“Enough about angels,” Charlie admonished. “I am tired of hearing about angels.”
I admit that I’ve been going on too much about angels but indulge me once more.
“We are waiting for an angel that never shows up. We don’t know if he’s there, because he could just be hiding behind the doorway.” I once saw that line accompanying an artwork in a gallery but I’m certain that I played around with the words. I suppose it means that we are on the lookout for a love that never comes, but is elusive and out of sight. But in the case of Charlie, he is elusive but right in front of my eyes.
I saw the angel looking fashionably casual in shorts and tee-shirt in the late night shop. His real name is Reese with an ‘S’ and he wasn’t hiding behind the doorway but appeared from behind shelves of soup, pasta and cans of beans. I know this angel, but he’s also out of reach.
The angel hadn’t expected to see anybody he knew, and froze like a rabbit in a car’s headlights. His smile faded when he saw that I was with someone. “Hi guys, are you going out?” I felt awkward. “No, we’re just going home,” I replied. Judging by the look on his face, that was a pretty dumb thing to say because it was a lie. “What about you? What are you up to?” He looked miserable. “I’m staying in for the next week or so.”
I wanted to say more but Charlie pulled me by the arm and signalled that it was time to leave. I nodded to the angel and left him on his own.
Outside the shop Charlie scowled. “Who’s the guy with the golden penis?” He has the ability to make me feel guilty, as though I’ve been doing something seedy and underhand, even when I’m completely innocent.
Later that night, I looked at the angel’s facebook page and could see that it was full of quotes like “can y’all please start dating men that actually like you so you can shut the fuck up,” and “come fw me, you won’t get cheated on.” Nobody posted any likes and I didn’t look anymore because it was too painful.
I felt sorry for him and contemplated sending a nice message, but I thought that might seem a bit creepy, and I wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t show it to anyone.
Image: Les amitiés particulières (1964). Directed by Jean Delannoy
It was the last night of our short seaside holiday and Charlie decided that it would be a good idea to stream a movie. He spent well over an hour flicking through Netflix and Prime Video until my patience finally ran out.
“Charlie, we will soon have spent as long looking for a movie than it would to watch one.” He stopped flicking. “Then I shall choose this one, and if you do not like it, I shall not be held responsible,” he said petulantly.
The movie he chose was in black and white and called This Special Friendship. It soon became apparent that it was old (1964), and in French, which delighted Charlie, but the English subtitles would soon annoy him, while I would be annoyed with Charlie for moaning about them.
“It is called Les amitiés particulières, which means ‘special friendships’, but the English cannot translate it correctly,” he told me. “The synopsis is simple. It is set in the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit boarding school and is a tender relationship between a 14-year-old upperclassman and a 12-year-old boy, who is the object of his desire.” Charlie’s expertise had come after consulting his iPhone.
The movie seemed harmless enough, and because it was made in the 1960s was tame when compared to boy-love movies of today, but after only a few minutes Charlie tutted with disdain. “The character of Georges is supposed to be 14 years old,” he said, “but he looks like he is older than me.” I later found out that the actor, Francis Lacombrade, according to one source, had been 21, but others stated that he had been 17.
Charlie’s derision intensified when the object of his desire appeared for the first time. He was a small cupid-faced boy carrying a lamb which we presumed was meant to be the symbolism of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. “Bordel de merde! Please tell me that this boy isn’t going to be his lover.” His fears proved to be correct, and I agreed that the age difference was disturbing.
He was called Alexandre, who turned out to be a bit of a cock-tease for Georges, but the romance mainly involved love letters passed between the two of them. The relationship is destroyed by a priest’s will to protect them from homosexuality. “We know why he did that,” said Charlie knowingly. “That priest wanted his wicked way with the little boy.” That wasn’t the case, but there were no happy endings, because heartbroken Alexandre jumped to his death from a moving train.
“The movie was good,” Charlie said afterwards, “but I found it troubling.” I agreed and began my own internet search to see what people thought about it. I was surprised to find that modern-day audiences seem unperturbed by the subject matter but could see that the Catholic Church had tried unsuccessfully to get it banned on its release.
Charlie disappeared into the kitchen while I fell down a rabbit hole as I dug deeper into the movie’s background. When he returned with two mugs of tea I told him my findings.
“I’ve found things that might upset you even more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The movie is based on a book written by a French author called Roger Peyrefitte and is said to be autobiographical because he had a similar romance, and the younger boy committed suicide.” My pronunciation was poor, and it came out as Pay-ri-fit.
Charlie corrected me. “Pey-ri-fee.” He stretched on the leather sofa and mulled over my new-found knowledge.
“But there is more,” I said, scrolling down the page of a French literary site. “Peyrefitte visited the movie set and fell in love with a 12-year-old boy who played a small part as a choir boy. They had a relationship, and the boy became his personal secretary and was eventually adopted by him.”
“It is Greek love,” Charlie frowned. “Erastes and Eromenos. What happened to them?”
“The boy was called Alain-Philippe Malagnac d’Argens de Villèle.” My English pronunciation left a lot to be desired, but Charlie looked at me as though I had said something significant.
“Alain-Philippe Malagnac?”
“I suppose so.”
“It cannot be the same person,” he cried, “but my father once knew somebody with that name.”
I continued reading.
“Malagnac became proprietor of Le Club Colony in Paris and briefly managed French singer Sylvie Vertan but it almost bankrupted Peyrefitte and forced him to sell artworks and erotic antiques.”
“The Alaine-Philippe Malagnac that my father knew was married to Amanda Leah, who he believes to really be a man, but a gay icon. He died in a fire near the Alpilles Mountains.”
I saved my pièce de résistance until last.
“Malagnac married Amanda Lear in 1979. She was close friends with Salvador Dali, who disapproved of the marriage.”
Charlie smiled triumphantly. “That is incredible. I cannot wait to tell my father, but what shall I say?” He began fiddling inside his shorts, something he tended to do when he mulled things over. At last, he came to a decision. “I will not say anything because he will become worried that I might also be seduced by an older man.”
I smiled. “I think it is most likely to be the other way around.”
Image: Les amitiés particulières (1964). Directed by Jean Delannoy
Charlie had been watching movies on TV and hadn’t gone to bed until three o’clock in the morning. This was normal, but he wasn’t used to me waking him up six hours later. I reminded him that he was due to meet Leon at ten for his photo shoot. Only the top of his head could be seen from under the covers and his hair stuck up at all angles. He was barely communicative and answered with strange little noises that sounded kind of cute.
Ten minutes later I had to tell him again that he had to get up. “It’s like trying to sleep in the Gare du Nord,” he moaned. There was then a frantic rush to shower and make himself look beautiful, not helped by the fact that in this rented holiday cottage the bathroom was downstairs while his clothes were upstairs.
I stayed out of the way and flicked through an old antiques magazine that was at least ten years old. Things appeared to be going well because when Charlie was in a good mood he would start singing Jacques Brel songs in French and I could hear the words to La Chanson de Jacky through the floorboards that had wide gaps between them.
“Même si on m’appelle Antonio Que je brûle mes derniers feux En échange de quelques cadeaux Madame, oh madame, je fais ce que je peux.”
Leon had arranged to meet Charlie outside Dolly’s Vintage Tea Room, but I’d been warned to stay away. He reasoned that my presence would cause him embarrassment. My day was going to be spent wandering around this small fishing village while trying not to spend money that I didn’t have.
“This is going to be interesting,” Charlie said as he drank the remains of his tea (white with two sweeteners). “Leon takes photographs of different subjects, but his speciality is taking pictures of dead birds and the occasional dead rat.
Charlie looked admiringly at the sketch.. “When I was a small child I got into trouble at school for drawing a picture of a naked man with a 20 inch dick. Not by desire, but by terrible proportion.”
Image: Staithes Harbour / North Yorkshire / delicto (2025)
We walked around Staithes Harbour while the tide was out and the sun went down and the boats ended up in the mud.
Charlie was in a reflective mood.
“We once visited Le Tréport and when the tide went out there was a dead body left behind. It was a man who had gone missing a few days before. The sad thing is that he had lost a boot, and I have always wondered where the other boot ended up because one boot was no use to anyone.”
It was a depressing story but a beautiful end to the day.
Charlie didn’t know it, but he turned heads at the beach today. I watched from a bench as he stripped down to his swim shorts and waded into the sea. For a guy who spends more time relaxing on his bed rather than putting in hours at the gym, he looked remarkably toned. His ancestral line is Mediterranean, and despite a Paris upbringing, he had the physique of his Marseilles cousins.
I was a solitary figure and had become the shadow in his life. Inseparable, comfortable, but never lovers in the truest sense. But I was pleased that he was attracting attention from females, and, dare I say it, a few jealous husbands and boyfriends. And yet, strangely, I also felt envious.
He shaded his eyes, scanned the promenade and waved. A few looked to see who had caught his attention and were disappointed that it was only me. I wanted to shout that Charlie was mine, only mine, and that I was proud of him, and that we shared a bed. But all that glitters is not gold.
The North Sea in April is bloody cold, but Charlie went full steam into the surf and threw himself into the water. His head broke the surface, and I could see that his teeth were chattering. I’d tried to tell him that the water would come as a shock, but he knew better, and would never admit to being wrong. He started swimming, long determined strokes, and completed two sweeps of the beach.
I contemplated that hypothermia might set in or that he might be out of his depth, but, after thirty minutes he swam back to shore, and pushing hard through the water, he reached dry land again. By now, I’d smoked several cigarettes and thrown the stone-cold remains of a takeaway coffee into a nearby rubbish bin.
Charlie dried himself on his towel and sat warming himself in the afternoon sun. Only now did he realise that people were looking, and it prompted him to put his tee-shirt on. He rested his arms on his knees and watched the world around him.
He was perhaps thinking about childhood holidays spent on the beach. He once told me that his family had rented a house every summer at Le Touquet-sur-Mer, and that he’d spent hours playing on the sands with his brother. I thought about Thomas, the older brother, and remembered that the tall boy had asked me to visit him in Paris, but not to bring Charlie along. My heart went out to Charlie, alone on the beach, who suspected that his older brother had an agenda, and was frightened that I might buy into it.
Shades of teen. We flicked through pages of photographs hoping to find one to use. The task had become tiresome because there were only so many images of scantily clad guys that you could absorb, and there was a risk that we might choose the wrong one. But we kept looking, thinking that the next page might reveal something better than the one before. “It is like watching gay porn,” said Charlie. “You start watching a video but move on to the next one because you think it will be more exciting but never is.” His reaction caught me by surprise. “This is hopeless,” he continued, snapping the photo album shut, “and why do they all seem to be called Luka?”
Charlie is reading an old book about an old French actress called Arletty. It was face down on the floor while he painted something that looked like mashed-up graffiti. He noticed me looking at it. “The book is called Je Suis Comme Je Suis – which means I Am As I Am,” he said.
“I’ve never heard of her,” I replied, flicking through its yellowing pages. Lots of tired text and black and white photographs. Charlie stopped painting and looked at me. “A madame after my own heart. Mon cœur est français, mais mon cul est international.”
I asked him to translate because he speaks too fast for me to understand. “It is quite simple,” he smirked. “It means that my heart is French, but my arse is international.”
He was provoking me, a crude attempt to make me jealous, that had succeeded.
I googled the name Arletty and discovered that she was accused of treason and imprisoned in 1945 for her wartime liaison with a German Luftwaffe officer, during the occupation of France.
Charlie’s face became sad. “Did you know that by the nineteen sixties she was almost blind?” He sat up on his knees and began fiddling inside his underwear. This was something he tended to do a lot. “She was blind in one eye but put the wrong eye drops in her good eye and destroyed that one too.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was a recluse, blind, and living alone in a dark Parisian apartment, which is how I will end up.” He peered at me with mournful eyes and waited for me to respond. It was a ploy that he used when he wanted attention.
“I’m sure that you’ll manage to find somebody who will be dumb enough to take you in.”
His face brightened. “That is correct. I will always be okay.” He jumped up and studied his unfinished canvas on the floor. “By the time I am old, I will be a famous artist, and there will be a long line of people wanting to take me in.” He waved his hand in front of my nose. “Would you like to smell my fingers?”
I have never been a Bob Dylan fan. Not that I don’t like his music, but he was always from a different era. But there are two tracks that I do like – Lay Lady Lay, and a forgotten single from 1978 called Baby Stop Crying that begins with the marvellous line, “You been down to the bottom with a bad man babe.”
Charlie showed me an image of a young Dylan on his phone. “What a handsome guy he was.”
I am reminded that Dylan may have been extremely attractive, and yes, I would have fallen in love with him, but I had once read that he was rude and obnoxious.
“He doesn’t take his clothes off when he goes to sleep, and the guy doesn’t clean his teeth, horrible breath,” a former staff member had said. And then there was Joni Mitchell who said she hated every moment of sharing the stage with him and blamed this on Dylan’s horrible breath.
I related this to Charlie, and he stared at Dylan with disappointment. “I hope that you realise how lucky you are to have me around.,” he sighed. “Not everybody is perfect like me.”
I once read André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis: Essays, and to be honest, it was a difficult read, partly because I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. Aciman’s approach to fiction is different, and I bought The Gentleman from Peru for Charlie, the French boy who once met the author, and wanted it because it was a signed copy. He keeps reminding me that I once had an original copy of Call Me By Your Name that I inexplicably threw away. I read The Gentleman from Peru because Charlie never will. His attention wanders after a few chapters, and that is why we are left with shelves of half-read books with slips of paper showing how far he got. But after finishing this book, I realise that this is more of a novella, and if Charlie is ever going to finish a book, this might be the one.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 