Hold on to every minute. Even when it is late and you should go home. What difference will 45 minutes make? Will love succeed in 45 minutes? The chances are incredibly slim but you count each minute with hope. When those 45 minutes are gone, and you go out into the morning sun, then you know that it was 45 minutes wasted.
An angel with black latex gloves. He tells me that he suffers from eczema and that it is flaring up everywhere. He shows me his hands, arms and chest, but I can’t see anything. He says he even has it on his arse cheeks but isn’t brave enough to show me something that isn’t there.
He’s from Wythenshawe which means that he has five sisters, five younger brothers and an incestuous pit bull. His grey sweatpants keep disappearing up the crack of his arse and he keeps rubbing his dick. Every few minutes he flirts with girls and that pisses me off. A cock tease. Then he starts chatting with a lowlife lad next to me and I see that there is more to this than I like.
But he returns and says that I have beautiful blue eyes, and when he smiles, I notice that he’s wearing braces on his teeth, which is kinda cute. He turns his back and the tee-shirt says ‘authorised personnel only’.
This is where I used to play football in Adidas shorts, with sexy legs and a six-pack. I was fourteen and showed off to the girls. I wasn’t great but that didn’t matter because they thought I was the best footballer in the world. When it was dark, we came here to smoke cigarettes and drink beer because this was our secret place.
A few years later I ended up in London and played for an amateur team which thought that I had a brilliant attitude and a bit of skill. And the girls still thought that I was a catch. But my attention had wandered. When I met an Italian boy called Nico, he persuaded me to move to Perugia with him.
I played for a small local team with black curly-haired boys who wore Kappa shorts, and they were the ones who had tanned legs and six-packs. I was a carthorse, and they were young stallions who flirted mischievously and called me ‘ragazzo gay’ – ‘gay boy’.
Now I have come back to see where the adventure began.
There are no younger versions of me anymore, no adoring girls, only long grass and trees. I sit alone on a bench, and a young guy walks by before heading into the undergrowth. He looks back and I know he wants me to follow so I decide that I will.
“Look, tonight is the future, and I am planning for it! There’s this shirt I gotta buy, a beautiful shirt.” – Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever
“Uh, I’m not very hungry; just gimme a double Polar Burger wit’ everything and a cherry soda wit’ chocolate ice cream.” – Danny Zuko in Grease
“And now after all this time I finally figured out how to trap him… I will become him” – John Travolta about John Travolta
In years to come, people will talk about John Travolta as a famous old movie star.
Historical fiction is a blend of the real and imagined. If only there was a way of going back to find out what was real and which of it wasn’t. And if I make things up, will people in three hundred years time believe that what I wrote was what really happened?
He sits like a ghost of last night, knees raw, boots scuffed, a slouch that says he’s seen too much for someone too young to carry it. The alley’s a graveyard of pallets and metal, the air thick with the stale breath of kegs that haven’t been touched since the last fight or fuck. The wall at his back don’t care who he is, and neither does the city — just another boy in borrowed clothes, dragging the hem of his story through concrete and piss. His eyes don’t beg. They dare. As if to say: I’m not lost — I’m choosing to stay gone. Everything here’s worn out —the barrels, the bricks, the boy. But there’s poetry in the ruin, and he knows it. He’s not posing. He’s waiting. For the light to change, for someone to look twice, or maybe just for the silence to settle in enough to sleep.
“Now he feels like some ageing pin-up finding a pimply kid masturbating over photos of him as a boy, and peeping lecherously in on those carnal couplings of his youth.” – Separate Rooms – Pier Vittorio Tondelli – Italy – 1989
White Nike socks. Navy blue Hummel shorts and tee-shirt. You’re a chavvy label-obsessed whore. But amidst that hard set defiance, I ponder on why your pale legs are so damn smooth.
Remarkably drunk. Trying to act like I’m not. Failing badly. Anyone with a dick will do. Luke who says he’s from the Manor estate comes and talks to me and is rough as fuck but handsome and eloquent. This straight boy could beat me up in seconds. He asks me if I have a girl at home and I nod. And then he asks me if that girl is really a guy. I change my mind and admit that it’s a guy. He admonishes me and says that I should never be embarrassed for liking guys.
He goes away and I tell ChatGPT what has just happened and it replies.
“It sounds like you’re in a difficult and potentially unsafe situation. If you feel threatened or at risk, consider reaching out to a trusted friend or contacting a local crisis line for support. If you need to stay awake and alert to complete your task, drinking water, getting some fresh air, and eating something can help clear your head. Would you like me to help you with strategies to appear more sober or to stay focused?”
Long live the King. The King is gone. I was the King but I am done. I had to go because the people didn’t respect the King anymore. The King was unable to control his desires. All those handsome Dukes, Counts, Barons and Earls. Now the King has nothing. The King must eat shit.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 