Playing Out

by Paul Magrs

  1 needed to draw, to have days off, to do things other than read and write in the locked Postgraduate Room. Its windows steamed up with claustrophobia, it seemed. The white board was smeared with words as though they flew about the room like Hitchcock’s birds when we weren’t looking, then flattened themselves to the board when we were. Julian’s desperate concentration wore me out, too; sometimes he was too panicked to break up a morning for coffee. When we did have coffee, in a campus bar with red gingham tablecloths, his conversation was weak and repetitious and you could tell he was just worried about his note-taking on the Renaissance. I’d forgotten, in a year, how intensive MAs can be. I was out to pasture in the grassless hinterlands of a PhD.

  So I relished my days at home; breakfast watching the frozen canal and its swans turned clumsy, skidding their way about. The canal went dusty with layers of snow; it was like Orlando. I had the cat twisting about beside me, and I drew some anemones we had on the mantelpiece until half nine that morning, until Julian arrived, fresh from dropping the Child at the creche. I’d persuaded Julian he needed the odd day away from our soundproofed room, too, and, given the circumstances we’d settled on, he agreed.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked breezily when I opened the front door. He had his flat cap on, jauntily; wrapped up for winter. He looked determined and business-like, as he always did when going for piles of research texts in the library. Today’s activity was something he was equally set on doing right. Meanwhile I was quivering inwardly, having expected him to have run a mile by now, all resolution, curiosity gone. While I made us a pot of tea I found I couldn’t swallow and just nodded as he fussed about with conversation.

  ‘I ehm…’ he stumbled, and I passed him his tea. He struggled to take off his coat and hat, still holding it. Perhaps he’d gone as nervous as I by now. ‘I told Elsa about this. Asked her, really, if she thought it was all right.’

  I took a scalding sip of Earl Grey. Earl Grey was something else we concurred on alongside Michael Nyman’s music, Chagall’s circus paintings. ‘And?’

  ‘She didn’t see why I even mentioned it. She says it’s up to us. But she’d like to see what we come up with. If you don’t mind…’

  I shrugged.

  A week ago there’d been a coffee break over scarlet gingham. We’d been joined by Teri and Elsa and Teri’s talk of marriage. She wanted to piss me off, did so, and left. Elsa went after her, a little later; they were doing a writing course together.

  Left alone again, Julian started asking me about my drawing. He showed me some contact prints of his he’d done in a rented darkroom the previous night. He had whole films of statues from Italy. Pearly white men stretched out and, in these mismatched, tiny contacts, interlocking in a bizarre panoply. Then there was a film of Stephen, dressed in his usual crumpled cords and jacket, in a dusty room, lying, standing or sitting in a glass cabinet. Julian explained that these were all his father figures; their poses paralleling one another. Oh boy. I said I thought they were very nice and that I’d like to see them finished.

  ‘And,’ I added, pouring more tea, ‘if you ever have film left over, I’d love some nice, proper photos taken of me. I’ve never had any done, really.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said in that rushed, cajoling tone, one eye on the clock and the other on the next topic of interest, as though wary of being caught out.

  We talked about Roland Barthes or something or other for a bit, before Julian said, ‘Of course, what I’d like to do is photograph a bloke naked. That’s what I really need.’

  I coloured again but couldn’t let the conversation drop. ‘I don’t know about that…’

  ‘Oh! I wasn’t asking you… I just meant…’ He floundered and my heart went out to him again, as it was tending to do. ‘Would you, though?’

  I felt I had a dire body and, in my excited indecision, felt it sliding, like molten butter, into slabs about my feet. ‘We’d draw up a bargain,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’ve got the same problem drawing. The next thing I need is a nude model, and I want a man. But who do you ask? How can you ask?’

  We giggled in complicity.

  ‘But we understand each other… where we’re at… and our romantic friendship. It needn’t be a problem. Why don’t we pose for each other? Make it mutual?’

  ‘A mutual appreciation society.’ He smiled.

  Held every Wednesday and Friday morning, we decided. And I would put the central heating on full blast, pull down the blinds in my tiny bedroom, switch on the lamps, get the Nyman CDs ready. We needed an atmosphere redolent with trust and artifice to see us through.

  Into this warmth and conspiracy, Julian actually turned up that first Wednesday morning. He walked into my room ahead of me as we came up carrying our cups of tea. He wore the expression of a potential house buyer and looked down at my drawing book and pens, pencils slung as if nonchalantly on the bed. He turned to smile at this and carefully put his posh camera to one side. I switched the music on and sat on a chair, finding I couldn’t actually say anything now we were here.

  He produced a very old hardback. ‘I’m afraid I’m sticking to the other condition. That I’m allowed to read while you draw, since it could go on some time.’

  ‘Fine,’ I nodded, and he tossed it onto my duvet and then shrugged his heavy jumper off over his head, fluffing up his hair as he emerged. His home-made shirt was rucked up; he tugged it and revealed a sparrow-thin torso which goose-fleshed over at first, its delicate nipples startled, on end. He was braced like a bird’s skeleton on the bed as he prepared to pose; milk-bottle white, fragile, a mass of shifting, fluent shades of cream and blue-grey. I judged and altered trapezoids, rhombuses of bones and shallow muscle and he carried his old book through all of these negotiations, keeping his eyes on the small print. He wrenched off shoes and socks, slinging them, followed by his trousers. Suddenly, he stood beside my bed in cotton undershorts and I had a moment of ontological doubt how he could be revealed so beautifully explicit to me by means other than an idealising imagination or the fervid mutual decision that we were about to fuck. Yet it was neither of these things and terribly, frustratingly realistic as he took down his pants and sprawled almost hairless and wan across the bed, the thick hooded nub of his cock slapping against his stomach and lolling under my nose.

  There were so very few poses, it turned out. Sprawling contextless provides the average body with a limited amount of things to do. I interrupted his reading each quarter hour for something new.

  He flipped about. ‘It’s cock or arsehole,’ he said, showing a streak of vulgarity I’d not heard before and more shocking, strangely, than his actions of that moment; belly down on the now-rumpled bed, raising his arse to display his pendulous prick, neat little balls.

  My part of the bargain was to be naked too as I drew him; ready for the photos he wanted to take in the bathroom. We lay side by side and I scratched away at the page; each drawing had its lavish crest of pubic hair and his prick looking different each time. It seemed natural to both of us that what we really wanted represented was his face, his cock, the smooth chest and stomach between. When he looked at the progress made he was fascinated by what I’d made of his cock. ‘It looks like a little face!’ he said.

  I undressed fearing that I’d get an erection, but I figured that, that being inevitable for both of us, we’d deal with it all right. I didn’t, however; hung limp and small alongside him. Julian appeared to cast the most cursory of glances.

  But I stood against our half-plastered, dramatic bathroom walls and he closed in on my skin, the shadings of muscle, the sullen defiance of my cock and murmured lovingly at it all through his viewfinder. He shot his pictures still naked and when he leaned in to show me how things focused, how light was squeezed out, nonchalantly brought us into contact and I felt my dick slide wetly along his thigh with a trail of precum.

  When I flipped through the drawings for Elsa over our next meal together—at my house this tim
e—I noticed a shocking continuity for the first time. She had expressly asked to see them and, embarrassed, Julian and I said she could. She picked up on this certain feature immediately. Julian’s cock was bigger, more alert in each drawing. By the last, warmest, most faithful version, he was sprawled entirely safe and sleepy and drawn from waist level. So safe and guileless he lay, giving a thoughtlessly rude view of a vulnerable, puckered arsehole and his thick cock arched up his belly as if to drink from the well of his navel. It hadn’t struck me before but in this drawing his foreskin was drawn back of its own accord, to reveal a tender, blushing dome; the urethra’s needle eye. He had a negligent, luxurious erection. The pose was so calm and accustomed, I hadn’t noticed. And how do you test hardness, readiness, with the circumspection we basked in?

  At the front of the Halifax there was one of those little tables for the kiddies, cluttered with Lego. The Child and I played there while Julian queued up, cap literally in hand, for the counter. We were making a tower sort of thing, putting a kind of conversation together. The Child was stuffed into a blue and yellow romper suit; when we walked through town Julian slung him carelessly arm to arm and it was as if the Child bounced, resilient, squalling, and attracting the attention of each shopkeeper we met.

  Especially in the indoor market they were known and watched out for; primped and petted, the young father and son exhibiting this astonishing precocity at buying their own groceries. Friday afternoons were when Julian had the Child to himself. This one in November was my birthday and we were having lunch together; at a table strewn with red, white and blue napkins in Cafe Monet.

  We spent all afternoon round town and it was dark before the shops shut. We were a family. A gay couple and child. And we basked in the fondness of shopkeepers. How nice it was for them to see how we were coming on. Nice to see the young ones managing. We were laden down with shopping. We bought Earl Grey in a speciality shop where everything came in redolent wooden kegs and barrels. I was learning that Julian and family liked to buy things which were, if not expensive, at least authentic. Handwrapped parcels of moist, fresh, loose tea, authentically dead and dripping birds hung outside butchers’ windows. I got caught up in it and it made me feel more bogus than ever; me with my penchant for snooping round Just What You Need and Superdrug.

  That night, the night of my twenty-fourth, I had a lovely time with a friend of mine in a cocktail bar done up exactly like the studio set for The Scarlet Empress. My friend was a sternly phlegmatic, one-handed fencing instructor. He took me to task.

  ‘You’re fucking with the bourgeoisie,’ he warned, adjusting his glasses and sucking on his cocktail straw. He’d recently done a counselling course and, while he kept the tone of voice they’d given him, he threw out their ideas of objectivity. ‘Or rather, the bourgeoisie are fucking you. They always do. You never win. Don’t bother with it. Don’t be daft.’

  I frowned, sunk into myself. ‘It’s just a laugh. I need a laugh. There’s no risk. Nothing’s happened. I can lap up a morning or two of mutual glorification with no strings attached and not get hurt.’

  ‘I dunno,’ he said. I wasn’t sure if that cast doubt on me or the situation. He added, ‘It’s a complex one. Because you reckon that he’s really a queer, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, God, I can’t tell anything any more.’

  Nowadays I just thought all sex was pretty androgynous. This caused problems for me in Cult Stud where centuries’ worth of accumulated theoretical discourse told me that there were all sorts of differences to be problematised.

  Yet… regardless of the biological accoutrements of the bodies I had encountered, their lovemaking always occurred to me as an androgynous affair. Sleek, lightly haired limbs folded about one another or reserved in a charged proximity. Their very vulnerability in the act or the presence of love helped them transcend gender. Surely.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said my fencing friend. ‘You’re queer or you’re straight and anything else is just fucking around. Tell him to get himself sorted.’

  We wandered home that night and he got me to promise to stop fucking about. He took the radical position. It wasn’t fair to expect people—me, since he was being supportive here—to stand in the background, in their own marginal Position and let others—straights, he spat—get away without commitment.

  ‘Bourgeois fucking straights,’ he sneered as we walked along the slimy towpath. We went to mine for coffee, and watched Ken Russell’s Women in Love off video.

  On the mantelpiece—and the fencer commented on them—in my gorgeous blue Habitat vase: a squashed bouquet of shocking pink and midnight anemones. Their stalks bent beneath the dull black weight of their hearts, and their vellum petals sodden and bruised.

  Walking back at teatime, Julian had made me wait outside Interflora with the Child. I had a feeling what he was up to. A nice gesture. A kiss-off. A promise. The Child flapped his arms to be picked up as it came on to freezing rain and I did so and received for my pains a swift, grateful hug. Julian came out with his shoulders hunched, brandishing his prize. He had two separate parcels of dark, glamorous flowers.

  ‘One for Mummy and one…’ he gave me mine, ‘for you.’

  THE LION VANISHES

  I was heavily involved reading something and I never noticed when we stopped. When I’m on a train I like to keep my head down much of the time. It doesn’t do to have people think you’re looking at them. Anything might result.

  It was a busy train, a trans-Europe express—of Agatha Christie and Kraftwerk fame—and we were crammed into compartments that reeked of pine, tobacco and musty plush. The woman sitting across from me was clutching three sticky cases of Belgian chocolates, a leopard-skin pillbox hat resting ominously on the shelf above her head. Up to no good, I thought, and went to the dining compartment for lunch, not wanting to be involved.

  At this stage our journey was all mountains and forests. I hardly knew where we were; if not hurtling through invisible, snow-stormed countryside, we alternated wildly between the dizzying clarity of the severest of altitudes and the vegetable dark of the woods. The landscape was something else, besides my fellow travellers, not to get too embroiled in.

  I review books, novels. I had a suitcase of twenty-six in the luggage carriage and by Manchester, England, was meant to have read and commented on each. I was on number twelve, a heady and baroquely inaccurate account of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and was anticipating another quiet afternoon in a semi-doze with somebody else’s fiction at my mercy, flipping the pages with a disrespectful haste.

  The quiet of the train was fascinating. A quiet tamped down by all the snow, which we could see but, since we were kept in this Regency-stripe-flocked shuttle, not even imagine tasting or touching. The climate’s unaffected quiet infected everyone, I thought.

  I had developed my sea legs, train legs, and I was buffeted all the way to the dining car, which was only two up from the last, the luggage car. I was very familiar with this last, since with each hardback book completed, I had to make another trip to replace it from my case. It was awkward, but I didn’t like to carry piles of books around with me the whole journey, drawing attention to myself.

  In the luggage car, also, in that workmanlike place full of yellow dust and shunting boxes and cases and crates, were the magician’s stage props. I’d known we had a magician on board; I’d seen him clearing tablecloths for applause at dinnertime.

  He was the shape of a purple pear and fit to burst through his immaculate evening dress, which he wore all day with a ludicrous top hat. He had a malevolent waxed moustache; as if he should stop the train and tie us all to the rails. He impressed everyone and we clapped at his antics with the crockery. After three days it palled and now he was quiet and not as showy. It doesn’t do to become too well known on a long trip, to be a prominent personality. We know that from disaster movies, don’t we? The mouthy characters (played by someone famous, known for doing quirky types) are the ones who’ll be killed, heroically perhaps, but pa
thetically and quite definitely. Think of Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure.

  So our magician kept his trap shut and soon we’d almost forgotten about him and his tricks. As the days in the interminable mountains slid by, he became dowdier and dowdier. There he was, this evening, sucking soup from a dull gold spoon in a shady corner of the dining car. His glasses were opaque and his shoulders hunched. I worried for him, even, that he mightn’t pluck up his charisma before arriving in Germany, where he was to start performing again. His assistant, Deborah, had shed her sequins and feathers and, sitting opposite him with a meagre salad, looked like an old man’s secretary.

  When I went to swap my book I would spend a surreptitious hour among the luggage and stage props of the magician and his assistant. God forbid that anyone should have found me in those joyful hours. In her spangly outfits with a feather boa slung I’d be lying inside her glittering coffin and waiting to be sawed into two or three with his doves and rabbits and what have you nibbling and scampering and shedding bits of themselves all around me. I’ve always fancied myself as someone’s assistant. Preferably in show business.