Category Archives: Charlie

I would like to go with Charlie / I need a holiday more than he does

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There was a time not so long ago when I was alone. The apartment was mine only. It is big and lonely, not that I spend much time in it, but it’s a place where I can retreat.

That was also a time when I had more money. It’s easy to save money when you are living alone.

That changed the day Charlie from Paris arrived in his old Austin car. He needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks and everyone thought my big apartment was the solution.

I agreed and I gave him a room and bed, a door key, and the run of the place. Charlie liked it, and it was soon apparent that he had no intention of leaving.

A van appeared one sunny morning and a man said he’d got several boxes for me. Not for me, you understand. There were about fifteen neatly packaged crates, each containing books, DVDs, vinyl records, and lots of clothes.

Charlie spent hours unpacking his possessions and carefully placing them around his room.

The following week more boxes arrived containing canvases, paint brushes, sketch pads and more clothes.

Charlie had moved in, and I didn’t really mind.

“This apartment has character,’ he said. It does have a charm about it but he’s never offered to pay for his stay. Nor does he pay for the food that he eats.

Charlie’s way of saying thank you is to offer small gifts. A poem he’s written, a picture he’s painted and sometimes a book he’s seen and knows I will like.

It’s all quite nice really.

‘We are like a couple,” he once joked. Except that we aren’t because I continue my liaisons with other men, and Charlie keeps disappearing to London and Paris to visit galleries. I never ask him what else he gets up to.

He always comes back.

Most people think we are a couple, and that is a nice thought. They think our nights consist of sharing a bed and being lovers. We aren’t, but I’d like to think that one day we might be. 

Am I jealous of Charlie? I’m beginning to realise that I am.

He’s announced that he’s going to Barcelona for a week in September. He showed me photos of the hotel he’s staying in. The Monument Hotel. Four stars and all that. I asked him how much it was costing and he said it was only €800 which sounded a lot. I checked out how much that would be in English pounds and it came to £700 which still sounded a lot.

“You don’t mind me going away?” Charlie asked.”I need a holiday.”

I wanted to say that I did mind. That I would like to go with him. That I need a holiday more than he does. That he can afford to go because he’s living for free. That I can’t afford to go because I pay for everything.

I said none of these things.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said. “I hope you have a lovely time.”

Charlie and the Sausage Sandwich

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It was late. Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet had spent a couple of hours devouring the flesh of human beings. Bones and All is a shockingly beautiful movie, and the end credits were rolling when Charlie bizarrely announced that he was hungry.

This might explain why he had been in a mardy mood. He once asked me in his cute French accent, “What is this mardy?” “Mardy bum,” I had replied. He raised an eyebrow like he always does when he is puzzled and disappeared into the kitchen to make something to eat.

He rattled about. The fridge door opened and closed and minutes later came the sound of sizzling. He was frying pork sausages, his favourite, something he consumed on an almost daily basis, which was infuriating because he never seemed to add an ounce of fat to that slender body.

I knew what lay ahead. The bloody plight that Chalamet and co had left behind was nothing compared to the chaos that Charlie would create. It might only have been sausages, but he would leave a dozen dirty utensils, a burnt frying pan, a filthy hob, and crumbs all over the worktop and floor.

I crept to the door to confirm my fears.

Charlie could turn a sausage sandwich into a work of art, one that requires skill and concentration, and a vast amount of mess.

He carefully sliced the bread roll in two, and then scored four golden sausages and cautiously stacked them onto the bottom half. Next, he sprinkled cheese, added mayo, hot pepper sauce, and tomato ketchup. He placed the other half of bread on top and delicately patted it, inspecting the finished article from every angle.

He passed me on his way back to the sofa, where he tucked his legs underneath him, and demolished this awful concoction. “Parfait,” he muttered.

Not once has Charlie asked if I wanted the same, neither does he consider where the sausages come from. That charming naivety suggests he believes that sausages magically reappear in the refrigerator.

I left him, sauce dribbling down his chin, while I cleaned the kitchen.

Who is this Andrey? The one who signs it with a kiss

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Charlie is sitting on the sofa and looks restless. He drinks a glass of red wine. Mouthful after mouthful. This means that he wants something, or there will be an awkward question.

I slump in the chair opposite. He picks up an old magazine and flicks through it, all the time watching me. A photograph falls out and lands on the cushion. Charlie picks it up and looks at it with a look of surprise. What is this photograph? He is a poor actor, and this routine has obviously been rehearsed. He holds it up for me to see. It is a black and white image of a pair of feet and the words, ‘My feet, Andrey.’

“Whose feet are these?” he asks. “

“Are you jealous of a pair of feet?”

“Why should I be jealous of feet? I’m merely interested as to who this Andrey is, the one who also signs it with a kiss.”

Charlie is staying here and has given no indication that he’ll be leaving anytime soon. He feels threatened. “Where is this Andrey?”

That is a good question. What happened to Andrey? I have no idea.

Andrey was from Krakow and was here because somebody recognised his potential as a model. He stayed in the apartment for a few weeks and did a photoshoot for an arty magazine for which the photographer placed snails on his face. Like many Polish boys, he was blessed with the look of an angel, but the harshness of the language sometimes made him sound abrasive.

The thing about Andrey was that he cared little about good looks but was obsessed with his feet. Big bony feet: his shoes were size twelve. We were never lovers; he was far too good looking for me to consider it. But he used to lay on the sofa, the one where Charlie sits now, and liked me to massage those exquisite feet.

Andrey wanted me to rub and tickle them and he’d squirm with pleasure until he nearly had an orgasm. (I once knew somebody that reacted the same way when I rubbed his nipples). He told me that the part of the brain that processes the sensation people get from feet was next to the area that perceives genital stimulation. It seems bizarre now but appeared perfectly normal then.

One day, Andrey had gone. I never knew where. But a few months later I received the photograph by post. The one being waved accusingly at me now. I once looked up Andrey online and it appeared that his modelling career hadn’t taken off. There was nothing. Not even a hint on social media.

I tell Charlie. “The photo must have come with the magazine.”

Charlie / He likes to paint in his underwear

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There is an old woman who lives across the street. She says she is 95 but seems to have been telling me that for the past ten years. She never sleeps because she seems to watch TV 24/7. She rarely goes out, which is quite understandable for someone who might be 105.

But once a week she gets a bus into town. It stops outside her apartment building and when she returns it waits ten minutes for her creaky bones get off. She pulls a red shopping trolley with big white spots and walks slowly along the pavement.

When she gets to her door, she rests on her walking stick and stares into a large plant pot that contains a palm tree. She does this for five minutes as though looking for somebody.

She rarely speaks, but this morning, as she followed the same ritual of plant pot gazing, she caught me leaving our apartment and summoned me with her walking stick.

“How are you, Mrs Hayward? How are you finding the secret of eternal life?”

She frowned. “That boy,” she said. “The latest. The one with the old car. He walks around without any clothes on… and with the lights on.”

“I’m sure he isn’t, Mrs Hayward.”

“Oh yes. I’ve noticed this is what foreigners do. Please tell him to put clothes on.”

I keep telling Charlie that when he struts around the apartment in his underwear then people will see him. He will tut. “Who wants to see inside?”

“It is because he is an artist,” I tell Mrs Hayward, “And when he paints, he likes to paint in his underwear.” This is true. “But I shall tell him that you like looking at him.”

Charlie and his Austin A35 called Garçon

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Charlie arrived out of nowhere. He says he is from Paris and that’s why he pronounces his name Shar-lee. Charlie also drives an old car, a 1960 Austin A35, which isn’t what I expect a 25-year-old French boy to own. He claims it was a gift from an elderly gentleman, and I presume it was given after Charlie had agreed to sleep with him. A last throw of the dice for an old queen. That was another time and place. But Charlie adores this car, and he has nicknamed it Garçon. ‘Boy’. He is an artist and he gave me a painting of Garçon in exchange for letting him sleep one night in a spare room. I have put it in the hallway and look at it everyday. I can’t help looking at Charlie either because that one night has turned into weeks. I once broached the question of how long he might be staying, and he disappeared into his room only to appear thirty minutes later with a poem he had written. Yes, Charlie writes poetry too. It was in French and I couldn’t translate it, but he said it was in appreciation of my kindness.