“Ricky said,” she tells me. “Still you two must be getting on OK if you’re still there. That’s nice to hear.”
“Yes,” I say. “I fell asleep and …”
“His place is cute,” Jenny says. “Don’t you think?”
I clear my throat. “Yes,” I say. “Real cute.”
Ricardo winks at me and I roll my eyes and shake my head to indicate that we weren’t talking about him.
“Small but perfectly formed,” Jenny says. “Like my Ricky.”
I swallow and glance at her Ricky. He’s scratching his balls, unselfconsciously grinning. I nearly say, “He’s not so small,” but I catch myself. “Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
“You’re useless today,” Jenny says, “put Ricky back on, will you? Oh, by the way, Tom never did phone me back.”
“No,” I say. “He phoned me on my mobile.”
“Oh good. That’s OK then. Byeeee!”
I wince at her piercing goodbye and hand the phone back to Ricardo who chuckles and holds the phone a foot from his ear. “Yes,” he says as I fill a glass with water. “Two bottles … Champagne. Yes! And whisky …”
He turns back to face the window, and stealing a last glance at his buttocks, I head back to the lounge. “Yes, Pot Noodle …” I hear him say. “Si, Pot Noodle. Because I burn it … OK, I burned it.”
When Ricardo returns, he’s wearing a towelling dressing gown, stolen apparently, from the Majestic hotel. He puts the pot of coffee on the table and starts to pour two cups. “How do you feel?” he asks.
“Erm – how about guilty?” I say.
This makes him smirk. “Your head, I mean,” he laughs.
“Guilty,” I deadpan. “And hung-over.”
He shrugs and hands me a cup. “No guilt. Nothing happen,” he says, now serious as if it’s important to convince me of this fact.
I wobble my head from side to side. “Not quite nothing,” I say. But of course in a way he’s right. Bill Clinton claimed that a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky wasn’t sex. My own definition usually widens to include any two people in the same room having an orgasm. But Ricardo and I didn’t go that far. Does that make it OK? I wonder. “I didn’t think you would tell Jenny,” I say.
Ricardo looks shocked. “I did not,” he says, categorically.
“I mean, about me staying,” I say.
He slips into a relieved smile. “Oh, yes, but it’s normal. I said you stayed. You stayed.”
“But you won’t tell her … the rest,” I say.
He pushes his lips out and shakes his head violently. “No,” he says. “Why would I?”
“Do you love her?” I ask.
Ricardo frowns. “Why? Why do you ask me this?”
I sigh through my nose and try to retrace the thought. I was thinking about Tom I suppose, wondering if this new situation implies something about my love for him, or lack of it. Before I can answer, Ricardo continues, “You must not think me a bad guy you know – I like Jenny a lot. But the truth is, it seems that we’re not such a big story.”
“Oh,” I say.
“But I like her a lot,” he repeats. “Really. She makes me laugh so much. I always like the one who make me laugh, and Jenny is very funny girl.”
“But you don’t think it will last?”
Ricardo shrugs. “Everything is not up to me …” He coughs. “Anyway, I want to go back to Colombia, so …”
I pull a startled expression. “Really? I … But you said you wanted French nationality.”
He nods. “Yes, I must wait for the papers. But then I go home for one or maybe two years.”
I nod. “I see,” I say. “Jenny doesn’t know that though?”
He shakes his head. “It’s complicate,” he says. “I don’t know when I get the papers. I have been waiting for five years. So maybe next week, or maybe in five more years.”
“But you definitely want to go back?”
He nods.
“You don’t like it here?”
Ricardo laughs. “Sure! Otherwise I would not stay so long. But the French are not so funny, you know? I like France, but we Colombians, we have more fun. People laugh. And drink. They party. Like the English maybe. When I was in London, it reminded me of home.”
I nod. “I understand that. I miss home too sometimes.”
“And my mother,” he says, seriously. “She is very old now. And not so good health. So …”
I nod.
“She will die soon. I don’t want her to be on her own.”
I nod again, more solemnly.
“It’s like you say,” he says. “Life is messy.”
I nod. “It is,” I say. A wave of sadness washes over me. I swallow with difficulty. I’m not entirely sure who I’m feeling sorry for. The thought that just drifted into my mind – that Ricardo might not love Jenny, but that I do love her – triggered it. Even if my own kiss and cuddle with her boyfriend never comes to light, her relationship is ultimately doomed, and that saddens me. She deserves better.
I think of Tom saying, “We’re all doomed,” in his funny, mocking way, and it seems clear in that moment that we are all doomed. He and I are also doomed. It’s not that my night with Ricardo has really changed anything, but that it seems in this instant transparently obvious that the writing has been on the wall for us – in ten foot high letters – forever. And it is this thought: that nothing good can come of any of this, not for Jenny waiting for Ricardo to leave; not for his aging mother waiting for death, not for Tom, or myself – it just seems to me that we all somehow deserve better. That thought, combined with the tiredness and the hangover just knocks the stuffing right out of me. A tear even starts to form in the corner of my eye. I stand clumsily. “I need to go home,” I say croakily.
Ricardo stands and opens his arms, a look of deep-rooted concern on his face. “Come here,” he says. “You must not … this is Christmas.”
But I shake my head, force a smile and push him gently away. Christmas is over. “No,” I say. “I just need to go home. I’m over-tired. Really.”
Waam Baam…
When I leave Ricardo’s, I don’t go home – I head for the beach. It’s stunning outside and the late morning sun is as hot as an English summer’s day. The beach is almost crowded, mainly, it would seem, with over-dressed Italian holidaymakers picnicking and snoozing off their Christmas Eve hangovers. I sit at the water’s edge and throw pebbles into the sea, which, after the rains, is an artificial looking opaque azure.
I let thoughts swing and sway through my mind in the hope that I can come out the other side with some logical conclusion, but everything remains a crazy swirling mess of guilt and excitement, of missed opportunity and lucky escape.
I have imaginary conversations in my head with first Tom and then Jenny, but they all lead to argument, to hand-wringing, heart-breaking loss for everyone concerned, and I come to agree with Ricardo that the best option is indeed to lie by omission – to say, quite simply, nothing. I wonder if, had I actually had sex with Ricardo, it would still be the easiest route, or would the greater guilt have pushed me to a different path? Would the path of least resistance have been to admit to everything? And then I think sadly that in a way, whatever we do, good deeds or bad, truth-telling or lie making, all we’re ever really doing is pursuing a path of least resistance. It’s just a question of how conscience defines that path.
I lie back and feel the warmth of the sun on my face and despite the uncomfortable pebbles I fall asleep for a while, possibly ten minutes, maybe forty, I’m not sure. I awaken when I hear myself snore, and blink up and down the beach, wondering if anyone heard. And then I notice that I have an erection, and wonder if anyone saw, and then I roll onto my stomach (the pebbles are even more uncomfortable) and try to remember again what or more importantly, who, I have been dreaming about.
Back at the house, I see that I have missed a call – number withheld. Overseas numbers often show up as withheld so maybe it was Tom, or Jenny. I’m not sur
e who I would like it to have been most. Ricardo maybe.
After a cup of tea and some toast, I steel myself and phone Tom in Brighton on the work number he gave me. He answers immediately with a perky, “Happy Christmas.”
“Hiya, did you just call? Because I nipped out …” I start, but Tom interrupts me.
“No, it was too early when I … when I left for work.”
Something in his voice – something about how any interrogation might lead towards my own predicament – warns me off asking him the obvious question of where he slept last night.
“Did you have fun with Ricky boy?” he asks.
“Yeah, it was nice,” I say, convincingly it seems to me. This confirms my decision to say nothing. “I actually stopped over,” I say, realising that Jenny already knows this. “I got too drunk to walk home really.”
I half expect, maybe even hope, that Tom will ask me about the sleeping arrangements. I have a desire, despite everything, to tell Tom about it, so that we could laugh about my near miss with Jenny’s fireman boyfriend instead of it becoming a lie between us, but he either doesn’t know the size of Ricardo’s flat, or doesn’t care, or most likely, trusts me so implicitly, that the idea of anything happening doesn’t cross his mind. It’s hard to not tell him, and I realise that it’s simply because Tom is the person I tell things to. And that this not telling, is probably the biggest sin of all. “Well, I’m glad about that,” he says. “It makes me feel a bit less guilty. About not being there, I mean.”
“I would rather have been with you,” I say. I’m not sure if it’s a lie. “But it was OK. He’s a really nice guy. How’s work going?”
“Huh,” Tom mutters. “Money for old rope. There’s nothing happening at all. I’m just sitting here waiting for non-existent foreign exchange ops. I’m just surfing the net really. Hey, I almost forgot,” he says excitedly. “You have a gift waiting.”
With the phone nestled against my shoulder he guides me to the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, where, balanced on a dining chair, I recover a small package from the behind the pasta. I fish it out, and sit and rip off the kitchen foil as Tom says, “Sorry, I didn’t have time to buy wrapping paper.”
I’m a bit stunned by the gift: an Apple iPhone. “Jesus Tom!” I exclaim.
“Don’t you like it? You can chan …”
“No!” I interrupt him. “It’s gorgeous. I love these. But they’re so expensive. It’s too expensive.”
“Well, you said yours is playing up, and I know your mp3 player packed up too, so I kind of thought it was perfect. You can surf the web on it too.”
“It’s brilliant Tom. I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s a special unlocked one. So you can just stick your own sim card in it,” he says.
“Honestly. I don’t know what to say. And I feel bad because you won’t get your pressie till you get back. Poor boy.” In my annoyance at his going away I actually didn’t buy him anything at all – a situation I will now have to remedy.
“Well, now you have a toy to play with on Christmas day,” Tom says. “And I know I’ve got something worth looking forward to when I get back as well.”
On a bad, disingenuous, self-righteous day, I could get upset over that remark, but today I just silently sigh and push it from my mind. Once we have finished chatting, studiously avoiding, it seems, any in-depth discussion of Christmas Eve on either side of the Channel, I plug the iPhone in to charge and sit and finger the packaging, which, in true Apple style, is almost as beautiful as the product. I want to box it up and open the package over and over as I did with Christmas gifts when I was a kid, but I can’t do that without unplugging it, so I resist.
In the afternoon, the sky clouds over again, and I use this fact as an excuse for another siesta, but once in bed, I can’t get to sleep – I realise that I’m feeling horny.
In search of release, I try to think of Tom – with my gorgeous iPhone charging in the other room it seems the least I can do – but as I play with myself, it seems impossible to maintain a picture of him in my mind’s eye, and eventually, telling myself that what goes on in the privacy of my own brain can’t hurt anyone, I give in and let the images jumping up and down at the periphery take over the screen: Ricardo in a suit, Ricardo in fireman’s gear, Ricardo naked in front of the window – it’s a triple-X blockbuster which leaves me sticky and glistening. And then once cleaned up, as I start to doze, I roll onto my side – almost squashing the cat in the process – and fall into a deep, dark, hung-over sleep.
The bushes are higher than normal, but of course, I realise, it’s a maze: the kind they have in stately homes cut lovingly from privet bushes. Tom is in front and Jenny is behind me and we are wandering happily, exploring the avenues and ending up repeatedly, laughingly at dead ends. It’s late afternoon, and the summer air is fragrant, the sun low, and we’re all best friends, almost one single being. The event is in context: I still have the contents of the picnic – strangely (since I haven’t eaten meat for twenty years) pork pies and tomatoes – digesting in my stomach.
As the sun fades, I become anxious about finding the way out, an anxiety that Tom and Jenny don’t seem to share. We wander down this path and then that trying out different theories, like always turning right, or following the most beaten path, but they inevitably lead to small gravelly cul-de-sacs. Each dead-end contains a homoerotic statue.
With the twilight fading, it starts to get difficult to see, and I urge Tom and Jenny on ever more frantically, but they won’t take me seriously and laugh and mock me for worrying. Their ridicule makes me as fractious as a four year old.
In the dead centre of the maze, I find a tower. It’s built out of planks like a child’s tree house, or the lookout tower at a border crossing. I climb the steps to get a better view, but when I reach the box it morphs into a sealed white room with a single strip-light and two opposing doors. Tom is standing in front of one, and Jenny, the other. The light starts to flicker and I realise that we are actually inside an exhibit in the Tate Britain – Martin Creed’s Light Going On And Off. I approach Tom’s door and he smiles serenely at me and shakes his head. I turn and walk to Jenny but she repeats the gesture. And then I hear a banging noise coming from the far wall, and a voice calling my name. “Mark. Are you there? Mark, are you there?”
I turn to Tom and Jenny for help, but they, and the doors, have vanished, so I cross the cube and put my ear against the wall and listen to the voice – unmistakably Ricardo’s – calling from beyond.
The flickering of the strip-light hurts my eyes so I close them for a moment, but when I open them again, the cube is gone and I’m in my bedroom. I hear the knocking again, then Ricardo’s voice. I stand and walk to the front door. I listen, but there is nothing, so I hide behind the door, open it an inch, and peer through the crack just in time to see Ricardo turn to walk away.
“Ricardo?” I say, wondering whether pretending to be out wasn’t a better option.
He turns and frowns at me. “I need to talk,” he says.
I nod vaguely. “I … was asleep,” I tell him, taking in only now that this is probably reality and the white cube almost certainly the dream.
He climbs tentatively back up the step to the landing. He’s wearing his uniform. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s OK,” I tell him. “Just let me get some clothes.” I push the door to, and return to the bedroom. I throw myself across the bed to fish my jeans from the far side, but when I turn, Ricardo has followed me and is standing right behind, so close in fact that there is barely room for me to stand.
“Shit!” I exclaim. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” he says, smiling weakly. “I make …”
“Yes,” I say, pushing him away gently, and moving my jeans so that they hide my dick. “You made me jump.”
“Jump,” he repeats.
With the bed against my calves and Ricardo three inches in front of me, I’m feeling a little trapped. “Can you just … ?�
� I make a shooing motion towards the dining room. “Let me get some clothes on?”
Ricardo laughs and takes the jeans from my hand. I frown at him. “What are you … ?”
“No,” he says, grasping them and throwing them onto the bed. “You don’t need.”
I shake my head and look around the room for clues – this all seems a bit unlikely. Not as unlikely as a cubic room with no doors, but unlikely all the same.
“Ricardo,” I say.
“Yes?” he grins.
“What do you think you’re doing?
He flashes the whites of his eyes at me. “I realised,” he says. “We have to.” As he says this he slides one hand behind my back and steps forward – I can feel the hard leather of his boots against the sides of my feet. My dick – now erect – presses against his blue nylon trousers. He grasps the back of my head and kisses me hard. And I let him. We kiss deeply for a moment, our tongues rolling around together. His left hand finds its way to my dick and he squeezes it gently, making me murmur, “Oh.”
This makes him laugh and repeat, almost mockingly, “Si – Oh!” He releases my head – he doesn’t need to hold it in place any longer, and moves his hand lower, unzipping, then pulling out his own erect dick.
And then he surprises me by giving me a gentle push back against the bed. My knees buckle and I am forced to sit, my head level with his waist. He pulls me forwards and pushes himself into my mouth. “Oh, oui!” he says as I open my jaw and let him in. “This is what I want.”
I am feeling a little shocked about the porn-film direction this dream is taking: fireman rapes sleeping friend. But then again … He grabs my head and pushes harder down my throat, making me gag. “No,” he says. “You can …” and pushes again.
I think of the guy in Paris who could, and for the first time in my life, I find that I can. I even reach out and pull his buttocks harder towards me.
“That’s right,” he says. “Oh, yes.”
After maybe twenty seconds though, my gag reflex returns, so Ricardo pulls out. “Turn around,” he says.
My throat hurts, which must, I figure, mean that this is really happening. I look up at him. Real or imagined, it’s truly a porn video.
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