Archer wants to be a model and writer but will fail at both because he is too shy. Archer tells me he has completed a photo shoot where he had to dress as a 1920s lad. He asks me if I would like to see the photos. Back at his apartment I tell him the photos are good, and when he shows me his writing I am impressed. But I am struck by the fact that Archer sucks his thumb like a child and tells me he has an addiction for unrequited love and loves the pain of romantic rejection. He likens it to a craving for cocaine. There are always secrets that need to be discovered.
Alfie is back. He turns up in the most surprising places and wants to sit and talk and show you the photos on his phone. Young Alfie, smooth-skinned, suntanned, and who flaunts himself in front of you. Mysterious little Alfie who makes you feel warm and good. But Alfie is young, and no matter how much I think he is attractive, I also think that little Alfie is just wanting someone older and stable to talk with. He is wrong because I’ll never be that person.
I see something written by somebody else, and like it. But I will forget the words, and they will be gone. I shall put them here. When I am old, and remember nothing, I will know that they didn’t get lost.
“When one is beyond love, where does pleasure lie? What does one do, seeing the lustful, disrespectful world going about its business, the young up one another’s arse? Was there ever an end to it, this irresistible, normal, subnormal craving for sex? Or did it go tauntingly on?”
Beneath the beauty was a person, like the rest of us. The blood running through the veins, and God-given blemishes. But that blood stopped flowing, and like others, will be remembered as you were. Never to grow old.
“If you dance with the devil, you may as well lead.”
For somebody who had ‘I will never die’ on his chest, you consistently tempted fate.
‘We’ve been – always here.’
What’s important was not the years in your life but the life in your years.
“This is for Jeremy, the most beautiful man that gave so much love to everyone he met no matter what.” – Christian Siriano
You came from the council estate, and we respected one another. One summer, when we were kids, we played football and afterwards lay on the grass. I couldn’t take my eyes off your legs. You asked me if I was a faggot. I said no. You laughed, and rolled on top of me, and I remember that sticky body. You told me you’d give me what I wanted. You never did, and we grew apart. Years later, I met you in a bar, and we agreed to meet up for a drink, but you never turned up. Then I heard you were in prison after robbing a Post Office.
There is a boy in a wheelchair, and he’s dressed in a hospital gown and plays the guitar. There might be nothing underneath that flimsy gown, but he does wear black socks. I always associate black socks with black moods, and I recognise that I permanently wear black socks.
The surroundings are bleak. An abandoned room with plaster dropping from its walls, and there is a floor lamp, with a tassel shade, like the one our parents had in the living room.
This is going to be a serious music video, but I ignore it, as I do most social media posts. What somebody else likes, doesn’t mean that I will like it too.
But something had piqued my interest and I listened to the song on Spotify instead.
“Hi there Ren. It’s been a little while. Did you miss me? You thought you’d buried me, didn’t you? Risky… Because I always come back.” The voice is weird.
“Hi Ren. I’ve been taking some time to be distant. I’ve been taking some time to be still. I’ve been taking some time to be by myself. Since my therapist told me I’m ill.” This voice is that of boyish innocence.
Ren sings in two mind sets. A song between two people but always the same person. ‘Sick Ren’, the one that suffered illness, depression, and doubt, and ‘Now Ren’, who got better, writes, plays guitar, sings, raps, and makes videos. A lot of his work is about his nightmarish experience.
“When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room. Into a blank canvas, that I would defeat the forces of evil, and for the next 10 years of my life I suffered the consequences…”
Afterwards, I watch the video, in which Ren switches between alter egos, and there is that fine line between sickness and health, and a fear that never goes away. That one day it might come back.
Dig deeper and you find a teenager who got a record deal and lost it when he fell sick with a mystery illness that took away a dream. There is an old YouTube video where teenage Ren speaks from the prison of his bedroom, and the trepidation that he might have been about to give up.
The illness was diagnosed as Lyme disease and after a stem cell transplant, he returned to the ‘world of the living.’ But the damage was done, it played with his mind, and we see an insecure young man.
This is performance art, and grown-up Ren jumps from the screen and works his way into your conscience.
There is mental illness in all of us. I see it in myself, and I see it in other people.
I’ve since watched interviews with Ren, and I see misery and torment, and I see my friend Liam, who I first met when he threw his skateboard into a bush so that nobody would steal it while he slipped into a bar for a drink.
I soon recognised that alcohol was used to numb his troubled mind.
When he is sober, Liam talks good sense. When he is drunk, you struggle to understand his mind set. And he can never look you in the eye, because he might see you backing away.
All the time, you think that there might be a key to end this misery, but that key is lost behind another locked door.
But occasionally, there is a glimpse of what lay beneath.
“I should go to bed,” he says. “But I think I’ll have another drink before I go.”
“I think you should go now.”
“But I don’t have a bed I like.”
“Then you can share my bed.”
“Will there be lots of cuddles?”
“I always give lots of cuddles.”
“I like lots of cuddles.”
Liam never gets those cuddles because I won’t let him anywhere near me and then I feel guilty.
But one day, I would like to think that Liam, like Ren, will move into the light.
***
“I was walking down a pavement after jumping out my mum’s car in a crossroads in a moment of frustration and distress with my condition. I was trying to run from myself. What appeared to be a homeless man with a dark complexion approached me and asked me what was wrong. I explained that I had been sick most my life, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to continue. He looked at me and smiled and told me ‘Everything is going to be okay in the end Ren.’ I had not told him my name. There was something so overpoweringly sincere about this simple message, which brought with it an overwhelming feeling of inner peace, and in a flash, he vanished.” – Ren
I once visited a Mediterranean island. Every night I took a book onto the balcony and read for a few hours.
Across the street was a restaurant, always busy. A young Greek boy politely greeted every customer. In between, he would pace up and down, lost in his thoughts. I watched him all the time.
My book became my excuse.
One night, the boy stopped his routine and waved. It became a nightly ritual, and I would wave back. And then he started smiling and acknowledging me with a friendly nod. He would get back to his customers, stealing a glance whenever he could. And all the time I had the advantage of watching him from above.
And then he was gone, simply disappeared.
One night, he didn’t appear, nor did he the one after. I enquired about him at the restaurant and a waitress fetched the owner.
He asked if I knew the boy well, and I said I did, sort of.
And then he told me that the boy had been riding home from work on his scooter and collided with a taxi. He had died instantly.
Have you ever grieved for someone you never knew? It is probably worse than grieving for someone you did.
All these years later, I think of that young boy, and in my thoughts, he waves, and he smiles, and he nods and casts furtive glances. Then he turns his back and is gone.
They played Stayin’ Alive and the kids had orgasms. It erupted. More than it did when we knew it. But that twinge of teenagism stirred and I was thirteen again.
Inky. Arty. Sexual. A magazine of the human skin. That tender moment became an exploration of naked flesh. It meant something to you. It meant nothing to me. But then your obsession became my obsession too.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 