‘I’m Coming Out’. I think that the crashing drum beats at the beginning are bloody marvellous. I think that Nile Rodgers was pissed off that they remixed his song and that Diana Ross was a difficult bitch to work with. She didn’t realise that ‘I’m Coming Out’ was a gay thing. I think that it should have been sung by a man. Johnny Mathis? But he made an album with Chic in 1981 and it didn’t get released until 2017, so Nile Rodgers might have been pissed off with him too. He probably thought, fuck these big stars next time.
Last night, Jeff Buckley visited while I slept and he climbed into bed beside me. I told him that he was dead, and he whispered gently into my ear. “That’s for the best. If I was alive I’d be 57-years-old and you might not like me anymore.”
I walk through the railway station and see that there are lots of policemen standing about. They are bored and seem to be talking mindless shit to each other. They make me feel guilty for something I might not have done.
But I am guilty of thinking that the railway station might be a good place to pick somebody up.
There is a good-looking student guy who walks in the opposite direction eating a banana, a fresh banana, firm and yellow. At this moment, I wish I had a banana just like it.
He disappears and I see a young guy who could be a model. He is dressed in a zebra-patterned jumpsuit and fashion boots that would look ridiculous on anybody else, but he carries it off. He is incredibly handsome, with a tanned face and wavy black hair that is tinted with blonde and has long dangly earrings.
The guy is holding a small suitcase, and I speculate that he might be going on holiday somewhere warm. He is waiting for someone and scans the station looking for that person. I guess that he’s looking for his boyfriend.
Once or twice, he catches my eye and holds his gaze for a second and it makes me excited. Then I realise I’m standing gawping and he probably thinks I‘m a bit freakish.
A girl comes up behind him, kisses him on the cheek and they both walk towards a platform. I contemplate pushing the girl under an incoming train but remember there are policemen nearby.
Then the guy with the banana reappears, and I think that ten minutes is an awful long time to be eating the same banana. He walks past and casts a sneaky glance in my direction.
A smoked bacon sandwich and sunbathing on the Aisle of Aldi And Dixon Dallas and his explicit gay country songs And a winding canal of no-added sugar apple and blackcurrant juice And a trip to the inconvenience store And the dead writer Eric Jourdan who sits with a wet and dripping Jeff Buckley who has climbed out of the Mississippi River And a stick man who jumps off the shelf above my desk And Chrissie Hynde who steals my unopened pack of twelve sharp HB pencils And jazz-funk played out of a wind-up gramophone And a beach hut with a blue flag on top And Grandmaster Flash who plays dominoes with a white-suited Johnny Cash and hum White Lines together And a cucumber sandwich filled with juniper berries, crab sticks and piccalilly And the boy’s a slag, the best you ever had And the handsome guy whose hair is cut by Jar Jar Binks And come see, come see, remember me And Heartbeat on perpetual loop And Timothée Chalamet dancing to Rush with Troye Sivan’s underwear between his teeth And Taylor Swift biting the head off a street drinker on Tottenham Court Road and spitting it into the Thames And train drivers who believe they’re poor And dirty teenage boys who are shirtless and ride Vespas up and down the seafront at Cannes And rusting Italian scooters dumped at the bottom of a Venice lagoon And Pier Paolo Pasolini reading Enid Blyton stories to Cornish piskies on Bodmin Moor And Arthur Rimbaud, who promises to be nice, quoting poetry, bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties, And Noel Coward dueting with Nicki Minaj on a bandstand in Barbie World USA And the Eifell Tower in French France weeping tears of diluted Gautier And the photo of Derek Jarman that blows over when a house from Kansas drops through the roof of TK Maxx And the sweaty rent boy that drinks Jack Daniels and bleach on the rocks And the woman who has her clitoris pierced by Brigitte Bardot wearing jam jar glasses in Taco Bell And the lanky lad with tarantula bites on his legs And the boyfriend who says he doesn’t love me anymore And Come On, Harry, We Want to Say Goodnight to You.
It is after midnight, and I want to sit outside on the balcony. I want to read The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave.
It is starting to rain, like it has done all summer.
I look at the folded umbrella at the table with the two chairs propped against it. There is an ash tray, that is really a pudding basin, overflowing with cigarette butts. There is also a thin paint brush, an empty can of Diet Coke, and a piece of white Lego.
They say that The Sick Bag Song began its life scribbled on airline sick bags. I don’t scribble.
I tap notes into my iPhone, and people think I’m on Grindr all the time.
I open the sliding door and listen to the raindrops. I hear a girl shouting in the street below.
“Wait Laura, I can’t keep up in these shoes. You’re a fucking slag!”
My phone pings. It is a group chat.
“Hey Anthony, will you take a photo of the full moon?”
I can’t see the moon because of the rain clouds.
I go to the bathroom and run a bath.
I go back to the window and think that I’m probably in a bad mood.
I’m in a bad mood because there are many things I want.
There are lots of books I want to read. There are movies I want to watch. I want to write a novel like The Catcher in the Rye I want to be a recluse like J.D. Salinger. I want to be a photographer. I want to make the balcony into a lush garden. I want to redecorate this crumbling apartment. I want to be able to eat chocolate like I used to. I want to do a lot of things.
I think about all these.
I go to take the hot bath and realise that I’ve added Oral-B 3D White Mouthwash to the water instead of bath creme.
I empty the bathwater.
I go back to the window.
Thunder rumbles. I want to go outside and put the umbrella up. I want to sit underneath it and read The Sick Bag Song and listen to the rain.
I tap all these notes into my iPhone. One day these notes will make a story.
Charlie is sitting on the sofa and looks restless. He drinks a glass of red wine. Mouthful after mouthful. This means that he wants something, or there will be an awkward question.
I slump in the chair opposite. He picks up an old magazine and flicks through it, all the time watching me. A photograph falls out and lands on the cushion. Charlie picks it up and looks at it with a look of surprise. What is this photograph? He is a poor actor, and this routine has obviously been rehearsed. He holds it up for me to see. It is a black and white image of a pair of feet and the words, ‘My feet, Andrey.’
“Whose feet are these?” he asks. “
“Are you jealous of a pair of feet?”
“Why should I be jealous of feet? I’m merely interested as to who this Andrey is, the one who also signs it with a kiss.”
Charlie is staying here and has given no indication that he’ll be leaving anytime soon. He feels threatened. “Where is this Andrey?”
That is a good question. What happened to Andrey? I have no idea.
Andrey was from Krakow and was here because somebody recognised his potential as a model. He stayed in the apartment for a few weeks and did a photoshoot for an arty magazine for which the photographer placed snails on his face. Like many Polish boys, he was blessed with the look of an angel, but the harshness of the language sometimes made him sound abrasive.
The thing about Andrey was that he cared little about good looks but was obsessed with his feet. Big bony feet: his shoes were size twelve. We were never lovers; he was far too good looking for me to consider it. But he used to lay on the sofa, the one where Charlie sits now, and liked me to massage those exquisite feet.
Andrey wanted me to rub and tickle them and he’d squirm with pleasure until he nearly had an orgasm. (I once knew somebody that reacted the same way when I rubbed his nipples). He told me that the part of the brain that processes the sensation people get from feet was next to the area that perceives genital stimulation. It seems bizarre now but appeared perfectly normal then.
One day, Andrey had gone. I never knew where. But a few months later I received the photograph by post. The one being waved accusingly at me now. I once looked up Andrey online and it appeared that his modelling career hadn’t taken off. There was nothing. Not even a hint on social media.
I tell Charlie. “The photo must have come with the magazine.”
I’ve been going out on Sunday nights for longer than I care to remember. There used to be ten of us, but girlfriends, boyfriends, marriage, kids, and growing up, gradually cut us down to two. Now it’s just Ants and me.
We chat about our week, share our secrets, and drink too much. I never appreciated that Ants would become my best mate. He’s seen me through some serious shit and my feral past amuses him. I’ve got older now.
When weekends became part of my working week, after I crossed that divide between host and customer, Sunday night became the start of my weekend.
We drink until midnight, much later than we used to. And when we say goodnight and Ants heads home, he contemplates what I will get up to.
I shall let you into a secret.
I am a night walker. I wander the murky streets of the city, ones that are empty of people, and where life seems only to exist behind the lights of high rise apartments. Once, I wanted to be the centre of attention, now I find that I like my own company instead.
I’ll wander the streets for a couple of hours, anywhere I choose to go, a new route every week. This dark and lonely world is one where you see things differently.
If you look closely, the city never really sleeps.
Lurking in the shadows are the homeless and the street drinkers. There are the screams of students who couldn’t give a shit that people are asleep. Sometimes you might see a copper in a car but it’s in their best interest to ignore you. There are the fire engines that wail into the night, silent ambulances that light everything shocking blue, and Ubers that dash from one job to another. But you can also hear the chimes of church bells that strike on the hour. For the most part, the city is still. If it rains, all the better, the dirty streets get wetter, cleaner, and the air is fresher. Nighttime is when the city is at its calmest.
At times like this I am inspired. I can think clearly, choose subject matter to write about, and the foundations of the next story appear to come from nowhere.
There is a downside.
We forget that alcohol makes you brave, and it takes you up dark alleys that people won’t dare enter even by day. If I do meet someone, we’ll eye each other with suspicion because these can be perilous streets too. I’ve had a few fights and years of brawling in bars and clubs prove convenient. I fight dirty. And the human body wants to get rid of the drink, more and more frequently, and I’ve pissed in more shadowy corners than I’d like to admit.
But I’m usually on my own, a lone wanderer, innocent and inquisitive, taking photos on my phone because nobody else wants to.
The night never ends here, because afterwards there are the bars that open obscene hours, ones that close when the sun comes up, but this is always another story, one that I shall tell Ants about next Sunday.
I want to take a photograph of you. On my phone that is. No, I don’t know you. We are total strangers. We almost walked past each other but something made me stop and turn around and shout after you. I want to take your photo.
I know that you think I’m strange, but it’s what I like to do. I take photographs of things and put them on Instagram and if I’m lucky about three people will like them. It’s a record of my life, the things I’ve seen and done, things I like. It’s a bit like keeping a diary.
Why do I want to take your photograph? Because I saw you in the street and thought you looked interesting. In plain terms, I liked the look of you. If I don’t take your photo, I’ll never see you again and will forget all about you. I’ve learned that the best photo opportunity is the one that presents itself, that moment, and if I hesitate it is lost.
I’ll show you my Insta page to prove I’m not unhinged. You are kind enough to say that you like my images. No other person does, and I thank you. But I’m glad you agreed to let me take your photo.
And you stand by parked cars in the pouring rain with your arms outstretched and raise your chin so that raindrops splatter your face. You think it looks good. I don’t disagree. You stand shivering, with short wet hair, boyish smirk, and a soaking wet white tee shirt that shows your nipples.
I thought about the actor Kevin Spacey, a man who has been cleared of sexually assaulting four men. A jury found him not guilty of nine sexual offences against four men in their 20s and 30s, between 2004 and 2013. He is a relieved man because had he been found guilty; he would have probably faced a prison sentence. All good then. Not quite. Because mud sticks. His reputation is in tatters, and it will still take a brave studio to cast the actor in future productions.
I also got to thinking about the society we live in. One that allows people to go running to the authorities when it suits them. I won’t decry the Me Too movement because what it stands for is correct, people who do wrong must be punished. But each good cause presents its own problems.
For every legitimate claim there are those that will exploit those good intentions and seek an opportunity to make a fast buck. And the authorities are obliged to take everything seriously because they will be scrutinised and subject to intense criticism by the media. Alas, our society now presumes everybody is guilty unless proven innocent.
I do blame the media, the one that I have an interest in, because we’re in the business of clickbait. And people believe everything they read.
I got to thinking about myself. Yes, about me, the law-abiding citizen who does no wrong and treats everybody with respect and dignity. I also think about you, the person who probably holds the same principles that I do.
Let me present a scenario. One that happened only a few nights ago.
I was drinking in a bar and quite fancied the guy next to me. I knew that he fancied me too. This guy has been mentioned here many times before because I refer to him as Bad Boy Jamie. I like my bad boys.
I went to the toilet to relieve myself and was aware that somebody had walked in behind me. I pissed down my leg, fastened myself up, turned around, and there he was. The one person that I had hoped to find myself alone with. Reader, he pounced upon me, and we kissed, and it was fantastic. But it was brief because somebody selfishly chose that moment to walk in. We shot outside the toilet like rats scurrying from a one-star takeaway. It wouldn’t have been a good outcome had we been caught. Boyfriends can be vicious and vindictive.
Bad Boy Jamie was pissed-off and this is when he can do unpredictable things. More importantly, he was pissed-off with me because afterwards I put up a steel barrier between us. He wanted revenge, and truth be known, he’d be more likely to stick a knife in me. But I considered what might happen if he went to the police and said I’d sexually assaulted him in the male toilet. Guilty until proven innocent.
And then a guy I’ve never met might claim that I had sex with him in 2003 and twenty years later he’d decided that he didn’t like it after all. A spurned lover might say that I repeatedly abused him during our seven year relationship. (He’s still bitter enough to claim that happened). And that guy who worked for us ten years back might say that I once used inappropriate language and that it’s been on his mind ever since. Guilty until proven innocent.
Get the gist?
I come from another time when being sexually promiscuous meant something exciting. You might disagree, but there it was.
I’ve never sexually abused anybody and everything I did was consensual. From teenager to man, if I got a knockback, mercifully few, I’d be embarrassed enough to go and hide in a dark corner.
Imagine a police officer knocking on your door and arresting you for your innocent past. It will happen to somebody, you, or me, and it seems that we must live the rest of our lives looking over our bruised shoulders.
I quote my twenty-something friend, Alexander, who recently told me that he’d never have a relationship with someone his own age. Why Not? “Because they all come with baggage,” he said.
That is the crux of the problem. Today’s youth are afraid to explore one another. They’re afraid that physical contact might come back to haunt them. They’re afraid that anything they say might offend somebody’s moralistic inclinations. And they must be careful what they write in a phone message in case it is screenshot and used in evidence. How very sad and boring.
But I fear most for the future. When today’s kids, the ones who know nothing different, grow up to become teenagers, they’ll stick with the disinfected moralism inflicted upon them by this present day melodramatic society. When that day comes, love between two people is in trouble.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 