Inside the room, there was a patch of light bleeding through the hole, and by its barren glow we discerned a thin, narrow mattress on the floor. I lay back as he unfastened my trousers and began to suck my dick, and all I remember now is that the pleasure derived almost completely from the situation itself, the location, the anonymity, the betrayal of the boyfriend upstairs. Selfishly, I came, his trousers still unzipped, his body untouched. He said he’d like to watch me suck off his boyfriend. The boyfriend didn’t appeal to me. I was more interested in the boyfriend never knowing, or, if he did find out, that he be annoyed at being left out, rejected. Even then, I knew all about the power of betrayal.
As I was climbing out of the room, Edward appeared from nowhere. ‘There you are, duckie, we’ve been looking all over for you.’ Behind him was a buxom woman with bright red ringlets, wrapped in a dress made of loosely coiled telephone cord and nothing else, and carrying a bright copper kettle, which served as a handbag. Clocking the guy behind me, Edward arched an eyebrow. He held up a packet of white powder and grinned at me. ‘Want some sweeties, little boy?’ he said in a creepy voice. I nodded and followed, leaving the American to his own devices. I had never known such happiness. Sometimes I thought I might explode with the intensity of it.
It’s strange to recount all this, to tell all this to you, knowing that you will never hear it. There hasn’t been a single day in here that I haven’t thought about you, wondered what you’re doing, and if you ever think of me.
Just now, Tony got up to take a piss, and when he’d finished and turned around he had your face.
1894
Today began as regular as any other day. Taylor woke us up prompt at half-eleven with a raucous rendition of some bawdy song. He knows loads. ‘Morgan Rattler’ is his favourite and it was that one he screeched out this morning: ‘First he niggled her then he tiggled her, then with his two balls he began for to batter her, at every thrust I thought she’d burst with the terrible size of his Morgan Rattler.’
That shrill banshee voice of his, like some poor beast with its head stuck, dragged us out of our sleep by the hair and shook us awake. He went about the whole fuckin’ house caterwauling till we emerged from our beds cursing him. Worse for wear from the cheap gin we drank last night, and from general lack of sleep, we pleaded with him to stash it. It’s rare for us to tumble into bed much before sunrise and last night was no exception. Taylor has his own room but we have to dab it up in one large room with dark blue walls and no carpet. There are two dilapidated double beds, their filthy mattresses spewing straw through various rips and holes, and we usually sleep two to one bed and three to the other though we have to change partners from night to night so as not to encourage any alliances, although of course they form anyway. Once up, we washed together, each standing in a small tub of cold water and soaping his neighbour. Walter thought it hilarious to piss on us all as we stood there and rinse us down with his very own hot water. I gave him a sharp cuff round the ear and he stopped that lark. A quick dry-off and then off downstairs to the kitchen. Taylor was standing there, of course, by the door as usual, leaning slightly forward with his cheek turned out, waiting for us to plant a kiss on it as we entered and say, each in turn, ‘Morning, Mother.’
He loves that.
Even at that early hour he was already on the gin.
Only in the bitter winter months do we bother to dress for breakfast; in fine weather like today Taylor likes to watch us eating our porridge as naked as babes as he sits there smoking and babbling on and on about this swell and that, who was coming later, who’s been involved in what scandal or betrayal. It’s an entire one-man show every morning, better than anything you’ll see at the music halls, with a cast of thousands wandering in and out as he puts on voices and gestures and runs riot. It’s hysterical. We’re always telling him he should go on the stage. This morning, though, I was too addled to pay much attention.
After the dishes were done and the house cleaned up from last night we wandered back upstairs and dressed. Then we gathered as usual in the parlour, ready for trade to commence.
By dusk I had already seen six swells. Taylor was raking it in.
The way it works is that Taylor lets them in and ushers them into the parlour, where Johnnycakes, if he’s free, asks them if he can get them a drink. Taylor thinks his American accent adds a certain exoticism to the place and it’s true, his deep purr makes you wanna fuck him just to hear him speak. The drink isn’t free, it’s all included in the thicker they give Taylor when they leave. Anyway, while they’re having a drink (if they have one, that is; some just take any boy available as soon as they walk in the door) they decide which boy they want out of those that are free, or if they want a lad already working then he will wait his turn. In that respect it works much like a barber’s shop. The chat flows free on all manner of topics, though mostly here the gents like to talk about what we get up to. They like to talk filth. And we’re more than happy to oblige, regaling them with tales of our antics.
So today was much like any other until come midnight we get raided, don’t we? Pandemonium spreads through the house like a fire. I’m upstairs sucking a certain high official of the Church of England and he’s taking a fuckin’ age to spend and I’m getting bored and irritated when there’s a storm of banging on the bedroom door and next thing I know there are two crushers in the room and the churchman starts to spend and then like a shot he is hoisting up his trousers and I’m sitting on the bed laughing as he hops around the room with one leg caught in his strides and his jiss flying all over the place. The bluebottles just stand there, not sure what to do. They tell me we’ve been busted and they wait for me to dress and then escort me downstairs, where everyone else is gathered. There are about a dozen crushers all grinning like bedlamites. All the swells, of course, are allowed to go back to their homes and their wives. It’s only us they want. So we’re all loaded into their growler and driven to Holborn salt box. It seems that although I wanted to avoid a life of crime I’ve ended up inside anyway. Ah well, sod’s law always gets you in the end, ain’t that the truth?
Taylor was at his fiercest and foulmouthed best as they bundled him into the van. It was worth it to watch the air turn blue around them. They’re a bunch of vicious, humourless bastards, though, who’d cosh you without a thought. In that sense they’re no different from the men I grew up with, only this lot think they’re better than the rest on account of that fuckin’ uniform they wear and the authority it brings. I hate the law.
We were all thrown in the holding cell, and it was already packed. It stank worse than a stable, with piss-soaked straw on the floor and the odd turd trodden in for good measure. Add to that half a dozen unwashed, inebriated men. God knows how long they plan to keep us locked up. I’m due to see Mr Wilde later tonight, so I just hope we’re not in here long.
1954
I’ve been following in the newspaper with great interest the case of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He and his cousin, Michael Pitt-Rivers and some journalist called Wildeblood, are being charged for conspiring to incite or commit acts of gross indecency. As I ate my toast this morning, I read with utter fascination about their dalliances with RAF men. It seems England is scandalised by men of different classes having any sort of contact whatsoever. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s time. I remember this Montagu fellow being arrested last October and being tried for indecency with Boy Scouts, but he managed to escape conviction then. Now they’ve got him in connection with two RAF chaps, who are giving Queen’s evidence. Poor sod doesn’t stand a chance. The papers, of course, are having a field day, calling the men involved ‘Corrupters of Youth’. I wonder what they would make of my relationship with Gore. Would they call me a corrupter of youth? Gore is far more corrupt than I. If anything, he is more likely to corrupt me.
Dear God, I wish he would.
I want desperately to ask him what it’s like, being beautiful. How does it feel to look in the mirror and like what you see, not hone in on the flaws
and the imperfections that can burden a face, nor turn away in shame, or, worse, recoil in horror? What emotion is provoked by the desire you must encounter in every pair of eyes into which you gaze? What must it be like to possess that power, that gift? Even when I was young I was ugly, or, if not ugly, plain; I knew early on that I was fated to be looked over and promptly overlooked, with my narrow, rounded shoulders and my shortness and my frizzy hair. Even at boarding school I was invisible. I wanted desperately to be initiated into those things about which there were rumours, notes exchanged, suspensions, expulsions, suicides, scandal.
Could I ever tell him? I wonder. Tell him how much I look forward to our Wednesday afternoons? I’m sure to him it’s just the day he has to trek over to Barnes. Or if he does look forward to it, it’s because he’ll be financially better off at the end of it. I can’t imagine he feels towards it the way I do. I find myself waking up earlier than usual, with a feeling of great expectation. Christ, I even whistle as I shave. My heart is buoyant, my energy high, and as the hour of his arrival approaches I suck on my own anticipation, my hands twitching, unable to lie still. To my shame, I act just like an expectant lover.
And it’s not just the prospect of seeing that body again, although I still find myself staring at it each time as if it were the first time. And it’s not simply the company, although I find myself getting lonely out here these days, in a way I never used to when I worked. It’s as if he supplies a different air, richer in oxygen, and I feel myself getting high in his presence, and I become more animated as I talk, and I find myself thinking all morning of things we could talk about, and I suppose it’s like a youth drug or something. It’s as if I’m a young man again. As if I’m in love. Christ, my hand won’t stop shaking.
I’ve decided to stop going to the drawing group. It seems I have become the object of malicious gossip. Peter, in whom I had stupidly confided about Gore’s visits when we were chatting last week, has gone and told the rest of the fishwives. It isn’t that I deliberately kept it from them, it’s just that I am by nature a very taciturn and private man. It’s none of their business, I told myself. I don’t really know why I told Peter. I regretted it immediately. On the way home after I’d let it slip I berated myself for my stupidity, for my ridiculous vanity, showing off what? My wealth? My devotion to art? Or was I showing off Gore, my trophy? Bragging about the fact that he visits me regularly, in private? The trouble is, I find it so damned hard thinking of things to say to Peter, and I mentioned, without thinking, during one of those awful lulls in our conversation, that I was thinking of painting in oils again after years, doing sketches in preparation. He asked who was modelling for me and before I could think to say I was working from the sketches made at the group, I blurted out Gore’s name.
‘Gore?’ he said. ‘Who’s Gore?’
And before I could think to say vaguely ‘Just someone I know’ I said, ‘You know, Gregory – he’s modelled for the group a few times.’
‘And you call him Gore?’ He moved in closer, his eyes betraying his fascination. I regretted ever opening my mouth. But I stumbled on, getting deeper in the mire.
‘Well, he said that’s what his friends call him.’
‘So you and he have become quite pally, then, have you?’ God, it was excruciating. Luckily Miss Wilkes clapped her hands loudly, announcing the end of the break in her usual manner.
‘Chop, chop. Next pose.’
I was released.
After a couple of days I had reassured myself that Peter could be trusted – that he was so shy he was unlikely to divulge the information to the others. Then, this week, the chatter in the room fell silent the moment I entered. They all looked up and smiled a greeting, which made me instantly suspicious, as they don’t usually do that. I looked at Peter and he looked away, and I knew. A sense of panic gripped me. I don’t know why, it’s not as if I’m doing anything criminal, but I felt such a sense of shame, I’m sure I blushed like a guilty schoolboy. Ridiculous, really. Let them talk.
At one point while we were all sketching away in silence, Miss Wilkes said to no one in particular, ‘I really must see about getting Gregory back to model for us. He’s such a wonderful model, and it’s been such a long time since he sat for us.’
‘Oh, yes, do,’ said Maurice, ‘he’s my favourite.’
There was an interminable silence during which I could virtually feel the physical weight of their anticipation, but I said nothing and the intensity waned. The conversation moved elsewhere. It always strikes me as odd the way they all chatter quite openly in front of the model, as if he or she were not really there. It must be the way the aristocracy behave in front of servants, acting as if they are deaf or aren’t really human. I barely say a word when I’m drawing there – the complete opposite of when I am drawing Gore alone, when I can’t keep quiet.
So I decided on the way home never to go there again. It will be awkward, my absence will undoubtedly be commented upon, and I shall no doubt bump into one or more of them in the street on occasion. Barnes is like a medieval village sometimes. But I don’t need them. Shan’t miss them. It’ll give me more time to work on my paintings at home. I never produce anything very interesting at the group; it was always more of a social thing, strangely enough. Now the social element has gone to the dogs, there hardly seems any point in pursuing it.
I always reassured myself that at least I acquired wisdom as my youthful ignorance was replaced by knowledge and experience. Now, however, having met a man half my age who has truly lived life to the full, I feel like a child again.
His appearance belies his knowledge – for there is a knowledge there, after all, which I have come to discover. Much more there than meets the eye. He isn’t as dim as he first appeared, just inarticulate, incapable of expressing the complexity of what he feels. How do I know? The rapidity with which his moods change, and the colour of his eyes with them; the world-weariness worn like a garment that ill fits the statuesque demeanour. His intelligence is of a different order – an intelligence of the body, if you will. An intelligence that shines unselfconsciously, wordlessly, and which would evaporate should he ever try to articulate it with anything other than his body. It is a logic of the blood-beat, a meaning held within the contours of his skin, coded within its tones and lines.
His face expresses such a joyful innocence when it breaks into a smile. His eyes sparkle with mischief, though not of a specifically sexual nature. His face and neck always discolour to a light shade of red when he is naked, making him look slightly embarrassed, even though his body language suggests the opposite. When he gets excited – which he does often when he talks – his hands move with wild abandon and his voice oscillates madly as he stumbles to find the right word. There is something extremely innocent about him that I wouldn’t immediately associate with a whore, though what that says about my prejudices I daren’t begin to imagine. He is like a beautiful child, and he makes me feel so jaded by comparison, so cynical and tired. His joy serves to remind me of my solitude, my self-enforced speechlessness – my monastic vow of silence that I took in my sleep one night, unaware of how much I’d miss engaging with the world. Until Gore’s arrival into my narrow world, I had grown accustomed to expressing no further sounds than ‘good morning’ or ‘good afternoon’ to neighbours and shopkeepers, and the weekly banal small-talk of the drawing circle. And now this man has come into my life who seems to question all my beliefs, casting on them the light from his skin and bringing them under scrutiny – without even knowing he’s doing it. I feel like a pupil with everything still to learn. Oh, I can hold my own, I’m well-read if not well-travelled, but everything I know seems anodyne in comparison to the side of life to which Gore has been exposed. His experiences are the stuff you never read about. He has a scar on his back, just underneath the right shoulderblade, from where he was stabbed in Johannesburg. He lost a toe from gangrene in a prison in Turkey after he was caught drug-smuggling. His body tells the story of his life. He seems to me the
freest person I have ever met. How like a prison my little house seems once he has gone and I am left to rattle in it alone. How dull the light seems in his absence, how dim the rooms.
1998
I moved out of Edward’s place after a few weeks and into a squat near King’s Cross. Edward and I crowbarred our way into it one night and I found myself a home. It wasn’t bad: it was adequately decorated and had running water and electricity. Once we were in, Edward nipped out to a friend of his who lived in the same block, to invite him back for a smoke. This man, emaciated and intense, was a poet named Dominic who dressed like a tramp and told us stories about the history of the area. Queen Boadicea was said to have fallen there, in the Battlebridge Basin, and the area, he told us, was bisected by ley lines. The huge skeletal cylinders of the black metal gasworks nearby, whose monolithic outlines filled the sky, were listed buildings. Vast iron lungs, imperceptibly moving up and down, up and down. The place was an ancient site of spiritual energy, he told us, a historic gateway to the past, a vital source of regeneration for the entire city. Periodically, Edward would croon the word ‘fabulous’ as he passed Dominic the joint. In his soft, serious voice Dominic told us he was working on a long poem about the place and its history, and asked if we would like to hear some of it. Edward nodded enthusiastically, and Dominic began reciting, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if he were reading from idiot boards. The only line I recall is, ‘He was mad by every measure of a standard man.’ Dominic told us that the earth, being older than us, holds us. He said that, however much we may feel that we have banished nature to the outskirts of the city, it inhabits the very buildings we construct to protect ourselves from it. There is nothing but nature. Culture is nature, he said. We are a recent natural phenomenon, and we may well prove to be transient. He said the next natural phenomenon will be the post-human, whatever form that takes. But the land, he said, is eternal. It moulds us in ways we couldn’t begin to imagine. It makes maps of us, not the other way around. It traces patterns on our skin and takes its co-ordinates from our desires. We think, he said, that we locate the land, but the land, in truth, locates us.
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