by Will Davis
‘This is my den,’ said Edward proudly. ‘All this junk was here when we moved in. I made this space all by myself.’
‘What’s wrong with your room?’ he said ruefully, rubbing his arm. He instantly regretted it though when he saw the wounded look on Edward’s face.
‘I like it here.’
He nodded, though really he couldn’t understand why a boy like Edward would want to go tunnelling around on his own in a dark attic. But the question was driven from his lips by the light pressure of Edward’s knee against his own as Edward shuffled around looking for something and muttering under his breath, apparently unaware their legs were touching. Not sure if he liked the pressure or wanted to be rid of it, but not daring to move and call attention to it in either case, he looked at the magazines and received another shock. The cover of the closest one showed two burly men against the backdrop of a sunny cornfield, naked except for cowboy boots and Stetsons, their erect penises pointed directly at one another.
‘Ah.’
Edward picked up something that looked like a crystal and clicked it, producing a small flame. He held a cigarette to his lips and offered another to him. He shook his head automatically, still staring at the magazines, deeply insecure and wondering all of a sudden what it was Edward wanted with him. Edward followed the direction of his gaze.
‘You can borrow them if you want.’
‘But they’re for . . .’ He could hardly bring himself to say the word, it seemed so controversial. ‘Men.’
‘Of course,’ said Edward simply. ‘I’m gay. Aren’t you?’
Inside Vlad’s tiny room he curls himself up on the bed while the aerialist smiles drunkenly at him and starts to take off his clothes. Vlad gets stuck with his trousers, and half stumbles, half trips, knocking the little mirrorball above and hurtling into one of the shelves behind, bringing the contents raining down on himself together with a stream of curses. He watches the aerialist fumbling to pick up the pots and pans, still manacled by his trousers, and starts laughing. Vlad looks up and peers at him, his puzzled expression touchingly childlike under the spinning diamonds of light. He reaches down to him, suddenly confident and sure of himself, of what he wants and what he is doing. He clasps his hand around the back of Vlad’s head and with all his strength jerks him up and towards him. Vlad lets out a little cry of pain at the violence of it, but does not resist. A second later he has Vlad on the bed with him, has straddled his lean body, and is running his tongue along the contours of his torso, tasting the salty surface of his skin, working his way down towards the penis which he knows will not work but wants to lick regardless. He reaches down to free his own penis, feeling it pulsate with longing. Only it is now his turn to struggle, as the zip refuses to budge. In the end he wrenches the trousers down, hearing them rip as they pass below his thighs, so engulfed by the urgency of lust he doesn’t care, is in fact glad and hopes they are torn to shreds. He resumes kissing the aerialist’s stomach, marvelling at its firmness, at the sharp apex that lines his navel and points the way towards his groin. He weaves his fingers into the aerialist’s underwear and gently probes the edges of his pubes before tugging the whole thing down, revealing Vlad’s cock, short and stubby, very slightly swollen. He kisses it, shocking himself with his own boldness as he runs his tongue along the little crevice of the head. It is only as he takes the whole thing into his mouth that he realises it is not just Vlad’s cock that is failing to respond, but that Vlad has not moved for a while now, and that instead of resuming stroking his head Vlad’s hands are limp at the sides of his body.
He releases Vlad’s penis and sits up. He cannot help but smile wryly at the sight that meets him. The aerialist’s head is thrown back. His eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly parted, and he is snoring ever so faintly.
Letting out a gentle exhalation, partly out of amusement and partly out of disappointment, he studies the face before him. The shadows play a game there, elongating the aerialist’s features, making dark hollows out of every groove while smoothing over the acne scars that pit his cheeks. He looks beautiful but strangely empty, devoid of character, like a discarded mannequin. Slowly, as he watches, the aerialist’s features begin to take on the properties of another person, one he has thought of every day for years. He feels a fresh lurch of longing, not for the aerialist but for this other face, an urge so strong and so startling his breath catches. Softly he slides his body into the small gap between Vlad and the wall, and rests his arm over the aerialist’s chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breast and listening intently for the heartbeat within.
He will open the door to a burly man with a protruding belly that swells up out of him like a pregnancy. The man will be holding a piece of paper and looking up and down at the house with suspicion.
‘Delivery of some scaff and truss?’
He will feel a little thrill as he takes in the large black van behind the man, with his co-worker who could also be the man’s twin sitting behind the wheel, knowing what is contained in the back.
‘That’s right.’
‘Truss is six metres, you know?’
‘Yes.’
The man will glance back at his colleague, scratch his head then look down the road at the other houses, taking in the rose beds and flower borders, the neatly trimmed hedges, the meandering tendrils of clematis, the freshly mown lawns and the statuettes, gnomes and gazebos with which residents have attempted to characterise their little stretches of land. He will take in the black-and-white walls and thatched roofs of the cottages, and the mock-Edwardian red brick of the newer buildings. Then he will look back at him and shrug, still confused but nonetheless deciding he is just not all that interested in why someone might want to install a six-metre metal truss in this quaint country neighbourhood.
‘Where d’you want it?’
He will meet the man’s gaze steadily. He will know that all about the road there will be faces peeping nosily out of windows, waiting to see what will be removed from the van.
‘In the kitchen.’
It was said offhand, the way people spoke on TV, as if it were just some charming incidental fact, not something momentously important that defined who or what you were. Not the way people spoke of it at school, where the word ‘gay’ was the worst insult you could apply and usually the cause of furious whispering and flurries of giggles.
‘Yes,’ he said after a long pause.
‘I thought so,’ said Edward.
‘Why?’
He was suddenly paranoid, wondering what he had done to mark himself out in this way. Was his voice too high? His walk too girly? His wrists too floppy?
‘Because you’re different,’ Edward replied mysteriously. ‘Like me.’
Edward breathed out a long stream of smoke and then giggled at his face, apparently amused by his confusion.
‘Look, don’t worry about it, OK? It’s cool.’
‘OK,’ he said, unconvinced.
He stared at the magazine and then reached for it. Inside a man with a ponytail was being taken from behind by a man with an eyepatch against a backdrop of a Spanish galleon. His heart thumped from fear. There was something repellent about the poses of the men, the grimaces of pleasure and pain on their faces, the unapologetic sight of their cocks pink and upright. Yet behind the fear he felt also a twinge of lust and something starting to swell in his crotch. Quickly he shut the magazine, trying to look unimpressed.
‘Here,’ said Edward.
He looked up guiltily to see Edward holding out the bottle of wine.
‘It’s good stuff. Vintage.’
He took it gingerly. At school some of the kids would boast about how much they could drink before they passed out. He had tasted alcohol only once before in his life, sneaking downstairs one Christmas after his parents were in bed to steal a gulp from the bottle of cognac his father had opened after dinner. It had been disgusting, he remembered, and had burned his throat. But he didn’t want Edward to know this pathetic fact an
d so, preparing for a scorching, he took a decent-sized swig from the bottle. He was pleased to find that the wine did not burn like the cognac, and that it even had a pleasant aftertaste, like blackberries.
‘So you want to know the story behind my parents?’
Edward eyed him craftily, as if he could tell he was dying to say, ‘Yes!’ This annoyed him, despite his awe of Edward, and he shrugged and made a show of studying the label on the bottle.
‘Dad screwed another guy’s wife,’ Edward said. ‘He was another author, this guy, who’d written some mean reviews of Dad’s books in the Sunday paper. It’s a big deal, this paper – guess he was pretty pissed off when he found out. Dad said we had to move because of all the reporters, but really it was because the womb wanted it. It was supposed to be just temporary, but now Dad says he likes it here and wants to stay.’
‘Your mum . . .’ he said. ‘She must have been –’
‘The womb hates him, but she also knows he’s the only man in the world who’ll put up with her. That’s how fucked up my family is.’
Edward reached for the bottle and took a big gulp, then a big drag of his cigarette, which was followed by another big cloud of smoke. There was something abandoned about the process, as if Edward was only drinking and smoking out of disillusionment. Edward’s mouth twisted into a smile, but it was a bitter smile, and he suddenly saw a new side to him, an unhappy vulnerable side that was ordinarily hidden by the smooth self-assurance that marked him out from everyone else. Once again, he didn’t know how he was supposed to react. The truth was that if anything he was jealous – jealous of Edward for having these impossible parents who were mad and famous and had affairs. But he knew enough not to admit to this.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I mean . . . it must be hard, that’s all.’
‘Life is hard,’ said Edward dismissively.
But suddenly he could see with crystal clarity that Edward’s world-weary air was affected. It was like a piece of armour, to shield off hostility and loneliness. Edward was not effortlessly cool and collected: it took effort for the boy before him, a lot of effort.
Vlad is still sleeping when he opens his eyes and finds himself once more in the tiny compartment the aerialist calls home. His neck and back are sore, and he discovers it is because the aerialist’s limbs are tightly wrapped around him as if clinging on for dear life. He is moved to find Vlad this way, but his bladder is full and throbbing. Gently he unravels himself from the aerialist’s body, accidentally elbowing him in the process. Vlad lets out a groan, then says ‘Shit’ and mumbles out a sentence in what sounds like gibberish before turning over and huddling up into a ball, dragging the covering with him.
He sits up and manoeuvres himself over the aerialist. On the floor piled up are his clothes, and he puts them on, vaguely shocked to think this is the third morning running he has worn the same underwear and shirt. He casts another look at the sleeping bundle of Vlad’s body. The aerialist’s face is tightly screwed up, as if his dreams are making him concentrate very hard indeed. An irrational feeling of affection sweeps through him. He knows it is foolish, a fantasy, that he does not really know the sleeper before him and furthermore has no right to look to this man to save him from himself. Yet he cannot stop it. He has yearned for this – for someone, anyone – for so long that the desire has grown too strong for the feeble constraints of logic and too wild for the cold lessons of reality. Such is the nature of desperation.
Ever so softly he reaches down and traces the dark arch of an eyebrow with his thumb, lost in the beauty before him, a beauty that is half real and half projected onto the sleeper. Then a sharp ache reminds him why he is up and he turns quickly to the door.
The outside world is grey and uninspiring. The circle of trailers and caravans looks drab and mud-splattered, all the colour and fever of the circus locked away within, leaving only an uncomfortable and oppressive-looking way of life to be seen from the outside. At the centre of the circle, where the bonfire of last night crackled, now sits a blackened patch of land, an ugly unnatural blemish on the surface of the earth. The grass all around is strewn with cans of beer and the occasional glass bottle winking in the weak morning sun.
He peers around. The curtains to the windows of the trailers are all closed. Seeing no one he quickly unzips and lets out a stream of steaming piss that sizzles as it pitter-patters into the grass. As he finishes there is the sound of a door opening, and he quickly zips up again.
It is the clown. He stands in front of his caravan, the one furthest from the circle, and yawns. He weaves his way unsteadily across the site, coming to stand right beside him. Wordlessly the clown pulls down the front of his bottoms, flips out his penis and lets out his own arc of piss, producing a great moan of pleasure as it fountains into the air. He is embarrassed and doesn’t know where to look. He ends up jamming his hands in his pockets and focusing on the clouds above, contemplating them as though it is a lovely spring morning.
‘Get what you came for?’ sniggers the clown.
He smiles warily, trying to seem amiable yet at the same time not wanting to show any sign of weakness. He understands the clown is not to be trusted.
‘I suppose you’ll be on your merry way then,’ continues the clown. ‘Nice day for a drive, isn’t it? And you’ve got all that distance to cover, don’t you? Back to the shithole you come from.’
The clown slaps his penis a few times to rid it of residual droplets.
‘I’m not going back,’ he says.
He surprises both the clown and himself with this – with the force in his voice and certainty of the statement. The clown makes a clucking sound and carefully stows his penis away. Then he turns to him. Close up, in unforgiving daylight, he can see how old the clown is. His face is deeply lined in places, as if he has suffered a great many hardships and each one etched a souvenir onto his skin. The clown’s angular features rest naturally in a surly contemptuous look. Though he is not ugly, and even might pass for attractive under a street lamp or above a candle, the expression on his face is bitter and cold, and this creates an impression of ugliness.
‘Well, best of luck anyway,’ the clown says, bringing his lips into what he is already sure is a trademark smirk. He smiles back and the smirk instantly vanishes.
‘If I were you I’d just piss off.’
He watches him amble away, whistling sharply as he goes, and wonders what would induce a person like this to become a clown of all things.
From then on they always sat together, in class and at lunch. People got used to seeing them as a unit and they were teased and threatened by Katy and the kids who sat at the back in their set. He didn’t care what they said any more though because when he was with Edward he felt stronger, wittier, smarter. He could ignore the jokes and insults that previously would have cut him and made him retreat further into his shell. He could even laugh at them. When someone shouted out that the poofs had entered the room when they came in one morning, the remark bounced off him like a dud grenade: he even grinned at the person who had shouted it and blew him a mock kiss, just as Edward had done that first day with Katy. Edward was full of knowledge and insider information. He showed him how to inhale when he smoked and taught him how to roll his eyes upwards into his eyelids so that only the whites showed as if he was possessed. They watched films from Edward’s father’s collection that his own parents had forbidden him to see – Straw Dogs, The Exorcist, If and Cannibal Holocaust. Edward introduced him to the music of Patti Smith and the Who, to the films of Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk, to the writings of Gore Vidal and Oscar Wilde.
‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,’ Edward would sigh as if overcome with ennui when they passed others in the queue for lunch and heard whispering break out behind them.
With Edward he felt as if he could be more than just a troublemaker or a nobody, and sometimes he would study Edward secretly when h
e thought he wasn’t looking, idolising him, unable to believe this unusual boy was actually his friend. Now and then Edward would catch him doing it and would smile as if he knew just what was passing through his mind and tell him to stop ‘acting like the womb’.
After school he would go back to Edward’s house and they would ascend to his den to smoke cigarettes and page through porn magazines rating the bodies of the centrefolds. They would talk about kids at school and psychoanalyse them – Edward had a fresh perspective on everyone. Fred, a boy who was constantly in trouble for picking on younger kids, Edward said was obviously damaged because he was unable to live up to some ideal, probably set by parents or an older brother who bullied him relentlessly and got away with it, and that laying into smaller boys was his way of evening the score. Katy, Edward thought, was an especially interesting case: she was mean and loud and hung around with boys because she knew she was not very pretty and it was a way for her to get the attention she desperately craved, which she would never otherwise receive from the opposite sex. Edward had a theory about everyone, and sometimes, when he was on his own, he would find himself wondering what Edward’s theory was about him.
Back in Vlad’s room he finds the aerialist sitting up on the bed against the far wall with his arms wrapped around his knees and in one hand a glass of water at the bottom of which a white pill is fizzing and turning to cloud. He smiles at Vlad, but the smile is not returned. Instead the aerialist clutches his head and gasps, then takes a great swig of the water and screws up his face.
‘How’s your head?’ he says, knowing that the answer is self-evident but feeling he ought to say something.
In reply Vlad emits a faint groan. He takes this as a good sign, for it seems to signal that the aerialist is not displeased by his presence, that the reason he did not smile back is his hangover rather than annoyance at the sight of him. He takes a step forward, meaning to sit on the bed beside Vlad, but at this point the aerialist’s head snaps forward, his eyes narrowed and features contorted.
