Tag Archives: life experiences

The Boy Danced Naked Under the Apple Tree

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Naked – Charlie Marseille (2026)

The apples were nearly ripe. Red where the sun had kissed them too hard, green in the hollows of shade. Some were freckled, some split open already, pale flesh browning, bees drunk on the sugar. The smell hung low and thick. 

He didn’t decide to dance. It happened the way shivering happens. One bare foot scraped the ground, testing it. His shoulders rolled, stiff and then looser, like he was shrugging off something heavy. His arms lifted, awkward, elbows bent too sharply, wrists slack. He laughed under his breath at how stupid he must look, alone in a field with no one to see.

That was part of it. The not-being-seen.

But the boy danced naked under the apple tree.

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring

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“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” – Oscar Wilde

Why do people talk shit and think that I am interested? The problem is me. I sit and listen and do my best to look interested, but it gives them an excuse to come back and talk even more boring shit. I need to stop being a drip tray.

My Head is Full of Random Shit

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*****

“Video Angelus internehilium et imortalis Even as we speak our hearts entwine. Senex et angelus video venestus caelum. Equiden lavare in meus vita empeteus Ah eeh ah eeh ah.”

*****

The boy who likes the excitement of fear.

“I worry about being thrown off the carousel in later life.” 

A skinny body and dirty pants.

*****

“He’s got it. Yeah, baby, he’s got it. I’m your Penis, I’m your fire. At your desire. Well, I’m your Penis, I’m your fire. At your desire.”

*****

Be careful who you choose because it can go wrong.

Is it that Bailey is still a virgin?

A shelter on a beach full of books.

A lake in an abandoned quarry.

Is it love that never quite reaches an orgasm?

A boy who turns up late is always popular.

Pasticcio.

The Organ of Lorenzini.

That Moment: Boy in the Black Hoodie

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Scally Boy – Charlie Marseille (2026)

Four guys are waiting for a haircut. One hides inside a black hoodie so that all I can see is the tip of his nose. I call him a ‘scally boy’ – someone with edge, rawness, no inhibition; danger; lower social class. People only see what they must see: confidence, arrogance, hardness. They fail to see his vulnerability, his ignorance of those who might exploit him, and his lack of ambition.

When it is his turn, he stands and takes his hoodie off—but he gets it wrong. As he pulls it over his head, his T-shirt comes with it and he is left half-naked. He corrects things quickly, but it is too late. I have already processed every inch of him: the pale skin, the smoothness, the flat stomach, the black hairs showing above his waistband, the tattoo on his arm that says Adam.

Such a shame, I think, because he is primed for one thing only—a girl. His masculinity, the expectation, the understanding that anything else will not do. The girl will fall in love with Adam, but what he feels about her will not matter. He will have done what is expected and will display her like a trophy before discarding her for another.

Adam catches my eye and snarls, “Do you like what you see, faggot?”

Charlie: The Rumour of Possibility

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He is completely unaware and does not expect to be photographed at all – Charlie Marseiiles

There is a game that Charlie likes to play. I blame the streak of melodramatic French in him — he can’t help speculating about everyone. We ducked into a bright little coffee shop to escape the damp, heavy air outside. Amid the hiss of the coffee machine, steamy windows, damp clothes and the sweet smell of pastries, Charlie zeroed in on a guy sitting alone, scrolling on his phone, blissfully unaware he’d become the latest target of Charlie’s imagination.

“What is he looking at? Who is he messaging?” Charlie whispered while we waited for our takeaway. I’d heard these questions a hundred times, and I hardly had the energy to answer anymore. His curiosity could tip into something nosy, even a bit rude, and I’d told him more than once that it bordered on prying. Still… I had to admit, despite my protests, it was often weirdly entertaining.

And he was already off. “It’s all very mysterious, but I’ve got a theory,” he said, eyes locked on the boy with the coffee. “He is telling someone he woke up without a care in the world… until a man in the street annoyed him. So he punched him — once — and killed him. And now that boy over there is a murderer.”

Sometimes I wondered whether he was just trying to make me laugh, or if there was something darker in the way he saw people. I glanced at the poor guy and found myself, just for a moment, considering whether Charlie’s wild theory wasn’t entirely impossible.

Straight Out of Verona – Part 3 – Cinzia

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I had never been to Lake Garda before, and I was surprised by how much it reminded me of the coast. The water was a soft turquoise, rippling with silver and white crests. The hills rolled gently, dotted with olive groves and cypresses. Braccobaldo Beach turned out to be a mix of pastel colours – terracotta roofs, lemon-yellow houses, pale pink facades – and construction sites.

Cola took me to the pebbly beach where his friends hung out and introduced me to Leo and Sandro. His girlfriend, Cinzia, came from San Giorgio in Salici. She relaxed on a sun lounger, attracting attention from cheeky young Italian boys who had arrived on scooters. Cola sat glaring at them, but he needn’t have worried because it was obvious that Cinzia was in love with him. She spoke in English (because it was better than my Italian) and wanted my views about Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni, who she plainly didn’t like.

Cinzia asked what I did for a living, and I told her that I was a writer, which sounded grander than it was meant to be. I explained that the novel I was writing, if it ever got published, would struggle to sell because only romantic fiction was keeping the book market alive. She raised an eyebrow when I told her that people had moved on from Harry Potter and were now interested in raunchy romantasy books.

The boys went swimming in the lake, and we watched as they grappled and tried to duck each other underwater. These were the last antics of teenage boys, a final celebration before they became men. All three were dark and handsome, but skinny Cola towered above the others. They had known each other since school, Cinzia told me, and were inseparable, but that was about to change. Leo was training for the army, Sandro was joining the Carabinieri, but she was unsure what the future held for Cola.

I asked how he was able to afford a brand new Abarth 500, and she laughed. It was not his car; it belonged to a signor from Torricelle who liked Cola and let him use the car in exchange for doing jobs around his big house in the hills. Cola was very skilful, she said, and could put his mind to anything that involved manual work. He was not, she added with sarcasm, very good academically. And she worried about what might happen if the signor dispensed with his services.

Read it… said it… heard it

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Image – Darkness Drops

The things I’ve read, said and heard this week…

ABOUT LIKING ATTENTION
JAKE NEVINS: How does it feel to be thirsted over by left-leaning gay men?
HARRY SISSON: Hahahaha well I’m personally straight so it’s not something that interests me, but I don’t hate! Thirst if you wanna thirst, I won’t stop you.

CHARLIE SHEEN ON HAVING SEX WITH MEN
“And in whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to navigate that, trying to come to terms with it — ‘Where did that come from?… Why did that happen?’ — and then just finally being like, ‘So what?’ So what? Some of it was weird. A lot of it was fucking fun. And life goes on.”

TALKING WITH ETHAN
“How are you getting on with Leon? Do you like him?” Ethan asked. “Good, but not really my type.” He seemed exasperated. “You don’t recognise him?” “Nope,” was my honest answer. “Are you pissing with me?” I shook my head and made a face. “I’ve never seen the guy before.” “Does that mean that you talk like normal people?” “It does,” I replied. 

LISTENING TO ARTIE
“The picture’s painted, I’ve been denied, the artist couldn’t fit me in, there wasn’t room for me inside. What else can I do when someone doesn’t want you?” – Art Garfunkel singing When Someone Doesn’t Want You… brilliant!

ON LYING ABOUT AGE
“How old are you? Social media is so frickin’ secretive.” I was careful with my answer. “ I am the age that you imagine me to be.”

Seven cool things that I heard this week

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“ I heard Earth, Wind and Fire singing ‘Ba-dee-ya’ on the radio, and I thought, oh no, this is another step towards autumn.” – a woman on the bus referring to the song September.

“There in the shade, like a cool drink waiting, he sat with slow fire in his eyes, just waiting.”  – Johnny Hartman singing A Slow Hot Wind. 

“He comes from an old Dorset family that made grandfather clocks and had a swan’s head as their emblem.” – a posh woman boasting about the man who her daughter is marrying.

“Hey, is there anywhere to play pickleball around here?” – a student in Starbucks.

“I can hear monks chanting.” – Charlie laid in bed in the middle of the night.

“The drawback is that you always get corn dust up your bum.” – a farmer on the radio.

“Come and look at this rock, it’s shaped like your willy!” – a young girl shouting to her older brother.

Both sides untouched. Not for listening. Display only

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Betty Blue – 37°2 le matin – Gabriel Yared (1986)

A second-hand record store. Old French chansons played over the speakers. “Très bien,” Charlie beamed, because it made him feel at home. But this wasn’t France, it was an English suburb on a quiet Saturday afternoon. I Shazamed a song on my phone. It was Jeanne Moreau singing Les Voyages. 

Charlie rummaged through a cardboard box of old cassette tapes and I pointed out that had he found something interesting, then he wouldn’t be able to listen to it, because we didn’t have anything to play it on. 

And besides, I told him, I was surprised that he even knew what they were because they were obsolete before he’d been born. “That is not the point,” said the Millennium Child. “I have a good reason for looking.”

At last, he found something that pleased him. “This is what I want,” and he held up the soundtrack album to Betty Blue, or 37°2 le matin, if we want to give it the proper title. (I later discovered that it was released in 1986).

“But how are you going to play it?”

“I am not going to listen to it. If I wanted to do that I would listen to the music on Spotify. I have something else in mind.” With that, he borrowed a pound coin with which to buy it. 

The apartment. The office (which used to be Levi’s bedroom). The cassette tape is stood upright on a shelf alongside vintage postcards, pebbles and shells collected from beaches, and a wooden model of the Arc de Triomphe. “It is simply for show,” said Charlie.

Jour de Charlie. A reincarnation of Jacques Tati

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Jacques Tati

A few weeks ago, Charlie introduced me to the works of Jacques Tati. We started with Jour de fête (1949) and over a week watched his Monsieur Hulot, featured in Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and Trafic (1971). I’m late to Tati’s work, but it wasn’t hard to catch up, because he made so few films, and the ones that he did were genius. 

Charlie knew I would like Tati’s humour but confessed to knowing little about him. Intrigued to find out more, I bought one of the many biographies and spent warm evenings on the terrace absorbed in the life of this French legend.

Tati had a gentle spirit, and a quiet dignity, but behind the camera he could be elusive, stubborn and emotionally distant. This was easily confused with arrogance and I was left with the impression that he wasn’t a nice person. It troubled me because I discovered too many similarities with the person I lived with. I thought, ‘Fuck me! Is Charlie a reincarnation of Jacques Tati?’

Charlie, who tries hard to be good at everything, but doesn’t really know what it is he is best at. Painting? Photography? Modelling? He’s a complex person, committed to artistic vision – sometimes to the point of obsession – and to an outsider he can seem a bit of a shit.

He’s quite the opposite really, but his devotion to art can seem almost monastic. He pushes for the purity of his vision, as though wanting to leave behind something beautiful, and that pursuit can sometimes be baffling. 

I explained this to Charlie, and as the English like to say, he got ‘the face on’. “You do not understand my ache of misunderstood devotion,” he replied. “But I appreciate your concern, because it is mine also, and I need to decide what it is that I am going to be brilliant at.”