I sat in the shade of the Winter Garden and was approached by a cool looking ginger-haired guy dressed in shorts and t-shirt. “Excuse me sir, I don’t know the city. Where is the best place to get the vibe?” I’d no idea where he could get the “vibe” and, as a rule, don’t do ginger, but on this occasion I was prepared to make an exception. Polite, handsome and seemingly likely to take one for the boys. He turned out to be a touring ballet dancer.
If someone asked me who the love of my life was, it would be the one that I’ve been waiting 15 years for. That’s how long my infatuation has lasted. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for him to realise that I am the one. But he knows all this, and isn’t in the slightest bit interested. It’s emotionally painful and challenging, and my resolve never weakens, but I know that it was never meant to be. I console myself with the things that are wrong about him. He is tall, blonde and lanky and everybody says that he has a tiny dick. He can be quite nasty. He spends money he probably doesn’t have. He is disorganised and incredibly untidy. And there’s the annoyance that everything is handed to him on a plate. A relationship would never have worked, and this one-sided love is best left unfulfilled. But despite all these flaws, love can be irrational, broken but still loved.
Colvey
There are things that people don’t know about you. And if they did, it’s unlikely that they would believe it.
The council house scruffs who think you are fucking cool in your Hoodrich gear. You talk to them like shit, and they are so thick, that even though they are scared, they think it is only a game.
But I know why you treat them so badly and keep them in their place.
I know your dark secret.
It is something that you don’t want them to know, and if they did, you know that you are finished.
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.
He stood next to his girlfriend and I couldn’t help looking at him. Discreetly like. But Matchstick Man had clocked me and looked at me like I’d done something incredibly bad. I wanted to shout, “Fuck you, Matchstick Man, you had your chance!” Instead, I went bright red and looked at my phone where an app nudged a virtual taxi nearer towards me. Sometimes thinking about it is better than doing it.
Who were you in my dream last night? We wandered barefoot through empty streets and drank in dirty bars. It was a good feeling, and we said we’d do it again. Yet, when I awakened, I wasn’t sure who you were. I thought I knew you but didn’t know where from. Were you a missed opportunity, who’d come to remind me that you might once have existed? So many questions. Be calm, be tender, and maybe I’ll love, I decided.
A twinkle of imagination. A scattering of angel dust. The glow of the pedalo boy, with gorgeous dark legs and dirty underwear, who stared into the sun and saw the shadow of an indecent stranger.
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.”
Saturday slaughter. Pumped up courage. Vodka fuelled Valkyries. Vanilla Valentines. Red Hot Chilli Poppers. Up and down. Cock teasers. Blonde bullshitters. Fag filled fags. Sweaty sex toys. Blue Adonis in Disco Cop. Twink paradise. Twink hell . Be damned by Twinkdom. Boys to men. Romeo, Romeo, Where the fuck are you Romeo? Smooth skinned sluts. Spray tan twiglets. Ba lamb babies. If you could read my mind, love. What a tale my thoughts could tell. Just like an old time movie. A movie that plays every Saturday. The boy shouts louder and louder. What’s he gonna look like with a chimney on him? Up and Down. An ecstasy-stained erotic dream. Screaming queens and disco lights. Screaming queens and fist fights. Shy guys and sly guys. Sugar daddies and fairy cakes. I need you. I want you. I can’t have you. No matter how hard I try, you keep pushing me aside, and I can’t break through. Listen to me. I can’t see through the smoke. There’s no talking to you. The Vengabus is coming. And everybody’s jumping. But you’re not coming. Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, I really don’t think you’re strong enough. Robin Hood and his band of boyfriend thieves. Cry babies. Jelly babies. Dolly mixtures. Sun up. Slow down. Come down. Vamos a jugar en el sol. Todos los días son días de fiesta. Vamos a jugar en el sol. Todos los días son días de fiesta. Sex in a Ford Fiesta. Sexy, everything about you so sexy.
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.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 