by Swan, Tarn
I ran the short distance to The Green to find that Twinkles had become an object of attention. A small group of people had gathered around the base of the tree and were shouting advice and instructions about what how best he could get down. Two teenage boys seemed to think it was hysterically funny and one of them picked up a fallen conker and made to throw it up at Twinkles. I barked an order for him to drop it or I would personally drown him in the duck pond. He muttered that he was only joking. I told him that there was nothing funny about persecuting a man who was in a dangerous position. I called up to Twinkles, but he was plastered to the trunk like a tree hugging Druid and was obviously too frightened to respond. There was nothing else for it. I would have to go up there and help him down. The last time I’d climbed a tree I’d been about ten and I fell out of it and broke my collarbone. It put me off from playing Tarzan amongst the branches. However, nervous though I was for myself, I was even more nervous for him. He’d break more than his collarbone if he fell from that height. I started to climb.
When I reached him he was ashen faced and clearly petrified. He refused to even consider moving. The branch I was resting my weight on was making some ominous creaking sounds, horse chestnut isn’t the hardest of woods, and I wasn’t about to hang around waiting for it to give way. I put my Dom’s hat on and sternly told him he was going to do exactly as he was told, or else. We both knew there wasn’t a lot I could do to carry out the ‘or else’ while stuck up a tree, but it was the tone that was needed to cut through his fear. I told him that I would go first and he would follow. He was only to look dead ahead and he was to place his hands and feet exactly where I told him. I would not let him fall. It was a slow process, but I finally guided him to the ground where we received a short burst of applause from the spectators. Gabby said she was sorry for sending him up and hugged him tightly. Twinkles was visibly shaking and I must admit that my knees had a slight tremor to them. You get to an age where tree climbing loses all appeal as an activity. There’s no sense of conquest at having scaled the thing, only profound relief that you’d managed to get back down without loss of life or limb. One of the teenagers cheekily asked Twinkles why he hadn’t just used his fairy wings to fly down from the tree. I hastily covered Gabby’s ears as Twinks rounded on him and told him to fuck off. I could understand his reaction, but I didn’t want Gabby hearing that kind of language.
We delivered Gabby and her prizes safely to her door. Twinks assured her he was still her friend. Once home I crossly reprimanded him for his lack of commonsense in pandering to Gabby and endangering himself in the process. It wasn’t a particularly harsh scolding so I was somewhat taken aback when he burst into tears and fled upstairs. I followed and found him sitting at the dressing table crying his heart out. He was distraught. I put it down to delayed shock and mentally chided myself for being insensitive.
Taking his hand I led him over to the bed and lay down holding him as he wept it out. Finally he stopped crying and said he was sorry for being such an utter embarrassment. I said he was no such thing. Lots of people would have been terrified and reacted similarly in the circumstances. He disagreed. Only he could climb a tree and not be able to get back down again. It had been such a stupid ‘gay’ thing to do. I asked him what he meant by a ‘gay’ thing to do, as it seemed to me that getting a sudden attack of vertigo was something that applied across the board, regardless of sexual orientation. He said he meant it was typical of him, because he was always so ‘gay’ and not in a good way.
Excuse me while I tangent here and say how very much I dislike the way the vicious and the ignorant hijack a word and turn it into an antithesis, so that it becomes not so much defining, as confining and ultimately derogatory. Gay is a word that is now often used as a general term of abuse. It’s like the word Spastic that used to refer to someone with Cerebral Palsy, as a term it became so sullied that The Spastic Society changed its name to Scope. It makes me deeply angry. Consequently I was a bit sharp with Twinks and told him that if there was something bothering him could he spit it out properly without use of moronic street idiom. Of course he took a huff and flinging himself off the bed denounced me as an uptight grumpy old bugger and said he was going for a bath.
I left him to it and went downstairs to finish off making dinner. He had his bath and came downstairs wearing his comfy flannelette pyjamas, so I knew he was still upset. I apologised for being a grump and then demanded to know exactly what was bothering him, plainly, or else.
The source of his upset turned out to be work related. As I said, he’s missing Barbara’s company and he also hasn’t taken to the woman who was employed to replace her. He feels she’s formed a clique with the others that he isn’t a part of. Anyway, this morning he overheard this new woman, Pat, talking about him to one of the other girls. She made a remark about not minding gays in general (how generous of her) but he was just a little bit ‘too gay’ and she had then poked fun at some of his mannerisms and then, and this is the bit that made me doubly angry, she said she didn’t know what I saw in him, because most of the time you would never even guess I was gay. God knows what she meant by ‘most of the time.’ Perhaps I occasionally let my wrists go limp or insert a small mince into my walk that gives the clue as to my orientation. She said it was a wonder I wasn’t embarrassed to be associated with Twinkles. Bloody Cheek! Why must people be so judgemental and hurtful? Okay, maybe she didn’t mean for Twinkles to overhear what she said, but why say it in the first place. Think it by all means, we can’t help the little bubbles of prejudice and unkindness that pop up in our mind from time to time, but we don’t have to speak them aloud. And she certainly shouldn’t have said such things to another member of staff, thereby contaminating his workspace and belittling him to his colleagues. She’s obviously one of those people who prefer invisible homosexuals, the kind of gays and lesbians who blend right in with the normal folk.
He wanted to know if he was indeed an embarrassment to me? I said I got embarrassed by some of the things he did, like the dildo trick he’d pulled on poor Gill, but no *he* did not embarrass me. I wouldn’t change any part of him. I meant it too. If, going back to where I started, the Tarn impostor on real earth did in fact have an opposites kind of Twinkles to mine then he could keep him, because I wanted this one with all his gestures, his fads and fashions, his dramas, his shrieks and shouts, and his smile.
Promising that I would never tell anyone inside or outside the family that he had got stuck up a tree I dished up dinner and then we curled up together on the couch and watched a film. I told him not to take Pat’s remarks to heart and said that maybe he and she would learn to like each other in time. He snorted and said he might be a bloody fairy, but he didn’t believe in magic. I playfully swatted him, and then kissed him soundly. We never did see the end of the film.
Well I’d better go. Teddy and Maurice are coming over. Twinkles took advantage of my love and sympathy last night and got me to agree to another rehearsal session. I’m telling you one thing, the moment they arrive I’m confiscating that stick from Teddy. He doesn’t get his chubby little hands on it again until he goes home, though if he really annoys me I just might whack it across his backside to see how he likes it.
18th October 2005:
Chicken Flu
It’s been a demanding few days, not so much work wise as Twinks’ wise. He’s poorly. Chicken flu he claims. The chicken we had last Friday must have been infected. I pointed out that chicken flu had not yet made the leap to the UK let alone humans and he had simply caught my cold. He then demanded to know what kind of Top gave his Bottom a cold? I said I hadn’t given my bottom, or indeed his bottom a cold otherwise we’d both be sneezing out of our backsides and anyway what was it with the term Bottom, he’d used it a few times lately? He said word on the street was that the term Brat, to denote a submissive, was now politically incorrect and had been banned by the Gay Court of Human Rights as degrading and replaced with the word Bottom. I said I didn’t know what street he’d
been wandering along, but on my street Brat was still perfectly acceptable. In fact in my personal view it was more endearing and less degrading than the term Bottom, which made a person sound like no more than an object of use, or a character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I couldn’t see any Ass’s ears on him. He then said I needed to get myself down to the frigging doctors and measured for a hormone patch, because I was getting grouchier by the second and it was like living with Victor Meldrew.
Anyway, leaving bottoms aside, I pointed out that he often passed his colds onto me. That was immaterial, as the colds I apparently gave him were far worse than the ones he gave me and I ought to prostrate myself and beg his forgiveness. I said he could have a lemsip and a hug and lump it. He wisely accepted.
He’s a bit hysterical about this chicken flu thing. I’m tempted to ban him from watching the news because it just hypes him up even more. He made Karen and Paul promise not to take Dominic to feed the ducks at the park in case one of them had flu and coughed on him. Then he asked the manager in Tesco whether he had any proof that the chickens on sale were free of the virus, could he show documentation of origin, vet’s certificates that kind of thing? The manager wearily said no and suggested we just stick to pork. Twinks said how dare he say to stick to pork, claiming to be an Orthodox Jew and it was therefore an insult to suggest such a thing. He could sue. The manager didn’t seem too worried. I suspect that he thought a man wearing red shoes, pink jeans, and a t-shirt whose logo read, ‘Yes, You’ve Guessed it, I’m a lesbian,’ wasn’t likely to be orthodox anything.
Gabby came second to her rival in the conker competition at school last Friday. Twinkles was gutted after all he’d been through to get her the conkers. He reckons the competition was rigged in the boy’s favour. The teacher was probably related and there was some kind of nepotism going on; either that or he’d brought in some specially bred, imported super-conkers. He offered to go give the boy a slap on her behalf (he reckoned he could easily take on a 9 year old) but she said thanks, but no, she’d already done him over. I aired the view that little girls really shouldn’t fight and I hoped she hadn’t gotten herself into trouble at school. She gave me a withering look and said she wasn’t stupid. She had waited until they were out of school before jumping him and didn’t I know it was sexual explicitness to say girls shouldn’t fight? I think I know what she meant. Twinkles solemnly told her that I was very old fashioned and hadn’t yet reconciled myself to living in a modern century. She nodded wisely and said, ‘he’s just like my granddad.’ Twinks loved that, he was grinning from ear to ear as he agreed with her. I’ve warned him that if he ever calls me granddad his life is over!
There are quite a few other bits of news from last week to catch up on, but I’ll have to leave them until later today. Twinkles is loudly demanding that I stop selfishly playing on the computer and come peel him an orange, as he needs the vitamin C to help fight the chest infection that my cold has given him. I suppose I ought to be grateful that chicken flu has given way to a chest infection and that he isn’t demanding I peel grapes for him.
18th October 2005:
A Royal Disagreement
The queen and I had a royal disagreement at lunchtime and I’m afraid I spanked him. He tearfully demanded to know what kind of mean Top spanked his Bottom’s bottom when he was ill. I said the kind of Top who thought his Bottom was behaving like a spoilt BRAT who was in need of a spanked bottom. He’s not speaking to me now, which is a huge relief and I can only hope that he keeps it up for at least an hour so I can have some peace and quiet. He’s sitting on the couch pumicing the hard skin off his heels with an air of martyrdom while lip-synching to Dionne Warwick singing Heartbreaker. What was the disagreement about? Basically I disagreed with having a copy of OK magazine thrown at me along with a mouthful of abuse and I exercised my right as a democratically appointed Dominant to put him over my knee and smack his petulant arse. He’d been reading it while lying on the couch and instead of putting it back on the coffee table when he finished, he’d dropped it on the floor. I didn’t notice and when I was removing the remains of his lunch from the table I accidentally trod on the magazine and ripped a page. He was cross because it was the issue containing the wedding photos of Jordan and Peter Andre, and I’d ruined the middle page spread. I apologised and offered to repair it with sellotape. He flung a fit, as well as the magazine, shouting something about how many fairytale weddings had I been to where the bride and groom were stuck together with frigging sellotape! I told him that anyone who could kick up that much fuss over a silly magazine didn’t have a lot wrong with them.
Talking of lip-synching, I survived Teddy and Maurice’s visit last Thursday night. In fact Teddy took such a huff at my confiscating his cane and parking it safely in a corner that he firmly attached himself to Twinkles and I was left with Maurice as a tutor. Despite his frightening fetish leotard and several sly attempts to feel me over, which I put a swift stop to, he proved to be a very good teacher. I found his less strident and less intense approach much easier to cope with and he actually succeeded in easing some of my awkward tension. He said it didn’t take a pedigree from the Royal Ballet School to do what we were doing. All I needed to do was memorise and follow a prearranged set of steps, that’s all a routine was, and nothing terribly fancy in our case, as we only had ten minutes or so to fill. It helped put things in perspective for me and by the end of the session I was moving in a way that almost resembled dance.
Despite his wandering hands syndrome I actually found myself warming to Maurice. He has a quiet, slightly wry sense of humour that kind of appears from nowhere, takes you by surprise and then disappears back behind his habitual faraway expression. I was silently wondering what he saw in Teddy, who totally swamps him in every way, when he brought me up short with a remark about Teddy and Twinkles being very alike. I was rather taken aback and a tad indignant to be honest. In my opinion my Twinkles was nothing like the officious Teddy either in manner or appearance. The remark came when Maurice and I were having a coffee break while Teddy and Twinkles were still practising. He backed it up by saying, ‘the moment is everything to them and when they’re working towards the moment, nothing else exists, and it becomes an obsession.’ I had to admit that was very true. Just looking at them as they worked you could see their total immersion in what they were doing. It was lifeblood to them. I suddenly felt very ashamed for being arrogant enough to question what he saw in Teddy. I was as bad as the woman who upset Twinkles at work by questioning what I saw in him. Love can’t be pinned down to a neat definition. It’s like the universe, its composed of too many differentials to be neatly and accurately defined or confined.
Friday night at the PP was very eventful in more ways than one and once again I’ll have to finish the account later, as Twinks is speaking to me again. He’s pumiced his heel just about down to the bone and is pitifully requesting that I attend and apply soothing ointment.
18th October 2005:
Drama At The Pink Parrot
Despite interruptions I’m determined to finish this entry today. Twinkles and I have now made up. I rubbed ointment into his sore heel and he said sorry, acknowledging that he’d behaved badly over the magazine, in fact he’d behaved not so much like a Bottom as a complete arse. I said I still loved him whether he was a Bottom, an arse or a Brat. He then said that he didn’t really like the term Bottom either, it reminded him of a cartoon strip depicting a 101 uses for a corpse’s bottom, one of which was to use it as a place to park a bike, with the front wheel sliding nicely into the cleft. I said I could think of lots of things I’d like to slide into his cleft, but a bike wheel wasn’t one of them. We ended up laughing so much that we both had a coughing fit, my own cold hasn’t fully cleared up yet.
Anyway, getting back to Friday. As I wrote earlier, there was some drama at the PP and not the usual kind. Rick came over and finally offered Twinkles an apology for calling him an attention-seeking whore, explaining he’d been in a bad mood beca
use he’d had a row with a friend. Twinkles gazed at him through his false eyelashes, fluttered them, smiled sweetly and said, ‘well, that’s dispelled the rumours about you not having any friends, where did you find him, on ebay?’ Twinkles, I’m afraid, is always more bitchy when he’s blonde, as he was that night. Understandably Rick was annoyed and told Twinks that he had one tit higher than the other and why didn’t he remove it and shove it up his caustic little arse.
Natalie, sitting at the next table, cackled, ‘little arse, you must be viewing it from a different angle to me then, Ricky darling.’
Twinkles counter attacked with, ‘I bet your fat arse has been viewed from quite a few novel angles and not just by one man at a time either. From what I’ve heard you’ve disproved all known mathematical theory. Apparently three into one DOES go, we’re talking double rear entry here plus a deep throat frontal assault!’