Devil in Disguise

by Julian Clary

  And even if Daniel was at home the second factor might not be in place: alcohol. Experience had taught him the painful truth that straight men rarely gave in to his advances when they were sober. The golden rules for the homosexual seduction of the utterly unattainable straight man were as follows:

  1. He must be alone, with no risk of interruption or discovery.

  2. Moderate amounts of drink should be consumed. (Too much and you risk impotence — an insult to your efforts.)

  3. Cover of darkness can do half the work for you.

  4. The more spontaneous and inconsequential you can make it seem, the greater the chance of a repeat performance.

  5. Do things to him that his girlfriend wouldn’t or couldn’t.

  What Daniel’s thoughts were on the whole sordid business Simon could only guess. In the early days he had seemed uncomfortable and guilty, but as time went on he seemed to bow to the inevitable. Then, after several weeks, there came a moment when Simon knew he could, with just a moderate amount of connivance, have his way with Daniel. The object of his desire began to play along with the arrangements and, worst of all, to skip the pretence at semi-conscious seduction.

  Once, they had been left alone for the afternoon in Molly’s flat while she went to an audition. Daniel had smiled at Simon and unzipped his fly, pushing him down to his knees with a killer smile and a ‘Go on, you know you want it.’ Worse still, Daniel was stone-cold sober. Of course Simon obliged — it would have been rude not to — but his heart wasn’t in it. This spelt the end. How could Simon believe that Daniel was straight if he was sober and awake, aroused and demanding? Reticence and a hint of disgust were vital components of the erotic cocktail and they were sadly missing. This was not how it worked. It was with a heavy heart that Simon wiped his lips after the deed was done. The deep, wide and everlasting well of desire began to dry up. The twenty—four— hour obsession with Daniel was reduced to an eighteen—, then twelve—, then six—, ever diminishing.

  New conquests caught Simon’s eye — the Turkish youth serving at the corner shop, who was always reading Nuts magazine, for example. Simon found himself in there several times a day, buying yoghurt and courgettes with as much significance as he could muster. Then there was the young husband who had scowled at his wife in the supermarket, given Simon a look that could only be described as ‘significant’ and disappeared in the direction of the gentlemen’s latrine.

  The joy of specialising in liaisons with straight men, Simon knew, meant there were never any painful, tearful, breaking-up scenes — on the part of the straight men, anyway. He never had to endure those ‘difficult’ conversations. He simply moved on. They would never admit to any emotional involvement or hurt, and if they did, the game would be up anyway. Perfect. No mess.

  As Simon’s focus drifted away from Daniel, so the reality of his behaviour towards Molly dawned on him. It was like waking up from a dream. How could he? What had he been thinking of? Molly was the most significant person in his world to him — like a sister. How could he have allowed such weakness to outweigh the value of their friendship? She understood him like nobody else did. Imagine how she would feel if she ever knew the truth! It made him cold with horror to think of it. What stupid risks he’d been taking, and all for fleeting sexual pleasure! Thank goodness the business with Daniel had run its course and they had not been discovered in flagrante.

  What a filthy, dirty business gay desires are, he thought sorrowfully. He had very nearly sacrificed his best friend on the Altar of Cock. Simon felt ashamed.

  Never again, he swore. I’ll never risk our precious friendship like that, ever.

  Meanwhile Genita L’Warts, a client of Boris Norris, had been promised a fast track to supersonic stardom by the never less than overexcited agent.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Simon. He was determinedly offhand about his so-called career, world-weary enough to believe things only when he saw them.

  ‘There’s a thirty-year career waiting for you, if you want it,’ Boris said sincerely. ‘Think about it. If you want to go to the ball I’ll be your coachman.’

  ‘I’m not Cinderella, you know,’ said Simon tartly. ‘And you’re a piece of shit. You think you can make money out of me. Well, go on. Try! We’ll scratch each other’s backs.’

  ‘I just happen to think you are the epitome of post-modern culture,’ said Boris, clearly quite hurt by Simon’s words. ‘And you’re right. My main interest in you is as a commodity. There’s no sin in that. But I foresee a big future for you. There are things that could get in the way of my plan for you. Homophobia and your drinking. I’m not sure we can do anything about either, but why not give me a chance?’

  Boris’s plan was to transfer Genita L’Warts to a more middle-class, more educated audience. They would love this exotic creature, this vulgar horror, who made you splutter and gasp with shock but laugh so hard you felt slightly guilty about it afterwards.

  ‘Here’s your choice. Stay on the gay circuit and ride the crest of a wave for a couple of months, or break out, evolve onto the arts-theatre circuit. We’ll conquer London first, maybe skip the provinces and go to New York in a couple of months.’

  ‘Have an egg roll, Mr Goldstone,’ said Simon.

  Boris immediately put his plan into action. When one of his other acts was struck down with shingles, the opportunity arose to launch Genita onto the mainstream with a three-week late-night show at the King’s Head in Islington. He visited Simon with the exciting news. ‘I’ve got you the interview with the Evening Standard. You can promote the show.’

  ‘My cup runneth over,’ said Simon.

  ‘You’re cynical before your time,’ said Boris.

  ‘And you’re rubbing your hands together rather tellingly,’ said Simon.

  As it turned out, no press was necessary: the run sold out within days. Simon didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the prospect of a straighter audience. ‘Look on the bright side. I’m less likely to get crabs. And if they don’t like me? Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!’

  His confident attitude paid off. Confronted with a silent, seated audience of the mint-sucking middle classes,’ Genita excelled herself. She found new targets to lampoon. Her particular brand of anarchy seemed all the more shocking to the well-heeled and well-fed.

  ‘Fancy people like you shelling out to see me!’ she’d mock them, gently to begin with. ‘Aren’t you all saving hard for a holiday time-share in Tuscany? You’re just the same as a gay audience but with worse haircuts.’

  On her opening night she slipped a bit of raw liver into her mouth while doing a frenzied impersonation of Princess Michael of Kent. She then pretended to bite off her own tongue and spat it at the front row. Genita liked it best when she heard women weeping as they stumbled towards the exits. The reviews were ecstatic.

  Boris brought on board a brilliant costume maker, who designed outfits with concealed panels. At a given moment Genita would freeze and the lighting would change so that she became a glowing blue silhouette. As ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ boomed out of the speakers, she would discreetly pull a string and a cloud of white butterflies would appear to float out from under her luminous silk dress. By the time Genita had fulfilled Boris’s expectations and sold out six nights at the Bloomsbury, the butterflies had been replaced by doves sprayed with iridescent glitter, and the sardines with a pig’s head.

  It was a week after these triumphant gigs that Simon had his final encounter with Daniel. It had not been planned and really shouldn’t have happened at all. Simon was well on the road to success with the Turkish youth from the corner shop and had arranged for Hail to come round to his place one evening to give him a private Turkish lesson. Daniel hadn’t entered his thoughts for weeks. But Molly had invited him for a celebratory dinner at her house, and Daniel had been there, looking particularly tasty in a white T-shirt and jeans, lit from behind by a lava lamp. After three bottles of champagne,’ Molly had been pie-eyed with tiredness. ‘I’m completely sizzle
d,’ she said, and Simon laughed.

  ‘Go off to bed, darling. I shall let myself out. Thank you for a lovely evening. Delicious shepherd’s pie.’

  Molly stumbled over to the kitchen and filled a glass with water. She leant over Simon and gave him a sloppy kiss on his forehead. ‘Congratulations on everything, darling. I really mean that. The world is your oyster now. The sky is the limit. Goodnight, love.’ She blew a kiss to Daniel but staggered a bit in the delivery, and he jumped up to help her into the bedroom.

  Two minutes later he returned, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  ‘Out like a light,’ he said, then flopped down on the sofa next to Simon and closed his eyes.

  ‘Just the two of us left at the party, it seems …’ said Simon.

  Daniel smiled, saying nothing and keeping his eyes firmly shut. Seconds later his thighs drifted lazily apart and Simon knew what was expected of him. He set to work eagerly, happy to oblige now that Daniel seemed like a straight man again.

  It was the sound of Molly’s fist slamming on the bedroom-door panel that alerted them to their exposure. Daniel’s automatic response was to leap to his feet and pull up his jeans in one movement lasting about two seconds. His hands clasped his now covered genitals protectively, like a fireguard. ‘What’s going on?’ he said unconvincingly, looking around him as if he’d just been beamed in from a time-travelling experiment.

  Simon’s final position was less dignified: he was crouching on the carpet, naked from the waist down. He raised his head and looked at Molly, as thick drool lowered itself from his mouth to the hearthrug beneath him. The three of them stared at each other. The silence was deafening.

  ‘I see,’ said Molly, very slowly and quietly.

  Molly couldn’t remember afterwards what she threw first, but it was something breakable — either a lamp or a pair of seventies glass vases. It didn’t really matter because everything followed in the end. The sound of shattering porcelain helped her to express her anger and distress and she lunged around the room, grabbing anything she could lift and flinging it at her lover and her best friend as they dived for cover. The TV set she couldn’t lift, but she tipped it onto its side and it made a satisfying deadly thud. All of this was accompanied by shrieks and screams, expletives and threats. When she finally stopped — only, it has to be said, when there was nothing left to break and everything that wasn’t nailed to the walls had been launched across the room — she realised that Simon and Daniel had left. The front door was open. She closed it behind them, turned and viewed the devastation. Stepping carefully over the shattered fragments and jagged edges, she slumped onto the sofa, too numb to cry.

  After a good ten minutes of deep breathing, she felt contrastingly calm and cool, like a deserted street after a hailstorm. It was the middle of the night and she was still a bit drunk, but she knew she had to get out of that flat right away. The bedroom had escaped her rampage and she took her suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and opened it on the — bed — the very bed she had been sleeping soundly in fifteen minutes before while her boyfriend betrayed her with her best friend. With this thought the tears streamed down her cheeks. Of course she’d known that Simon’s lustful desires centred on attractive ultra-straight men, but she’d never imagined he would steal her boyfriend. How could he? They had been confidants, trusted and true soulmates.

  With a sudden hot rush she remembered all the times Simon had engineered things to be with Daniel while she was otherwise occupied. The nights she’d waited outside the cinema, the evenings that Daniel was late home because Simon had been discussing the merits of Swiss or Roman blinds. And then there had followed occasions when she had reached under the duvet to initiate their lovemaking ritual and Daniel had uncharacteristically declined. It all became clear. She didn’t for a moment suppose that that evening had been the first of their illicit trysts.

  She had stood in the doorway for quite a few seconds before she’d banged the panel with her hand, and there was something very relaxed and comfortable about what was going on between them. Daniel’s undulating hip thrusts and Simon’s moans of pleasure had a musicality about them that was more of a waltz than a quickstep. They had been there before, clearly. She was completely amazed by the realisation. Daniel was, or so she’d thought, one hundred per cent heterosexual. She had never had the slightest inkling otherwise. She paused and shook her head with amazement. It just wasn’t within the bounds of possibility. It was laughable. And so she laughed — a bitter, disbelieving laugh that soon turned into a cry of despair.

  When the latest wave of emotion subsided,’ Molly seized the window of opportunity and threw her belongings into the suitcase. She knew she would never return to this flat, so she chose with as much care as her hysterical mood would allow. She went into the bathroom clutching an empty Tesco carrier-bag and swept the contents of ‘her’ shelf into it. She plucked her expensive shower gel from its hook in the shower cubicle and threw in all of her cosmetics. Clothes were rifled through next, and tossed in a jumbled mess into the case. Within twenty minutes she was packed and couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  The suitcase had not been enough so the excess was in a black bin-liner. Her exit from the flat was not, therefore, as glamorous as she might have hoped. She paused long enough in front of the bathroom mirror to rearrange her curly hair, wipe the tearstains from her cheeks, apply some dark brown eye-shadow and some subtle tan blusher.

  Then she walked out of Daniel’s flat with her head held high,’ wearing four-inch heels and an expensive black mock-moleskin coat that made her look and feel a little like Kate Bush wandering madly over the moors. Molly knew she must be over the limit for driving, but the alcohol was only having a mild anaesthetic effect now, enabling her to act in her own best interests.

  She threw her luggage into the boot and buckled herself into the driver’s seat. She turned the key, started the engine and decided to wait while the windows de-misted. Trying her best to live in the moment, as Jane had advised,’ Molly thought about how much she loved her car. It was like a womb. When she was inside with the windows locked, it became her private world. It would have to take care of her now. Protect her. Molly pressed the button for the CD player and closed her eyes. Petula Clark’s voice rang out, begging her sailor to stop his roaming.

  Molly had no idea where she was going. The simple act of fleeing was enough to satisfy her for the moment. As she drove away, and out of Daniel’s life, she opened the windows and let the cool, damp air invigorate her spirits. Then she had an idea.

  ‘Lilia!’ she said to herself. ‘I’ll go and see Lilia.’

  An hour and a half later she found herself driving through the dark Northamptonshire countryside. The windows were firmly closed now and rain was hammering on the car roof. She was going very slowly down a narrow country lane. She didn’t seem to need to direct her trusty car: it just took her, slowly and safely, to her destination.

  She pulled up outside Kit-Kat Cottage and turned off the engine with a sigh of relief. She had arrived in one piece. The porch light was on but otherwise it was in darkness. What should she do? It was now four in the morning. Should she rouse the house, making a dramatic, tear-drenched entrance? Or should she wait until morning when there were signs of life within and her arrival would be more conventional?

  Well, she figured, she was an actress. She would go for the more memorable approach. She applied some blood-red lipstick,’ tousled her hair to give it some lift and crept up the gravelled driveway like a burglar. She wondered whether to ring the bell or tap lightly on the front door but then had the bright idea of telephoning. She retrieved her mobile phone from her handbag and dialled Lilia’s number. It rang ten or eleven times before an answer came.

  ‘Yes? Who is it?’ The accent sounded odd but it was clearly Lilia’s voice.

  ‘Lilia? It’s Molly. I’m so sorry to disturb you at this time of night, but I’m outside your front door. Do you mind if I come in?’

  ‘Molly, my
child! What are you doing here?’ said Lilia, reassuringly German once more. ‘Of course — of course, you can come in. You poor thing! Something must have happened … I am coming now to let you in.’

  The line went dead and within a few seconds the hall light came on. Then Lilia was standing before her in her embroidered kimono, arms outstretched in greeting, her face the epitome of motherly love. ‘Molly! Molly! Come in, you must be freezing. Oh dear!’

  Molly fell into the old woman’s arms, sobbing already, a long-distance runner at the end of her gruelling journey, collapsing with relief. ‘Lilia. Thank you for opening the door, for being here for me.’

  Lilia pulled her in and led her distraught visitor into the lounge. ‘Sit there,” she said, pushing Molly into the armchair and shuffling off to the sideboard to get two glasses and a bottle of brandy. ‘You need a drink. Sit quietly, drink this, and when you are ready, tell me everything. Keep breathing at all times.’

  Molly was hyperventilating, her inhalations rasping and raw.

  ‘Sit still. Be calm,’ Lilia commanded. ‘You are home now. Relax!’

  Slowly Molly’s breathing returned to normal and she ceased flailing and rocking from side to side.

  ‘Now,’ said Lilia,’ ‘tell me what has occurred. Your boyfriend Daniel, I suspect. Am I right?’

  Molly wiped her eyes. ‘How did you know that?’

  They talked until dawn. Molly explained in great detail the relationship between her and Simon, and how she was now certain that the affair between him and Daniel had been going on under her nose for months. She recounted each and every occasion when Simon had made arrangements with her just to be sure she was out of the way. She trembled in the recalling, she choked as she described the scene she had witnessed on the sofa, and she wailed her distress to a deeply sympathetic Lilia,’ who rocked her in her arms and told her everything would be all right.