Stardust Diaries 2007

by Swan, Tarn

  He craftily struck just after we’d had sex, which he’d initiated by walking into the living room carrying a play flogger, a butt plug and a set of restraints. He had a yen for some rough domination and wanted me to enslave and brutalise him. How could I not oblige?

  After making sure the front door was locked and the chain was on so Lulu couldn’t get in I took on the role of Slave Master with enthusiasm. It culminated in some hot and steamy action.

  I was feeling pleased after a rather fine performance and was on my way to sleep and not really listening to what he was saying, but making noises suggesting I was, and that's when I agreed to partner him in a jitterbug routine for the late bank holiday charity ball, which had a wartime theme. I learned a lesson. I will never again make encouraging noises when I haven't got a clue about what's actually being said. He wouldn't let me wriggle out of it. I'd sold my soul to the devil and he was going to collect.

  Every evening saw me undergoing trials and tribulations as devised by those medical menaces in frocks, the dancing queens Maurice and Teddy. They ruthlessly put me through my paces. If that weren't bad enough, the routine being drilled into me by the lady Hitler's was done to Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. It was horrible. I wanted my mum to step in and put a stop to it. After all I'm her son. It's her job to protect me from bullying, but no she stepped in on the side of the bullies.

  “Stop moaning, Tarn, you get more like your father every day. He was always uptight. It’s only a one-off. Loosen up and you might have fun. It's for charity and it'll make Twinks happy and God knows you did FAIL him over that lip-synching thing. This will make up for it.”

  I looked to Prissy for moral support, but found only an echo of my mother's sentiments. He is so under her thumb.

  Twinkles told everyone I'd set up the car accident just to get out of dancing with him.

  I finally got around to opening and reading the hate mail letter we received the day before my accident. I’d forgotten all about it. I was dusting the hall table a few days ago when it came to mind. It was disturbing on more than one level. It reads: the hour approaches. I am watching. You won’t know me until it’s too late. I am the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Man shalt not lie with man.

  Twinks broke down when he read it and not just because of the words. Pasted to the bottom of the letter was a red silk flower. Twinks recognised it, as had I. It had been cut from the train of his stolen wedding gown. Putting his hands over his face he sobbed. I don’t blame him. I could have wept myself. Pulling him into my arms I comforted him as best I could. The silk flower was gloating confirmation that the mailer had been the housebreaker.

  I don’t report all the letters to the police, but this one I felt had to be logged, not just because it confirmed who had broken into our house, but also because of the implied threat. They told us to be vigilant, but not to worry too much as the writers of such letters were cowards who rarely posed a real physical danger to their victims. Their intention is to frighten and demoralise. Small comfort.

  I want so much to meet this person, this writer of letters and destroyer of possessions, to see them face to face and to ask why they feel have the right to persecute us in this vile way. People who use the Bible to invoke, justify and carry out acts of cruelty are the real evil evildoers in this world. It’s why I don’t believe in the God of organised religion. God in that context tends to be a twisted spite filled demon and a representation of all the worst aspects of humanity.

  Maybe the police are right about the writer just getting off on scaring us. The letter was written a while ago and neither Twinks nor I have had any sense of being followed or watched. Even so I’ve warned him to be careful and I shall be too.

  Talking about him in frocks I hope he's behaving himself along Blackpool’s Golden Mile. I warned him before he went that I expected him to be on his best behaviour and not cause Brian any grief by fighting with Natalie or anyone else. I'm going to give him a call soon to find out what he's up to. I doubt I'll see him again until the early hours.

  Time to get up and have a walk and stretch. My back is beginning to ache and besides I'm entertaining a young lady this evening. She'll be here soon. Gabby's mum and dad are off to a bank holiday shindig at their footie club so I said I'd baby-sit.

  We're having a theme night - Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s in preparation for her going to see the latest instalment at the cinema tomorrow evening. She's growing up fast and is sweet on Johnny Depp, but then who isn’t. He’s earth’s most fancied man, fancied by men and women across the gender spectrum be they gay straight lesbian or bisexual. The only people who don’t fancy him are asexual and some of them waver.

  8th June ~ Hell on Heels

  The weather has been odd today. It was cold and drizzly first thing this morning, more like autumn than summer. Then mid morning I nipped out of the office to pick up a bouquet of flowers and buy an array of fancy cakes in time for my section's coffee break. It was one of the girl's birthdays. It's an office tradition that I mark birthdays with cake and flowers. I do it for the male staff too. Never let it be said I discriminate, though granted the ladies are more appreciative of the flowers than the men. Me giving them flowers seems to confirm my gayness and makes the paranoid amongst them suspect I have designs on them. Straight blokes have a problem getting their head around the fact that gay men don’t lust after all males, just as straight men don’t lust after all women.

  Returning to weather. When I got outside it was still overcast, the sky was an opaque grey, but it was warm, as if summer was banked up just beyond the grey haze and waiting for a chance to break through and shine. By the time I left the office to head for home tonight it had broken through with a vengeance and the sun was spraying out a fierce heat. It's still warm now. I'm enjoying a large glass of chilled wine while taking pleasure in the scent of lavender coming in through the open window from the garden. We have a lovely show of it under the living room window.

  Twinks is out, it being Friday. He went out looking like an American footballer in drag. He’s got shoulder pads under his gown and shin pads under his stockings. I declined to go. I've got a cold and my sinuses are aching, so a noisy smoky club isn't the best of venues. Besides, this weekend sees the PP hosting the annual Stiletto Olympics. It's hell on earth, or on high heels. It's a charity event, but believe me, there's very little charity between the participants. They’re evil as they battle it out to be fastest and best.

  Tonight will sift the men/women from the boys/girls and whoever survives the heats will be pitched against each other tomorrow night in the grand finale. The prize is a gold plated jewelled stiletto shoe trophy, a magnum of champagne and two hundred pounds in prize money. The club will be chaos. There’ll be competitors from Land's End to John O Groats turning up to take part. It can get savage, and I don't mean Lily Savage, though a few will be dressed as that formidable queen.

  Participants have to negotiate an obstacle course involving all kinds of hazards, beer crates to climb over, poles to limbo under and all while dressed in full drag and with heels no shorter than six inches. There are time trials and it's altogether worse than a Roman Circus. The contestants are like gladiators who jab, shove, punch and cheat their way around the course. It’s no place for the faint hearted. Blood gets spilled and nails broken.

  If Twinks makes it to the finale I'll have to attend, and not only in a proud supportive role, but also as referee because the rough stuff gets rougher and good humour tends to get left on the sidelines. I got punched in the eye one year when I intervened between Twinkles and a huge Amazon drag queen who was trying to suffocate him between her twin peaks. It was revenge after he caused her to pull up short by craftily setting fire to her boa with a lighter he borrowed from Big Mary. While she stamped out her flaming feathers he stormed ahead of her to the finish line. She soon stormed after him.

  I was cross with my man. Cheating and dirty tricks are par for the course and much of the ple
asure, but I did think setting fire to someone's boa was taking rivalry and a desire to win a bit too far. Stardust's bottom was duly spanked. His backside didn't stay red for too long, but I had a very colourful eye for well over a week. The things I've suffered for love.

  Talking of love, it was our first wedding anniversary last Sunday. A whole year has passed. The time flies, doesn't it just! I wish I had some kind of mechanism for halting a day or even a moment in time, so I can review it from another angle and live it again and enjoy it properly.

  Our civil wedding ceremony was one of the best days of my life. I never thought I would ever have the right to legally commit to someone before witnesses. What a huge, wonderful step forward not just for gay rights, but also for basic human rights. It offends my sensibilities on every level that there are people who want to reverse such a hard won right.

  It's a shame that some of the people who embrace their chosen religious faith with such fervour can't embrace tolerance, mercy, respect and kindness with the same fervour. 'Faith’ is such a lovely word with a wealth of beautiful possibilities attached to it, but all too often it comes covered in barbs that wound and kill before the beauty is revealed.

  Our anniversary was a low-key affair, but beautiful in its own way. We exchanged gifts and cards with each other and also received cards and flowers from family and friends. Brian presented us with a couple of bottles of rather fine vintage champagne. I stuck them in the fridge to chill down with plans of opening at least one of them when we returned from the romantic anniversary lunch I’d booked aboard the River Princess, the Tees pleasure cruiser.

  The meal was delicious, the views from the boat delightful and the weather most cordial. We returned home and settled down to enjoy a glass or three of champagne and reminisce about our wedding day, while looking over the wedding photo album, which thankfully had not been discovered by the Christmas creep. We may not have our outfits any longer, but we have pictures and memories. We also reminisced and re-enacted some of the more intimate moments from our honeymoon. All in all it was a very fine day.

  Time to give Brian a ring to see how thing are going at the PP. Not that I'm checking up on my beloved or anything...much.

  11th June ~ Twenty-Twenty Vision

  We had a weekend of tumults of one sort and another, which of course is nothing new in our house. If I were one of those people with an inclination towards sticking a nameplate on the garden gate, it would be engraved with the words Welcome to Tumult.

  For a start his majesty was in a strop after failing to secure the coveted Golden Shoe trophy in the Stiletto Olympics. He claims he was cheated. It's true. He was cheated, but as I pointed out cheating was the name of the game. He'd just have to accept that on this occasion his cheating hadn't been quite as good as other people's cheating. He blamed me with all my strict ways. I've ruined his lack of morality and undermined his cheating and conniving skills. I told him it was a shame he couldn't let things go with grace instead of brooding over them.

  It was a beautiful morning yesterday. I woke up to the gentle sound of birdsong and the caress of the sun as it reached long rays through the window. He was lying beside me sound asleep. He looked so sweet and delicious. I felt tender passion stir and inclining my head placed a kiss upon his rosebud lips, only to be impaled on thorns as he woke up and put the lips into moaning mode.

  “Close the blinds for God's sake! It’s too bright and too early. I haven’t had enough sleep. What do you think you’re doing waking me up at this godforsaken hour? As if I didn’t know! Sex, that’s all you want fro me. Well you can forget it, and shut those bloody birds up! They’re getting on my frigging wick with their chirping!”

  Resisting a powerful urge to smother him with a pillow I landed a wallop to his crotchety backside and got up to have a shower and get the day underway. We'd invited mum to join us for Sunday lunch. She's a bit of a grass widow at the moment. Being a teacher Priscilla hasn't got time enough to fart at this time of year, as he eloquently put it. He’s busy with exams and reports and assessments.

  Mum arrived bearing gifts in the shape of ready prepared vegetables and a flask of gravy. Evidently men are incapable of preparing veg and haven't got a clue about good gravy. I found it a bit much in view of the fact her gravy is made from Bisto granules and mine is the real McCoy made from meat juices and homemade stock. I didn't argue because it's a waste of time arguing with my mother. She’s like Twinks and convinced of the rightness of everything she does and says. While she went off to clean the bathroom (visiting mums have to help their offspring, it's the law apparently) I poured her instant gravy down the sink and put her veg in the fridge for use another day.

  Lulu turned up, invited himself for lunch, helped himself to a large glass of wine and tottered off upstairs to entertain my mother with a graphic description about his date on Thursday night. Twinks and I had heard it all before.

  He described how they'd gone to the pictures and how, at invitation, he had dipped deep into the large box of popcorn his date had nestled on his lap only to find his hand curling around something hot and hard, not so much popcorn as cockcorn. There was a moment of silence as mum got her head around this snippet, then a screech.

  “Oh my God, you mean, no, never, you're having me on?”

  As Lulu made reply I closed my eyes and silently thanked God that Gabby wasn't about as she often is on a Sunday.

  “I'm not kidding. I swear, Joan, I nearly died. I still haven't worked out how he managed to insert his cock through the bottom of the box. I mean I like my popcorn sweet and sticky, but there's sticky and there's sticky. I didn't know where to put myself, or my hand. I had visions of popcorn spraying out of the box and showering the row in front, talk about a blow job.”

  "Never mind, Lu, pet, just be grateful he didn't ask you to suck the mustard off his hotdog.”

  Honestly. I blushed red as raucous laughter filtered down from the bathroom. Sometimes I wished my mum were more like Lu's mum had been and blissfully and wilfully blind to the world I inhabited instead of a part of it.

  The main rumpus of the day took place after Sunday lunch. We'd all settled in front of the box to watch the recorded finale of the reality talent show to find a Joseph for a new West End stage production of the Technicolor Dreamcoat musical. Twinks has followed the programme avidly from week one. He and Lu had developed a soft spot for local lad Lewis and were rooting for him to win.

  Twinkles, totally forgetting the show was recorded got out his mobile to vote for Lewis once again. I reminded him the lines had been closed for quite some time and the winner already decided. Lulu got a sharp slap from Twinks as he told him just whom that winner was. He’d heard it on the radio.

  The shriek of indignation Twinks let rip at Lu's giveaway of the winner of the coat of many colours was as nothing compared to the screech of rage he let rip at my mother's sudden declaration that in her opinion he needed glasses.

  “Glasses, what do you mean frigging glasses? There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision I’ll have you know.”

  “Then why did you lean forward and squint when you were trying to read the mobile number at the bottom of the telly screen? God knows, Twinkles pet, it’s a big enough screen.”

  Twinkles took complete umbrage. It was outrageous, an insult to suggest he needed specs. First she had tried to force him into wearing beige chenille and now she was trying to impose glasses on him. What was she frigging saying, he was getting old or something?

  Mum stuck to her guns saying she recognised impending short sight when she saw it. She’d seen the signs before. It was she who had told my father he needed glasses and aunt Helen and her friend Nancy, and a woman who worked on the checkouts in Asda. She had been right every time. They had all ended up getting specs.

  Twinkles told her she was like a curse - a bringer of gegs, but she wasn't cursing him with eye furniture. Not while there was breath in his body. Mum told him if he didn't stop ranting she'd make sure
there was no breath left in his body.

  Further argument was cut short when dad dropped in with Janet. Mum purloined her and took her off into the garden to play. Twinkles was almost charming to my father for once. He made him a cup of coffee and sweetly told him he deserved a medal for having been married to Joan for so long and did he know she was responsible for cursing him with the hideous specs he had perched on his nose?

  A further tumult occurred when everyone had left for home and Twinkles discovered Janet had been playing with his fluffy pink mules. She adores them and loves to stroke and cuddle them. Consequently she had slavered on them, the fluff was sodden. He made a scandalous, childish, ungracious song and dance about it. It was a tumult too far.

  Bending him over the back of the couch I briskly paddled his backside with the sole of a soggy slipper. He didn't speak to me for the rest of the evening. It was like I'd died and gone to heaven. After shampooing his mules he sat blow drying and brushing them while I watched television.

  I've been observing him and know what, I think mum might be right about him needing glasses, or at least an eye test. I'm monitoring the situation. Watch this space.

  18th June ~ Water Water Everywhere

  I thought it was never going to stop raining last week. It relentlessly poured down day after day. It was a relief to wake up to see sunshine glimmering at the window yesterday morning instead of hearing rain battering the panes. By way of celebration I had passionate sex with my beloved, or would have if he hadn't crossly slapped my hopeful hand away the moment it touched his cold shoulder, retorting, and I quote: “has hell frozen over, I don't think so.”

  The weather might have improved outside but there was still a distinct chilliness on the domestic front. We had a little difference of opinion on Saturday afternoon. It resulted in me not allowing him to go out to the PP on Saturday evening. I reminded him that his duty as an obedient submissive was to serve the sexual needs of the HOH. Baring his teeth he offered to give me oral. I declined. It’s a wise HOH who knows when to submit to his partner's mood. I didn't fancy singing soprano.