John is a stick with a skinny arse and looks like he might snap in two if I wanted to break him. He poked me gently in the stomach like it was something that could only be shared between us.
To the boy who went to McDonald’s and ate a Double Big Mac with Bacon, a double cheeseburger, chilli cheese bites, large fries, a Galaxy Cookie Crumble McFlurry, and drank a Banana Milkshake. You ate the cucumber sticks because you said they were healthy. I wonder why you have the body of a skinny HB pencil
I can still attract any man in the world. It’s just that any man is never the right man.
Last night, I felt somebody squeeze the back of my leg, a delicate touch, but before I could turn around, they had gone. A figure walked away, never looking back, but I knew who it was. There was no name attached because in the only serious conversation I had, I forgot to ask his name.
Paint ball splats. One hits me in the face and goes straight up the right nostril. Samuel ignores me. Who is Samuel? Another story for another day. But that is a splat. Another guy tells me a story about Bad Boy Jamie, and he tells me a tale that is remarkably similar to mine. That splat hits hard. It is all about paint ball splats.
He put his arm on my shoulder and a shot of electricity ran through me. Bad Boy Jamie is the baddest of the bad, and he came in and put his arm around me, and everybody looked at me like I was doomed.
Ben, another Ben, who I am very proud of. He is young and gets drunk easily. He reminds me of me. He does silly things and that makes me frightened. He is joining the circus, but before he goes we have arranged to go for a drink. We will talk like intellectuals because he is incredibly clever. The one thing I won’t say is that I love him very dearly.
There is a popular French blog that I follow and is a mixture of photos and occasional pieces about characters, books, and movies. My French is hopeless, and I appreciate that Google allows me to right click and translate it into dodgy English.
I like the blog, but today I have inadvertently discovered that what I took to be cleverly written pieces are really a collection of plagiarised snippets from other websites.
It came to light after researching a story it had featured about Jean-Claude Brialy, a French actor from the 1950s and 1960s, Yves Montand, the Italian-born French actor and singer, and Reda Caire, a popular singer in Paris from the 1930s to the 1950s. I found that the story existed word for word in several places.
A synopsis.
Brialy once claimed that Montand had a nine-month gay affair with Reda Caire while working as his private secretary.
Helene Hazara, a cultural critic, radio hostess and expert on French chanson, wrote that “everyone in show business knew that Montand had been Caire’s lover. In the ’50s, Montand used to make homophobic jokes about Reda, who called him up one day and said, ‘If you say nasty things about me, I can also tell stories about you!’”
But Caire, speaking about Montand, also came up with the best and bitchiest line. ”It is odd that a boy with such a beautiful membrum should have such smelly feet.”
There is a scene in Molly Manning Walker’s coming of age movie, How to Have Sex, where Mia McKenna Bruce’s character, Tara, walks along Dinokratias, the wildest street at Crete’s Malia Beach.
It is the morning after the night before.
The sun is rising behind the mountains. The bars are closed. Rubbish is strewn along the street, the wind gets hold of it and blows empty bottles along the warming tarmac, there are discarded flip flops, and piles of vomit that will soon be scorched by the sun. It is deserted, except for the solitary bar owner who sits looking at an apocalypse that must be cleaned up.
I’ve gone back in time, same place, same time of day, only a distant year.
Hours earlier, the street had been full of kids like me enjoying drunken depravity. Drink after drink after drink, until the world had started to spin, and where I had to park my backside on the kerb and listen to banging dance music, and the screams and shouts of people who, the more they drank, got louder and louder.
The sticky heat of the night, with the smell of wild orchids, and sun lotion, and Davidoff Cool Water. Tanned, sweaty, half-naked bodies, with dirty feet. Skimpy shorts and ripped tee-shirts. Pecs, tits, and tattoos. Gold chains and nipple piercings. Skinny Joes with holiday haircuts. Six-pack caballeros. People who were in love with everyone. A moment that would bookmark itself in the subconscious , until the day you see a movie that reminded you.
Then there was the shirtless guy with long legs and sticky out ears who parked his arse next to mine and offered me a bottle of lukewarm water. He chatted shit, but we were strangers who were in this together, and he suggested we take a walk. I followed him through tiny dusty roads, away from the noise and crowds, to where it was dark and quiet, and cicadas sang while we talked.
He told me about his shitty job in a supermarket, his girlfriend who had got pissed and gone off with another bloke, and his brother that nobody knew about, who was in the nick for murder. I told him how popular I was with girls, which was true, and he was impressed. There is little else to remember except that we talked until the sky lightened, a cockerel crowed, and he said he must go back to where he was staying in the hills.
By the time I walked back to the apartment, Dinokratias had ditched its partygoers. There were no tears in my eyes like Tara had in the movie, but there had been a feeling of satisfaction, that I had experienced something unique, a moment in time when I had met somebody who I would never meet again. I never asked him his name, but he had been happy, and drunk, to tell me everything about himself, safe in the knowledge that what he told me would go nowhere and quickly forgotten.
