It’s not until Tom – still in a daze – has stepped out of the shower into the clothes I have waiting, picked up his ready-packed rucksack, and is being pushed towards the front door, that intrigue starts to penetrate his morning-head. “Where are we going?” he asks. “And why the hell are we going there at seven thirty?”
I wink at him, run a hand down his back, and give him a gentle push forward. “If we don’t get a move on,” I say, checking my watch, “you’ll never find out.”
He pauses to look at a package discreetly left by Jenny on the sideboard. “What’s that? A gift?” he asks.
“It’s from Jenny,” I say, “DVDs – English Classic Cinema. You can open it when we get back.” It’s brutal and a little dismissive of the gift, but there really isn’t time for anything else.
On the airport shuttle, Tom grins at me for the first time of the day. “I know where we’re going,” he declares, then repeats himself in a child’s sing-song voice, “I know where we’re going.”
The bus lurches out of the depot, and I grin back. “Don’t get overexcited,” I say. “It’s not San Francisco.”
Tom shakes his head slowly and beams at me. “I know it isn’t,” he says confidently.
At Nice airport we check the screens for the departure gate; I will have to give Tom his boarding pass at security, but I’m holding out as long as I can. He scans the screen alongside me, still with a cocky grin that says he has me sussed.
“So, I would say,” he says, matter-of-factly, “that it’s zone A; somewhere around … gate … twelve … Right?”
I scan the screen for our flight and then shake my head at him. “Nope,” I say. “Wrong!”
And then I scan the list to see where Tom thinks we’re going – KLM2163 – 8:55 am – Zone A, Gate 12 – Amsterdam.
I swallow hard. “Shit Tom, no,” I say. “I told you not to get too excited.” I pull his printed boarding pass from my bag.
“No?” he says, starting to unfold the sheet.
I study his reactions. Poor Tom, bless him – the shadow that crosses his face, the twitch downwards of the mouth, the swallowing of the forty percent of his excitement that has turned out to be unnecessary, lasts mere milliseconds. He covers it all up with every ounce of willpower he can muster. But I see it all the same, and I kick myself for not thinking of bloody Amsterdam myself.
Then, mind over body, he slides back into the broadest of grins and hikes his bag onto his shoulder. “Paris!” he exclaims. “Paris is great! Brilliant!”
*
After an uneventful orange-themed low-cost flight, and two rubber-themed high-cost sandwiches, a couple of efficient French trains and a five minute walk, we find ourselves outside the grotty Hotel des Trois Fréres, freed of our bags – left in the lobby.
And we spend a perfect Paris day. It’s the perfect Paris day. It’s the same day that millions of other couples have done before us. It’s the same day Emilie Poulain did onscreen, seemingly over and over again.
Paris is eternal, the adverts say, and of course they’re right – Paris is a stunningly preserved, beautifully maintained jewel of a city. But as we wander along the Seine, our breath rising before us on this icy but thankfully sunny day; as we peer up at the Eiffel tower or drink cups of coffee served by overbearing white-shirted waiters and wander past the boating pond in the Tuileries, it does strike me that the eternal nature of Paris is a double-edged sword. The city may be better preserved than any other European city, the architecture may be a historical diamond in Europe’s crown; but if you have ever been to Paris before – no matter when in the last sixty years – then the sense of déjà vu in every visual, culinary or cultural experience is simply overpowering. And as we wander along, enjoying it immensely, I can’t help but think that, like any permanent exhibition, Paris is a city you only ever need to visit once. I’m hoping Tom doesn’t feel the same way.
We have fun of course, in the understated gay district – le Marais – eyeing up the cute French boys. And boy are they cute. We peer in at the outrageously priced clothes shops, and wander, wide-eyed around Rob Leatherstore – more S&M museum than clothing shop – before treating ourselves, giggling like adolescents, to a set of rubber balls on a string. They’re red, washable and hygienic and range from gob-stopper size to terrifying-tennis-ball. By the time we spill onto the street, good humouredly arguing about who gets to inflict the balls on whom, we both have half-baked stiffies.
The cheap room, when we finally get to check-in, is architecturally gorgeous with big bay windows and three-meter ceilings. But of course this is Paris, a city where you truly get what you pay for – or a little less – and so in every other way it is abysmal: we haven’t paid enough for anything else.
The carpet is threadbare, the paint is peeling, the shower is down the hall, and the bed sags in the middle. But neither of us cares in the slightest; in fact, if anything, it all just adds to the fun of the trip. “Thank God Tom isn’t a chic-queen,” I think, as we dump our stuff and run, laughing, back down the stairs ready for our night on the town.
The rap is that it’s impossible to get a good, reasonably priced meal in Paris, so we’re thoroughly chuffed when Tom’s touristy first pick turns out to be a good one. The Café Beaubourg with its soaring columns and trendy décor, with its windows overlooking the steel plumbing of the Pompidou Centre, looks, to my eye, far too chic to be promising; but the second we step inside and are greeted by a grinning waitress (yes, grinning, in Paris), I think we might have struck lucky after all.
The food – we both choose grilled jumbo prawns – is speedy and excellent, and the Croatian waitress returns to smile and chatter at us throughout the meal, telling us amongst other things that her brother is gay, “too.” This causes Tom, once she has gone, to whisper, “Jesus! Is it stamped across our foreheads or something?” We toast to Tom’s birthday, eat a sickening heap of profiteroles, and then, stuffed and happy, head on for the next leg of our Parisian adventure.
The first gay bar we find in the Marais is the Quetzal. I remember it vaguely from some distant visit to Paris, and am again stunned at how unchanging France is. American and English cultures are so dominated by novelty and fashion; France manages to just chug along as the rest of the world repeatedly implodes and reinvents itself. However, once inside the Quetzal the idea of change starts to seem quite appealing. Though the barman is smiley and welcoming, there are only five guys in the bar, and none of them look particularly happy, well or wise.
Tom flashes the whites of his eyes at me, takes a gulp of his beer and grabs a free sheet from beside the door. “I think we might be needing some alternative addresses,” he declares. “This really isn’t Amsterdam.”
We drink our beers quickly, and – for some reason feeling a little naughty – shuffle out the door.
“How low energy was that?” Tom says outside.
I turn the map around as I try to find my bearings. “Must be something they put in the beer,” I mutter. “Anyway let’s hope it’s better in the next place.”
As we near the Cox, there are so many people on the pavement that I wonder for a moment if they aren’t having some kind of private function, but as we push through the fifty smokers outside, and squeeze intimately past another hundred leathered bodies inside, it transpires that, tonight, the Cox is simply, the place to be.
“Wow,” Tom says. “How many cute men?”
And they are, without a doubt, the prettiest bunch of leathery, bearded men I have ever seen. “Tell me about it,” I say.
“Wow! I’d do just about any of them,” Tom says, making me frown in mock outrage. As we reach the bar, I tap him on the shoulder and say, “Check out the bar-staff.”
There are three men working the bar: two identical Tweedle Dee / Tweedle Dum boys with tattoos and beards and a third steroid-pumped hair-bear with pierced nips, leather jeans and a Sam Browne belt. They are all taking themselves very seriously and pouting so much they look like post face-lift Cher, which strike
s me as a terrible waste of so much work at the gym. With some difficulty, I order two pints from Tweedle Dum. He’s so terribly caught up in his own aura that he’s unable to lean towards me far enough to actually hear me, so I’m forced to transmit the message in mime. Once he seemingly has understood – and it’s hard to know really because he neither smiles nor speaks, but sweeps instead, dramatically away – I hand Tom a twenty Euro note before pushing through to the toilets, wondering exactly why this bar is so popular, and the other with the friendly service, so empty. Maybe Parisians thrive on rudeness?
The urinals are so close together it seems impossible to use the third stall, so I wait until two are free and occupy the farthest. But the second I start to piss, a guy – another man-mountain in chaps-over-jeans and a Lucky Strike motorcycle jacket – squashes in beside me. I move as far sideways as I can, but I can still see that, a) he isn’t pissing, and, b) he’s looking at me pissing. Maybe he’s searching for inspiration.
As I squeeze my way out past his butt – and the size of the place is such that it really is a squeeze – he distinctly says, in an angular foreign accent, “Very nice.”
Back in the bar, Tom has lined up two pints each. “It’s only happy hour for another ten minutes,” he tells me, “So I thought I might as well.”
I grin and take a huge gulp of beer. “You did good,” I say.
In the corner of the bar a DJ is playing some very danceable electro and I watch him groove to the mix for a while, but when he looks up at me and I smile and nod approval, he does the same pouty thing as the muscle barman.
“What’s with the Parisian pout?” I ask Tom.
He frowns at me.
“Mr Muscle,” I nod at the barman, “and the DJ – they both have the same pout.”
Tom glances at one and then the other. The DJ rewards us by sucking in his cheeks and pursing his lips even further.
Tom laughs. “Oh give them a break,” he says. “Even I look like that sometimes.” He swivels back to face me, and mimics the DJ.
“You do?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “When I’m constipated.”
I snigger and have to spit my beer back in the glass. Some of it goes up my nose. “They look more like they’re trying to keep something in to me,” I laugh.
Tom winks at me. “Maybe they are,” he says. “That Rob shop is just around the corner. Maybe they are all trying to keep those balls in.”
“I like it here though,” I say, checking out the other faces in the crowd, most of which are smiling and animated.
“Yeah, it’s a great place,” Tom says enthusiastically. “It feels like Brighton after work.”
I nod and grin. “Cuter boys though,” I say. “The French did so well in the genetic lottery. It makes me sick.”
Someone squeezes behind me. Space is tight – this I know – but this particular squeezing past still feels more intimate than necessary. The guy’s hands distinctly grasp my hips as he pushes by, causing me to wrinkle my brow in amused concern. As he moves on through the crowd and into view, I see that it’s my neighbour in the motorbike jacket – the guy from the toilets. Now that he’s more than an inch away I’m able to check him out, and I realise that he’s pretty hot. His arse is pert, his chaps are supple and shiny and his jacket is open revealing a muscular looking, lightly furred chest. And above all he’s smiling – at me. But why?
At the beginning of the second pint, Tom notices him too. “Don’t look now,” he laughs, “but two thirds of the way around the bar, beefy blond guy, red and black bike jacket.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s been cruising me for ages,” he declares happily.
I open my mouth to say, “Me actually,” but remembering that it’s Tom’s birthday, I say nothing and simply smile.
“What is it about being in a couple?” Tom asks. “I mean, when I’m single, guys like that never look at me.”
I nod. “Yeah,” I say, glancing over at Lucky Strike – who winks very obviously at me. “I know what you mean.”
When happy hour ends, the crowd, including Lucky Strike, disperse and the ambiance becomes relatively chilled. Most of the people who remain seem to be couples. When Tom comes back from the toilets, he grins broadly and kisses me – a surprise. He’s not generally one for public displays of affection.
“What’s that for?” I ask slipping a hand into the rear pocket of his jeans.
“Oh nothing in particular,” he says. “For my birthday present maybe; it’s really good to be somewhere else for a change.”
I smile at him and pinch his arse through the fabric. “Yeah,” I say. “I thought the change would do us good.”
Tom nods towards the door. “Talking of which …” he says. “Shall we?”
The Bear’s Den is a small neighbourhood bar, with standing room for maybe twenty people and a few chairs outside under an awning. On reflection, there’s probably only standing room for ten. The big muscles of Cox are replaced here by beer bellies. Big beer bellies. Tom’s wrinkled nose tells me what he thinks about the place, but because the bearded barman – who is as huge as his customers – serves us immediately, we order two halves and retreat to the farthest corner of the room to watch.
“It’s a local bar for local people,” Tom sniggers, and it’s true, people are looking at us as if we just climbed out of a rocket.
“I don’t think we’re big enough,” I whisper.
Tom sips his beer. “Not obese, you mean?” he murmurs.
“Tom!” I say.
“Well, call a spade a spade,” he says
I drop my mouth in horror. “You can’t say that either!” I laugh. “That’s worse.”
“Tom frowns at me. “Why?” he asks, genuinely confused.
“It’s racist.”
“Oh!” Tom giggles, covering his mouth. “I always thought it was to do with, you know, spades and shovels. Anyway, you know what I mean,” he continues in a whisper. “All this eroticising fat – it just strikes me as an excuse for laziness really.”
I frown at him and scan the bar once again. It’s true that most of the guys here probably would be diagnosed as clinically obese. But then, these days, so would most of the straight men in Birmingham. “I find it a bit of a relief,” I say. “A break from all the Stallone lookalikes.”
“Don’t tell me you’d rather look at these guys?” Tom says.
I gesture for him to keep it down. I know no one can hear us, but the conversation is making me nervous. If nothing else, our hushed tones are drawing attention to ourselves. A grey haired guy with a humungous belly crammed into a paw-print t-shirt and khaki, military combat-pants is definitely looking our way.
I smile at him but he just frowns and looks away. “Let’s drink up,” I say to Tom. “We can carry on this conversation outside. I feel like I’ve invaded someone else’s patch. I don’t think the bears are that friendly.”
“So you think they’re cute?” Tom asks as we negotiate our way to the next venue.
“Who?”
“The fatties?”
“No,” I say. “Not at all. But I like that they exist. I respect their right to eroticise something other than the Jean-Claude Van Damme model that we’re all somehow supposed to look like.”
“Humph,” Tom says. “You’re just pretending to be politically correct. But you don’t find that kind of lard appealing any more than I do.”
I nod half-heartedly and grab his elbow and steer him across the street. Our breath is rising in the cold night air. “You’re right, I don’t – though actually, big muscle guys don’t really do it for me either. But I really do like that they exist. I’m being honest.”
“I don’t get it,” Tom says, then, “Fuck, it’s cold, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is. You know how women these days have all these body-image problems because every woman the media idealises spends her evenings vomiting? Well, the fact that bears exist somehow reveals that the other model – the gym-bunny on
e – is just one model; it opens a route to feeling happy about who you are, no matter what you look like.”
“If you say so,” Tom says, squeezing between two cars and joining the pavement.
“It just means that it’s OK to not spend all your time trying to look like Schwarzy,” I say. I pause and nod at the door to Wolf. “Looks like the next stop,” I say.
“Well, we know what the bears are like,” Tom says. “Time to throw ourselves to the wolves.”
Wolf is a much bigger space than the other bars, and interestingly the men – lone, predatory, hungry looking – do meet a whole range of wolfy adjectives.
I grab a couple of stools and wait for Tom to return with drinks and think about the whole body-image thing, and it strikes me that we set impossible targets for ourselves – we’re all supposed to be well-read intellectuals but with the bodies of nineteenth century foundry-workers and the incomes of eighties city traders. And there just aren’t enough hours in a life to do them all.
As the moon rises, the wolves gather, inexorably filling the room with rapacious, leather clad testosterone. Though the sexual tension is exciting, the solitary nature of the guys around us depresses me a little. No one seems to be having much fun, and Parisian pouts abound. But Tom is enjoying himself – he grins like a kid in a sweetshop as he compares this guy to that guy. My jealousy is peeping through a crack in the door, but for the moment I have it under control. When I can’t wait any longer, I thread my way through the crowd to the rear of the bar. But as I start to descend the stairwell, and as the light behind me starts to fade, I realise that I have mistaken the backroom for the toilets.
When I get back, Tom is looking puzzled. “People keep wandering off and then coming back,” he says. “I think there’s another bar.”
I grin and nod. “Yeah, I found it,” I say. “There’s a backroom downstairs.”
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