I have a feeling that something bad might happen. It makes me nervous. Like when you want to have a shit but you’re worried because the drains keep backing up.
The Apprehension is for the Possibility
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Tag Archives: Writing
The Boy Danced Naked Under the Apple Tree
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.
The Weight of Wonder
When you look at boys, do you really look – do you look in detail? People see Bradley and assume that beauty must imply intelligence. It doesn’t. The truth is, he’s a bit of a himbo. There’s a Yorkshire saying for people like that: “thick as pig shit.” And Bradley, I suppose, fits it perfectly. He smiles – handsome, devilish – with a guileless sense of wonder. But how long can I keep swallowing my frustration? Physical attraction fades quickly, and I realise the only role he can play is arm candy: a beautiful body, empty-headed, ornamental.
My Head is Full of Random Shit
*****
“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.
Last night I dreamt I was eighteen again
Hormonal Surge: Increased testosterone, fuelling restlessness and the need to discharge energy, sometimes through risky or boisterous play, mock fighting, and testing boundaries.
I wake and can hear music playing in the other room. It is an eighties song – Calling All the Heroes – and it is perfect. My first waking moments are defined by a song made before I was born. It will become a favourite. Whenever I hear it, I will recall the dream.
“I’m eighteen. Like I always am. There are twenty boys of a similar age. We don’t know each other, but we have bonded; something connects us, though I don’t know what it is. And now we are friends. Brothers who drink too much, laugh, and joke. We move from bar to bar until the group becomes fragmented, but still we keep bumping into one another — in different bars, on street corners, in dark streets – and each time we greet each other with high fives. I keep losing my coat that contains my mobile phone, but somebody in the group always finds it and saves it for me.”
What am I dreaming about?
Eighteen. Delayed or suspended adolescence. The moment just before categorisation -before ‘out’ or ‘not out’, before relationships are legible, before desire is policed or explained. A moment of pure potential, when attraction, friendship, and self-recognition have not yet been sorted into boxes. A group of boys I don’t know, where intimacy doesn’t have to announce itself as erotic to be real. Touch exists: high fives, a coded language, bodies moving together through night-time space, alcohol loosening edges, and the bond is felt rather than named.
These boys don’t posture. They don’t test me. They don’t ask who I was. They simply accept me. A world that perhaps never fully existed, but felt briefly possible.
The group breaks apart, but there is no need to cling because the bond reasserts itself naturally. “I still know you. You still know me.” I repeatedly lose my coat and my phone – yet I am never punished. I am held by others even when I am careless, distracted, or drifting. I don’t have to hold myself together perfectly. I’m not abandoned for losing my way. A fantasy of uncomplicated male belonging – one where youth, desire, friendship, and identity coexist without fracture or explanation.
The next part of the dream is important.
“There are ten of us staying in a hotel room. It is the only one available. We snack on almonds and slices of apple covered in salted caramel and maple sugar. Two double beds and a single mattress on the floor. When it comes to sleep, we must find space in one of the beds. I choose a double bed where four of us will squeeze together. I’m thrilled that the most handsome boy will sleep next to me. But at the last moment, he is taken. Another boy wants him to share the mattress on the floor, and I am devastated. The dream is never consummated.”
The hotel room matters. It is temporary, improvised, and not designed for this many bodies. I share a bed with four boys. The choice is telling. I don’t choose privacy, pairing, or exclusivity. I choose crowded intimacy – warmth, bodies, breath, limbs overlapping. Proximity without the exposure of being singled out. I am about to be close to the handsome boy without declaring him an object of desire, but he isn’t a person yet – he is a figure onto which desire might safely attach itself.
The handsome boy doesn’t reject me; he is summoned – pulled away by another boy. Desire is displaced, not denied. My devastation isn’t only about losing him. It is about losing the fantasy of being quietly chosen within the group. But the group has ruptured because somebody else’s desire has rearranged the night. My loss is intimate, quiet, internal – no one else even notices it happening – and so I do not follow. I do not compete. I do not protest. I absorb the loss silently.
I woke up.
That Moment: Orpheus Is Waiting For Me
A razzle. A night on the town. Blurred lines. Anyone with a penis qualifies. Charlie says “You’re drunk!” I tell him that I’m tortured but coping nicely. “A walk in the fog is all that it needs to calm me.” But Charlie issues a warning. “Beware of Orpheus because he might seduce you on a back lane.” I am intrigued and walk into the fog calling for Orpheus.
Short Story: What the Crowd Cannot Have
The first time Brodie and Archie met was not under the best of circumstances.
It was a Friday afternoon beneath the Miller Theatre on West 51st Street. Brodie – hi-viz vest zipped to the throat – stood amid abandoned scaffolding, photographing stress fractures in the concrete. The air was dense with dust, old and mineral, as though the building itself were exhaling.
A figure emerged at the far end of the tunnel and walked towards him.
Brodie lowered the camera. He waited until the young man was close enough to see properly, then snapped, “What are you doing here? This is a restricted area. Turn around and go back the way you came.”
“I’m sorry,” the young man said. He spoke with an English accent, careful, almost courteous. “I didn’t realise. What was this tunnel used for?”
“The other side of that wall is backstage,” Brodie replied. “Probably for actors crossing beneath the stage. But there’s no time for questions. It’s unsafe down here. The roof could come down at any moment.”
It was an exaggeration. But saying it gave him a small, illicit thrill – authority borrowed from the place.
The young man hesitated. He had floppy brown hair, eyes dark and inquisitive despite the rebuke. “What are you doing?”
“I’m inspecting the structure,” Brodie said. “Everything looks glitzy up there. Down here it’s rot and age.” He paused. “You still haven’t explained why you’re trespassing.”
“I was just exploring.”
“Explore somewhere else.”
The young man’s shoulders dropped. As he turned, he fumbled the folder under his arm; papers spilled across the dusty floor.
“Shit – sorry. My script.”
Something softened in Brodie then, too late to retract the sharpness he’d already spent.
The second time they met was in the staffroom.
Brodie was entering notes on his laptop when the door burst open and a tide of people flooded in, loud with laughter, trailing the smell of coffee and citrus wipes. Lunch packs appeared: protein bars, yogurt, hummus, cut vegetables. Actors, Brodie thought, irritated beyond reason.
Michael wanted renovation proposals by Monday. Concentration felt impossible.
Then he saw him – the boy from the tunnel – laughing with the others, sleeves pushed up, script tucked under his arm as if it were a talisman.
Of course.
On their way out, the young man stopped at Brodie’s table. “I’m Archie,” he said, holding out his hand. His eyes lingered, dark and unguarded. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
Brodie hesitated, then took it. The contact was brief, oddly charged. “I’m Brodie. Forget about it. Just – stay out of the tunnel.”
Archie smiled, chastened and amused all at once.
After that, Brodie thought about him more than he liked to admit.
He knew he could be abrupt, inflated by his own sense of usefulness. Actors irritated him on principle. But Archie – English, polite, quietly intense – had unsettled him.
Late one night, Brodie searched the Playbill bios. Archie was a rising star: television work, the National Theatre, lead roles in the West End, now a Broadway debut.
Impressive.
What Brodie didn’t know was that Archie had been searching too. He’d asked about the surveys, about the renovation. He found the company. He found Brodie’s photograph.
Hazel eyes. Skin warm-toned, as if lit from inside. A face shaped by movement rather than posing.
Tasty, Archie thought, surprised by his own boldness.
Two years later.
Archie slipped out of the Walter Kerr Theatre the moment the curtain fell on Chatterton. No shower. No linger. Wool coat, beanie, scarf pulled high. He moved fast, before the autograph hunters gathered.
Outside, Broadway surged and glittered – yellow cabs, steam vents, neon, voices colliding. It still thrilled him. It always did. A world away from Buckinghamshire.
At the apartment, Brodie checked the clock: 10:30. Any minute now.
The flowers were arranged just so. Archie liked flowers. Brodie liked that Archie liked them.
When the door opened, relief moved through him like a current.
Tea was requested. Always tea. Archie shed the night – coat, scarf, public self – and collapsed onto the sofa. He spoke about the show, about the line he’d missed. Brodie stroked his hair, grounding him.
Later, Fleet Foxes floated from the bathroom. Steam curled beneath the door.
Brodie knew the routine by heart. He would collect the clothes, note the forgotten boxers, breathe in the faint, intimate salt of them – something human beneath the polish. It embarrassed him how much that scent moved him.
Archie emerged clean and fragrant: Le Labo, Dior and mint. Blue silk pyjamas. He smiled like someone stepping into safety.
They ate together. They watched television under the blanket Archie’s grandmother had made. Archie pressed close, smaller than he seemed onstage, all softness and thoughtfulness and unspoken worry.
Sometimes Brodie felt the weight of what he was not allowed to be – unseen, untagged, absent from photographs. Invisible by design. But here, in this private room, their bodies fit without explanation. The most erotic moments were those that could not be shared publicly.
Brodie was Archie’s shelter. Archie was Brodie’s undoing.
Brodie had watched hundreds of videos of Archie on YouTube, moments in which he appeared entirely at ease – charming interviewers, holding eye contact, listening with an attentiveness that felt generous rather than rehearsed.
His answers were always articulate, delivered with that unmistakable smile. But Brodie could see what others missed.
The exposure beneath the polish. The small betrayals of nerves: the way Archie’s smile lingered a fraction too long; the absent-minded stroking of his own arm as he spoke; the slow, circular massaging of each finger; the hand lifting to his hair, not to adjust it, but to reassure himself it was still there.
These gestures were invisible to the audience, but to Brodie they were intimate, almost confessional – proof that the confidence was something Archie stepped into, not something he owned.
Thomas Chatterton had been an ideal role for Archie. The eighteenth-century poet – celebrated as the marvellous boy for his precocious brilliance and dead at seventeen – had been reimagined as the subject of a hugely successful Broadway musical.
In his twenties, Archie might once have been considered too old for the part, but his fine, boyish beauty dissolved any such doubt. Night after night, he stepped into Chatterton with such ease that the distinction between role and actor began to blur.
To the audience, he seemed timeless, suspended in youth and promise. To Brodie, there was something quietly unsettling in this devotion – the way Archie gave himself over to a boy who never lived long enough to be disappointed by what came after.
When the movie ended, the future rose between them.
“Would you come to London?” Archie asked quietly.
Brodie had been waiting for this. “Yes. If you ask me to.”
Archie’s eyes filled. “You’ll have to share me.”
Brodie pulled him closer. “I already do.”
The Patron Saint of Foolhardy Teenage Boys
A solitary figure stands above Kinder Scout. He cannot be seen, yet he watches from afar. The darkness thickens over the peaks, and a westerly wind rises as if summoned from nothing, but neither deters him. This is not a place for the unprepared. The temperature will fall; the warmth of the day will slip away, unnoticed, into the stone.
As the figure observes the six boys pitching their tents, a quiet certainty settles within him: he is powerless. He cannot call out. He cannot warn them. Leaning on his stick, he endures the bitter air and waits, bound to witness how they will meet the night. Their laughter will thin, their bravado ebb, as loneliness takes hold. Escape will become a wish rather than a choice, and sleep the only surrender, each of them willing the morning to arrive.
When he is certain the boys have fallen into a restless, unhappy slumber, the figure moves. He steps softly across rock and scrub, listening, careful not to betray his presence. Only when he is satisfied that he will not frighten them does he pause to peer into each tent. There he sees them cocooned within their sleeping bags, clinging to one another, sharing the fragile warmth of slender, adolescent bodies against the cold.
At last, he chooses a broad, ancient rock and settles there, a silent sentinel. He remains, guarding their sleep, until the first pale glow of the new day begins to rise in the east.
In Control of My Own Happiness
A flicker of FOMO. A spoiled rich boy invites everyone to a birthday dinner, and I’m left out. I wasn’t meant to be there – and I wasn’t. Everyone’s buzzing, and no one gives a fuck whether I’m there or not. Still, life goes on. I grant myself a little grace, even if there isn’t much to give. Let them, I tell myself. Let them spend obscene amounts of money, drink too much, and throw it all up later. I’m in charge of my own happiness. I have a ‘wonder mind’. I buy prawn linguine, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chew Chew ice cream, and watch Fellini’s La Strada instead.
David: A Good Story, Apparently
I got a message from David. The first I’d heard from him since our falling out in December. I hadn’t been expecting an apology and didn’t get one. I wasn’t even sure one was required. Some days I thought I might be the one who owed it. Still, the silence had broken, and that felt like something.
‘My boy turned forty this week and wanted to see where he was born. I took him to the Kapiʻolani Medical Center, where his mother gave birth to him. It wasn’t what he had in mind. But he stood straight, like the military taught him, and was too polite to tell me to go to hell. He was a Kamaʻāina — child of the land — but this wasn’t where he grew up.’
“What???” I replied.
David rang immediately.
I paused Heated Rivalry, which had literally just started. I hadn’t even got past the opening credits. Everyone had been talking about it, which was precisely why I’d been avoiding it. The same thing had happened with Adolescence. The louder the praise, the more stubbornly uninterested I became. But Heated Rivalry had the added incentive of steamy gay sex scenes — and I liked the idea that large audiences wanted that and were openly enjoying it. So fine. I’d given in. And then David called.
“It’s a paragraph I’ve just written,” he said. “I found a draft of something I wrote about Hawaii in the eighties. A good story’s been hiding in a drawer for forty years. It’s time to rewrite it. Update it.”
“Hawaii?”
“If memory serves, I based it on a Rolling Stone article about a teen suicide. But I think that was Kansas. Or somewhere like it. No idea why I chose Hawaii.”
“Suicide?”
“That only comes at the end.”
“Well,” I said, buying time, “I suppose there has to be a happy ending.”
“A suicide and a birth,” he said, as if that clarified things. “You get the opening now?”
I didn’t. Except that David was a successful writer, and it clearly made sense to him. Which, apparently, was enough.
“I think I know why I chose Hawaii,” he continued. “There was a film I saw. Big Wednesday. Surfing. Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey. Semi-naked most of the time. Very young. Very hot.”
“Who?” My patience was thinning.
“Ah. Before your time. Though now that I think of it, that film was set in California.”
“Get to the point, David. The longer we talk, the longer I’m delayed from steamy gay sex. What’s the story actually about?”
“Whoa,” he laughed. “So you’ve sorted things out with Charlie. What did I tell you? You can’t keep a good man down.”
I froze. Had I really discussed my prolonged sexual drought with David?
“I’ll be brief,” he said. “It’s about jealousy. At least on one side. When three people are involved, somebody always loses.”
This was unexpected territory for him. David could spin a tight crime plot or disappear happily into a historical setting, but relationships were something he normally sidestepped entirely.
“It feels a bit left-field,” I said. “And why go back to something written that long ago?”
“It was shite,” he said cheerfully. “I never read past the first page after I shoved it in a drawer. My first novel came out ten years later — my style had changed completely by then. But time’s counting down. It feels like unfinished business. I want to turn it into something wonderful.”
“How old were you when you wrote it?”
“Let’s see… I started it in 1984, so I’d have been twenty. Finished it the year after. That’s why the characters were that age.” He paused. “It’ll read like I’m reliving myself.” Then, suddenly: “Goddammit. I remember now. I’d just read Michener’s Hawaii. That’s why. Oahu, specifically. And Magnum P.I. was on television.”
I thought about my own life. Whether anything I’d written would still exist in forty years. Whether I’d ever be considered established, in any meaningful sense. I’d been carrying an idea for a book for years, but inertia kept winning. Instead, I scraped a living writing about country houses and cities. It all felt increasingly dull. Stranger still, it occurred to me that David must have written that early draft on a typewriter — a genuinely painful way to work, as far as I was concerned.
He said he had to go.
“By the way,” he added, “I’ve finished the Isherwood biography on Kindle. It ended rather abruptly. One moment he was alive, the next he was gone. Dead. But I won’t mention it again. You seem sensitive about that.”
I restarted Heated Rivalry. Two seconds later, my phone buzzed.
‘Forgot to say. I’m going for a drink with a young man — a student — only nineteen. Just out of nappies, really. Don’t tell Josh, but of all people, I thought you’d like to know. 😏’
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 