by Tim Anderson
I looked at her through narrowed eyelids. “What did you do? Wait. Show me your tongue.”
She rolled her giant, bloated tongue out of her mouth, and it looked like a giant sea cucumber. It didn’t seem possible that that swollen, red, alien tentacle could possibly fit inside her mouth. With her finger she tugged at the giant hoop she had somehow negotiated onto it, no doubt expending buckets of blood and Anbesol in the process.
Yeah, I thought. That seems about right.
What on earth? This is just too tawdry for words. I don’t even know how to narrate what I’m seeing without being arrested for public lewdness.
The night had begun harmlessly enough. The young man started his night out at a nancy dance club in downtown Durham with his lady friend Jennifer, and they were shaking their tight young asses to a revolting selection of house music. The only time I stopped rolling my eyes was when RuPaul’s “Supermodel” played, because that song is fun-ny.
The boy occasionally stopped dancing and wandered around the three-floor gay monstrosity like Augustus Gloop in the Chocolate Room, checking out the tail on tap. As far as the eye could see, gym bunnies, muscle Marys, big old Nellie queens, refugees from Fairytown, preppy sideburn monkeys, fatties, bears, twinks, power bottoms, fatty twinks, Nellie twinks, butch fairies, butch monkeys, butch bears, butch bottoms, butch bear preps, and Nellie bear fatties laughed and talked and drank cocktails and insulted each other and occasionally (often) shrieked.
Our hero wanted to talk to a few of them, maybe even many of them (all of them), but his shyness and complete lack of game prevented him from sidling up to some Brad or Dave or Brent or other and shooting the shit about Melrose Place or 90210 or Howards End or whatever the gays of 1993 are into.
He did the rounds for a little while, casting his longing gaze from face to face, supple bicep to supple bicep, hard nipple pushing through tight T-shirt to hard nipple pushing through tight T-shirt, on the hunt for someone, anyone who would agree to some sort of arrangement of the sexual variety.
But no one was really responding much to his judgmental face, and eventually he returned to the dance floor to perform some more lame tricks. A few terrible songs later, over walked Jennifer with a male friend she’d just met.
He had on a tight stretchy green-and-white referee’s jersey, a black baseball hat, and tight, tight pants.
“Tim, this is Greg,” Jennifer said. Greg took our hero’s hand with a solid grip and shook it. Jennifer winked at our hero as if to say, “He thinks you’re cute; don’t fuck this up.”
The men started chatting, and our hero learned all the key details about Greg. He was from Wilmington. He was the manager of a Wendy’s. He was in Durham for the weekend with his friend Bob. They were staying at the Heart of Durham hotel across the street. The mating ritual had officially begun.
All the important details having been covered, the two gentlemen headed back to the half-empty dance floor and flailed around for a while before Greg asked our hero if he would be interested in joining him at his hotel room for a sleepover.
So here we are now in a cheap hotel room that smells of beer and the back room of an adult bookstore. The two men are engaged in a marathon round of naked Twister, starting before the door is even slammed shut, moving quickly in front of the teevee, against the teevee, on the bureau, against the mirror, into the bathroom, onto the bathroom sink, moving into the shower, then back to the sink, around the corner in front of the bed where Greg’s friend is inconveniently passed out and spread-eagled, and then over to the love seat, where, after a seemingly endless skit on The Sodom and Gomorrah Show, things reach their…climax.
So how’s our hero’s blood sugar, now that he’s in a deep, exhausted slumber after such an Olympian workout, during which his virgin card was officially punched? Well, he hasn’t had anything to eat in more than six hours, so he should be hitching a ride to Twitchville any minute now. Ah, there we go. Twitch, sweat, more twitching, more sweating, lifting of the head, looking around, dropping of the head, twitch, and repeat. After several cycles of this he finally jerks awake, figures out what’s happening, gets up, searches for his pants for what seems like an hour, finally finds them twisted in knots under the bed, pulls some coinage out of them, and limps out to the vending machine to buy a candy bar.
Staggering back to the room, he realizes he’s locked out. After a few moments of sighing and eye rolling, he figures he’ll just wait outside for a while and let them sleep. He steps toward the railing and looks out at glamorous, glamorous downtown Durham.
He’s enjoying this Milky Way more than he’s ever enjoyed a Milky Way.
CHAPTER 10
I’d spent two years at two different colleges, and as that second year of beer bonging, traditional bonging, spastic dry-heaving, staring into space with dead eyes, paroxysmal blood sugars, and extreme cave-cricket wrestling progressed, the big question was: Where was I going to run away to next?
The question was easily answered once I, a certified Anglophile, discovered UNC had an exchange program with the University of Manchester: It was time to run away to England, where all young American men go to find validation for their inferiority complexes. And what better city for a gloomy boy with a penchant for self-pity and misanthropy to take up residence than the home of the king of all hilarious miserablists, Morrissey? The answer was: no better city.
After years of pent-up sexual frustration and one night of wild, merciless cherry popping, I spent the final months of the summer preparing to leave the country for the first time and embark on a cross-cultural adventure that would hopefully involve innumerable sexual partners of increasing sex appeal. Having moved to a country full of dour, miserable bastards, I would finally be surrounded by a citizenry who weren’t put off by my condescending, judgmental face. Perhaps it would even work in my favor.
By the end of my year abroad, my hope was to have secured the affections of some count or baron or footman or other, who would be drawn by my American otherness. Xavier would propose to me at an Indian restaurant in Rusholme, place a glass slipper on my foot as I spooned rice pudding into my mouth, and carry me to his castle in Whalley Range, where we would spend our days eating Cadbury chocolate bars and finishing each other’s X-rated crossword puzzles.
They say that if you don’t like the weather in London then you should just wait ten minutes. What they don’t say is that by the end of that ten-minute wait you might possibly, through no fault of your own, be getting a hand job.
I had just landed at London’s Gatwick Airport, and I was heading toward the line for the shuttle to Heathrow for my flight north, which would take place a mere nine hours later. Before I got to the line, though, I stopped at a kiosk to check out the amazing new world of chocolate that I would soon be letting into my life during low blood sugar episodes: Boost, Aero, Dairy Milk, Double Decker, Flake, Milk Tray, Wispa, Star Bar, Twirl—and those were just the swishy-sounding ones.
“Don’t care how, I want it now,” my inner Veruca Salt proclaimed.
Which one should I choose? I had no idea, so I closed my eyes, reached my hand out, and grabbed. I popped my eyes open and gazed upon the chosen two: Wispa Gold and Star Bar. Now that I had them in my hand, though, I couldn’t wait for a low blood sugar opportunity—I had to taste at least one of them now, screw the consequences. In the next few minutes it would set a high bar.
I moved on to get my ticket for the shuttle, and I was standing in line sinking my teeth and gums into the soft, chocolate-enveloped caramel mouth explosion that was the Wispa bar when a weary man behind me sighed.
“This shuttle is so drearily long.”
I looked back at him. He was an older gentleman of perhaps fifty, and he had the stiff bearing and aristocratic air of a man who should be wearing a cravat. Where was his cravat?
“Is it?” I said.
“Oh, yes, it’s terrible. Have you not taken it before?”
“No, never. This is actually my first time in England.”
“Oh, really?” He was ever so excited. “Where are you from?”
I considered his accent. At first I thought he was some sort of British, but hearing him speak further, I had my doubts. He either sounded like a Briton who had spent way too much time in America or an American who’d spent way too much time in Britain and whose American friends no doubt constantly wanted to slap him when he talked.
“I’m from North Carolina.”
“Ahhh, North Carolina, I know it well. Mainly Wilmington. I’m well acquainted with the Mickey Ratz bar.” He looked at me as if to say, “Are you well acquainted with the Mickey Ratz bar?”
As it happened, I was mildly acquainted with the Mickey Ratz bar, but only because there had been a gay-bashing incident outside the bar the previous year that had been in the news.
“Oh, yes, I know that place. A guy got beat up outside last year.”
“Oh, really? That’s just terrible.” He then gestured that I should step forward to the counter, where the nice lady was waiting to sell me a ticket. I got my ticket, then went outside to wait for the shuttle to arrive. The man soon joined me on the curb and decided the topic of Mickey Ratz had not been adequately addressed.
“Yes, whenever I’m in Wilmington, I make it a point to go—such a great place.”
At this point I should say that I was twenty years old, I was undersexed, I had a knack for never capturing the attention of any male human in my vicinity, and I was flattered just to be considered. I’d never been wooed this forcefully while out in public minding my own business. Was it England that was the missing ingredient? Or just this new really tight T-shirt I was wearing against my nubile young flesh? A combination? In any case, I decided to take this man’s obvious interest and run with it. I put my half-eaten Wispa Gold and the Star Bar in my shoulder bag.
“I’ve never been,” I said. “But I’ve been meaning to.” At this point I was probably batting my eyelashes at him. He nodded as the shuttle approached.
We boarded, and I moved toward the back to a seat by the window. The cravat-less gentleman slid in next to me and, as the shuttle began its forty-five-minute trek to Heathrow, he started getting all grabby, taking liberties with my crotch. Liberties, I say. Sure, I didn’t stop him, and my crotch certainly didn’t put up a fight. And sure, I just sat there and let him have his way without any complaint at all, but still. Liberties.
He continued his handsy appreciation of my lap off and on all the way to Heathrow. I didn’t really know what to do besides sit there and enjoy the new charm of riding in a vehicle on the wrong side of the road (in the literal and the metaphorical sense), occasionally scanning the bus for any witnesses to our utterly wicked fantasia. Once we arrived at the airport, we got out, and I assumed our whirlwind romance was over and done with because, really, what kind of future did we have together? I expected nothing from him beyond this one crotch massage.
But the Man Without a Cravat was not ready to part.
“Wait right here,” he said after we’d entered Heathrow, as if he owned me or something. I waited right there, and he went to make a phone call.
He came back a few minutes later with a very determined face.
“I’m trying to get out of this meeting. Would love to pop over to the hotel for a bit.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering if the hotel would have a heated pool, a heated poolboy, and complimentary Cadbury bars. After a few awkward moments of waiting for him to decide what he was doing, I figured it was as good a time as any to say good-bye.
“Well, I’m just going to go check in and head to my gate, I think.”
“Hang on a minute,” he said, scanning the concourse. “Let’s go this way.”
We went that way and soon were rounding a corner and walking down a narrower hallway with wall-sized windows looking out onto the runways.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, then walked straight ahead and darted into a door on the left. I stood where I was, patiently waiting for him to see to his bladder needs. A few moments later he popped his head out the door and looked at me. “Come on,” he said.
Oooooooh, I thought. That’s what this is. He’s not going to take me for a drink at the VIP lounge, then smuggle me over to a hotel room that cost more money than my monthly diabetes bill, then give me another crotch-over, then order some room service, then give me a couple hundred dollars for my troubles before paying for a cab back to Heathrow in time for my flight to Manchester this afternoon. No, he just wanted to get his rocks off real quick in that single-person restroom using me as his muse. I wanted to tell him I was not that kind of boy, that I’ve got a certain sense of decorum and etiquette, that I was raised better than that. No way, no how. You exceed my age requirement for such behavior. But then I figured, oh, OK, whatever, just this once.
A few minutes later he darted out of the bathroom, running late for his meeting. I emerged soon after, pulling my Wispa Gold out of my bag and gently reintroducing it into my mouth. As I hobbled around looking for my airline to check in for my flight, a posh female voice on the public address system cooed words that really resonated: “Welcome to Heathrow International Airport.”
Manchester is England’s second-largest city, behind London, and it has even better weather, and by “better” I mean “much worse.” While the nickname of Chapel Hill was “The Southern Part of Heaven,” Manchester was known as “The Rainy City,” which didn’t really do it justice. Better would be “You Think You’re Sad? I’ll Show You Sad.” Because, yeah, it rained in Manchester. It rained a lot. It rained so much, so hard, and so cold that some days you forgot there was a thing called the sun in the sky and emotions to be felt like “happiness,” “ebullience,” and “not suicidal.”
It was the first big city I’d ever been to, much less lived in, and I spent my first few weeks strolling down Oxford Road past the Holy Name Church, home of The Smiths’ famous “Vicar in a Tutu”; walking along the canal and into the city center to browse around and maybe find out what a cheese-and-onion pasty was; riding in the front row on the second level of double-decker buses and taking in the majestic industrial gloom of the city; and sitting in pubs just letting those velvety Mancunian accents wash over me. I was typically American in my love of any English accent, no matter how preposterous, and it didn’t take long for me to really start to lament my own way of speaking—my nasally American twang, my inability to convey a sneer or an eye roll over the phone, my pronunciation of Edinburgh. Buying a music magazine at a street kiosk soon after arriving, I decided I didn’t want to betray my identity as an American interloper to the grizzled gentleman manning the counter, so I tried my hand at some sort of native accent that I stitched together from memory based upon Buzzcocks records, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oliver!, and reruns of The Young Ones on MTV.
“’Ave you gotta a Melody Maykah, mate?” I asked with a straight face as the man stared at me in disbelief. “Melody Maykah?” I repeated. He looked down at the rows of magazines and pointed to the latest issue of Melody Maker, which he was pretty sure I’d asked for.
“Cheers,” I said, rhyming it with “jizz,” just like the Queen does. “ ’Ow much is that, then?” I said as I fished some coins out of my pocket.
“Fifty p,” he said, and I naturally handed him a five-pence coin. He gave me that confused look again, and I started placing more coins in his palm, one by one, until the look and the palm went away.
I was not alone in my Anglophilia. There was also Scott from UNC, who lived in my same block of flats and was already using the word “pissed” to mean “drunk,” “knackered” to mean “exhausted,” and “silly cow” to mean “dumb bitch.” Another American exchange student, Tracy from Buffalo, had dyed-auburn hair and a bad case of trichotillomania—in her case, a compulsion to pull out her eyelashes. Perhaps as a result, she also had an ever-present ring of thick black mascara around her eyes. She was also absolutely obsessed with The Smiths and, in fact, had come to Manchester for the sole purpose of tracking Morrissey down
at his home on…I don’t know, Meat Is Murder Avenue? How Soon Is Now Circle? Paint a Vulgar Picture Parkway?
“He’s gone!” she lamented, slumping down at the table I was perched at in the pub at the student union. (That’s right: a pub at the student union. Not to be confused with the bar at my residence hall.) “To London!”
“Who’s gone to London?”
“Morrissey!” Her lips quivered as she spoke His name.
“So…do you think he made the right decision this time?” I asked with a gleam in my eye, referencing an apt Smiths lyric even though it was probably not a good time for that. “I mean, how do you know this?”
“That guy Dave told me. He’s a big Smiths fan, and he said Morrissey lives in London now. Ugh, this is a disaster!”
“I bet he still comes back to see family,” I said, trying to offer her some comfort. “You know, like his mum and his gran and aunties, and his bits and bobs, and his uncle down at the chip shop or something.”
She was not consoled. “But…this means I won’t see him out.”
“Out where?”
“Just out! I don’t know. The Salford Lads Club?”
Aha. I know that place. Morrissey and the gang were standing in front of that building on the album sleeve for The Queen Is Dead. But did she have no plan for meeting up with Morrissey besides walking the streets, scouting around pubs and bookstores, and maybe going downtown and holding up a sign saying “Morrissey, I’ve Been Collecting My Eyelashes for You” in front of the Arndale Centre? A stalker’s gotta have a more solid plan of action than that, come on.
“Hmm. I’m not sure that place actually exists,” I said. “I read somewhere that it’s just a disused building now.” I then quietly patted myself on the back for successfully using the British word disused in a sentence.
I felt for her. Sure, she was a little unstable, and it had probably not been wise to make the stalking of a singer your number-one goal for your year abroad. Still, the girl had been thwarted, and being thwarted is no fun, as I knew all too well. She’d now have to come up with a new reason for being here. Or she’d have to transfer to the London School of Economics. That got me thinking: What was my reason for being here? To get the hell out of my country, to live in a big city, to savor the flavor of soggy chips with salt and vinegar. All true. But why else? Maybe something about surrounding myself with hot pasty dudes that talk like sarcastic Prince Charmings, all of whom seem gay? Maybe. Also:
