Call Me (17 page)

Did he want to decapitate, dismember, deflesh, destroy, leave me to decompose in the garbage? Best out of here, quick. Did he think that or did I?

If he'd made a charge for me, like a soldier with his bayonet ready for anything, I might have screamed for God or my mother. (Or Ray.) I was filled with true, naked, yellow fear. As he talked, an aimless monologue which even bored him, he seemed silent. As he waved his arms and pulled a pantomime of faces, he seemed still and staring. (He'd got me there with all the skill of a salesman on commission.) Black eels invaded my digestive system. As he talked I thought I saw his hair growing, grey roots suddenly appearing under the sandy fullness. My eyes were heavy.

The sudden barking of his dog in my face broke the mood.

He pointed vaguely to my waist. “You can keep that,” he said. “And here's a little something. Now go.”

On the landing in the prickly dark silence, I stood clad in nothing but a black leather jock strap. In one hand a pannier containing a stolen knife, in the other shiny black skin-tight cycle shorts, teeshirt and cheque for £60. Payee left blank.

I pressed the down button. The lift, it could have been fifty stories down, groaned and heaved.

I pressed the button again. I started to count. I held the pannier against my chest and the organs that were thumping towards my throat, the scream that was jamming against the back of my teeth.

*   *   *

In my flat with the door locked behind me, just after sunrise, it was 5:13 am, the day of my birthday. I sang Happy Birthday to a man who was earning himself a pretty impressive CV. A man who was realising he didn't know how lost he was.

*   *   *

Through the spyhole I saw the same delivery man again.

“I'll be out in a moment,” I shouted through the door. “Leave it on the mat, would you? Thanks.”

When he'd gone I opened the door, still in my pyjamas.

On the doorstep in a shallow wicker basket wrapped in cellophane with an orange ribbon tied high beside a little envelope, in front of a floral display of creams yellows and pinks, sat a pink and white teddy bear: ‘Cuddles'. What he'd missed out on for years.

The phone rang.

I picked up the basket with one hand and grabbed the phone with the other, for once hoping it was just my mother wanting to wish me happy birthday and check I was still coming over.

“Hello. Is that Euan?”

“Speaking.”

“Oh hi! I'm
Capital Gay
ad 89.20. Michael.”

“Mr Strut It!”

“Well, I'm hoping you're Mr Strut It, actually. I'm glad it caught your eye. I'm in Camberwell.”

“Bet you've been busy auditioning with your ad.”

“So so, only fifteen replies. I had a soldier round in all his uniform, that was nice. I put it in for six weeks. It's so cheap in
Capital Gay.
Now, do you like videos? Blue, you know. I've got six tapes. That'll keep you going! You could have an eighteen-hour marathon wank. Mostly American but a few French chickenish ones too. Are you on the gay scene?”

“No.”

“I used to be but the ad keeps me pretty busy—I've given up relying on clubs and my sort of thing is very safe. Do you think you could cope? Strip? You must be warned, the videos are extremely pornographic. You may end up with your balls a lot lighter than when you arrived.”

“I'll bring a large box of Kleenex.”

“Yes, I couldn't abide my carpet getting spoiled. Wish you were here strutting it now mate. I think you're gonna be pretty good by the sounds of it.”

I shook him off with a promise to try and drop by his place some time in the evening.

*   *   *

The day of my twenty seventh birthday, the fifteenth of June, the midday meal and I was getting an ugly head-on view of my father. He sat opposite me sweating in the day's vest. Hairy, heavy arms, elbows on the table, knife and fork raised. An exercise in breathing and masticating at the same time, mouth open, he chewed on special offer beef. My mother served him another helping before coaxing a slab of it towards my plate.

Wearing under my jeans the leather jock strap I'd acquired at the start of the day, I watched him butter and salt his potatoes. No one noticed my thick lip. If they had asked I would have said Hamish had given me a nasty peck.

My father and the generations before him had come from a fishing village near Cork, dependent on a sea forever hurt and angry. It was an area prone to occasional mental disorder, common enough for a community turned in upon itself for centuries. A harshness of life that didn't breed optimism but dogmatism, suspicion, aloof superiority, fatalism. People there told meandering ghost stories while awaiting death. (Preferably the death of others.)

My father was a carpenter before he started up his own building business, serving his apprenticeship in a damp shed in Beara Bay where he made a variety of coffins in different sizes. Handy.

I've learned much from my father: the power of neglect, authoritarianism, murderous rages, deceit and good old fashioned hypocrisy. Zooming from one to ten on the temper scale faster than your average Broadmoor resident, a picture of clenched yellow teeth and jutting chin, he believed in exercising his right to pull/push/grip/shake/slap/smack/bully. I knew his rules at an early age and abided by them. The cold silences, the tick of the clock, all silent for the news at six, seven, nine and ten. I knew what happened if a rule was broken. Those huge, hard hands. From children to mother-in-law, against the wall. Whack! Then the lecture shouted at point-blank range. Or shouting the two favourite words from his limited vocabulary: dumb and stupid. Satisfied only when the teardrops started.

My three sisters had an easier time of it. They toed the line. They knew he'd come in handy when it came to loft conversions and the laying of crazy paving.

His slaps had kind of stunned me. I wouldn't know where I was for a while. That in itself could feel almost nice. Warm and tingly. Tranquillising. Not really there or anywhere. Like stretching and yawning, eyes closed, while taking in the fetid air.

One night the bogey man met up with my father as he was staggering towards his car, tore out his larynx and fed it to a stray dog. A frequent fantasy. In another, the whole family was lying on an analyst's couch, staring up at my father who was having to listen to how we felt while he was strapped to the ceiling with ropes, dressed in his Sunday best and gagged with one very large raw potato. I always feared this fantasy might turn on me and he'd piss down on the lot of us or knock the potato out with his tongue and vomit every drop of his insides down.

I hid when I heard him coming. Under beds, behind bushes, curtains, inside cupboards and wardrobes. While I listened to his tirades from the top of the stairs, I learned to exercise bladder control. I prayed that in his sleep or at the pub, he'd choke on his vomit.

Intensive fantasy-filled masturbation was always a relief. I reserved the tears and sulks for piano practice and long walks alone. While they fretted over my school fees, they didn't question why I bed-rocked or why I threw up every day before school. They had no idea I was being bullied.

I dreaded the school holidays just as much. Being at home. The arrival of my appalling academic reports. The humiliation. With parents who didn't give quality time chat and an au pair from Limburg, I seemed a bit on the slow side. Delayed speech. I didn't understand my class mates. I was talking German before I talked English.

I didn't belong anywhere. Except with the dogs and cats and the fish in the pond at the top of the garden.

Admitting there was a problem might have given them an indication of the nature of their son. I hid from them that I was being called a poof, queer, faggot and all the rest. For years. Even by the teachers. (A big shout to St Benedict's Public School for Catholic Boys, Eton Rise, Ealing.)

Perhaps a hint of my already non-reproductive instincts, was what worried my parents. They were most distressed years later when I revealed that my remaining testicle had not been covered with lead while undergoing the radiotherapy at Barts. They had continued hoping for grandchildren even when I was living with Ray and getting it up the bum. God bless them.

Their only boy. Their reluctant bloody show piece. I sulked and glared when their visitors said how cute I was and what long eyelashes I had. The strain of being their ambassador to the world made me feel like a resident alien.

“So,” my father said chewing, “How's work?”

“Rex Features have placed quite a few picture sets lately. One for
Stern,
two for Japanese magazines. And I've just got a commission from
Le Point
on street markets.”

Lies, all lies. Had I said I'd just done the cover of
Time
he'd have said, “That's nice.” What he wanted to hear was foreign currencies, particularly those with high exchange rates. My mother thought I should be making it with
The Daily Mail
or putting my play-safe teaching degree to good use. I'm a disappointment. I'm a disappointment to myself most days.

While eating, I fought the impulsive desire to smash everything made of glass in that cosy, claustrophobic bungalow. Windows, all three tv screens, hidden bottles, dainty Waterford Glass, picture frames of births, baptisms and marriages—rarely in that order. Glass is a bugger to clear up. The grandchildren would have to be banished for weeks. Glass splinters get everywhere.

“Well, your honour, the defendant's early years were friendless, closed years of postponed promises, unkept favours. Slovenly years, disordered.”

But I got through the meal without any obvious discomfort. I sat and listened to the same same same fucking stories. Family: none of my business—nothing to do with me.

When I told them about Ray and me, when I left home to live with him, their symptoms of trauma had been stiff lips and silence. They didn't accept a single invitation to visit. Not once. They hated Ray and he hated them back. His attitude was kind of refreshing. Direct. My mother telephoned lots when Ray finally snuffed it, but neither came to the stupid service. Not that I'd have wanted them to.

“What would you like for Christmas?” my mother asked as I was leaving.

It's mid June, I thought, for Christ's sake!

“My father's funeral would be nice.”

“I'll see what I can arrange,” she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek, half smiling.

*   *   *

At Mr Strut It's, the video player was on like a tap, pouring out taken for granted porno on a movie-size wall screen in fabulous Dolby Surround. The video was linked up to the hi-fi, drenching us from mounted speakers. He'd covered his carpet with the kind of polythene sheeting decorators use, a neat precaution against stains or bad karma.

I sat on my bike, emptying his fruit bowl in slow, juicy bites. I'd made a rule when carrying my bike into his living room: No touching! Placing three seats around the cramped low-ceilinged room, I told him he could move from one to another but he had to stay in the chosen seat for a minimum of three minutes.

Being given boundaries in his own home he found both humiliating and wonderfully exciting.

At one point a wasp flew in and made for the fruit bowl. The performance was halted as he (inordinately terrified) swatted the insect to death with a copy of
The Guardian.

When his seedless grapes, two oranges, a Golden Delicious and an above average sized banana had disappeared though the appropriate orifice, it was time for the laziest striptease ever. Ridiculous, with the bike as some sort of improbable erotic symbol.

Thankfully, he kept his clothes on. Neat circles and squares cut out of his cheap jeans exposed bits of flesh, like he'd been practising shape-cutting exercises aimed at lower ability kids. He rubbed himself every now and then in a most pathetic way. He'd worn the crotch thin. I made him put his hands on his head like a naughty boy for that.

With my eyes closed I could press the
PLAY
button in my head, rewinding recent shaggable glimpses by fruit stalls, at bus stops.

I imagined I was far out of London in a wood, up a tree, wanking off all alone as I'd done for years before Ray came along. I saw a picture of James Dean like that once—up a tree, clutching his dick. Paid by the hour, so the story goes. Amazing what actors get up to when they're resting.

When I opened my eyes I'd shot beyond the protective polythene he'd laid down. I'd sprayed the video, splashed a Californian hunk faking it for the camera to subsidise a paltry allowance. The things a boy has to do to get through college. He clapped when I'd finished my little show piece, though I don't know what Equity would have made of such a performance.

“How did you get that gorgeous love bite? It's fab! I adore love bites. They're so slaggy. Do us a favour and give me one. Go on. It'd freak them out at work.”

I began to think of a few things which would freak him out. Not only him, but his neighbours, those colleagues at work, estranged family, the tabloids. The BBC, Sky, CNN and NHK. I said I'd give him a love bite people would talk about if he washed off some of that aftershave first. He toddled off quite happily to soap and splash the vital parts. Ritualistic last minute ablutions he'd mastered great speed in performing.

While he was behind the locked bathroom door, racing to get back to some tactile contact, one of the many illegal videos featuring minors went into my pannier along with a couple of postal orders already made out to
The Pink Paper
and
Gay Times.
Taking just two was hardly greedy: there were whole bunches of coupons for
Boyz
lined up ready to lure others into his den.

As he over-optimistically douched and lubed, I considered two choices: doing him a favour or creeping out while I had the opportunity. When he came in I was lacing up a pair of Dr Marten boots inherited from Ray. I still wore the black leather jock strap from the shithead in Muswell Hill. A surplus of oil covered my body.