, there was something about the smell of baking in their home that made both of them feel like it. He was aware of a twitch in his groin.

  He looked round and noticed three things. One, Karl was already surrounded by a group of four girls, a couple of whom were topless. They were brushing up against Karl’s arm, although Neil was pretty sure that actual physical contact with nude parts was prohibited. Two, Tim was sitting at a table and there was a stunning redhead on his knee. He looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights but a rabbit that was excited, rather than terrified, by the thought of the inevitable collision. And three, less than a metre to his right, there was a woman gyrating against a pole. She was wearing little other than nail and hair extensions.

  ‘Should we have a drink?’ he asked ‘his’ hostess. It seemed only polite as she was making such an effort, still earnestly sucking her forefinger and all.

  ‘Mine’s champagne. I’m a girl who likes it fizzy.’ She shimmied a little when she said the word fizzy, lest either of them were in any doubt about the meaning of her innuendo. Neil was aware that the ‘champagne’ that they were given was probably cava and yet cost ten times over the odds. Still, he had to push on. They’d sunk about six pints before they’d left
the pub but he wasn’t floating, he had yet to hit that exquisite feeling of carelessness. He quaffed a glass of bubbly and then another, which finally supplied him with the confidence to take a more leisurely look around.

  Despite the gruelling aerobic workouts the girls performed on stage, he noticed that the dancers were all pleasantly curvy. Besides the surgical enhancements, they had large bottoms and strong thighs, perhaps as a result of the idea that most men like something to hold on to. Fair enough. It was a busy night. There were three large groups that looked like stag parties or gangs of colleagues. They sat in the corners and competitively tried to out-spend, out-drink and out-cuss one another. Plus, there were at least half a dozen smaller groups of mates, similar to their own, and a large number of loners. The loners unnerved Neil. They seemed to take it all too seriously. Because it was so busy, there were not many girls floating around the club looking for someone to dance for, most had attached themselves to a punter and stayed close by.

  Neil knew the routine. These women had to chat to the customers, make them feel really special, get them to buy lots of overpriced drinks and then, ideally, take them to the private rooms for private dances. They had to do it in such a way as to create the illusion that they found beery, leery, often fat, balding and old men simply fascinating and that they were just dying to take off their clothes for them. Indeed they’d do it even if they weren’t being paid hard cash! It was a chimera that was eluding Neil tonight. It was a blatant fact that the event was all about a transaction and the balance of power. Who had the most money? Who had the most sex? How much sex could be bought for how much money?

  Neil swallowed down another glass of bubbles and willed himself into the mood. He just wanted to lie back and sink into sex. Not think about anything much at all. Another glass was sunk. Another bottle bought. Finally, sex started to close in on him. Overwhelm and overawe him. Sex was in the air. In his head. In his fingertips. The hostess watched him pass the point of no return as she played with her hair, her throat, as she brushed her hands across her nipples and thighs.

  Neil was nervous and hard at once and somewhat relieved to suddenly notice that Karl and Tim were back by his side. Their hostesses stood by while the guys propped themselves up against the stage. Their eyes were level with the calves of a dancer. She crouched down, so that for a fleeting, exciting moment her sparkly gusset flashed just in front of their faces.

  ‘Good legs,’ slurred Tim.

  ‘You’re looking at her legs?’ asked Karl in bewilderment.

  ‘It’s because she wears heels all day,’ Tim added.

  Neil couldn’t speak properly. He was hypnotised by red talons, bleached hair, year-round tans and slinky dresses that threatened to slip at any moment. How much had he drank with his hostess? More than was sensible. More than normal. More than ever before? Enough, at least, to stop him thinking about babies.

  ‘Many of the girls are trained dancers, Cherry was just telling me so,’ commented Tim.

  ‘Maybe these strippers do refer to themselves as dancers and they very well might have a talent that way, it hardly matters,’ said Karl dismissively. ‘None of the punters care if the girls can do-si-do or demi plié, the important moves are thrusting and flicking. Now, who’s up for a private dance?’

  Tim shook his head emphatically. ‘No, enough is enough. Ali would kill me as it is.’

  ‘But you are not planning on telling her.’

  ‘No, but if she found out.’

  ‘You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,’ pointed out Karl.

  ‘No,’ said Tim. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Cherry, the redhead he’d been drinking with. Was she a genuine redhead, he wondered. Would she be freckled? Would her nipples be pink? Would her pubes be that same erotic, charged colour? Neil was staring at his brunette in the same curious and intense way.

  ‘OK, I will,’ slurred Neil.

  ‘What?’ Karl and Tim chorused, turning on Neil. In the past Neil and Karl had, on occasion, visited a strip joint together – corporate entertainment if they had their big boss over from Japan or maybe a stag do – but never before had Neil agreed to a private dance. He would watch the girls on the poles on the centre stage and he’d buy drinks but he’d never entered the VIP lounge. Karl often had and he returned from the concealed rooms with stories of girls sitting on his lap, feeling his erection through his thin trousers, stories of blow jobs and hand jobs which were legally prohibited if money changed hands but Karl always insisted that the girls simply found him irresistible and did it for free. Indeed, he had once dated a stripper that he met here, for a month or so. Neil wasn’t sure he believed Karl’s stories but suddenly he felt a need to be up close and personal, even if he had to pay for it. He couldn’t remember when he and Nat had last had sex. Weeks ago. Before he mentioned wanting a baby. Even then, it wasn’t the raunchy sort of sex where Nat thrust her breasts in his face and threw her head back and moaned. It had been quiet and pleasant. Neil didn’t want sex with his hostess, just a dance, just a bit of sexiness. What was the harm?

  Neil straightened up, raised his chin and, in the manner of someone going off to war, he marched (or rather swayed) in the direction of the VIP lounge.

  19

  ‘Don’t, don’t. Seriously, I’m going to be sick,’ Nat said as she battled to sit straight. She was literally laughing so much that her stomach hurt. She’d forgotten just how hilarious Matthew could be, or maybe she’d never known, or maybe she just wasn’t used to laughing much at the moment; she and Neil hadn’t shared as much as a grin for days now. She reached for her water glass and took calming sips.

  ‘Don’t gulp because, knowing you, it will come back out through your nose,’ warned Matthew.

  He was referring to an incident where once Nat had ‘snorted’ Fanta out through her nose and on to his best friend, just before said best friend had to attend an important job interview. The memory no longer caused Nat to shrivel in shame, and she chuckled. ‘God, Yes, I was accident-prone, wasn’t I? Do you remember when I met your mother and father for the first time?

  ‘Yes, you decided to dye your hair before the lunch date.’

  ‘It turned a sort of mucus green colour.’

  ‘Lovely picture you paint.’

  ‘That’s how your dad described it!’

  ‘Rude bugger. Sorry. I apologise sincerely on his behalf,’ said Matthew formally.

  ‘I was mortified at the time but when I look back now I think he was trying to make a joke, you know, lighten the atmosphere.’

  ‘You mean because you’d knocked my mother’s plate of spaghetti on to her lap and ruined her Jacques Vert dress.’ Matthew couldn’t help but grin at the memory, it was so utterly slapstick it was impossible not to.

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ giggled Nat.

  ‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow in mock suspicion.

  ‘No!’ Nat paused. ‘Although if I had, no one could have blamed me. Your mum hated me.’

  ‘She did, didn’t she?’ agreed Matthew honestly.

  ‘And she never hid the fact.’ Even through the laughter, and after all this time, Nat was still a little hurt and indignant. She glanced at Matt and he seemed to understand her old insecurity. Gracefully, he opted to put the ancient history to bed.

  ‘No. But she doesn’t like anyone, least of all herself,’ he explained simply.

  Nat felt an enormous wave of liberation swoosh through her body. It wasn’t her fault; it was Mrs Jackson’s problem. Oh, what a relief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nat mumbled.

  ‘It’s OK. I know you really didn’t drop the spaghetti on purpose.’

  Nat considered explicitly explaining that she was saying sorry that Matthew had an unhappy mother, rather than sorry about the dry-cleaning bill, but when she glanced at him, she knew he understood. He was retreating into humour and who could blame him? Parents were so complicated.

  ‘And I’m sorry I broke that weird, antique boot rack at your boss’s ho
use. Do you remember? I thought it was a stool and sat down on it to take my shoes off.’

  ‘Ah, you did him a favour. It was as ugly as hell,’ grinned Matthew.

  ‘Quite. But you didn’t see it like that at the time.’

  ‘No, sorry, I was quite stroppy about it then, wasn’t I?’

  ‘I think the final straw was when we got home that evening and we realised I’d locked us out of the house. I’m sorry about that too.’

  It was clear, without either of them having to say so overtly, that they were both sorry about anything big, or small, that had ever caused the other upset, discomfort or disappointment. The bottle of wine and time had helped them reach this affable amnesty.

  ‘Are you still a disaster zone?’

  ‘No. I’m not,’ said Nat, thinking about it.

  ‘What changed?’

  ‘I suppose I’m simply not as nervous as I used to be.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I get the monopoly on nervousness. I spent the eight months of our romance wondering when I could admit to being gay.’

  ‘I spent the eight months wondering when I could admit to being tone deaf.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s much more of an obstacle to the happily ever after, I agree,’ Matthew joked.

  Nat could barely remember the accident-prone, nervous, miserable being she once was, but talking to Matthew was bringing back memories of her more gauche and glum self. When she’d first picked up the Little Black Book, all she’d thought about was the numerous beginnings the small leather book represented but Nat knew there was more to the past than beginnings. There were endings too and disappointments, mistakes and insecurities. She hadn’t considered that before she’d picked up the phone.