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.
A parcel came for Charlie. It was a small brown box that had been posted in France. He was still asleep, so I put it on the side, and it would be hours before he noticed it.
“Why didn’t you tell me that I had a package?”
“Sorry, I forgot.”
Charlie ripped the box open and pulled out a pile of magazines. They were called Catholica and there was a photo of him on the cover. He was in his underwear, or rather somebody else’s, and was seductively looking up at a stained glass window.
“Look at these. Matis has published my photos.”
“Who is Matis?”
“I told you about him. He’s the photographer I met in Paris, who styles himself on Jacques Henri Lartigue.”
The name rolled off his tongue, but I had no idea who he was, and the expression on my face gave me away.
“Lartigue was France’s greatest photographer.”
“Is Matis a good photographer too?”
“The best. He has published in all the major magazines, and this might be the making of me.”
Charlie closed the box and any hope that he might give me a copy quickly vanished.
Later that day, I googled Matis, but found nothing. I persevered and eventually found him after searching for photographers based in Lille. He had an Instagram account and amidst countless images of half-naked boys, I discovered Charlie’s photos.
I knew this body well from the times when he’d sat on the floor in only his underwear and painted. I would steal glances while writing, and then pretend to be concentrating on my work whenever he looked my way.
Charlie wasn’t mine and hadn’t given any indication that he might be interested in me, but the more I looked at the photos, the more I became jealous.
I was envious of Matis, whose images also populated the page, that he was younger, in his late twenties, and more handsome than me. He’d cast a spell on Charlie, and I was increasingly afraid that he might lure him away, back to his homeland, and leave me behind.
That night, Levi was working, and Charlie spent ages in the shower, followed by his normal routine of applying expensive lotions.
I opened a bottle of wine and binge watched a Swedish tragicomedy where a naïve 27-year-old loses his father in an accident and does everything in his power to avoid his grief, and slips into the adult world of sex, drugs, and alcohol.
Charlie finally appeared in silk pyjamas and dressing gown, his hair neatly combed, and smelling of expensive French cologne. He made himself comfortable on the sofa beside me and, like always, placed his bare feet on my lap.
“Will you massage my feet?”
I gently stroked his soft skin while thinking that it was an intimate moment, but Charlie was absorbed in his iPhone.
“Matis has asked me to go back for more photos,” he said.
I wanted to say that I hated Matis and wished that he’d shut up about him. I also wanted to tell Charlie that I’d become very fond of him, that I was falling in love, and wished that he’d stay here with me.
I didn’t say anything like that because I was afraid that if I had, Charlie might become upset and say that it wasn’t what he wanted, and that it might be best if he moved out.
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” I told him.
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.
I have reached the end of André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis Essays, and it has been a long journey. I finished it, and realised that for the most part, I have no idea what Aciman is writing about. As I’ve mentioned before, this is perhaps because I am not as clever as he is.
But I have persevered, and he talks about irrealis moods and uses examples from his interesting life, in books he has read, and in the movies he has watched. I have even taken the trouble of researching ‘irrealis moods’ but became more confused.
I have tried to explain it to my partner and got it hopelessly wrong.
“Something that happened, but might not have happened, but we expected it to happen, therefore it might have happened, but we did not realise that it had happened, and might not have even happened yet, but might still happen.”
I can take satisfaction that I have at least written like Aciman, even if it is entirely incorrect.
There are fantastic lines in the book that I wish I had written… if only I had been clever enough.
Charlie is finally back from France. He spent Christmas and New Year with his family in Paris and on the day I expected him back, he messaged to say that he’d gone to Lille instead. I didn’t ask why.
“How was your Christmas?” he asked. “Ok,” I said, “it was a quiet one, but Christmas was ages ago.”
Levi had spent Christmas with his mysterious girlfriend and the apartment had been depressingly subdued. I’d spent Christmas Day watching movies on Netflix.
“I have something exciting to tell you,” he said. “I met a guy in Paris who thinks I should be a model.”
“That’s good,” I replied, “but be wary of anyone who says you could be a model, even though he might be right”.
“I know, but this was different, and he invited me to go to Lille for a photoshoot.”
Charlie opened his phone and showed me photos from his Instagram account, the same one that he’d blocked me from seeing. There he was, in various stages of undress, and I had to agree that he looked good.
“The shoot was called Catholica,” he continued, “and the photographer thinks I make a good catholic boy.”
Looking at the erotic images, I would have described Charlie as anything but.
“Did you get paid for it?”
“There was no money, but it was good exposure.”
I felt like telling him that I’d done so much for exposure, but it rarely reaped rewards. I had learnt that exposure meant giving something to someone for free.
“I didn’t realise that you wanted to be a model.”
“I am a painter, but I believe I could make a career as a fashion model. It pays to multi-skill.”
In the time that I’d known Charlie I had realised that he was a dreamer, but that added to his French charm. He was certainly handsome, if not on the small side, and he certainly had the physique.
“Can I have a good look at the photos?” He hesitantly handed me his phone. His cheeks coloured, as if he was embarrassed to show me, and I flicked through them.
“They are very good,” I conceded. “Will you show them to Levi?”
“I think that Levi will have seen them already, because he follows me on Instagram.”
“Ah yes,” I responded, “he showed me while you were away, and I realised that I couldn’t see them because you’d blocked me.” Charlie couldn’t look me in the eye and looked nervously at the floor. “I’d like to follow you because I think your photos are excellent, but you obviously don’t want me to see them.”
“It’s not that,” he said,” I thought that you would think badly of me.”
“Not at all,” I told him, “I’m proud that you want to do something different, and the photos are very creative, but I understand if you don’t want me to see them.”
Whilst I was scrolling, I noticed a photo. It had been taken in Paris and showed a guy with his arm around Charlie. The guy had a baseball cap and wore a big coat that said, ‘blessed have not seen yet still believe.’ He had a broad grin that was matched by the one on Charlie’s face. They looked happy. I handed the phone back and pretended that I hadn’t seen it.
“I shall unblock you.”
At that point, Levi, the Polish boy with a broad Yorkshire accent, came in.
“Charlie, you’re back.”
“Hello Levi. Yes, I am back. What have you been up to?”
Levi nodded towards me. ”Did he tell you that I got him drunk?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“It was an amazing night. So good that he asked me to sleep with him.”
I squirmed with embarrassment because it was the first time that Levi had mentioned it and I had hoped that it had been forgotten.
Charlie was shocked. “What do you mean?”
“He said he wanted to take me to bed, but I had to turn him down.”
There was a strange look on Charlie’s face, and I couldn’t tell if it was pity, or disgust. He shook his head and went to make a coffee.
When I checked later, Charlie still hadn’t unblocked me, and I didn’t want to remind him because it might make me look desperate.
I mentioned it to Levi later who thought about it before responding. “There are some parts of his life that Charlie doesn’t want you to see.”
It was incredibly cold. He wore a thick coat and long scarf, a snood covered his face, and he sported a black woolly hat. Only those blue eyes might have given him away, but nobody gave him a second glance.
The tram was crowded, and he had to stand, but he didn’t mind because he could watch people and not be recognised. He didn’t normally mix with these people but there were no airs and graces, no standing on ceremony, just ordinary honest folk going about their business, and that was a comfort to him.
What would they say if they knew who was standing beside them?
He got off somewhere in the suburbs and called at a Londis where he asked for twenty Marlboro Gold. He looked at the shopkeeper who appeared nervous, like he was going to be robbed, and only afterwards did he realise that the man was suspicious of his American accent.
It was a short walk to the tiny terrace on a side street, and he knocked on the door. It was opened by John who gave him a peck on the forehead.
“I didn’t think you would come.”
“Why wouldn’t I come?”
“It’s just that you are a famous actor, coming to my house for tea.”
Back in the States, tea was called dinner, and this amused him.
“Where would you like to eat?”
He took off his winter clothing and settled on the sofa beside the fire. “I think we should eat here and watch Emmerdale and Coronation Street.”
I have a friend request on Facebook from Cameron who is Gen Z beefcake and part twink. I’m flattered. But there is a problem. Trouble always follows him. My friend says reject it, but I believe that if somebody sends a friend request then they obviously fancy you. My friend says I’m delusional, and I hope he’s wrong, but seldom is.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 