by Max Schaefer
When it has gone Tony stands with his hands on his knees. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Jesus. Fuck.’ Blood pulses in the full of his face, a hot mask squeezing him. ‘Shit’: only barely not yelled. His eyes are prickling; he might really cry. He kicks the nearest thing hard, a waste bin. It gives a dull brief ring. Grow up, you cunt, he thinks, and walks on, but his legs are shaking stupidly and soon he sits straight down on the platform. He wipes his eyes. Just give it a minute and he’ll stand up.
It is Steve’s wink that keeps coming back to him. It was nothing probably, but still, how fucking strange. And that talk about his boy getting buggered, of all sick shit. Jesus. The kid’s only three or something.
Just one more minute. It’s good he got off at Charlton, being stuck with them any longer would have done his head in. At least if someone comes out and calls you queer you know where you stand.
Somebody is watching him, approaching down the platform. Tony looks up. The boy from the Craven Club.
‘What do you fucking want?’ says Tony.
‘You invited me home with you.’
‘Yeah well.’
The boy looks up at the sky. He says, ‘Your mates — were those your mates? They nearly kicked my head in. They were close, weren’t they? They could have killed me. Really killed me. Would you have done anything?’
‘I wouldn’t have let them.’
‘What would you have done?’
Tony looks at him. ‘Thought you got off at Deptford.’
‘I got on another carriage. It’s lucky I saw you, I was waiting for Woolwich Dockyard.’
‘You’d have run into all them lot probably.’
‘Oh God.’ His voice shakes at the thought.
‘No, they’ll be busy with the niggers now.’
‘Jesus,’ the boy says.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. You really talk like that. Do you think I’m a queer bastard Aids carrier too?’
‘I hope not.’ Tony gives a sort of laugh. ‘If you’re still coming I mean. Are you?’
‘Half of me,’ the boy says, ‘wants to beat the fucking shit out of you.’
‘You wouldn’t get very far but you can try if you like.’
The boy sits down next to Tony. ‘Well,’ he says, looking straight ahead, ‘I suppose I was originally hoping for the other way round.’
‘What really? Beat you up?’
‘Not … seriously. You know, just a bit.’
‘Slap you around a bit.’
‘Not seriously or anything. Not like them.’
‘Well this is it.’ Tony holds the door for the boy, whose name is Chris. ‘Luxury accommodation isn’t it. Do you want a drink?’
‘Are you having anything?’
‘Don’t laugh but I’m having a cup of tea. But I’ve got beer if you want.’
‘Tea’s perfect actually, thanks.’
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Just milk please.’
He has to wipe out two mugs. The teabags float half out of the hot water. He forces them down a couple of times to stew better but they keep bobbing back up. Witches, he thinks. Burn them all.
In the bedroom Chris is looking at his walls: posters for Hail the New Dawn and the Waffen-SS, Union Jack, small portrait of Hitler. ‘Thanks,’ he says, handed the tea, and sits next to Tony on the bed. They sip slowly, waiting for it to cool.
Tony says, ‘One of the blokes I was talking to at the bar said you was eyeing him up and all.’
‘The one with the boots on his T-shirt?’
‘Paying attention wasn’t you?’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Bit of a skinhead thing going on.’
‘I was only looking at him until you came in.’
Tony says, ‘Put down your tea a minute.’
Chris’s mouth tastes of milk and cigarettes. His head trembles in Tony’s hand, which pulls it against him, lacing fingers through wads of hair. Tony’s tongue is a thug against his. Tony says, ‘You’re a good kisser aren’t you.’
Chris smiles as if to say that’s not all. He pushes himself back from Tony and lowers himself off the edge of the bed to the floor, where he kneels. Supporting himself on his balled fists, he leans forward and kisses Tony’s left boot, about halfway up, looks back at Tony watching him. He repeats the kiss a couple of times, then licks the same place gently, just a small patch on the side, a taste. He grips Tony’s booted leg in both hands, his left on the back of Tony’s calf, his right anchoring the toecap to the floor, and in a series of overlapping strokes pushes the wetness out from its starting point, slightly further each time. He is working himself up to move down towards the feet, along the gradient of accumulating dirt.
Tony reaches down to touch his head. He says, ‘Come back up here.’
‘What are your tattoos for?’
‘I’ll show you. Look. This is the first one I got, this is Borstal tears. When I was inside as a kid. A lot of lads who’ve been to Borstal have them. Some people just have dots, but in the same place, it’s the same thing. They’re fading though because it’s only biro ink.
‘This symbol’s for the British Movement. I got that done in ’77, a couple of months after I joined. How old were you then?’
‘Eleven or twelve.’
‘Yeah well I’m not saying nothing. Couple of swastikas here and here. They’re from around the time that cunt Thatcher got in.
‘That one’s just a picture I liked, it don’t mean anything. ‘Skrewdriver, here, I know you know who they are. I got that when their album come out last summer.’
‘Is that it?’
‘For now yeah.’
‘None hidden away? That’s a pity. What are you going to get next?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing for a while.’
‘You should get that one with the dotted line across the neck’ — his fingertip traces it — ‘and cut here written on it.’
‘You’d like that would you?’
‘God yeah. I think those are fucking sexy.’
‘Yeah well it’s not you has to wear it all the time. You got any?’
‘Tattoos? Course not.’
‘Show me then.’
Chris’s body keeps surprising him in its simplicity, the way it offers a kind of rediscovery of something forgotten. Like a flower, thinks Tony, trying to pinpoint it, like a spring flower after winter, and then, confusing himself a little, like a glass of milk, or one of them yoghurts that aren’t flavoured. Like a bath. But Chris, blind to the timelessness of his body’s simply being, wants other stuff, has the restlessness of a scavenging animal. He keeps turning to expose himself, he unfolds urgently, like a blank page that wants marking. Tony keeps holding and kissing him but the moment he lets up his grip Chris is diving again, this way, that, in his earnest semaphore, and there is the constant tug back to Tony’s boots, which Chris won’t let him take off, which draw Chris like a scent obsessing a dog: you yank it back with the leash and it seems to concede but in another moment there it is, off again. How do you keep a boy like this? In the end he lets him go, and Chris gives a little indulgent giggle as if to say, There, I knew you wanted it, almost a snigger, really, something foul about it, and he is down on the boots like a limpet and giving them intense attention, incredible, a huge fucking turn-on of a sight, but frustrating, because your boots can’t feel anything can they; you’d rather have him back up here doing it to you. If you could only hold him, if you could grasp what he has to offer that he doesn’t seem to notice, let alone value, it could really be something; and Tony suddenly has this bizarre vision of himself in a student bar, at the centre of a crowd of, Jesus, students, girls with hammer-and-sickle badges and attentive Chinks and even blacks, blacks with glasses and books, and they’re all watching Tony with smiles as he says, ‘But then I met him,’ squeezing Chris’s knee, ‘didn’t I? And now here I am’ … the life, it must be, contained in that little balled-up body down there, if you could only reach out and take it, the body that is giving yo
u regular polling glances between its fervent local application, begging glances, and when you reach down and touch its cheek the reaction is so immediate, the little anticipatory wince, the gasp, that it’s clear what it’s begging for; well, you have to start with where you are, you know why he went for you. So Tony slaps him, not hard, across the face, and immediately the boy’s full attention snaps on, like something plugged in, the eyes fixed on you, the connection made; and so he slaps him harder, and Chris’s whole body, vindicated, begins to vibrate with excitement.
Tony grips him by his hair with his left hand and with his right hand he fucking belts him one.
Some time later Chris says, ‘Wait. Have you — have you got any more stuff?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Any more nazi stuff.’
‘What for?’
‘Just to have out. To look at.’ He smiles. ‘It’s a big turn-on.’
‘Oh.’ Tony relaxes his grip. ‘I’ve got some magazines …’
Then something occurs to him: ‘Hang about. Stay there.’
He pulls a chair over to his cupboard, stands on it (aware of the sight he must be from that angle, the wobble of his arse) and reaches for the bin bag. ‘Stand up,’ he tells Chris, climbing down again. He rips the black plastic, too tightly knotted to untie easily, and slides out its contents. He unbundles the flag — he’d forgotten how heavy it was — and gripping the long edge shakes it out and lays it flat on the bed like a sheet.
The flag creates silence for a moment.
‘Jesus,’ says Chris. ‘That’s amazing.’ He puts a finger to it. ‘It looks really old. Is it real?’
‘Course it’s real.’
‘How did you get this?’
‘An old lady give it me.’
Chris strokes the flag. He traces the black piece, with its border of heavy stitches. ‘It’s amazing,’ he says again.
‘Go on,’ says Tony. ‘Lie down.’
And again, later still: ‘Wait.’
‘Too much?’
‘No, I … I don’t know if you should do that.’
‘Don’t you want me to?’
‘God yes.’
‘Well then.’
‘No, but I just — I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know … Health.’
‘Oh.’ Tony sits.
‘I didn’t want to make you stop.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I just think we should … sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
Chris says, quietly: ‘Shit.’ He reaches for Tony, who takes his hand and lifts it off again: ‘Give it a bit.’ In the silence they newly hear the faint thud of some neighbour’s stereo.
Tony stands. He fetches his cigarettes from the kitchen. ‘Want one?’
‘Thanks.’
They sit, smoking: Tony on the edge of the bed, Chris on the flag-draped mattress with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up. After a while, with his big toe, he tentatively strokes the small of Tony’s back. ‘You OK?’
Tony exhales smoke. ‘I saw this bloke today I used to know. Outside the club. He was sick, he looked fucking horrible. He didn’t say but it must have been … He came inside, the one in the wheelchair? I carried it upstairs for him. It was probably stupid but I thought I should.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine. You just carried his chair?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, then. And you washed your hands after?’
‘I mean after a while I did.’
‘Anyway I don’t think you get it from that. You get it from — you know. This.’
‘Brilliant, thanks.’
‘But not if you’re careful. I mean, they say unless you’re really promiscuous then you should be all right, if you avoid anal sex. You know, fucking. Which is why I … and just make sure the guys you have sex with are in good health and aren’t promiscuous either. Oh, and avoid people who’ve been sexually active in America. You haven’t have you?’
‘Never been.’
‘Well then. That’s it basically. Listen to me, I sound like Gay Times’
‘That’s not so—’
‘No, see?’
‘But how do you know if someone’s — they say “in good health”—’
‘Well, it’s not, they’re not worried about a cold, are they? The guy you saw today, in the chair, you wouldn’t have slept with him, right?’
Tony manages half a laugh, and Chris smiles: ‘So.’
‘And besides that you can—’
‘Yes. I mean, technically they’ve found HTLV-3 in saliva, so even snogging you can’t be sure, but I think at a certain point what are you supposed to do? If you follow the main guidelines. That’s what I’m doing … It could turn out to be a big fuss over nothing, anyway. All this talk about how the numbers are going to skyrocket, there’s no way they can know that.’
‘Saliva’s spit, isn’t it? Fuck knows what I touched.’
‘But I’m saying. If you got it like that half the country would be dead.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow. Really killed the mood, haven’t I?’
Tony smiles. ‘Sorry.’
‘Tell you what. Just lie down and close your eyes. Go on.’
‘ … I’m quite tired mate.’
‘Oh, poo. Well, that’s age for you.’
‘Fuck off.’
Chris says quietly, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah I should get some sleep.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘OK.’
‘But stand up a minute. I should move this.’
They get off the bed and Tony lifts the flag by one of its shorter ends. ‘Can you help me fold it?’
Touching his corners to Tony’s, Chris asks, ‘What are these stains on it?’
‘Dead men’s blood.’
He starts. ‘You’re joking, right? Don’t try to scare me, I’m serious.’
‘I didn’t kill no one you soppy cunt. German blood. National Socialists.’
‘From the war?’
‘From before the war.’
‘I don’t understand. What is this? How come you have it?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Try me.’
‘No. I’ll tell you one thing though. Hitler’s held this flag.’
‘Now you are kidding.’
‘Swear to God.’
‘Fuck. Fuck! … How much is it worth?’
‘Enough.’
‘Aren’t you worried someone might steal it?’
‘For a while I was. But I don’t think no one knows about it. Except you. That old lady who give it me died soon after.’
Chris uses the bathroom. When he comes back he says, ‘I should go.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know, but … I’ve got classes in the morning.’
‘Trains have stopped.’
‘I’ll find a night bus or something.’
‘Up to you anyway.’
When he has gone Tony wraps his legs around the bundled sheets and murmurs to them in the dark as if they were Chris, staying.
Boots and Braces
A man in his sixties left the shop as I approached. He wore full skinhead gear: red-laced boots, bleached jeans, black jacket open to a vest that made the shape of his torso, with its wrinkled dugs, uncomfortably explicit. He stopped in the street and raised his left hand before his face, then gripped it hard with his right. He was in pain, arthritis perhaps; he grimaced as he squeezed, endlessly adjusting his grip, until he was almost in tears with distress: as if the pain were a blister he had no strength to burst. The walls of the shop were hung with netting, and gas masks stood on display. The twenty-hole Rangers I tried first seemed too big, but unwilling to repeat my blushing farce of lacing, painfully exacerbated by the assistant’s sympathy, I bought them anyway. They cost considerably more than I had expected.
&
nbsp; Later that evening, looking at myself in the mirror, I was mortified by their naked fetishism. Their brand-new gleam, fresh from the box, insinuated hours of devoted burnishing, and they climbed high up my calves with a shameless plasticity. With a pair of jeans rolled above them and a black Fred Perry, both borrowed from Adam, my lack of authenticity seemed horribly visible, as if quote marks swarmed about me like moths.
‘It’s not very you,’ said Adam. But it is you, I thought, watching him get ready with a dreamy anticipation untainted, for once, by the knowledge that I could not follow. Usually, when he dressed for a night like this, or some private meet, I would be struggling not to manifest my exclusion, and the absence of that familiar anxiety was almost numbing. I ended up drifting through the flat after him in a haze of pleasure, or rather the promise of it, still frustratingly intangible, which I tried to reify by inventing new rituals of intimacy: offering, for example, to shave Adam’s head. He said no, but seemed happy for me to watch: his fingertips, checking for completeness, made confident, musical patterns on his scalp. Afterwards he stood quite still beneath the shower, letting the flecked suds roll before its enveloping sheen. Not for the first time I was taken aback by this slim, quietly muscled body and my claim on it: if not exclusive then at least unique. On his left shoulder, unmarked except by the pale bump from his BCG injection, he had been talking about getting his first tattoo, from which might follow the whole foreign syllabary of possible piercings. I pictured us entering the club in our similar gear. I had only a vague conception of the place, but I thought we might be young for the crowd. I imagined kissing Adam there and perhaps, in that environment, more: saw us spotlit, and aspired to.
When Adam was dry he put on a red jockstrap and long socks; then combat trousers, cropped and blundy stained. He fastened his boots with none of my neophyte fumblings. A trail of hair emerged from his groin like an access route, but the chest above it was shaved as usual. He harnessed his T-shirt in place with red braces and fastened a wide leather cuff round his right wrist. He pulled on his bomber jacket and checked his reflection. ‘Are we off then? ’ he said.
