by John Maley
‘Get dressed,’ Dan ordered.
Bernie slowly put his clothes on. When he stood up to fasten his trousers, he felt nauseous.
‘Can I use your toilet?’ he asked.
Dan nodded. Bernie went to the toilet. As he stood pishing into the pan, his eyes caught sight of all the toiletries on the ledge beside the bath. There were skin creams, perfumes, make-up and sanitary towels. Then when he went to wash his hands and face at the sink, he noticed a plain gold ring on a wee ledge beside the toothbrushes. Bernie felt sick and wanted to be sick, to get it over with. He hung over the sink but couldn’t do it. He went back into the bedroom where Dan was making up the bed. He turned and looked at Bernie.
‘I want you out of here in five minutes. Ma wife’s home at seven.’
Bernie stood stock-still.
‘Move!’
He moved.
When Bernie got back to his place he took two paracetamol and a glass of water, pulled off his clothes and climbed into bed. It felt good to be in his own bed. He felt as if he’d been away from it for years. Sleep came quickly. He slept fitfully and woke up about noon. He needed to pee, and to drink more water. Then he sat in the living-room. He didn’t open the curtains. He thought of putting the TV on, then decided he couldn’t bear the noise. He thought of making himself some breakfast, then felt sick at the thought of it. He thought about Dan. He had a strange longing then for him. He wanted to be taken in his big strong arms again, carried into his bed, under the duvet. To feel Dan’s big body rolling over him. Then Bernie thought of how quickly and coldly Dan had got rid of him. How he’d felt scared at the way Dan had looked at him. It was as if nothing had happened between them. As if Bernie was an intruder that Dan had surprised. Bernie began to take stock. Dan was an ugly big bastard. He was also married, something he didn’t have the courtesy to mention before they’d done this thing. Bernie felt ashamed all of a sudden. Ashamed and cheap. He felt terrible for what he had done. He’d worked himself up to this, doing it with a man, and had ended up kissing a married man’s cock and being thrown out with the rubbish. He heard a car screech outside and remembered the drive to Dan’s. Both of them drunk and unable to drive. How dangerous that was, how wrong. Bernie found himself crying then and wasn’t sure why exactly. It was shame and guilt and feeling sorry for himself. It was also relief that he was home in one piece. He covered his face with his hands.
Later Bernie sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. He had put some laundry in the washing-machine and listened to the noises as it worked through the wash cycle. He drank his coffee and reflected on the night before. He felt better now. He felt he had made a step forward on a journey he was destined to make. He was a poof. Just like those boys in the toilet in Delilah’s. Just like the lip smacking lovebirds in Club X. Just like Dan, wife or no wife. For too long, Bernie decided, he had been scared to live like he wanted to live. He decided it was time to get into the driving seat and take control of his life.
Struck by Lightning
At my time of life you take what’s coming to you. Usually, it’s an old man in a torn car coat, smelling of lager and urine in equal measure. I answer to sixty but am actually perilously close to seventy. The temptations of celibacy are almost irresistible. Almost. The thing about this particular game is that you never know your luck. Take last Saturday for instance. I was sitting here, at my usual place, at the far right corner as you enter Delilah’s. When I say my usual place, I mean whenever I’m in this godforsaken dump. It’s too young for me. Most of the clientele are in a drug-induced state of hysteria. However, it has to be said that a significant number of them are quite beautiful. I come as an observer rather than a participant. I sit over here in the corner and imbibe as many gin and tonics as I can possibly bear. I am rarely disturbed. But I had the most extraordinary fortune last Saturday.
A young man approached me. Barely twenty, I would say. Pencil slim. Model looks. He appeared from nowhere and sat down beside me. I caught my breath, at his beauty and his impertinence. At the point of asphyxiation I let out a tremulous gasp.
‘You okay?’
Unable to find my voice, I simply nodded vigorously. The young man gave me the once over. I gave him the twice over. He began a conversation with me. Something about how noisy it was. How smoky. He was too beautiful to look at. I wondered if he was some kind of performer. A budding young actor perhaps. Or the lead singer in a pop group. It transpired he was a student at University, studying Politics and Economics.
‘Brains as well as beauty,’ I quipped.
The impetuosity of youth being what it is, it wasn’t long before we got to the bottom of things. He lived in a student hall of residence and would not be able to accommodate me. But he plainly wanted to spend the night with me. I told him he could come back to my place. I feigned nonchalance, pinching myself. I should explain that I live with my mother. She is almost ninety, a fact of which she is unnervingly proud. She is a light sleeper so stealth is essential when returning from the hunt. As we came up the drive to the front door I turned to my beautiful young beau and held a phallic forefinger to my pursed lips. He smiled and nodded.
Once safely ensconced in the lounge, we had a nightcap. I had another gin and tonic and my child bride had a whisky. He began to speak frankly of sexual matters. He liked to suck, but not to fuck. He liked hairy chests, did I have one? I felt embarrassed. My chest owes more to Debbie Reynolds than Burt. I hoped this whole evening had been more than cruel flirtation and that he would stand and deliver. But he spoke with the sureness of beauty. He was direct and to the point. He liked older men. He made some amusing reference to wine. I was, apparently, vintage. I asked him if he intended popping my cork. He needed no further encouragement.
We mounted the staircase to my room. In a trifle, we were naked and thrashing under the billowing sheets. He was nubile to the touch, skin smooth as silk. He began at my neck and worked his way down over my hairless chest, down past my belly, until he swallowed my pride. He licked, he kissed, he nibbled, he sucked, he blew. He made a meal of me. I came convulsively, my back arched in gay abandon. I reciprocated, or would have had he not ejaculated as my lips gave his prick a preliminary tickle. He blamed my moustache.
We lay entwined and spoke softly for a while. Then we drifted off to sleep. I dreamt my mother had come into the room, discovered we naked lovers, and brained the both of us with her ivory-headed walking stick.
When I woke in the morning I was quite alone. My young buck was gone. I looked for a note but there was none. I had half-hoped he’d have left a contact number. My mind raced. Had I dreamt the whole thing? I looked at my cock and could make out a small lovebite. I could smell his aftershave on me. He had said it was called Be. Then, as so often the morning after, I was seized by paranoia. I suspected robbery, and possibly murder. I looked about me. Nothing seemed amiss. I hurried downstairs. Everything seemed to be in order. Then I thought of my dear mother. I had a fearful vision of her, strangled in her bed; her rings hacked brutally from her arthritic fingers. I dashed into her room. She was sitting on her commode, reading a magazine. I excused myself. Having exhausted all the negative possibilities, I was now free to gloat about my conquest. I went into the bathroom and studied myself in the mirror. I had held a vain hope that somehow beauty was contagious and I had been stunningly transformed by my intimacy with a god. Crestfallen, I let my dressinggown fall from my shoulders. If anything, I looked older and plainer than ever. It had been a late night and I had drunk too much. I ran a bath and submerged myself. I replayed the details of my night of debauchery. The smoothness of his skin, the eagerness of his lips.
It was here that I was sitting. To observe, not participate. How can I explain the inexplicable? It was as if I was struck suddenly by lightning.
A Lousy Lay
Ben liked the expression. Get laid. It was better than fucked or shagged or screwed. It was an Americanism.
‘So what happened last night?’
‘I got laid.’
‘Again?’
Ben smiled at the incredulity in her voice.
‘Ben, yer a cow.’
‘It never rains but it pours. I don’t know whit it is, Sandy. I’m fightin’ them aff wi’ a stick.’
‘You must be doin’ somethin’ right. What’s yer secret?’
‘Wish I knew.’
Ben and Sandy had met for a few drinks in town. Sandy was going on to meet a girlfriend in a new bar that had opened up in the Merchant City. Ben was going on to Delilah’s. They sat in a booth and gossiped. Inevitably, they turned to sex. Sandy was currently single. She had been going out with a fireman who, she assured Ben, knew how to use his hose. But the flames of passion had flickered and died. Ben had something to tell her. He had been in Bennets the night before and met this guy called Jerry. He worked in a bank in town.
‘A sperm bank?’ asked Sandy. If it was nothing to do with sex, she’d make it something to do with sex.
Jerry worked in finance. He was a sharp dresser and looked as if he’d just stepped out of a trendy shop window. He’d approached Ben. He was a bit full of himself, but very charming. He said he hated the scene and had just come in that night to escape a tedious works’ night out. Ben wasn’t sure about Jerry. He found smart men slightly intimidating. Ben was a denim queen. He went back to Jerry’s place.
Jerry lived in a ground floor flat just off Great Western Road. They sat in the spacious kitchen and Jerry made them coffee. Ben wasn’t used to this. Normally he’d be down to the nitty gritty by now. This was definitely upmarket stuff. Ben wondered if they were going to do anything at all. He had been asked back for coffee and it just might have been literal. They drank the coffee. Ben was unemployed but told Jerry he was a landscape gardener. It was daft, lying. Especially if the man wanted to see you again and you had to string the lie along. Ben had worked for the Parks Department but that was over a year ago.
They eventually went to bed. The sheets were fresh, as if Jerry had changed them that day. They wanked and sucked cock and fell asleep. Ben didn’t feel comfortable with the whole situation. There was something too reserved and mechanical about Jerry. He couldn’t relax.
Next morning they sat at the kitchen table again, with coffee and toast. Jerry had the radio on. He said he was meeting his sister and would have to go out. After they got ready he gave Ben a crumpled piece of paper with his name and phone number on it, written in pencil. Ben said he’d call.
‘You should call,’ said Sandy.
Ben shrugged.
‘I don’t know.’
That had been the Friday night and this was Saturday night. Sandy said he’d started the weekend with a bang. Sometimes she’d shake her head and look disapprovingly at Ben when he told her of his sexploits but she was into it. She liked talking about sex with a man she had no sexual connection with.
Ben had got laid again. He’d got his hole, as Sandy liked to announce at the top of her voice in the pub. He’d met someone in Delilah’s. Bob was his name. He was a housing worker, up from London for the weekend. He had silver hair and a pockmarked face. Lovely blue eyes. He’d stood beside Ben and felt him up. It was tacky but Ben liked the up-front approach. They went back to Ben’s.
Ben lived on the fifteenth floor of a tower block in Sighthill. It was a dive and he couldn’t really do anything about it till he got a job. Then he’d grudge spending the money on the place. He didn’t like his neighbours. There were two old widowers, a young guy who was dealing smack and a wino who played C & W all the time. There was talk of the flats being upgraded. They were using them to house the asylum seekers that Glasgow was taking. The council said they would install video surveillance and get a concierge service. Ben was glad they hadn’t installed video cameras in the lifts yet. Bob had stuck his tongue in Ben’s mouth as soon as they had stepped into one.
It took around a minute for them to get from the front door into Ben’s bed. They’d got into bed half-dressed and continued undressing each other under the covers. There were two things that Ben wanted to tell Sandy. Two things Bob had done that really annoyed him. The first was he kept asking if he could fuck Ben. Ben hadn’t gone in for that for a while and he wasn’t about to fuck with a total stranger who was going to bugger off back to London the next day. He kept asking and Ben kept telling him no. The other thing was he tried on Ben’s underpants. He made a huge song and dance of putting on Ben’s pants and acting as if it was a sexy big deal. Eventually he’d taken them off and Ben had put them back on, to protect his arse from further advances.
‘Sounds kinda sexy.’
‘You would say that.’
They were talking on the phone on the Sunday night, Ben and Sandy. Ben felt depressed after two nights of drunkenness and debauchery. Sandy said he should count himself lucky. She could barely remember what a cock looked like. If this was the sin, then Ben collected his wages later that week.
He noticed little tiny dots on his pants. He wasn’t sure what these spots were at first. Then he realised they were spots of blood. It was the following Saturday he stood in the bathroom with his trousers and pants down, under the light. He looked at his scrotum. There were what looked like little grey-green balls stuck to the sagging skin. He pulled one off and held it up under the light on his fingers. He saw tiny legs moving. It was a crab louse. He had crabs. He’d never had crabs before but this was obviously what it was. He phoned Sandy for advice.
‘You have to get a lotion,’ she said. ‘They plant eggs.’
‘Eggs? This is like a fuckin’ horror movie.’
‘D’you have anything else? Like a discharge?’
‘Naw.’
‘You didnae fuck?’
‘Naw.’
‘I’d go to the VD clinic if I were you. Just in case.’
Ben got an appointment for Monday. They confirmed the crabs and prescribed a lotion. He was to put it on his scrotum and leave it on for two hours. That would do the trick. They took a blood sample as well as a wee scrape from his cock. They asked him if he wanted an HIV test but he said no. Ben supposed they would test the blood they took anyway, anonymously. He didn’t want to know about it.
The lotion stung his scrotum. He had to pick the dead eggs off his pubic hair. They hadn’t spread anywhere else. Sandy had said these crab lice could crawl up to your armpits and over your hairy arse.
Ben wondered who had given him the crabs. Was it Jerry? Surely he was too clean and fresh and smart to have crabs? That had fuck all to do with it. The smart money was on Bob. There was that pantie trick. What the fuck was that all about? The guy probably had a crab fetish. Kinky cunt. It wasn’t about blame. He’d slept with two guys in a row. The AIDS poster came to mind. Sleep with one person and you’re sleeping with all their ex-partners. Those crabs had probably originated on Plato’s balls.
He hadn’t fucked with them. If someone had crabs and you got naked with them, that was you.
He met Sandy the following Friday. He thought she’d be a pain in the arse but she was sweet. Ben was in penitent mood.
‘I’m gonnae clean up my act.’
‘Don’t kill yerself. You’re young, you’re single, you’re sexy. These things happen.’
She told him another story about the fireman.
Ben never phoned Jerry.
Queer John
John felt the letter in the inside pocket of his jacket. He felt it sort of rustle and crackle as his jacket rubbed against his shirt. He was scared of losing the letter. Yet he also had a sudden vicious urge to destroy it. To rip it up into a hundred tiny pieces and throw it to fuck. Or burn it. Ask somebody for a match or a lighter and torch the thing, watch it blacken to cinders. But shite doesn’t burn. And that’s all this letter was from start to finish, shite. He thought of opening it up and holding it over the lit candle on his table, to make a ceremony out of it.
His fac
e had burned when he had read the letter that morning. His arms had shook. He couldn’t believe such an offensive weapon could have been so callously shoved through his letterbox. He thought he should sue the Post Office for attempted murder. He knew the handwriting on the envelope immediately. It was from Cary, his boyfriend. He recognised that meticulous, mutinous hand. It was the ultimate Dear John letter. Not only was the age of chivalry dead, but a stake had been driven through its noble old ticker.
The letter seemed like such a physical thing. It was a material fact, there in black and white. The prick had even put his address in the top right hand corner of page one, as if John had forgotten where he lived. He’d been there. They had slept there together. He had sucked Cary’s cock in that flat. He had been there but was never going to go there again. It was a nice flat. It was dark because Cary was a real Blanche Dubois about lighting. He was always talking about ‘ambience’. How ambience created mood. Ambient lighting. Ambient music. He thought it was classy. John thought it was calculating. But there was a beautiful, ethereal quality about Cary’s place, the pretentious cunt. It really was a chill out zone. It was a haven.
‘It’s kinda sci-fi’.
Cary had looked at him with surprise.
‘Sci-fi?’
‘Aye. Like one of those old sci-fi movies.’
‘It’s the lighting. I’ve worked on the lighting.’
He certainly had. There were uplights, spotlights, dimmerswitches, what looked like hi-tech versions of lava lamps, candlelight, fuck there was moonlight through a skylight.
‘I just meant it’s kinda space-age.’
‘Space age?’ said Cary. ‘We’ve had the space age for thirty years.’
‘I know. It’s nice. I like it.’
John had only two forms of lighting in his house. A hundred watt glare or a forty watt lamp out of Woolworth’s. Take your pick.