by David Rees
He drove up to Hampstead Heath. As usual, its own busy life seemed to go on regardless of anything else, was a kind of sedative or distraction: nothing here changed, the white walls of Kenwood, the ancient trees, the sweep of the land, the men hungry for sex. His cock was sucked, fingers stroked his balls; and he did likewise, groped, caressed, sucked. Then he said to himself: I don’t want to come like this. I want to be screwed.
Arnold perhaps; he hadn’t seen Arnold for a while. Mark’s judgement was of course perfectly correct: an idle chatterer, one whose hallmark was verbal diarrhoea. Not even particularly good-looking, but a big cock. A very big cock.
Mark dressed in white shirt and white trousers and went to the Black Cap. He immediately felt out of place, wrongly dressed, and there was nobody at the bar of any possible interest. Boring, boring! Perhaps I’ll go into town, he thought; perhaps I’m ready for the clubs: maybe I can stand the music, even if it’s songs that remind me of Donald. ‘Are we in love or just friends?’ he sang under his breath: no, it didn’t hurt. Maybe he would meet the most marvellous man in the world tonight; beautiful fascinating.
But he didn’t want to run into Donald, so he decided to take the precaution of driving along the Holloway Road. Yes, the Fiat was parked outside the house; Donald was therefore at home. With a man, or … watching TV, having an early night for once?
They met at the bar of the Phoenix. Donald, flushed with drink, was in great good humour. ‘Lovely to see you? Ace you going to join us?’
‘Us?’
‘Me and Arnold.’ Mark followed him, knowing it was a mistake, but he felt quite unable to do anything about it. Arnold had also been drinking too much ― the words babbled on, non-stop, silly rubbish trickling into Mark’s ears.
They had been out to dinner. ‘I had nothing better to do this evening,’ Donald said. ‘Arnold paid.’
‘How will you pay him back?’ Mark asked. ‘With your body?’
‘Why not?’ Donald looked truculent, a bit like his father, Mark thought. ‘He’s been screwing me most nights this week; why not one more?’
‘Who else have you slept with recently?’
‘Oh … only Neil.’
‘Neil! He’s bald!’
‘Yes. Have you ever been in bed with somebody and thought to run your fingers through his hair then realised he hasn’t any? It’s a most curious sensation. He moved away and danced with Arnold. Why not leave at once? It was the only sane thing to do. Apart from which there was a conspicuous absence of any men here who looked remotely beautiful or fascinating. But he did not leave: something in him was making him respond to the exuberance of Donald’s mood; in that, he used to think, lay some of the magic of Donald.
‘We must dance to this!’ Donald dragged him by the hand. Catch me, I’m falling in love. I suppose it’s golden oldies half-hour. Remember this?’ Then gazing at Arnold, who was alone at the bar sipping beer, he said, ‘Shall we get rid of him?’
‘Who?’
‘Our Arnie of course.’ He was silent for some moments, nuzzling his face against Mark’s, then he said, ‘Tonight … I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for years.’ They kissed. ‘No. It wouldn’t do. I suppose … we’ll have to leave you to your own devices.’
Mark nodded. ‘I suppose you will.’
‘But it’s been good … really good seeing you.’
‘Has it?’
‘I feel happy!’
‘Happy anniversary, then.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Donald said. ‘What anniversary?’ He laughed. ‘It is rather funny, meeting you like this. If it’s a joke, I wonder who it’s against.’
‘Not Arnold. Though he does look a bit glum.’
‘That’s his problem. Anyway … I’ll make it up to him in bed.’
‘The joke’s against you. Ultimately.’
The next record was It’s Raining Men. ‘I promised this to Arnold,’ Donald said. Mark watched them. There was nothing particularly intimate in the way they were dancing; just a couple of friends. But, he thought, how enormously Donald was enjoying the flattery and attention from two admirers!
Half an hour later they said goodbye and left. Mark decided to follow them; there was little point in staying, even though he hadn’t been in the club very long. Eyeing up men: a waste of time; he couldn’t cope. He drove behind them out of town; Arnold’s car was faster than his, and when they reached Mornington Crescent it edged away. He could see their heads growing smaller as the gap slowly widened, and eventually they disappeared out of sight.
It was late, well after midnight; he was at home, wondering whether to go to bed or stay up longer: there didn’t seem much point in pursuing either course of action. A sense of disgust with himself, stronger than the feelings of rejection and hurt, began to hit him: if Donald had behaved that evening in a particularly callous and frivolous manner, his own behaviour, conveying the impression that he was enjoying himself, pretending to condone what Donald was up to, was worse. Why had he hidden everything he really felt? It was as if he had no moral standards or judgements, was merely a cipher grovelling before a man who had become a festering lily.
Manhattan Transfer on the record player were singing Love for Sale. He listened to it several times, trying to memorise the words:
Love that’s fresh and still unspoiled
Love that’s only slightly soiled…
He switched it off. Perhaps he should read something there were several books on his shelves he had not read, had bought thinking that one day he would find them of interest. He glanced at the titles: How Far Can You Go?, Between the Acts, To Have and to Have Not, Undo Your Raincoats and Laugh. He opened his copy of Housman:
Tell me of runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave
Or bastions to design
For longer date than mine.
Nothing: too near at hand,
Planning the figured sand,
Effacing clean and fast
Cities not built to last
And charms devised in vain,
Pours the confounding main.
He went into the bathroom. The little medicine cabinet above the basin: why not? He reached for the bottle of valium. There were enough pills here to finish it all, Why not? He opened the bottle and emptied it, slowly counted the tablets: yes, quite enough. He carried them into the lounge, placed them on the table and stared at them. Up till this point he had been completely detached about what he was doing, as objective as if he was another person watching himself, or as if he was playing a game like patience simply to pass the time. But when he said am I really going to do it, and the answer was yes, the circumstances changed dramatically. He found himself gripped by a series of powerful emotions quite unlike anything he had ever experienced, physical pressures that seemed to come from outside his own body, as if some force had violated him and was holding him in a state of suspended animation. It took a great effort to move his hand; even breathing was difficult: there were pains in his chest, a blockage in his throat, and his tongue was leaden, too large for his mouth. And the most awful nausea began to attack every part of him, his legs, head, arms, stomach, even his back-bone. He thought he was going to faint. I have only to make perfect my will. He had a fleeting image of last wills and testaments; wondered momentarily what legal difficulties would occur for parents inheriting the property of a son who had died intestate and by his own hand; remembered the pleasure he had felt years ago writing his will, leaving everything to Donald.
‘Have you ever been in bed with somebody and thought to run your fingers through his hair, then realised he hasn’t any? It’s a most curious sensation.’ Happy anniversary, Donald. Ted. Jason. Brian. Helen. Helen! He couldn’t cause her this much hurt. Perhaps he should phone. Why? To ask her forgiveness? It wouldn’t be a cry for help. The voice inside him grew in strength: you can’t do this; you just cannot do something so dreadful. Eventually he was able to stand up and move across the room. He stared at the telephone. Br
ian never slept well, always found immense difficulty in sleeping again once he had woken. He would be quite furious if Helen dragged herself out of bed and rushed over to Camden Town at ― what was the time?― twenty to two in the morning.
He went back to the table, and looked at the heap of pills. He would wash them down with whisky: there was an unopened bottle in the kitchen cupboard. Someone had told him ―Chris, he remembered; how ironic! ― that valium and whisky were a lethal combination. It was just a question of time; five minutes, maybe ten, and he would do it. Donald. My life, my happiness! All sunlight and dancing. When we first knew each other and we were apart, that first Christmas, you signed your letters with the word ‘Sol.’ There is no more sun,
He went to the cupboard and fetched the whisky. Then he picked up a handful of tablets.
Now.
A motor-bike engine. Lights. Footsteps. A knock.
Three days later he was on his way to the Middle East. Jason had planned to go there for a holiday ―Amman, Petra, Aqaba: the Arabian desert, the Dead Sea ― but his mother had died of a heart attack; as the only surviving relative he had to organize the funeral and sort out the will.
Mark bought the ticket from him.
FOUR
‘What’s wrong?’ Brian asked.
‘This.’ Helen was reading a letter. ‘It’s from Amman.’
General bright talk for a page and a half about his first impressions of the Middle East, then: ‘I said nothing on the phone before I left because I didn’t want to worry you, but on the Saturday night I was a hair’s breadth away from swallowing a whole bottle of valium. I desperately needed to phone you at two a.m., but was scared of waking Brian. Thank God for Jason, who turned up unexpectedly. (He saw the lights on as he was driving past, and stopped to tell me of his mother’s death. He’d been out to dinner with friends in Stoke Newington, and was looking for a last drink before he went home.) He talked me through till breakfast-time… The reasons for the suddenness of the depression were solely to do with that hateful hour at the Phoenix: hiding my real feelings from Donald was in retrospect a deplorable self-degradation, a total loss this time of self-respect.
‘I can’t begin to describe it, Saturday night: the real horrors. Not the rush of blood, the butterflies of sexual jealousy; but something almost external that seized me as if I was in a vice. I just knew that in ten minutes, or half an hour maybe, I would pick up those pills and swallow every one of them, wash them down with quantities of whisky, and that nothing and no one could stop me. I was physically paralysed ― no, I can’t find words for it. I’ve felt the same sensation here, once, but it was not so serious, a pale echo of that Saturday ― I found I was in a shop looking at poisons and trying to decide which was the least painful. I know I shouldn’t tell you these things because you’ll be very upset (I can see you now and hear what you’re saying to Brian) but the moment I start concealing anything from you there’s something wrong with our relationship. It isn’t pining for Donald; it’s more a a knowledge of waste that hits me ― yes, self-pity I know but it’s no good suppressing it; I have to get it up and out of the system, recognizing it for what it is. Maybe if I slept with a beautiful man here I’d feel differently, but I can’t deal at the moment with sex, not in any way. It would just leave me with an even greater sense of futility. As for Donald; feel I ought to be purged of him now instead of wanting him for what he is (or, rather, was); it’s like a virus, my love for him, and has to be killed.
‘I’m sorry. I wish I could spare you this; it’s not fucking nice of me. Saying it ― well ―perhaps it helps the attempt to get rid of it. I don’t think it’s an inevitable downward spiral, but it’s the sheer pointlessness of existenœ after Donald that just hurts too much. I ought to be writing this to him, not to you. Why should I distress you and spare him? O.K., I know he’s your little brother. You and I once talked about falling out of love; I remember you saying that no one could be blamed for it. Quite true, quite right. But if he stopped loving me, why couldn’t he say so and leave me alone? And if not ― well, what, why? What meaning has it, what explanation? I wake every morning with the need to adjust because sleep makes me forget ― oh, he’s not here beside me. It’s always the worst moment of the day. I feel morally unclean ― as if he has raped or defiled (I don’t know what the right word is) what was between us: maybe it never was worth having ― a dolls’ house.
‘A few weeks ago we went to the cinema. He said, “I love you tonight because we’re here and it’s Cabaret and the ambiance is so good.” Yuck. Shallow as a drying pool pool. Am I beginning to hate him? That’s only a kind of loving. I long to feel total indifference. I’m sleepy now, valium-sleepy: another day has passed. I’m living in a sort of men-o-pause. Goodnight.’
Brian was silent for some time, then said, ‘I’ve nothing to say. Even if I felt all that, which I have done, I couldn’t write such a letter. My own marriage breaking up. I wouldn’t talk to someone in that way.’
‘You’re a very different person.’
‘Yes. This constant verbalising, this pouring himself so much golden syrup over other people, you … I don’t understand it. Perhaps I just disapprove. What was all that about the Phoenix?’
‘It was their anniversary ―’
‘No. Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.’ He looked again at the letter, then said, ‘You certainly do have a close relationship with him.’
‘What do you mean?’
All this fag-hag stuff. I don’t understand it. I feel left out, I suppose.’
‘Left out? Are you telling me you’re … jealous?’
‘Am I?’
‘Shit!’ She stood up and walked round the room, then came back to the breakfast table. ‘Would you like some more coffee?’
Brian laughed. ‘What an extraordinary thing to say! In the circumstances. Only you would say that.’
Helen ran her fingers through her hair. ‘What you said … it bothers me. I didn’t realise.’
‘Don’t take it more seriously than it was meant. I was talking without thinking first … as Mark would. Really, it isn’t important.’ They looked at each other, both somewhat surprised. ‘It is not important,’ he said again.
‘What was your reaction to it all?’ Ted asked. They were sitting in their garden; Jason, who had not been to bed all night, was still dressed in his motor-bike leathers, dark glasses and helmet.
‘I felt very, very sorry for him.’ He ground out his cigarette. ‘I thought I should stay there … I’m sorry I had to wake you at two thirty in the morning, but if I hadn’t phoned to tell you where I was, Christ knows what you would have imagined … dead under a lorry or something. We talked till seven a.m. Or rather, he did. People in that state … they say some very weird things.’
‘What things?’
‘I don’t want to repeat them.’ He looked up, stretched, and yawned. ‘I tried to persuade him to let me share his bed. But he wouldn’t.’
‘What good would that have done?’
‘I don’t mean I wanted to have sex with him! God … no! I thought someone ought to hold him, kiss him, be tender with him. I wanted to do that.’
‘Hmm.’
Jason grinned. ‘You’re jealous! Well … my memory might be playing tricks, but I seem to recall that he looks very nice stark naked.’ He gestured, obscenely. ‘And . . . so I’m told … he’s rather efficient at it.’
Ted laughed. ‘Everyone’s efficient in bed with the right man. Or inefficient with the wrong man.’
‘The point is I didn’t … and don’t … want to have sex with him. Only with you. You’re quite well aware of that. But … what a mess! Fancy letting someone push you so far! Their relationship should have broken up years back. Mark thinks they were the envy of the gay world, but I never envied them. Sticking together because of the shared furniture, and Donald not enjoying sex unless it was with someone else!’ He shook his head. ‘Ridiculous!’
‘Hundreds of gay couples have lived like
that. Do so even now, despite AIDS.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t suit me. There’s one thing about us Donald and Mark haven’t had for years: I can’t get enough of your body. It astonishes me, but … I can’t.’
‘It’s that important?’
‘For Christ’s sake, yes! Good sex, fabulous sex; what’s the point of having a lover without that?’
‘For some people having a lover is … status. Security. A position in society.’
Jason snorted. ‘The best position for a lover is underneath me on a mattress!’ He finished his coffee. ‘Or the other way round. Something else about Mark I don’t accept is this running to straight friends like Helen with all his problems. Why doesn’t he talk to you?
‘He did on one occasion.’
‘He knows you’d say it’s finished. I guess he doesn’t want to face that truth,’ He yawned again. I don’t think I care for Donald all that much.’
‘Why?’
‘Too needy. Too greedy,’ He stood up and went indoors. ‘I can hardly move, I’m so tired! Good thing it’s Sunday. Will you cook my breakfast?’
Ted followed him into the kitchen, and began to beat up some eggs. ‘Too needy, too greedy,’ he said. ‘My first lover was a bit like that. A student, a nineteen-year-old, and I’d just started teaching; I was twenty-three. Well, we were together five years ―’
That’s long, for a first relationship.’
Ted laughed. ‘Look who’s talking! Anyway … when he was at university I didn’t charge him rent, or ask for a share of the electricity or the gas or the rates or the phone bill ―’
