This is where I used to play football in Adidas shorts, with sexy legs and a six-pack. I was fourteen and showed off to the girls. I wasn’t great but that didn’t matter because they thought I was the best footballer in the world. When it was dark, we came here to smoke cigarettes and drink beer because this was our secret place.
A few years later I ended up in London and played for an amateur team which thought that I had a brilliant attitude and a bit of skill. And the girls still thought that I was a catch. But my attention had wandered. When I met an Italian boy called Nico, he persuaded me to move to Perugia with him.
I played for a small local team with black curly-haired boys who wore Kappa shorts, and they were the ones who had tanned legs and six-packs. I was a carthorse, and they were young stallions who flirted mischievously and called me ‘ragazzo gay’ – ‘gay boy’.
Now I have come back to see where the adventure began.
There are no younger versions of me anymore, no adoring girls, only long grass and trees. I sit alone on a bench, and a young guy walks by before heading into the undergrowth. He looks back and I know he wants me to follow so I decide that I will.
Historical fiction is a blend of the real and imagined. If only there was a way of going back to find out what was real and which of it wasn’t. And if I make things up, will people in three hundred years time believe that what I wrote was what really happened?
He sits like a ghost of last night, knees raw, boots scuffed, a slouch that says he’s seen too much for someone too young to carry it. The alley’s a graveyard of pallets and metal, the air thick with the stale breath of kegs that haven’t been touched since the last fight or fuck. The wall at his back don’t care who he is, and neither does the city — just another boy in borrowed clothes, dragging the hem of his story through concrete and piss. His eyes don’t beg. They dare. As if to say: I’m not lost — I’m choosing to stay gone. Everything here’s worn out —the barrels, the bricks, the boy. But there’s poetry in the ruin, and he knows it. He’s not posing. He’s waiting. For the light to change, for someone to look twice, or maybe just for the silence to settle in enough to sleep.
White Nike socks. Navy blue Hummel shorts and tee-shirt. You’re a chavvy label-obsessed whore. But amidst that hard set defiance, I ponder on why your pale legs are so damn smooth.
Long live the King. The King is gone. I was the King but I am done. I had to go because the people didn’t respect the King anymore. The King was unable to control his desires. All those handsome Dukes, Counts, Barons and Earls. Now the King has nothing. The King must eat shit.
Matchstick Man doesn’t like the angel and talks to him like shit. “It’s like working with an infant,” he says. Matchstick Man gets jealous quickly. I wonder if he’s feeling insecure and threatened by the angel’s innocence. And he gets angry when I say that the infant might be annoying but is cute.
Image: Les amitiés particulières (1964). Directed by Jean Delannoy
It was the last night of our short seaside holiday and Charlie decided that it would be a good idea to stream a movie. He spent well over an hour flicking through Netflix and Prime Video until my patience finally ran out.
“Charlie, we will soon have spent as long looking for a movie than it would to watch one.” He stopped flicking. “Then I shall choose this one, and if you do not like it, I shall not be held responsible,” he said petulantly.
The movie he chose was in black and white and called This Special Friendship. It soon became apparent that it was old (1964), and in French, which delighted Charlie, but the English subtitles would soon annoy him, while I would be annoyed with Charlie for moaning about them.
“It is called Les amitiés particulières, which means ‘special friendships’, but the English cannot translate it correctly,” he told me. “The synopsis is simple. It is set in the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit boarding school and is a tender relationship between a 14-year-old upperclassman and a 12-year-old boy, who is the object of his desire.” Charlie’s expertise had come after consulting his iPhone.
The movie seemed harmless enough, and because it was made in the 1960s was tame when compared to boy-love movies of today, but after only a few minutes Charlie tutted with disdain. “The character of Georges is supposed to be 14 years old,” he said, “but he looks like he is older than me.” I later found out that the actor, Francis Lacombrade, according to one source, had been 21, but others stated that he had been 17.
Charlie’s derision intensified when the object of his desire appeared for the first time. He was a small cupid-faced boy carrying a lamb which we presumed was meant to be the symbolism of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. “Bordel de merde! Please tell me that this boy isn’t going to be his lover.” His fears proved to be correct, and I agreed that the age difference was disturbing.
He was called Alexandre, who turned out to be a bit of a cock-tease for Georges, but the romance mainly involved love letters passed between the two of them. The relationship is destroyed by a priest’s will to protect them from homosexuality. “We know why he did that,” said Charlie knowingly. “That priest wanted his wicked way with the little boy.” That wasn’t the case, but there were no happy endings, because heartbroken Alexandre jumped to his death from a moving train.
“The movie was good,” Charlie said afterwards, “but I found it troubling.” I agreed and began my own internet search to see what people thought about it. I was surprised to find that modern-day audiences seem unperturbed by the subject matter but could see that the Catholic Church had tried unsuccessfully to get it banned on its release.
Charlie disappeared into the kitchen while I fell down a rabbit hole as I dug deeper into the movie’s background. When he returned with two mugs of tea I told him my findings.
“I’ve found things that might upset you even more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The movie is based on a book written by a French author called Roger Peyrefitte and is said to be autobiographical because he had a similar romance, and the younger boy committed suicide.” My pronunciation was poor, and it came out as Pay-ri-fit.
Charlie corrected me. “Pey-ri-fee.” He stretched on the leather sofa and mulled over my new-found knowledge.
“But there is more,” I said, scrolling down the page of a French literary site. “Peyrefitte visited the movie set and fell in love with a 12-year-old boy who played a small part as a choir boy. They had a relationship, and the boy became his personal secretary and was eventually adopted by him.”
“It is Greek love,” Charlie frowned. “Erastes and Eromenos. What happened to them?”
“The boy was called Alain-Philippe Malagnac d’Argens de Villèle.” My English pronunciation left a lot to be desired, but Charlie looked at me as though I had said something significant.
“Alain-Philippe Malagnac?”
“I suppose so.”
“It cannot be the same person,” he cried, “but my father once knew somebody with that name.”
I continued reading.
“Malagnac became proprietor of Le Club Colony in Paris and briefly managed French singer Sylvie Vertan but it almost bankrupted Peyrefitte and forced him to sell artworks and erotic antiques.”
“The Alaine-Philippe Malagnac that my father knew was married to Amanda Leah, who he believes to really be a man, but a gay icon. He died in a fire near the Alpilles Mountains.”
I saved my pièce de résistance until last.
“Malagnac married Amanda Lear in 1979. She was close friends with Salvador Dali, who disapproved of the marriage.”
Charlie smiled triumphantly. “That is incredible. I cannot wait to tell my father, but what shall I say?” He began fiddling inside his shorts, something he tended to do when he mulled things over. At last, he came to a decision. “I will not say anything because he will become worried that I might also be seduced by an older man.”
I smiled. “I think it is most likely to be the other way around.”
Image: Les amitiés particulières (1964). Directed by Jean Delannoy
There are things that people don’t know about you. And if they did, it’s unlikely that they would believe it.
The council house scruffs who think you are fucking cool in your Hoodrich gear. You talk to them like shit, and they are so thick, that even though they are scared, they think it is only a game.
But I know why you treat them so badly and keep them in their place.
I know your dark secret.
It is something that you don’t want them to know, and if they did, you know that you are finished.
Charlie had been watching movies on TV and hadn’t gone to bed until three o’clock in the morning. This was normal, but he wasn’t used to me waking him up six hours later. I reminded him that he was due to meet Leon at ten for his photo shoot. Only the top of his head could be seen from under the covers and his hair stuck up at all angles. He was barely communicative and answered with strange little noises that sounded kind of cute.
Ten minutes later I had to tell him again that he had to get up. “It’s like trying to sleep in the Gare du Nord,” he moaned. There was then a frantic rush to shower and make himself look beautiful, not helped by the fact that in this rented holiday cottage the bathroom was downstairs while his clothes were upstairs.
I stayed out of the way and flicked through an old antiques magazine that was at least ten years old. Things appeared to be going well because when Charlie was in a good mood he would start singing Jacques Brel songs in French and I could hear the words to La Chanson de Jacky through the floorboards that had wide gaps between them.
“Même si on m’appelle Antonio Que je brûle mes derniers feux En échange de quelques cadeaux Madame, oh madame, je fais ce que je peux.”
Leon had arranged to meet Charlie outside Dolly’s Vintage Tea Room, but I’d been warned to stay away. He reasoned that my presence would cause him embarrassment. My day was going to be spent wandering around this small fishing village while trying not to spend money that I didn’t have.
“This is going to be interesting,” Charlie said as he drank the remains of his tea (white with two sweeteners). “Leon takes photographs of different subjects, but his speciality is taking pictures of dead birds and the occasional dead rat.
He stood next to his girlfriend and I couldn’t help looking at him. Discreetly like. But Matchstick Man had clocked me and looked at me like I’d done something incredibly bad. I wanted to shout, “Fuck you, Matchstick Man, you had your chance!” Instead, I went bright red and looked at my phone where an app nudged a virtual taxi nearer towards me. Sometimes thinking about it is better than doing it.
