“ 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.
Image: The Boy with the Black Dog – Charlie Marseilles
Ten o’clock in the morning and I hoped that I wasn’t too late. I stood on the terrace and looked upon the narrow street, the wait tense, every figure a possibility, every person making my pulse leap, until I remembered the black dog, and the disappointment set in.
I was in my hiding place, and he wouldn’t know that I was there, the anticipation laced with secrecy, maybe even guilt. I was invisible, while he was exposed for everyone to see. What would happen if he looked up? Would he even notice me? What if I wasn’t the only watcher?
The minutes ticked by and I hoped that he would appear, and when he did, it would seem like the world was holding its breath. I waited for the boy with the black dog.
“The president is a camp icon. He’s like a drag queen. He’s outrageous, he’s transgressive, he’s catty, he’s a narcissist the likes of which we haven’t seen since Alexander the Great.” – James Kirchick, journalist and author of ‘Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington’, as quoted in in The New York Times.
Matchstick Man stretched and showed his slender stomach. Lean, flat and toned. It was for my benefit, and he knew that I would be distracted by the neat wave of wispy hair that headed south of his Calvin Klein waistband. But he still claimed to be straight, and when I suggested otherwise, he simply laughed.
The tall handsome guy, maybe in his twenties, looked fine from a distance. When he came over, I found that he’d had lots of botox and talked about Donald Trump in a squeaky voice.
An older man chatted me up, and said that I had a lovely smile. But I wasn’t in the mood, and played hard to get, and so I made an effort not to smile anymore. He called me an arrogant prick and left me alone.
A group of guys stood next to me. One of them, who appeared to be wearing aluminium foil, thought he was the patron saint for confused gays. He pontificated that he knew more than anybody else and his friends agreed with him. I wanted to make a noise like a sheep but somebody beat me to it.
Two guys told a friend that when they got together they were both tops, and so they tossed a coin to decide who would be the bottom.
Somebody behind me said something like, “Oh, poor love, poor heart, I played with your pain, I trampled on you with indifference!” – or words to that effect. I hoped that they were quoting from something, and this wasn’t part of their normal conversation, but somebody said, “I agree.”
The Angel grabbed me from behind and gave me a hug which I thought was sweet. He sat beside me and gave me a tour of his body tattoos. The last time I saw him, he insisted I speak to his grandmother on his mobile phone. It was an awkward conversation with somebody I didn’t know. She told me that he was ‘ a little shit’ because he forgets to take his ADHD medication and then he’s like a rabbit. My interpretation of a rabbit had been different to hers. Later… he ate pizza with his eyes closed and looked so tired that he may have drifted off at any moment.
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.
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.”
Urban adolescent. Prowling the streets. Catching stares. Bringing himself to orgasm and waiting for one that will be.
Colvey is number one and will die before he is properly a man. He is angry and suspicious of everyone. Wary of his enemies and more so of those who say they are friends. (Know what I mean bro?) Some will argue that this streak of uncertainty gives him an advantage, but one day he will meet the person that will plunge a knife into him and then knowing who to trust and who not to will be irrelevant. One thing I do know is that it will be the person he least suspected.
Angry with everyone. Controlling the uncontrollable. Respect from those who have no idea what it means. (Respect bro!)
Until then, Colvey must control this unruly band of boys – tearaways, petty thieves, and miscreants – who cannot muster up a brain between them, and who idolise him because they are afraid of the consequences if they don’t. Look around the city and you will see the tags on shitty walls, doors and metal shutters that protect empty shops in rundown streets. Our territory, our ground, our space.
Grooming. A word that has become part of modern society. A bad word. A careless word. Colvey might be accused of grooming kids to swell his ranks. But it is something he started when he was a small boy who shit his pants in school.
Provincial demon. Misery. Mayhem.
Keep your enemy close to you and let him do your dirty work.
Mason is number two and must wait. Living under a shadow that must surely fade. It is one thing knowing those who will cause you harm, another when that threat comes from within. Catch these hands. Colvey knows this. (You’re my best mate bro). The dance of Caesar and Brutus. Fake and be friend.
I watch. I see. Tattletale, snitch, informant, telltale, squealer. Colvey’s bitch. The one person he says he can trust. The one person who could bring him down if I wanted to. But that ain’t gonna happen because I’ll be a good number two.
Secrets and lies. Scrawny and slim. Wiry. The violent sex. “You want to know something?” Colvey lies next to me. “I ain’t gay bro. I like pussy. This is only bud sex.” ‘I ain’t a batty boy either,” I tell him. Colvey kisses me. “This is sheesh. Don’t tell anyone that I like bussin’ you bro.”
The bartender pours me a pint of Guinness. There is something exciting about him. The fantasy, service, and the desire are charged with a kind of unspoken drama, where connection and expression flourish.
He stands at the centre of this world: confident, attentive, just out of reach. There’s power in the dynamic where he’s part host, part performer, and part confessor. That mix of emotional availability and physical proximity is incredibly compelling.
He leaves the Guinness to settle and waits. It’s a subtle performance of masculinity, of beauty, and a flirtatious smirk. There’s a silent dialogue: who’s paying attention to whom? He represents a safe focal point for flirtation and fantasy. He’s someone I want to admire, talk to, maybe even imagine a story with, without needing it to be real. It’s an aesthetic moment as much as an emotional one.
He’s a kind of canvas – with a quiet understanding, a rescuer, a rebel, a secret crush. Each interaction, no matter how fleeting, is charged with possibility.
He starts pouring again, and I ask for a four-leaf clover on the top of the Guinness. When he hands me the drink, I see that he’s tried to draw one in the foam.
I think there’s something haunting and poetic to explore in this distance between us – the observer and the observed where we are both muse and mirror. That space between emotional hunger and aesthetic distance – that quiet pull toward someone who may never cross the line into intimacy.
I realise that he hasn’t drawn a four-leaf clover after all and can see that it is a penis instead. He leans over and whispers that only wankers draw a four-leaf clover. I take a sip, and he smiles, quietly calling me a cocksucker.
Sometimes, you have nothing to do except watch and think. It’s Tuesday afternoon, it’s overcast, and I’m sitting on a beach… I tap random thoughts into my phone… and later, it reads like a diary, but also conjures up memories of being a child when we had ‘news books’ in which we wrote any drivel that might have happened.
This is my drivel…
Megan tells me a story about Peran of Polruan, with his salty brown legs, who lives alone in an old fisherman’s cottage called The Buoy. Never a visitor. Not a word to anyone. The girls think he’s a Cornish Saint and want to have sex with him. Every morning he catches the river ferry and returns at teatime. Where does he go? What does he do? On summer evenings he reads on the doorstep. I’m intrigued, but I want to know more about the books that he reads.
***
I’m looking for a bit of phwoar on the beach. I want a handsome young guy who strips to his shorts and goes swimming. But on this cloudy Tuesday afternoon I’m blessed with old ladies in one-piece costumes who do sedate breast-strokes to the pontoon and back. Shortly after four o’clock, a blonde schoolboy appears and parks himself close by. His shirt is untucked and the school tie hangs loose around his neck. From his bag, he pulls out a copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and starts reading. He seems happy being with Ralph and Jack, and I wonder which one of them he’s sympathetic to.
***
It’s been a month since I had a cigarette. I realise this whilst standing on the quayside. Instead, I’ve been using my Pro Max Double Apple – 10K puffs. What might you get up to with ten thousand puffs? Behind me, a sour-faced woman moans to her husband that I’m vaping. I turn around and give her a deadly look and she tuts. There wouldn’t have been any remorse if I’d pushed her into the sea.
***
“The Tesco delivery is coming tomorrow morning,” says Megan. She makes it sound like this is the highlight of the week. It might well be. She’s changed a lot since moving down here. Where is the Megan I once knew? The girl who drank Aperol Spritz by the dozen and got her tits out afterwards. “That’s exciting, I look forward to it,” I reply. She gives me a wicked look. “I was hoping that you might stay in and wait for him. I think that you’ll be less sarcastic after you’ve seen the Tesco guy.”
***
I write at the kitchen table with the door open and ignore the wasps that fly in and buzz above my head. I’ve realised that they soon get bored and leave the same way that they came. Megan appreciates my eclectic music tastes and has recommended an album called Senza Estate by My Friend Dario. It plays on my laptop while the wasps gather around the Corn Flakes. One of the tracks is called Keep on Cruising which is calming and innocent, and far removed from the cruising that I’m used to.
“The Laurels Residential Care Home is pleased to announce that the Space Kids will be here on 8 June 2045.”
The pending arrival had been flashed onto the wall of every bedroom. Old people liked it when the Space Kids came. They came across the fields on Ducati Thrust Bikes, not a sound, and only the shaking of the hedgerows gave any indication that they had arrived. They gathered in the ChatGPT room and shouted for everyone to leave their pods. The Space Kids had brought holograms of dead stars and allowed them to mingle with the residents. Patrick Swayze and Kurt Cobain chatted with them, Prince and Amy Winehouse waltzed around the room, Bruce Willis cracked jokes, and Michael Jackson reeled off poetic verses from Thriller. But their favourite time was when the Space Kids fired up the ‘retro spectro disco’ where the likes of Pulp, Oasis and Take That got them all dancing. Towards the end, there were traditional food dishes like Big Macs, Nando’s Chicken and Pepperoni Pizza with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to follow. It had an emotional ending when the Space Kids paid tribute to the home’s oldest resident who was treated to a Sid Vicious avatar singing a punk version of We’ll Meet Again. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 