Better Than Easy (18 page)

With the phone nestled against my shoulder he guides me to the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, where, balanced on a dining chair, I recover a small package from the behind the pasta. I fish it out, and sit and rip off the kitchen foil as Tom says, “Sorry, I didn't have time to buy wrapping paper.”

I'm a bit stunned by the gift: an Apple iPhone. “Jesus Tom!” I exclaim.

“Don't you like it? You can chan
…
”

“No!” I interrupt him. “It's
gorgeous
. I
love
these. But they're so expensive. It's
too
expensive.”

“Well, you said yours is playing up, and I know your mp3 player packed up too, so I kind of thought it was perfect. You can surf the web on it too.”

“It's brilliant Tom. I don't know what to say.”

“It's a special unlocked one. So you can just stick your own sim card in it,” he says.

“Honestly. I don't know what to say. And I feel bad because you won't get your pressie till you get back. Poor boy.” In my annoyance at his going away I actually didn't buy him anything at all – a situation I will now have to remedy.

“Well, now you have a toy to play with on Christmas day,” Tom says. “And I know I've got something worth looking forward to when I get back as well.”

On a bad, disingenuous, self-righteous day, I could get upset over that remark, but today I just silently sigh and push it from my mind. Once we have
finished chatting, studiously avoiding, it seems, any in-depth discussion of Christmas Eve on either side of the Channel, I plug the iPhone in to charge and sit and finger the packaging, which, in true Apple style, is almost as beautiful as the product. I want to box it up and open the package over and over as I did with Christmas gifts when I was a kid, but I can't do that without unplugging it, so I resist.

In the afternoon, the sky clouds over again, and I use this fact as an excuse for another siesta, but once in bed, I can't get to sleep – I realise that I'm feeling horny.

In search of release, I try to think of Tom – with my gorgeous iPhone charging in the other room it seems the least I can do – but as I play with myself, it seems impossible to maintain a picture of him in my mind's eye, and eventually, telling myself that what goes on in the privacy of my own brain can't hurt anyone, I give in and let the images jumping up and down at the periphery take over the screen: Ricardo in a suit, Ricardo in fireman's gear, Ricardo naked in front of the window – it's a triple-X blockbuster which leaves me sticky and glistening. And then once cleaned up, as I start to doze, I roll onto my side – almost squashing the cat in the process – and fall into a deep, dark, hung-over sleep.

The bushes are higher than normal, but of course, I realise, it's a maze: the kind they have in stately homes cut lovingly from privet bushes. Tom is in front and Jenny is behind me and we are wandering happily, exploring the avenues and ending up repeatedly, laughingly at dead ends. It's late afternoon, and the summer air is fragrant, the sun low, and we're all best friends, almost one single being. The event is in context: I still have the contents of the picnic – strangely (since I haven't eaten meat for twenty years) pork pies and tomatoes – digesting in my stomach.

As the sun fades, I become anxious about finding the way out, an anxiety that Tom and Jenny don't seem to share. We wander down this path and then that trying out different theories, like always turning right, or following the most beaten path, but they inevitably lead to small gravelly cul-de-sacs. Each dead-end contains a homoerotic statue.

With the twilight fading, it starts to get difficult to see, and I urge Tom and Jenny on ever more frantically, but they won't take me seriously and laugh and mock me for worrying. Their ridicule makes me as fractious as a four year old.

In the dead centre of the maze, I find a tower. It's built out of planks like a child's tree house, or the lookout tower at a border crossing. I climb the steps to get a better view, but when I reach the box it morphs into a sealed white room with a single strip-light and two opposing doors. Tom is standing in front of one, and Jenny, the other. The light starts to flicker and I realise that we are actually inside an exhibit in the Tate Britain – Martin Creed's
Light Going On And Off.
I approach Tom's door and he smiles serenely at me and shakes his head. I turn and walk to Jenny but she repeats the gesture. And then I hear a banging noise coming from the far wall, and a voice calling my name. “Mark. Are you there? Mark, are you there?”

I turn to Tom and Jenny for help, but they, and the doors, have vanished, so I cross the cube and put my ear against the wall and listen to the voice – unmistakably Ricardo's – calling from beyond.

The flickering of the strip-light hurts my eyes so I close them for a moment, but when I open them again, the cube is gone and I'm in my bedroom. I hear the knocking again, then Ricardo's voice. I stand and walk to the front door. I listen, but there is nothing, so I hide behind the door, open it an inch, and peer through the crack just in time to see Ricardo turn to walk away.

“Ricardo?” I say, wondering whether pretending to be out wasn't a better option.

He turns and frowns at me. “I need to talk,” he says.

I nod vaguely. “I
…
was asleep,” I tell him, taking in only now that this is probably reality and the white cube almost certainly the dream.

He climbs tentatively back up the step to the landing. He's wearing his uniform. “I'm sorry,” he says.

“It's OK,” I tell him. “Just let me get some clothes.” I push the door to, and return to the bedroom. I throw myself across the bed to fish my jeans from the far side, but when I turn, Ricardo has followed me and is standing right behind, so close in fact that there is barely room for me to stand.

“Shit!” I exclaim. “Don't do that!”

“Sorry,” he says, smiling weakly. “I make
…
”

“Yes,” I say, pushing him away gently, and moving my jeans so that they hide my dick. “You made me jump.”

“Jump,” he repeats.

With the bed against my calves and Ricardo three inches in front of me, I'm feeling a little trapped. “Can you just
…
?” I make a shooing motion towards the dining room. “Let me get some clothes on?”

Ricardo laughs and takes the jeans from my hand. I frown at him. “What are you
…
?”

“No,” he says, grasping them and throwing them onto the bed. “You don't need.”

I shake my head and look around the room for clues – this all seems a bit unlikely. Not as unlikely as a cubic room with no doors, but unlikely all the same.

“Ricardo,” I say.

“Yes?” he grins.

“What do you think you're doing?

He flashes the whites of his eyes at me. “I realised,” he says. “We
have
to.” As he says this he
slides one hand behind my back and steps forward – I can feel the hard leather of his boots against the sides of my feet. My dick – now erect – presses against his blue nylon trousers. He grasps the back of my head and kisses me hard. And I let him. We kiss deeply for a moment, our tongues rolling around together. His left hand finds its way to my dick and he squeezes it gently, making me murmur, “Oh.”

This makes him laugh and repeat, almost mockingly, “Si –
Oh!”
He releases my head – he doesn't need to hold it in place any longer, and moves his hand lower, unzipping, then pulling out his own erect dick.

And then he surprises me by giving me a gentle push back against the bed. My knees buckle and I am forced to sit, my head level with his waist. He pulls me forwards and pushes himself into my mouth. “Oh, oui!” he says as I open my jaw and let him in. “This is what I want.”

I am feeling a little shocked about the porn-film direction this dream is taking: fireman rapes sleeping friend.
But then again …
He grabs my head and pushes harder down my throat, making me gag. “No,” he says. “You can
…
” and pushes again.

I think of the guy in Paris who could, and for the first time in my life, I find that
I
can. I even reach out and pull his buttocks harder towards me.

“That's right,” he says. “Oh, yes.”

After maybe twenty seconds though, my gag reflex returns, so Ricardo pulls out. “Turn around,” he says.

My throat hurts, which must, I figure, mean that this is really happening. I look up at him. Real or imagined, it's truly a porn video.

“Yes,” he says, pulling a condom from his pocket and raising an eyebrow.

“It's too late anyway,”
I think, standing, and nodding gravely.
“It's done.”

“No,” Ricardo says. “On the bed. Like a dog.”

I think to correct him, to tell him that
doggy style
sounds less aggressive. And then I wonder if I don't actually prefer,
like a dog.

I reach towards the nightstand for some gel, but Ricardo pulls me roughly back towards the edge of the bed and spits on my arse. It's not the safest lubricant, but there's something overwhelmingly erotic about the gesture, and by the time I have thought about it it's too late anyway because he's already pushing at the gate, murmuring, opening, wheedling his way in, and then he's pumping into me, slamming against my buttocks, and I'm yelping in pain / pleasure / guilt / ecstasy / God-knows-what. Like an animal on heat; like a dog.

Despite his reputation, he comes quickly – too quickly. He pulls out too quickly as well, making me gasp at the loss. But then he gives a new set of commands. “Turn around. Yes, bring yourself – yes, I want to see you,” and as I start to wank myself off, he pinches my nipples so hard he makes me yelp again.

Staring into my eyes and nodding slowly, the
pompier
now more devil than saviour says, “Yes. You like that.” He's surprisingly convincing. It hurts like buggery, but I
do
like it.

As soon as I come, he releases me, ruffles my hair as if I'm a cub scout who has just performed a good deed, kisses me on the forehead, and glancing at his watch, says, “Sorry, but I must go. See you later.”

I watch him button up, turn and leave. I listen to the front door closing behind him, and I lie back on the bed, my chest still glistening and still so aroused, that frankly, I could do the whole thing again.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am –
who would have thought that Ricardo could epitomise so succinctly everything that is wrong with gay men?
And
everything we fantasise about?

As the clouds outside drift across the evening sun, making the light from the window brighten and
darken like a light going on and off, my mood shifts and changes too, running from a strange unexplained elation that feels almost like the buzz of first love, through depressed moody guilt, onto self loathing for my cheap infidelity, and then back onto a fresh bout of arousal.

So I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, and wonder where the roulette wheel of my emotions will settle. Occasionally I glance over at the used condom on the sideboard – it really is there.

Though the next day is, in France at least, nothing other than an ordinary weekday, I use the excuse of my Englishness to celebrate Boxing Day, thus avoiding the requirement to put a fresh coat of the special stain-proof paint I have bought on the
still
stained ceiling.

The weather outside is sunny, but my emotional weather map has settled towards the lows of the previous day and I'm feeling depressed and guilty and above all, sorry for myself. It seems to me today that all of my relationships are based on my fulfilling some
need
within the other party. In Tom's case, it's all about the gîte. In Ricardo's case, it would seem, judging from his quick departure, that it was all about the need to ram his genitals somewhere. Even Jenny, it now strikes me, is only
really
present in my life because Tom and I saved her from an abusive relationship with her alcoholic ex; is only
living
here, because she too needed a fresh start, far away from her own messy past.

But of course, it's Ricardo I think about the most. His attitude, though sexy at the time, can only, when analysed, be seen as macho, insulting, and possibly even verging on homophobic.
Oh, you're a gay man? Suck this would you?

About four, halfway through a Christmas episode of
Absolutely Fabulous
on BBC Prime – an episode I have seen many times before, an episode
everyone
has
seen many times before – the phone rings, and even though I can't think of anyone I really want to talk to, because the number is hidden, I pick up. It's Jenny, and she wants, she says, to have a, “natter.”

“Tell me what you think about Ricky,” she says. “I've been dying to ask.”

I lie and tell her that I am just heading out to meet a gay friend in crisis. “Tony?” I say. “Did you never meet him? Oh well, he lives in Paris most of the time.”

When I hang up I make a mental note not to forget the salient details: Tony, Paris, crisis. Another step in the lying game.

When Ricardo calls a little later I hesitate but then pick up, half wanting to tell him to go fuck himself, half desirous, simply,
strangely
, to hear his voice again. He tells me that he wants to talk, and he sounds unusually serious, so I decide that it is a good adult thing to do – to go and face the music, to name and shame; to state clearly and concisely that this chapter, whatever he thought it was, has now ended, and that all we need to do is agree in adult fashion exactly who will say what to whom, or more precisely who
won't
say what, so that we can forget the thing ever happened and move on. I arrange to meet him in the Bar du Coin – a local pizzeria, and I warn him not to tell Jenny. She thinks, after all, that I'm busy counselling the imaginary Tony.