Maxwell and Myles: two brothers, yet two entirely different temperaments.
Maxwell, the extrovert; Myles, the introvert.
Maxwell reserved only in appearance, Myles inwardly repressive.
Maxwell is confident where Myles is nervous.
Careless meets diligent.
Dominant faces the submissive.
The imaginative brother beside the one more firmly rooted.
An optimist paired with a pessimist.
Adventurousness set against caution.
All of it the quiet outcome of the genetic lottery: strands of DNA shuffled and recombined into millions of possible arrangements. From the same parents, yet never the same person. And then life intervenes—different encounters, different choices, different small accidents of experience.
What begins as chance becomes character.
What begins as similarity drifts toward contrast.
In the end, perhaps they also choose it—each brother carving out a separate niche, shaping himself in deliberate opposition to the other, until the distance between them feels almost inevitable.
“The self-righteousness of that age was really camouflage to disguise its own hypocrisy, and the people who were loudest in their condemnation of my father were often those whose own lives could least bear investigation.”
– Vyvyan Holland writing in Son of Oscar Wilde. Published by Rupert Hart-Davis (1954)
And I can’t help thinking that the same still applies…
Rawly talented. Jeff Buckley. Photographed by Merri Cyr
Something strange had happened beforehand. A young guy sold me my cinema ticket. Soft features, dark curls, expressive eyes. Soft-spoken. All the time he smiled as though sharing a secret only he understood.
There were other staff around, but when I bought a coffee he served me again. He looked astonishingly vulnerable when he realised he’d screwed up making my hazelnut coffee. And then he scanned my ticket when I headed into the screening.
He might have been Jeff Buckley, if only he’d known who he was.
The cinema was empty, as though this showing were meant for my eyes alone—someone who only discovered him after he was already dead. That strange, almost mystical aura: the romantic legend whose story remains unfinished. It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.
A Pre-Raphaelite look—with scratchy stubble—and the whisper of a small child that could rise suddenly into a soaring falsetto, almost devotional. Was there ever anyone who captivated me so completely?
I heard the murmur of Cinema Boy: “The face that once commanded admiration and became a ruin, a tragic testament to a sad end.” That someone so beautiful would go swimming and never come back. My heart insists it was intentional.
One album—both his coming-out and his epitaph. One of the greatest albums ever recorded.
Six days. That’s all it took. A body decomposing, bloating. Skin that once felt so good to touch became pruned, pale and waterlogged—brownish, yellowish, ugly. Corpse wax. A moral fable in which the loss of physical perfection mirrors the decay of the soul.
The film ended. And Cinema Boy—who was probably called Will, or Aaron—came into the cinema to clear up after me.
He was still smiling to himself.
It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley, a 2025 feature-length documentary directed by Amy Berg (known for Deliver Us From Evil and Janis: Little Girl Blue). It is the first comprehensive documentary authorised by the Jeff Buckley Estate.
Jeffrey Scott Buckley. Guardian angel. Born: Anaheim, California (1966). Died: Memphis, Tennessee (1997), aged 30.
The people who excite me rarely seem interested in me, while those I feel nothing for often are. It’s a familiar paradox. Attraction doesn’t always align; sometimes it’s a mismatch of types, sometimes it’s the pull of emotional unavailability. I keep finding myself drawn to people who can’t—or won’t—choose me.
The sensible answer is obvious: stop chasing. Put that energy back into my own life instead of pursuing people who remain out of reach. Still, it’s irritating to realise that the very traits I possess—traits that don’t necessarily fit my own ideal—might be exactly what someone else has been looking for all along.
Some faces belong more to memory than to the world.
It’s a bit of an obsession, though I try not to talk about him too much. Still, his name surfaces from time to time. And then the teenage guy asks me if I know who River Phoenix was.
He asks it casually, like it’s just another name drifting out of the past. Of course I know. But I hesitate before answering, as though admitting it might reveal too much.
Who would have imagined we’d spend the entire night talking about River Phoenix? About how beauty becomes fixed in time. About the strange intimacy we form with the dead.
Every so often he tilts his head in a way that reminds me of him. Not exactly. But enough. For a moment I imagine he might be the reincarnation of River Phoenix. The thought is absurd, of course.
What he loves is not the person. Only the image. And the image never grows older.
Harry Oldham is writing a novel based on his criminal and sordid past. To do so, he has returned to live at Park Hill, where he grew up, and the place that he once left behind. That was then and this is now, in which the old world collides with the new.(Parts 1 to 18 are available to read in the menu)
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous – Part 19
April 1984 When you look back over a life, there’s always a year that stands out. My annus mirabilis was 1984. Not that anything exceptional happened. But things were happy, and I was rolling in money.
It was also the year I turned eighteen.
Now I’m about to turn sixty, and it feels like a distant memory. Almost a life that belonged to someone else.
I remember one April night. The days were getting longer, and when darkness fell the sky above Park Hill was clear and moonlit, the air sharp with a chill. I leaned on the balcony rail and told myself something I had started to believe.
I was a male prostitute.
That didn’t bother me.
I thought about all the names people might have used to describe me. Queer. Faggot. Bender. Nancy boy. Shirt-lifter.
None of them applied.
Because I wasn’t any of those things.
I was straight.
Anyone could see it. I was a good-looking lad who could get any girl he wanted. That was obvious to everyone.
Especially Andy and Jack.
That year I’d become a bit of an enigma to them. I still hung around with them like I always had, but they didn’t know what I was really doing. None of us had jobs—we were living on the dole. Wasters, really. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Boredom got us into trouble more often than not.
Our parents hated it.
But I didn’t care.
I didn’t need a job.
I always had money.
More than enough.
Andy and Jack couldn’t work it out. They didn’t understand how I could afford to go out most nights. What annoyed them even more was that I never invited them along.
We’d grown up together. We knew everything about each other.
Or at least they thought we did.
Andy took it the worst.
One night he punched me in the face. We were walking down the street when he suddenly turned and landed one on my chin. I charged at him and shoved him over a wall before Jack managed to drag us apart.
Later Andy said he didn’t know why he’d done it.
But I knew.
He could feel there was something about me he didn’t understand anymore.
Something I wasn’t telling him.
And there was Paolo.
I’d kept him away from Andy and Jack for a reason. If they ever met him, it would be game over.
Paolo was my work partner.
And because I kept telling myself I was straight, I hadn’t admitted something else.
He’d also become the person I cared about most.
Things had changed the year before. One side had been taken out… and those of us left were requisitioned by the survivors. Frank Smith had it all planned. Stage one complete. Now on to stage two of his masterplan.
The new world he dragged us into was worse than anything before.
But it paid.
Men didn’t just watch anymore—they wanted us. Big houses. Fancy mansions. Weekends filled with food, drink and sex.
A lot of sex.
And money.
So much bloody money we didn’t know what to do with it.
Sometimes it felt like we’d already sold everything there was to sell. Our innocence. Our dignity. Our bodies.
But every now and then we escaped from it.
One night Paolo curled up beside me in the back of a big Ford Granada and asked if he could stay at my place. His black curly hair brushed against my cheek, and I realised I liked it.
My parents were away visiting relatives in Skegness, and my younger brother Adam was off somewhere up north on a school trip.
There was no reason to say no.
Besides, I wanted him safe.
Photograph: David Sillitoe/Flickr
We got dropped off on Duke Street and walked in silence to my parents’ flat. Paolo had his coat wrapped tightly around him and a scarf pulled up around his neck so that he looked like one of those preppy American boys from the films.
I didn’t know much about the place where Paolo lived.
But when I opened the door to ours it smelt of burgers, chips and stale cigarettes.
I suddenly felt ashamed.
Paolo grabbed my hand like a frightened kid and let me pull him inside.
The flat was silent.
What we were doing felt wrong—but exciting at the same time. The same thrill I used to feel when the Geisha Boys broke into someone else’s place.
Except this time it was my home.
Paolo stayed close while I switched on the lights, hoping nothing embarrassing would reveal itself.
We were both bruised and exhausted. He asked if he could have a bath.
“I need to wash them off,” he said quietly.
The dirty old men.
I nodded.
He went into the bathroom and turned the hot tap full on. It ran loudly for a while before suddenly stopping.
“Harry?”
His voice echoed down the hall.
“Where are you? Come here.”
The door was unlocked. Paolo was sitting in the bath hugging his knees.
“Are you going to join me?”
I shook my head.
“Harry… I’d really like you to get in with me.”
So I undressed and climbed in.
It felt strange. We both knew every inch of each other’s bodies, but sitting there face to face suddenly felt awkward. I stretched my legs either side of him and he rested his elbow on my knee.
“The first time we met,” he said, “you hit me.”
I remembered.
“I didn’t know you, did I?”
“Would you ever hit me again?”
“No,” I said. “And now I’d hit anyone who hit you.”
Paolo smiled at that.
“I love you, Harry.”
I grimaced.
That was what Geisha Boys were supposed to do.
We slept together in my single bed that night. Nothing happened. He held me all night and I kept my arm around him. When he finally fell asleep, I rested my chin on his thick curly hair.
For a moment I felt something close to peace.
It didn’t last long.
The next day Andy called me a faggot.
He’d seen Paolo go into my flat.
“Who the fuck was that you took home?”
This time I hit him first.
I punched him so hard his nose burst and blood ran down his chin.
“You’re a cunt, Andy. That was my cousin.”
He didn’t believe a word of it.
“You’ve gone fucking weird,” he said.
Later Jack rang.
“Harry, you’ve busted Andy’s nose.”
“He called me a faggot,” I said. “And I ain’t no faggot, am I?”
“Nah,” Jack said. “I told him that. But he’s still pissed off with you.”
I couldn’t tell Jack the truth.
Mostly because I didn’t know it myself.
I wanted to say something else.
Do you remember Mr Johnson who taught us English? Let me tell you something, Jack. Last week he fucked me up the arse. Yeah. Our school teacher rammed me from behind.
But I ain’t no faggot.
But I couldn’t say that.
Could I?
I also remembered something else.
Years earlier we’d all been drunk at a party and ended up piled together on a sofa. We were messing around, laughing.
Then Andy and Jack kissed each other.
Properly.
Tongues and all.
That pissed me off. I stormed out and walked the streets for an hour because I was jealous.
But that didn’t mean anything.
Did it?
“A penny for your thoughts, love.”
I was sitting in June’s kitchen stirring a mug of tea far too many times.
“I’m a bit confused, June.”
“Is it Frank?” she asked.
“He’s the least of my problems.”
She smiled.
“So that means you’re thinking about Paolo.”
I gave her a look.
“Paolo’s a jewel,” she said. “And you, Harry, are a rough diamond. But when you put the two together something beautiful happens.”
“I ain’t queer, June.”
She didn’t argue.
“But you care about him,” she said gently. “And there’s a fine line between caring for someone and loving them.”
“It’s all a mess.”
“Is it?” she said softly. “I don’t see why.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“Paolo is a wonderful person. And I think—for the first time in your life—you’ve met someone who adores you exactly as you are.”
I looked down at my tea.
“Accept that,” she said. “Give him the chance.”
“And what happens then?”
June sighed.
“Harry… I don’t like what Frank’s doing to you both. I’ve told him so. But despite all that…”
She paused.
“I think something unexpected has happened.”
“What?”
“You’ve fallen in love with him.”
I laughed at that.
But June didn’t.
Frumpy old June—with a voice like an angel—had just told me the truth.
The thought had never even occurred to me. I genuinely just assumed he wasn’t interested. That was the simple explanation. I made a move, Oscar politely declined, and I retreated into my own embarrassment like a responsible adult.
But Alfie wouldn’t let it go.
“There’s a lot of energy around you,” he said. “It makes people feel exposed. They don’t always know how to handle it.”
I laughed it off at first. It sounded dramatic. But later I started replaying things.
I had been too focused on not humiliating myself to notice the details. The pause before he answered. The way he clenched his fists. The fact that he held eye contact just a second too long before looking away.
Alfie had noticed.
“There was interest,” he said carefully. “But when he realised it might actually become something real, he pulled back. Did you see him blush?”
I hadn’t. I’d been too busy overthinking my own tone of voice.
“He wasn’t rejecting you,” Alfie continued. “He was protecting himself.”
I don’t know. Maybe that’s giving him too much credit. Maybe it’s just a way of coping. But when I think about it now — the way he looked at me before he looked away — it didn’t feel cold. It felt cautious.
“He finds you intimidating,” Alfie added. “Magnetic. But intimidating.”
Sicilian Youth with Flowers – Wilhelm von Gloeden (1900)
He came in the glow of the noon-tide sun, He came in the dusk when the day was done, He came with the stars; but I saw him not, I saw him not.
But ah, when the sun with his earliest ray Was kissing the tears of the night away, I dreamed of the moisture of warm wet lips Upon my lips.
Then sudden the shades of the night took wing, And I saw that love was a beauteous thing, For I clasped to my breast my curl-crowned king, My sweet boy-king.
John Francis Bloxam writing under his pseudonym of Bertram Lawrence . It appeared in The Chameleon, a one-off literary magazine edited by Bloxam, in December 1894.
I have a feeling that something bad might happen. It makes me nervous. Like when you want to have a shit but you’re worried because the drains keep backing up.
The apples were nearly ripe. Red where the sun had kissed them too hard, green in the hollows of shade. Some were freckled, some split open already, pale flesh browning, bees drunk on the sugar. The smell hung low and thick.
He didn’t decide to dance. It happened the way shivering happens. One bare foot scraped the ground, testing it. His shoulders rolled, stiff and then looser, like he was shrugging off something heavy. His arms lifted, awkward, elbows bent too sharply, wrists slack. He laughed under his breath at how stupid he must look, alone in a field with no one to see.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 