The script didn’t work. We looked at it for hours… days even… until somebody said… “Ditch the Peter Pan shit, because everybody knows the Peter Pan shit already… focus on Michael, and only Michael, a handsome son of a bitch who Peter Pan would have fucked anyway.”
“Shameless. He floats naked in the water, the light rippling over chest and stomach. His lips, as if caught between a breath and a moan, his hand loose at his side like he’s waiting to be grabbed. There’s nothing soft about it – just flesh, need, and the unspoken dare in his stillness. Every line built for touch, for heat, waiting to be claimed. The invitation to take what you want. The sight is blunt, undeniable: he wants to be used.”
Charlie had taken his art in a new direction. He was bored, disillusioned with paintings of landscapes, objects and street scenes. A flirtation with what he called ‘art contemporain’ had ended in frustration. “Circles, squares, solid colours, lines, zig-zags … they mean nothing to me!”
The first that I knew about this new path was when I returned home to find Levi, our former lodger, sprawled on the sofa in just his underwear. “It isn’t what it looks like,” he flushed. ”I’m only doing it as a favour.”
Charlie shouted from the bathroom. “I am ready now. The bathtub is full and my camera is ready.” I was bemused to say the least.
Charlie wandered into the room. “Ah, you are home, mon ami. I need the bathroom for thirty minutes while I photograph Levi.”
The Polish boy with the Yorkshire accent followed him along the corridor and into the brightly lit bathroom. With a certain amount of embarrassment he stepped into the bath. “Lay down, Levi, and put your head underwater. I am going to stand on both sides of the bath and take photos from above.”
I watched from the doorway and listened while Levi was told to take deep breaths and submerge himself. Then he had to raise his right arm, then his left, and then both of them together. All the time, Charlie was precariously balancing, taking shot after shot.
When they had finished, Levi stood up, looking satisfyingly toned, and dripping from head to toe. Charlie looked him up and down. “As I suspected, you have a little dick, but we cannot all be lucky. You can get dry now.”
“I feel stupid,” Levi told him, “and I haven’t brought any dry boxer shorts.” Charlie flicked through the images and appeared not to have heard him, so I went to a bedroom drawer and gave him a pair of mine to change into.
That night Charlie spent hours searching for the right photo. The next morning he visited a local print shop and had it blown up to the size of a small poster. He placed it on an artist’s easel and studied it. “I am going to use this photo to create my next painting,” he announced. “If it is successful then I am going to start painting beautiful men from now onwards.”
I reminded him that there had been a time when he would have considered Levi anything but beautiful. “That was the case,” he replied, “but I needed somebody that I knew who was willing to model for me, and when I have finished, I will make him appear extremely homoerotic which is something he is definitely not.”
“Don’t fail to drop in to tea tomorrow old girl, or you’ll miss the treat of your life. A new beauty, my dear, the latest thing from Harvard. You may have read of him – Harold Halfseas. Has chestnut hair in crisp like waves all round his forehead; oval face, pure Grecian profile, marble and rose complexion and a magnificent figure. You’ll come? Thanks, darling! I thought you would.”
– From the World News – Columbus, Ohio – 2 December 1923
He crouched at the platform’s edge, elbows balanced on his knees, his bare arms lit starkly by the fluorescent tubes above. The train had not yet arrived, but the rails sang faintly, a low vibration that climbed through the soles of his shoes. He leant forward, alert, as if he could will it closer with the sharpness of his gaze.
The station smelt of metal and damp stone, a place most would find tired and ordinary. But for him it felt alive – charged. His youth made everything sharper: the hum of electricity, the echo of footsteps along the tiled walls, even the restless air that slipped through the tunnel ahead. He sniffed his armpits and detected the sweet aroma of innocent sweat that he rather liked.
And then the lights appeared, two pale orbs cutting through the dark, and his breath caught. It was only a train—one of a thousand that came before and would come after. Yet in that moment it felt like something else entirely, a promise or a dare. The train held his past, and once he had boarded, it would move him towards a future. He didn’t know where it would go, only that he was ready to be carried.
He grinned to himself, a private smile that nobody else saw. His whole body hummed with the knowledge that he was young, and that youth meant possibilities.
Maria was tired of life. Tired of the flat that they lived in. Tired of not having enough money. Tired of being a mother to a four year old. Tired of not being able to take a bath on her own. That was it. She was tired of Joe most of all. They sat opposite each other in silence. She kept still, but he fidgeted, unable to get comfortable and put his feet against the wall behind her and trapped her head between his legs. She noticed the scar on his left knee that had turned pink in the hot water. She also saw how white the bubbles on his legs seemed against the dirty bathroom tiles. Joe lit a cigarette and offered it to her, but she declined, and he simply shrugged. All the time he flicked ash into the bathwater, but she no longer cared. At least he wasn’t wearing sunglasses like he normally did in the bath. ‘I used to love him,’ she thought, ‘but now I hate him more than anything.
I was dancing with ghosts. Men who lived from the reign of Queen Victoria, through Edward VII, to King George V. A few lived beyond. They were spectral figures circling me, wavering, and waiting for a response. Watchful. Whispering. Lingering. For the most part, they were happy that I was there, but a few eyed me with caution. They lived in a time when it was wiser to trust nobody.
More and more joined the dance. Coming out of doors that had long closed, from dark corners, and miserable places to where they were banished.
Each told me their name, some I knew, but most were unfamiliar, and frowned at my ignorance. There were those whose names I recognised, but not the men they belonged to. But there were so many that I would not remember everyone, and I resorted to recording names in a notebook. I wrote frantically, eager to please, careful not to miss anyone.
A long list of dead people, some of whom were friends, acquaintances, and some who were strangers to one another. They danced because they were connected – names intrinsically linked – but they might not have known it. They had gone into my notebook because they shared something in common.
When they lived I did not exist. I came much later, born into a kinder world.
The passage of time puts me at an advantage. A century later, it is easy for me to see how they lived, what achievements came their way, if at all, and how they were remembered, for better or worse. The links are in the chain – who was attached to who?
Six years. Remember the first time? Ignorant shit of a boy. I was the best, but to be fair, you did eventually realise that. Six years flirting. Six years wasted. All because you married that horse of a girl who never liked me. It ended badly. Tears tonight because you’re scared. I sympathised and looked incredibly sad. All the right moves. But really, my heart sang from the rooftops. My skinny petit pois…. ha ha!
“ I heard Earth, Wind and Fire singing ‘Ba-dee-ya’ on the radio, and I thought, oh no, this is another step towards autumn.” – a woman on the bus referring to the song September.
“There in the shade, like a cool drink waiting, he sat with slow fire in his eyes, just waiting.” – Johnny Hartman singing A Slow Hot Wind.
“He comes from an old Dorset family that made grandfather clocks and had a swan’s head as their emblem.” – a posh woman boasting about the man who her daughter is marrying.
“Hey, is there anywhere to play pickleball around here?” – a student in Starbucks.
“I can hear monks chanting.” – Charlie laid in bed in the middle of the night.
“The drawback is that you always get corn dust up your bum.” – a farmer on the radio.
“Come and look at this rock, it’s shaped like your willy!” – a young girl shouting to her older brother.
Ten o’clock in the morning and I hoped that I wasn’t too late. I stood on the terrace and looked upon the narrow street, the wait tense, every figure a possibility, every person making my pulse leap, until I remembered the black dog, and the disappointment set in.
I was in my hiding place, and he wouldn’t know that I was there, the anticipation laced with secrecy, maybe even guilt. I was invisible, while he was exposed for everyone to see. What would happen if he looked up? Would he even notice me? What if I wasn’t the only watcher?
The minutes ticked by and I hoped that he would appear, and when he did, it would seem like the world was holding its breath. I waited for the boy with the black dog.
“The president is a camp icon. He’s like a drag queen. He’s outrageous, he’s transgressive, he’s catty, he’s a narcissist the likes of which we haven’t seen since Alexander the Great.” – James Kirchick, journalist and author of ‘Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington’, as quoted in in The New York Times.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 