Boys of the Fast Lane

by Zack

  It’s just nerves …

  The two days in L.A. before Mike returned to London vanished in a whirl of excitement at the reunion, an explosion of happiness at the ending of a love-starved year, a sex jag fueled by mutual need. But the passing days had clothed the memories in a sense of unreality and a nagging fear that Gil might wake drenched in sweat and find it was all just a long wet dream. Now he was on the way to join Mike. The dream a reality, but the reality an unknown quantity. Hence the nerves. Would settling back into a rhythm in the flat on Aberdare Gardens be easy? He knew he would feel self-conscious, like he didn’t quite belong in the familiar surroundings, like an impostor in his own play, lost on the stage. Like perhaps he shouldn’t rush to unpack his battered old suitcase, like …

  “Can I get you anything, sir?”

  Gil looked up in surprise at the TWA flight attendant. Her pleasant smile looked professional, the sort that’s become permanently attached to the lips in case relaxing might reveal something more bored and fed up.

  She pointed above his head at the underside of the lockers and the small glowing light.

  “Uhn. Oh, I’m sorry. I must have pressed it with my elbow or something.”

  “That tends to happen. Quite often—”

  “But I’d love some water, please.”

  The interruption had a soothing effect and the water eased his throat. Instead of worrying about the future over which he had no control, Gil closed his eyes and conjured up Mike Smith the way he’d seen him last time they took a flight together, on the way to London from Rome, where Gil had begun his movie career as a gofer on the James Rosen flick being shot at Cinecittà: the round face, always bubbling with humor and ready to laugh—what Trev sometimes called Mike’s “bumptious” attitude. The word association always made Mike laugh outright and he would stick his bum out and pat his firm ass cheeks like one of the Black Cap drag acts. Ahh, Mikey, Mike … Those carefully disordered locks of black hair; the long eyelashes hiding hazel eyes incised with hints of green that always twinkled, always seemed amused; the neat, generous mouth (“everyone says I have good cocksucker lips …”) with ready grin or outright wide smile for everyone. Gil remembered the pale fawn-colored T-shirt pulled tightly over gym-trained muscles and flat stomach, tucked loosely into the freshly laundered khaki safari shorts he favored, the ones with cuffs. They bunched up in crisp folds at the front, advertising what lay beneath—not surprising when Gil thought of those huge balls. The long, powerful, lightly downed legs stretched out as far under the seat in front as they could go. In the lobe of the ear nearest him the small silver stud winked in the sunlight …

  The TWA Jumbo droned on through the night, every tedious minute flown across the Atlantic ( surely, by now? ) a minute nearer London … and Mike.

  Mike regretted the third coffee, not because it tasted like crap compared to even the cheapest cup he’d had in Los Angeles, which it did, but because of the searing sensation it raised from his complaining stomach. He grinned mindlessly at a passing woman fussing with her small poodle and then glanced for the thousandth time at the arrivals information board.

  Flight TW-958 from Ontario and Los Angeles, ETA 10:30.

  His eyes ranged over to the large digital clock at the right of the board as the small flaps flicked over. Five to ten. He should have had something to eat, anything to settle the flutters in his belly.

  Gil’s coming home!

  And that was it, of course, not the coffees. They weren’t to blame for his nervous tummy, nor was the lack of breakfast. Down there resided still the remnants of excoriating guilt over what James Rosen, the fucking bastard—and yes, why not speak ill of the dead?—had forced him to do to Gil. It was absurd to wonder how much Gil had changed in the intervening year. They’d only parted a few weeks ago. But then, their reunion, once accomplished, had felt like a head-on collision from which each had walked away dazed, hopeful but perhaps unsure of what lay ahead. Mike shook his head irritably and gave his cheek a mock slap. It never paid to think too much. That’s what had first attracted him to Gil in Rome, the intuitive, almost unthinking, approach to life—well, that and his looks and his body and his cock and the happy way they fitted together and fucked …

  But then Mike discovered, as they got to know each other better, that in fact Gil was more of a thinker than first appeared, so it hadn’t come as so much of a surprise to learn that, exiled to America, he had started experimenting with writing movie scripts. At least until Jeff got him involved in the Ridley Scott project, the daftly named Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from a book by some dick called Dick— Philip K.? He tried reading one of the man’s stories once, something about people living their lives backward. It started with a gruesome scene of two cops who hear the cries of a corpse coming to life and they go into the cemetery and dig her out. Alien had been a great success for Scott, so maybe it was the gruesome quality that attracted Scott to the story.

  I’m rambling …

  Mike flicked his head around to look at the board again. Ten-fifteen.

  When he came to with a start, having believed he’d never drop off, Gil saw the pale light of dawn rapidly burning to a more lurid scarlet out the window two seats over from his aisle position. He pushed his shirt sleeve aside and looked at his watch. One o’clock. He frowned and then remembered he was still eight hours back. Nine o’clock in Mikey-boy time. The odor of rapidly heated scrambled egg, breakfast sausage, and over-crisped bacon filled the compartment as attendants began slapping trays down. The bacon smell sparked a memory: the first time Mike took him to a greasy spoon in a side street off Leicester Square for an “all-day breakfast,” and when the plates arrived Gil looked in alarm at the soggy pink stuff that passed for British bacon. “It’s not cooked,” he protested.

  “It’s back bacon,” Mike said defensively.

  “Don’t you Brits have real bacon? It was okay in Rome.”

  “Yank commissariat for the American crew. And we do have streaky, but this is back bacon, the real thing, fried just right.”

  His stomach waved the flag of rebellion at the thought of food, and Gil stared at the steaming tray as the last skeins of dream faded. On that flight to London it had been him who egged Mike on to visit the toilets at the rear of the Trident jet, where they both crammed in and fucked until Alan, the British sound recordist, hammered on the folding door.

  After sipping the icy fruit juice, Gil told his stomach to mind its manners, and he wolfed down the breakfast, aware of a sudden hunger that the thought of Mike, naked in his arms, aroused. What if he’s changed his mind? What if it’s all a big mistake? Why don’t you just shut up and see how it goes?

  Outside, day bloomed fully and within minutes of the breakfast trays being cleared, Gil sensed the plane’s change of altitude and a slight quietening in the rush of the engines. The woman seated next the window suddenly nudged her husband excitedly and pointed out. As the big aircraft banked a little, Gil caught a glimpse of green-gray smudged landscape below the wing divided by a wide waterway of an uninviting slate color. For another twenty minutes ( that’s twenty less … ) the big airplane gently dropped through the broken cloud cover of middle England until the captain’s drawl fought with the engines for attention to inform his passengers that they would only have one go-around on the Heathrow stack and should be on the ground pretty much on time at ten-thirty local. “That’s gee-em-tee, folks,” he added helpfully.

  By the time the plane dropped into the upper layers of cumulus, the cloud cover had thickened considerably, and underneath the base the ground appeared indistinct and drear, reminding Gil that it was early December. He checked his watch even though he knew the day. He’d left L.A. on the seventh; now it was the eighth—the day a year ago John Lennon died. They had landed at Gatwick … And that reminded Gil that he’d blanked out the last time he really had flown with Mike—back from New York, when they’d gone over with Rod and Damien Foot to film at the disco, Subway. On the return flight Mike acted in a wi
thdrawn way, distant and cold. It was the start of everything that went wrong. No wonder he’d chosen to forget it. Flying from Rome had been full of glee and hope for the future; flying from New York had been the precursor of despair.

  The weather and Heathrow control dashed any hope of seeing the center of London set out below on the final approach. All he could see when the 747 banked—and little enough of that with two others in the way—looked rural. They were obviously coming in to land from the other direction, the west. And what was visible became an incoherent smear as rain began to lash the windows. Furious streams flowed backward and jumbled the view of the terminal buildings as the big jet thumped down on the runway and rolled out onto the first available exit. As if it were a sign, the rain altered direction to run in rivulets more vertically down the small window as gravity overtook the effects of motion.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London-Heathrow, where the local time is ten thirty-two. On behalf of Captain Bulow and the crew may I say thank you for flying TWA and we look forward to seeing you on board again soon. Please ensure you take all your …”

  Gil’s heart began to hammer in his chest like it wanted freedom.

  * * *

  Flight TW-958 from Ontario and Los Angeles, landed 10:33.

  He looked at his watch. “Ten-forty-five! Shit …!” It came out loud, but amid the general hubbub no one took any notice. Mike saw he might have a battle on his hands for a place among the milling crowd lining the rail just outside the United Kingdom Customs doorway. Even as he strode across the concourse the press thickened as more greeters pushed for a position. On the wall beside the blank Customs door a notice informed those waiting to expect passengers approximately twenty minutes from the advertised time of landing. And a few minutes before eleven the doors started to swing open as arrivals from TWA-958 began emerging with piled baggage carts. Mike felt fairly sure they were Americans by their dress and look. They have the dazed long-haul look of people wondering what on earth they’re doing here and considering getting the first flight out. Here and there, the seasoned traveler marched ahead with the confidence of the terminal’s geography and a confirmed plan. Others, alone, came out with the faintly embarrassed look of hibernating creatures meeting sunlight for the first time in months; the fast, furtive glance to seek known faces; evident relief and then smiles. Families with exhausted, febrile children struggled with collapsing pyramids of bags, happy to fall into the arms of friends or relatives.

  Mike’s inhaled breath stalled and almost choked him. His Adam’s apple caught painfully. A face filled his vision, at once so known and so extraordinarily strange. He thought he was seeing Gil for the very first time as though through the medium of a mind-concentrating opiate which both distorted and impelled at the same time. For a moment Gil looked left to right and then his beautiful gray eyes widened as he caught sight of Mike. There he was, with his heart-shaped head and mop of blond hair (which needed a trim, again) covering half his ears and falling across his straight brows. And that countenance which too readily expressed his emotions and ranged in a trice from a look of pure innocence to sly naughtiness. So unchanged, so different.

  Typically, Gil had encumbered himself with nothing more than his battered old suitcase, not a large one at that, and a bulging backpack. He walked between the other passengers to the end of the guard rail and turned to face Mike. They stared at each other, and Mike felt his mouth twitch into a smile, much as he could see Gil’s doing the same. He wanted to reach out and grab his American in his arms and hug him until they both fell to the stained floor, and then rip off his clothes, and make mad love to him.

  Gil reached out his right hand and Mike automatically reciprocated. The grip was disappointingly damp. “Hi,” Gil said.

  “Hey, you. You’re here …” Mike snorted noisy derision at his own ineptness. “Course you’re here. How was the flight?’

  “Long. Boring. Have you been waiting much?”

  Was this it, then, the banality of greeting; molten desire reduced to the slag of scuffed particolored linoleum tiles of Terminal Three? Mike smiled, determined not to give way to a feeling of anti-climax. He took the case from Gil and swung around to lead him toward the nearest exit. “Not long,” he lied. Then he grinned broadly and winked. “I got here a few minutes after nine.”

  Gil shoved ahead through the exit doorway with a quick sideways look over his shoulder and laughed at the admission. “You idiot!”

  He pulled up abruptly just outside, still under the shallow awning which kept the rain at bay for a few feet. Mike joined him with an apologetic wave of his free hand. “Sorry, me ol’ ballin’ buddy. Welcome back to Britain. You didn’t think to bring a mack?”

  “A what …?”

  “Er, you know, mackintosh, a raincoat?”

  “Ah.” Gil eyed Mike’s casual attire—the black jeans and his usual black leather “bum freezer” over a denim shirt—with a wry smile. “Where you parked Horny?”

  “Straight over. We’ll have to run for it.”

  As they climbed the dank concrete steps, one after the other, Mike’s ass flexed tantalizingly in Gil’s vision. He retained a fond image of the other face, where the faded dye highlighted the bulge above the fork of Mike’s long legs. Now the immediacy of meeting again was concluded, Gil thought he felt better, more relaxed. Airports were surely never the best place, and yet the crowded concourse had granted a degree of anonymity while repressing the desire to show too much emotion … well, between two boys in public, anyway … and in Britain. Gil had to remember that gay sex was only allowed here between adults of twenty-one and above. Which he was, now.

  “Hey! We’re legal, ain’t we?”

  “Bloody hell, yes. Hasn’t that taken all the fun out of it!”

  They emerged through battered swing doors on the car park’s fourth level.

  Mike swung around a parked car and squeezed between it and the Alfa Romeo to put Gil’s case in the trunk … no, call that the “boot” here. Gil followed and stood blocking the way when Mike pressed the lid down and turned to him. His round eyes fixed on Gil’s and for a long moment they stared into each other’s regard.

  Mike smiled. “Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get them peepers …”

  And then almost as a motor reaction Gil raised his arms, leaned forward and met Mike’s cool lips. Hands clutched at his waist as Mike pulled him close so their crotches pressed together and the kiss went on until the distant echo of a car door shutting came harshly through the gloom.

  Mike leaned back slightly in Gil’s embrace and shook his head from side to side slowly, lips parted in an enigmatic smile. “I can’t believe you’re really here yet.” He laid his head down on Gil’s shoulder and breathed in his ear. “My God, but I’m so happy to have you back. I know I’m lucky and I don’t deserve a second chance—”

  “Hush, Mike. I’m here. C’mon, let’s get going. I wanna get home and catch up on the jet-lag.” He pushed Mike’s head up and grinned at him. “After you’ve taken real good care of me.”

  In the light exiting traffic Mike drove fast through the tunnel connecting the terminals to the Bath Road traffic circle and the motorway link to the M4. The incessant rain was still slowing everyone, but it was well past the rush hour and in minutes they were on the elevated Brentford section and then Mike steered onto the slip and down to the North Circular at Gunnersbury. After the Hanger Lane roundabout Gil began seeing familiar sights: the twin towers of Wembley Stadium, the coils of the M1 and Edgware Road; Hendon Way, and shortly after Finchley Road. The road sign fastened high up on the face of a house gave Gil an unpleasant shiver. He associated Finchley Road with where Mike had broken the awful news that he had fallen in love with Trevor and it was all over. Knowing the reason behind that, and knowing that Finchley Road was simply a main drag with no sinister attachments, didn’t lessen the upsetting thrill seeing it gave him.

  “How’s Trevor?” He knew Mike would instantly detect the neutral tone.


  “Looking forward to seeing you again.” Mike turned his head for a second, wry smile plastered over his lips. “And to say sorry.”

  “Uh, well, he doesn’t have to—”

  Mike returned his attention to the thickening traffic as the road narrowed toward Finchley Road tube station. “But he insists he wants to, probably cos he can’t wait to get into your pants again.”

  Gil shuffled uncomfortably in the bucket seat, but thought it best to keep silent.

  “And then there’s Will. He hasn’t stopped talking about you ever since I got back, so much so that I wouldn’t mind betting he has the hots for you … at least, in between the girl friends—or ‘bints,’ as he calls them—he keeps dragging in, begging me to give him some space so he can get laid.”

  Gil shuffled again. A smaller version of his older brother, William Smith exhibited the same precocious tendencies in abundance. Gil could well imagine that Mike and Will’s mom and dad wouldn’t appreciate him “dragging in bints” for a casual screw on their sofa or find their precious boy curled up naked with a girl on his bed in their home a few doors up Aberdare Gardens from Mike and ( yes! ) Gil’s apartment.

  Mike flicked the indicator and pulled smartly over to the right filter lane as they came to a halt at the traffic lights outside the big Waitrose store. Seeing it laid out before him while they waited on the red brought back more memories tinged with sadness for the past but brightened by the prospect of shopping there again. For some reason, a bottle of South African Roodeberg red floated across his inner vision. By no means the most expensive wine on offer in the store, it had represented a touch of extravagant pampering on payday each month when they both worked at Pinewood Studios. Another memory caused him to smile. He’d gone shopping and wandered into what had originally been John Barnes, a part of the John Lewis chain, reduced to a smaller section of the store when Lewis had their Waitrose food arm take over the Finchley Road premises. And there he came across a beautiful hard-wood chopping block, about eighteen by twelve inches and all of three inches thick. He thought it a good price and, on an impulse, picked it up and took it to the checkout. As he waited his turn, a little elderly Jewish mamma behind him poked him in the ribs and asked the price of the board. “Er, sixteen pounds.” At this, she rocked back and forth like a Yiddish roly-doll and chortled in happy contempt. “Oy, oy, I bought one exactly like this one and for only two pounds!”