Call Me (21 page)

Since 1929 it's been home to many a fungal infection and sexual compulsive in search of a bit of fun. It's a place of lazy camaraderie: substandard off-the-rack bodies, their purple veins swelled to bursting, exchange weary smalltalk within sub-ecclesiastical architecture designed to encourage hush. The Krays used to go there. Michael Cashman, too.

Eyes in half-familiar faces seemed especially alert to a newcomer; with the grey institutional towel wrapped around my waist, I became my cock, the curve of my arse, pecs, waist, weight. Through interconnecting catacombs and chambers floored in chequerboard stone and walled in the glazed white tiling common to corrective and sanitary institutions of that era, I was followed by a handsome Asian youth. Hot room, steam room, showers, tiled bath the size and depth of a cattle dip, sauna.

“Kuldip.”

A simple answer to a simple question.

“Kuldip,” he repeated, probably out of surprise at being asked his name. The mutual fumbling in the toilet took only a couple of minutes. He'd started playing with his dick the minute we were alone in the sauna, only stopping briefly when a fat old queen with a sulky cock came in, continuing until another entered, brazen enough to try and get involved. It took no more than a wink for me to follow him to the cold, slippery-floored toilets.

“We gotta be quick,” he said, closing the cubicle door.

On rolling back his foreskin, Stilton came to mind, but I still thrust my tongue deep into his mouth. I don't think he wanted to be kissed (he'd probably got a little lady and two kids tucked away somewhere) but it was while I snogged him so forcibly that a minigalaxy of sperm shot from his long, thin dick.

Back in the steam room, mutual discarding achieved over a shared can of Tango, I had the feeling I was on the wrong train and it was time to get off. There was still time to jump, I thought, take a holiday, rustle up a couple of travel features. Maybe I could sweet talk
Chat.
After a while I realised my ears were stinging.

Cooling down under a shower, I was aware of each and every white haired old man, their skins bleached from hours of ambling about in the wet. I could almost hear their lunches sluice through their guts. Here queens rubbed shoulders with villains, cab drivers and tradesmen, all after a touch of the vapours. Made equal by the steam. Boxers go, supposedly, to lose their bruises, taxi drivers their lumbago. Theatrical types to maintain their instrument. The majority looked singularly miserable as they loitered with intent.

Taking a breather between orgasms, two slightly younger but also white haired men sitting on grey plastic chairs, Sunday-in-Broadstairs, pointed me out to each other. I recognised the one on the left. His woolly pendulous torso adorned my kitchen wall like an imaginary beast from a Salvador Dali painting. What, I tried to remember, was he into? I smiled, turning my back, giving them a bit of arse to savour.

Another, breaking the boredom of loitering by taking occasional sips from the water fountain, followed me into the steam room after I'd finished showering.

“Fancy a rub?” he asked all chummy, placing a paw between my shoulder-blades.

“Okay,” was the simple go signal he'd been hoping for, pitched an octave lower than usual.

While I lay on a slab of grey marble, delicate hands lathered and kneaded my body with matronly attention, occasionally giving my flaccid prick a rub-down to see if an erection were on the go. When he realised that he wasn't going to have something hard to suck on, he rinsed me off with a bucket of cold water rather abruptly, patted me on the bottom twice to show there were no hard feelings, then left whistling like a sailor.

Moving to the far corner of the empty steam room, I sat cross legged in the corner and began to jerk off, invisible in the steam. The door squeaked.

There was an inrush of light and cool air. Wondering if the sound of my wet foreskin rolling back and forth could be heard, I stopped abruptly. Slow footsteps came my way. A dark silhouette stood before me.

“Hello Bike Boy,” the silhouette said, taking a seat beside me on the marble shelf, placing a hand on my right knee. “You walked right past me in the changing rooms.”

My erection deflated in an instant. The accent struck a chord, faintly. His dark eyes drew mine for a full ten seconds. When I heard the smoker's cough I knew who it was: Jack from Hampstead.

“I liked those photos you took of me,” he said, raising a hand to my right nipple. Perhaps he detected an increase in size since he'd last played with them.

That'll teach you for falling asleep with a stranger,” I said, my voice pitched an octave higher than usual, trying to sound boyish, just a bit scared to tell the truth. We both laughed at this as he put his hands around my neck.

“In today's high speed world we all, by varying degrees, leave behind a trail of debris in our frissive interactions with others: lovers, friends—”

“And victims,” I interrupted.

“And victims,” he echoed.

He began to squeeze those hands around my neck, increasing pressure very slowly, face closing in on mine. His towel slipped off him as he crouched over me on the bench. As we kissed, my air supply was cut off. I didn't struggle. I felt very calm, closing my eyes, going limp. Then he let go. He laughed a little as if it was the biggest joke, which maybe it was. He slapped my face playfully, just the once. It was so soft, welcome.

It must be getting dark outside, I thought as he got down on his knees to pogo his head. I was hard in his mouth in seconds. But it's never really dark in a city, not black black, except under pillows, floorboards and mud, under the influence of drink, behind a shiny leather mask, deep in a drug-induced sleep in bricked up cellars. He tossed me off, tonguing my ear, looking me over as I made a silent donation directly into the sperm bank drain.

I wasn't looking forward to the fifteen-minute ride through miserable Bethnal Green sidestreets strung with second-hand cars. I dreaded rewinding the answerphone in Ray's old home, the raspberries and the pips. There are lots of other people in this world besides Mr Right.

“Want to come back to my place?” is what I wanted the man with the smoker's cough to ask. “Don't see why not,” would've been my answer. He didn't pop the question. We showered side by side in silence.

“Take care,” was what he said without looking at me, as I rinsed the bubbles off after a soaping I didn't need.

The paper used for the production of this card

comes from a sustained forest.

This card is blank for your special message.

Price Code F

Made and printed in England.

D

The mad Welshman had sent a gouache of six blurred boys, cycling down a hill. Rear view. I considered wiping my arse with it and returning to sender.

*   *   *

“Whoever it is must be serious,” Jessie said, handing me a slender white box tightly tied with a red ribbon, smiling less this time and not winking as she shut her door.

A sprig of baby's breath had protected the single red rose in transit. Those petals fell one at a time as I stood over the toilet, whispering to the bowl,
He loves me, he loves me not.

Imagining his face being punched by a freckled fist lightened my mood. I'd reduced the situation to a pseudo-shocked vaudeville act.

Pausing over the bowl, now polka-dotted red, I varied the words:
He is insane, he's not insane, he is insane, he's not insane. He's going to kill me, he's not going to kill me, he's going to kill me, he's not going to kill me.

Through the open window I heard Hamish. I strained to hear his song. When the phone rang I jumped, then flushed.

Lifting the receiver all I heard was long-distance static. No words. Pip.

*   *   *

The hours I've spent, the energy I've used in the search for symmetry: countless. When the sparks start flying in my brain, off I go with the hoover. Spontaneous, frantic. It's like a hiccup of the mind. Vacuuming until it feels right. I need these rituals for the moments of peace they can offer. What I really want is not to need them. Different compulsions surface when I leave my front door.

It was close to dark when the little itch began. The bell in my head went
ding
and I thought mmm mmm—something's going to happen tonight.

I was dying for it. Thought my prick would burst, the skin was stretched so tight. I couldn't stand being in. So close and muggy. I couldn't breathe. The Beaufort Scale was on zero. My heart was beating itself to death waiting for the storm to break. Sniffing the air and looking upwards I could feel it coming and I wanted to be there, in it.

I was barely conscious, yet perfect in motion. In nothing but my shorts and racing shoes, minus ankle socks, I walked out and rode off.

When the rain fell it was lovely. My nipples hardened in the breeze as I went down the hill from Angel towards Kings Cross in the last of the bright, flat light before the storm. I was cycling without direction, yet knowing where to make each turn, taking the short cuts through Camden, moving in darkness without lights. Sometimes a bike just takes you where you want to go.

Behind Jack Straw's Castle, under a warlike sky, London's mutual masturbators welcomed me to their dark, secret club. The glowing butts of cigarettes hovered and floated in the darkness more like tropical insects than votive candles. Faceless fucks with hard-ons for death, in silent slow-motion walking round and round in circles, stamping down the growing green. Bachelor ramblers begging to get their heads kicked in. Keats walked on it, Constable painted it. At different times the Heath offers something to everyone. From the Royal Artillery cooling off their horses to champion boxers in training for a match. Once a refuge for people suffering from the Great Plague of London; in that respect it has not changed.

Morning constitutionals are often interrupted by the sight of condoms and rubber gloves hanging from branches. The Heath's a twenty four hour free-for-all and a graveyard of sweet memories. Everything goes on there, every sexual excess of which flesh is capable. Enter AYOR. No admission fee. Kamikaze queers more than welcome.

The cold dark edges invited me in, joining the herd busy digging graves with their cocks. Cold dark edges insisted I enter to belong in the dark. Grinding round the interior of my skull was a tune I'd made up the day before. Loathsome, slow notes. Circling.

Though it was dark I could see a dummy getting fisted. His eyes were focused on nowhere as his arse took it, moaning as the fingers explored, coming alive like a glove puppet once each finger had wriggled deep inside his tubing.

I pushed my bike along with a lazy, hip swaying thrust, hunting a five minute friend, playing lunatic hide-and-seek. After walking round, aware that my quality control barrier was slipping every ten paces, I made the random selection of a buck-toothed, nipple-pierced baldy ready for anything on bended knees. His left hand slid up through the back of my shorts as his mouth warmed my cock inch by inch, providing mouth-to-dick resuscitation. While the thumb of his right hand did a fair rotation up my arse, my dick bashed the candida deep in his throat. No sub-text. No foreplay. As the thumb poked deeper, I neared orgasm.

Withdrawing his hand from the warmth of my shorts, he began to suck on the baby turd he'd harpooned with his thumb. Another dead-alive, catching a whiff of fresh shit, perhaps jealous of the brown dug out of pale flesh, approached quickly and stood close.

I could have been stabbed, or raped. I could have been so very very dead. Heart cut out and hung from a tree for birds to pick at, flies to vomit over, suck up, lay shiny eggs upon … Yes, I might have known agonizing pain for seconds. Mmm.

I picture a lot of jerks at my funeral, should my body be found, eyes bulging—perhaps only identifiable through dental records. Awful floral tributes with Interflora blooms spelling SON. I can hear the embarrassing sermon by a Benedictine who taught me nothing. My real existence would be glossed over. No mention of Ray. How nice it would be to attend my clone's funeral and watch that mother of mine cry tears for the son she never knew.

I left the buck-toothed creature licking his warm brown lollipop and passed another group of bulky silhouettes among black branches. So many of London's married men, there, doing it. Groaning, groining. Grunting. Full of discontent, disease and despair. Willy waving sour cocks as buggers buggered, while coppers took down the number plates of expensive vehicles in the car park—many containing locked in dogs waiting for their masters to finish their business in the bushes.

Chancing my bike to the bushes, I ran to the pond where Ray and I used to feed the ducks. He'd taken some photos there one time. Over-exposed, only the very blackest parts of my face had shown. Pupils, nostrils, hair, jaw line and the gap between lips.

I flung myself into the deep, inky pond where fish had stopped living. The foul water reeked and the sludge at the bottom felt gross. Still erect, I perched myself on a log to jerk off. The cum I ejaculated no doubt became part of some food chain.

I felt very thin and pale and blurry as I stood by my bike, waiting for more rain. I had a second wank just to keep warm and have something to do.

*   *   *

Unplugging the phone calmed me, I felt instantly lighter. The consequences of my actions were creeping up, internal consequences rattling under my skin. I was beginning to feel increasingly nervy. Twitched out.

I've never had a problem with my Yamaha, or had to refer to the trouble shooting page in the owner's guide but that day there was no sound and I couldn't work out why. It took me an hour to realise that the master volume was on zero. I was pissed off about it but glad that I'd managed to work it out by myself.

Arriving at a
LO TOM
which I slowed right down, pressing
SUSTAIN
I started playing simple root chords using the slap bass sound. I saw that my fingertips were extremely white and realised I was fingering with excessive force which could have damaged the terminals. Abandoning any idea of making a recording, I switched off the power supply then plugged the phone back in which was an odd thing to do as it was bedtime. The phone started ringing as the plug entered the socket.