London Triptych

by Kemp, Jonathan

  Dominic worked for the housing co-operative who rented out the flats where I lived and he managed to wangle it so that I could pay rent on my place and stay there indefinitely, which was perfect. Now that I had my own place, the career that had begun on that golf course with the Count could resume. I placed an ad in the free gay press and pretty soon my phone was ringing. The first client was a rather timid old man, who spoke very softly and was rigid with nerves. I ushered him into my bedroom, which was at the front of the flat. Outside there was a narrow balcony upon which pigeons nested, and which I shared with the neighbouring flat. I’d yet to meet the neighbours. Before I’d had time to ask the man whether he wanted a drink first, the doorbell rang. He looked at me, terrified. I ignored it, but it rang again and again, persistently, until I had no choice but to answer the front door. Outside in the hallway stood two firemen and a young man who introduced himself as my neighbour. He explained that he’d locked himself out of his flat and needed access to the balcony in order to break into his flat. The three of them marched through the door and into my bedroom, where the old man was by now virtually palpitating with fright. They opened the sash window, clambered through and disappeared, the young man going last and thanking me for my help, casting a puzzled glance at the old man sitting fidgeting on my bed before disappearing through the window. I stood there flooded with relief at the timing. Ten minutes later and it would have been a different story. The man asked, ‘Does that happen often?’ and I said, ‘No, it’s the first time.’ Then he said, ‘Get it out, then, so I can suck on it.’

  Before long I was also posing naked for photographs and performing in pornographic films. These were the tools with which I slaughtered everything I had been. I removed myself – am still removing myself, even now. I became a whore in order, not to find myself, but to lose myself in the dense forest of that name. Words, by naming, claim a sovereignty not rightly theirs. In doing so, they mask a geography of possibilities. My first solo video was for a middle-aged man in Cambridge who worked as a tennis correspondent for one of the broadsheets. He picked me up at the train station and drove me back to his house. Over a cup of coffee, he began showing me photographs of other models, clothed and unclothed, solo and in pairs or groups, and giving me their names, asking me which ones I fancied doing a film with. Suddenly there was the sound of people coming in the front door, and the guy quickly scooped up the fan of photographs he had been showing me and hissed, ‘My parents!’ He pushed the photos underneath the sofa before doing the same with the thick wad of photo wallets that lay beside me, telling me in quick whispers that I would have to pretend I’d come to discuss tennis, a subject about which I know absolutely nothing. His aged parents and an equally elderly aunt then shuffled their way into the room and he introduced me. The three of them settled down into the floral three-piece suite and the man offered tea, and then disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me alone with them.

  ‘Which court do you use?’ asked his mother, making small talk.

  ‘Do you know Willesden Green?’ I replied, to which she shook her head. ‘I use a court in Willesden Green.’

  They came around another time when I was just starting a duo, and at the sound of the key in the door, to which the middle-aged man had made himself particularly attuned, the boy and I were hurried into an office at the back of the house while he went off to entertain the parents. By the time he returned we had already fucked twice.

  It was for him also that I had done my very first duo, and when he’d introduced me to my co-star, a six-foot-four, dark-haired, hairy-chested, chisel-jawed man, I was straining at the leash. The video guy, John, left us alone while he went off to fetch his camera, and this beautiful, sexy man leant across and whispered in my ear, ‘You can do anything you like but don’t touch my hair.’ I found out later that he had had a hair transplant and was some kind of walking advert for the procedure.

  After every shoot I did for him, John would cook us lunch and he, my co-star and I would watch his recording of our performance as we ate from trays on our laps.

  I did several films for a man in Hove, whose bed was encased in black leather sheets, and who always wore the tightest stone-washed jeans imaginable, and liked to go through a ritual of washing our genitals after we had cum for his camera. He would disappear to the bathroom to fetch a warm wet flannel with which to wipe us down.

  Having sex in front of a camera was a curious process of self-objectification, whereby I would distance myself completely while remaining utterly within the present tense of what I was doing, within the moment of pleasure. I was in that state of being where only sex matters. I never doubted that I was in complete control, that I was doing what I wanted to be doing. It was falling in love with you that made me start questioning my life, made me stop wanting that way of life. Maybe love is always an aberration from what we take to be our normality. I can imagine you saying something like that.

  In those days, all that mattered was fun. I didn’t want to feel anything but constant stimulation, extreme pleasure. Dancing and fucking, that was all I lived for. The next drink, the next fuck, the next drug, the next client, the next party. London meant having everything. I wanted sex all the time, and found that it was possible to live this way. An entire network of men appeared, only too willing to thrust money into my hands for the pleasure of seeing or touching or tasting my flesh. To say that my vanity responded does not do justice to the vigour with which I pursued this line of work. I was doing two or three videos a week as well as servicing my clients, and because the life modelling didn’t pay as well I eventually did less of that, preferring the more lucrative porn work. Slick with baby oil, I would slide from one encounter to another. I hid myself beneath that glistening skin, beneath that hunger for pleasure. Unknown desires were unearthed within me. I explored them and explained myself to myself through the coded messages that came from touching other men’s bodies. Nothing about my life seemed real to me and that was just how I liked it, just how I wanted it. On top of that, I was going out every night and having recreational sex once or twice a day, often with more than one person at a time. It never occurred to me that I might live life any other way. My body moved to an insistent blood-beat that never seemed to rest except perhaps for those brief catches at pleasure when I realised that nothing was easier than to live like this. My pleasure lay in getting what I wanted even though I wasn’t sure why I wanted it. Sex became so habitual that I ceased getting much pleasure out of it, though I continued to act as if I did, and continued to pursue it constantly. Everywhere – parks, toilets, even the tube or the street – men are picking each other up, following each other home, undressing each other and wordlessly exchanging pleasure. It thrilled me to be part of that unspoken, unseen network of activity.

  There is something about that life that sours so easily after a while, and yet it remained impossible to leave. One party blurs into another, one encounter morphs into the next; you wonder what you are doing but never enough to wonder why you aren’t doing something else. When do you officially become a whore: when you first take money for sex, or when you first realise you’ve lost count of the men you’ve had sex with?

  Something disconnects.

  I’m not saying it wasn’t a good life; I’m not saying I didn’t have fun. What I’m saying is that I was in for a shock. I thought that pleasure would always manage to steer me clear of pain, not knowing then that the two walk together like mute Siamese twins, never talking to one another, though never able to separate, often thinking the same things, and always, always, inhabiting the same space. I tried to make sure pleasure was always one step ahead of pain. For a while at least, I suppose I succeeded.

  One night, in a club in Leicester Square, I was approached by a paunchy middle-aged American sporting a moustache, Hawaiian shirt, baggy Bermuda shorts and a baseball cap. It was towards the end of the night and somehow I had lost the people I’d arrived with, and he began chatting to me. I was speeding off my dial. He invited me to a party
being held by a well-known male strip troupe that was appearing in town at the time. He mentioned a few celebrities who would also be there. He explained that he had been sent to find some boys, that it was only five minutes away. I’d already had sex in the toilets with a Brazilian, but I was still horny and it sounded like fun so we left the club and walked around to his car. I stopped, suddenly sober.

  ‘I thought you said it was only five minutes away.’

  ‘In the car. Five minutes in the car.’

  I got in the passenger seat and we drove off. He asked what music I wanted on, and I said that if it was only a five-minute drive I didn’t care. I began to feel uncertain. Some instinct was telling me to be wary. He put the radio on. Then he began telling me stories about the strippers, how they started by doing circle jerks at college. At one point he touched the top of my leg, to indicate how high-cut the strippers’ shorts were. Eventually he pulled into a large block of flats on Kensington Gore and drove into an underground car park through a remote-controlled door that slid shut behind us. Inside the car park, he stopped the car and asked me to get out and open the gate that closed off his individual parking space. I did so. My unease had increased and I found myself imagining what gruesome fate might await me in that flat. Scenarios of slaughter filled my thoughts, with parts of me ending up in skips, in the river, scattered across the city. Once he had driven into his parking space I pushed the gate closed and ran to the door. Instinct made me run. Set into the larger garage door through which we had just driven was a smaller door. As I approached it, I wondered what I would do if it was locked, but it opened and I ran out into the night.

  Anxious that he might come after me, I ducked into Hyde Park. Within ten minutes I was picked up by a biker in full leathers, and we rode back to his place in Wimbledon on the back of his Yamaha, me breathing in the smell of leather inside the helmet, holding onto him. Back at his, he hooded me in a studded leather mask and handcuffed me to the bed while he fucked me, spitting at me all the time, trying to aim it at the eyeholes and unzipped mouth. You find danger if you need it. After I had cum, he uncuffed me and asked me to choke him as tightly as I could. ‘Tighter,’ he hissed as I increased the pressure, his fist pumping furiously at his cock, his face getting redder and redder. I watched him lying there panting afterwards, my white handprints vivid against his crimson neck, a huge smile on his face, and thought about the fragility of this life.

  I have no idea what time it is now. The whole prison is shrouded in silence, apart from the occasional scream or eruption of rage, and the steady snorts from Tony below me. How I envy him his lack of consciousness right now. Sleep is a country that has just cancelled my visa. All I have to my name are these useless memories. Because of them I am here now. They form a path that leads both backwards and forwards. That’s the strange thing about prison: there doesn’t ever seem much point in looking forward, not even to the day you get out. It seems like a liberation to which you can no longer lay any claim. And the present is so unbearable that the only safe place to look is behind you, both literally and metaphorically. But my memories give me nothing resembling safety. I feel a rush of vertigo every time I think of you.

  1894

  They held us in remand for a whole fuckin’ week, the miserable bastards. You ever been in the clink? It’s no party, especially if you’re young and pretty, surrounded by men who’ve not seen a woman in years. None of them would touch Taylor, but they were all over me and other boys. Ironic, when you think about it, that we were up to the kind of stuff in there that had got us locked up in the first place. But we weren’t getting paid.

  None of us was charged with anything, though, thank God. Taylor thinks they just wanted to scare us – scare him – and they did for a while. I’ve never seen him look so fuckin’ terrified. Yet the first thing he did on our release was set off to find new lodgings. And guess where we live now. Only right in the dirty fuckin’ heart of Westminster, no less. Little College Street. Slap bang behind the Houses of Parliament, right under their fuckin’ noses. I can’t believe the front of that man. But it makes absolute sense. Now we’ve got all the trade we need right on our doorstep, and they don’t have far to travel for a little relief from the tedium of running this country.

  So we’re all here now apart from Walter, who had it bad in the slam, pretty thing. Me and the others didn’t mind the attention, but poor Walt kept refusing, so he’d get duffed up as well as fucked. I put up no resistance, being the shameless whore that I am. But when we got out Walter didn’t want to risk getting thrown in clink again and so he’s gone back to Manchester, although he’ll be worse off there, I don’t doubt. We may even see him again, soon as boredom sets in. And so with sadness we said goodbye, though he said he’d come visit us whenever he was in need of a good time and I for one hope he does.

  So we’re back in the game and this new place is even swankier, though a bit smaller, and we still have to share a bed – though now at least, with Walter gone, it’s two in each.

  The night we moved here, Oscar came to investigate the new premises. Said he wanted to make sure we had the right wallpaper, though I think he missed us. He’s become a regular at the house since that first night at Kettner’s. The next week a repeat performance and the next week and the next, a regular little earner it’s turned out to be, entertaining this Mr Oscar Wilde. At the start I was no fonder of him than any of the others, though he’s more amusing than the other swells, who’re always so bloody serious and humourless. To begin with he was just another fool easily parted from his ackers, but he has grown on me, I have to admit, though it took a while, and it took till we were alone, but then I realised that without an audience, once he stops posing and trying to impress, to make people laugh, then he ain’t half bad. But the first time when it was just me and him at first I was dreading it because he’s not much to look at, let’s face it, and anyway, all he usually does is watch us perform, so I thought I was in for a dull old time but I was wrong. He has this way about him that brings out a good feeling, not like some of them who after kissing them it leaves you feeling dirty and full of regret, and you kind of feel unwell. With him it wasn’t like that. It might sound peculiar but he treated me like I was a girl, sitting me on his knee and wooing me and the like. At first it was funny and I was laughing but then it became nice and it was a good feeling, the way he petted me and worked at getting me feeling special and all ready to be touched. It sounds queer saying it like that but that’s how it was, how it is with him.

  I didn’t catch on at first just how famous he is, but I soon clocked on that he’s known all over London. He’s been to America and France and Italy and Greece, and everybloodywhere. Places I’ve never heard of and have no clue where they are.

  We aren’t alone often because that poncy little prick Bosie’s nearly always with him, but luckily they’re always falling out and when they do he comes here to see me alone and then he’s like a different person. Bigger, warmer, kinder. He’s a way about him, gentle I’d say if that didn’t sound so soft but he is a gentleman, whereas Lord fuckin’ Alfred treats me like shit on his shoe.

  Either way, though, I get paid so what’s the bleedin’ difference – rough or gentle, they call the tune, although it’s always him that pays, always. I’ve never see the lord dip into his dusty upperclass pocket and I doubt I ever will.

  Bosie likes nothing better than to spit in my face and bark obscenities as he spends, while Mr Wilde – or Oscar as he’s requested I call him – will stroke my hair and call me his boy as he comes between my thighs, for he doesn’t like to fuck, he likes to slide his prick between my spittle-slicked and hairless haunches. As he does it, he describes the curve of my roseleaf lips or the beaten gold of my hair, the blossoming bud of my cheeks – things like that. And to tell the truth such tenderness always makes me feel more unsettled than the lord’s barked curses, but they also make me feel warm and strange.

  Last night Oscar took me to an orgy held in the grand house of a Member
of Parliament, a Tory. We had to travel somewhere way out west, way beyond anywhere I’d ever been. I lost recognition of the city not long after we passed Marble Arch, and as we rode there in a carriage he held forth as usual and I sat there listening, not understanding a word of it, as usual.

  ‘Like plants we strive towards the light,’ he began, and I settled back to enjoy listening. ‘If we don’t understand something we say we are in the dark, or we ask for some light to be shed. Indeed, “Let there be light,” was God’s incantation for Life itself. The cold light of day as opposed to the dead of night, clarity versus obscurity, the purpose and virtue of the Enlightenment. The Light of Reason. Also, alas, its fatal flaw, for we are whole only when we take into account our shadow, for the shadow holds a knowledge all its own; the night contains another truth no less important for its occluded and tenebrous nature.’

  He lit an opium cigarette and filled the cab with the sickly-sweet smell. After taking several drags he handed it to me and continued.

  ‘Because the night makes us blind, we fear it, forgetting that the blind develop other senses, forgetting that in the night-time, during those brief sightless hours, we feel so much more. In the blackened, cabbalistic looking-glass of the night hours our own faces appear. Incarcerated in the dark cell of night are the things we wish to hide, a wisdom the daylight hours refute or disavow. Light and dark, like good and evil, far from being opposites, turn out to be complements. And it is the task of the artist to enter the dank cave of the sunless hours and recount everything that he sees there.’