Call Me (22 page)

I considered unplugging again. Just for a moment I hesitated. I couldn't resist lifting up the receiver. There were no words, just long-distance crackle and grit, then the line went dead. Pip.

*   *   *

In raised capitals, gold on creamy yellow, one word:

Always

D

If it hadn't been me it would have been someone else. He needed a point of focus. Not many young men would have bought the man a cup of tea unless paid by the hour.

He didn't need
me,
he needed
something
to make up for the long years of loneliness, the difficulty of being a silent queer. Pre '67 was one thing, the disco '70s another. One of the bravest things he'd ever done was place a dumb ad in
The Pink Paper.

I really should have given him the number of some escort agency.

*   *   *

Friendship cards are both big business and a pain in the arse. Drawn to do a spot of market research, I entered Paperchase purposefully.

Graphic: A bridge. Wording outside:
Cross Over The Bridge To Me.
Wording inside:
Be Mine.

Graphic: A love heart. Wording outside:
I LOVE YOU
 … written maybe twenty times. Wording inside:
… And The Amazing Thing Is We've Just Met!

Graphic: Infantile smiley face. Wording outside:
Thinking of You.
Wording inside:
Puts a Smile On My Face!

Graphic: Clouds. Wording outside:
YOU,
written in creamy yellow on palest blue. Wording inside:
You Are A Part Of Everything I Do
 …

Graphic: A lacey pillow case. Wording outside:
Even When We're Apart
 … Wording inside:
I Sleep With You In My Heart
 …

Graphic: Two words in four different font styles. Wording outside:
I Care.
Wording inside:
I'm Always There
 …

Graphic: Flames. Wording outside:
HELL
 … Wording inside:
O!

And there were many, many more, waiting to be signed, sealed and delivered. I felt decidedly light-headed in there, watching the punters making up their minds.

*   *   *

The long-distance crackle and grit went on for longer than usual. It sounded so much clearer than the many answerphone recordings. I could hear him breathing like a bull. A child was audible way off in the distance, screaming. Little birds, too. I'd been expecting the call and nine o'clock on a Sunday morning was his chosen time.

After years of immobilisation, stunned by romantic obsession, wanting but not getting, he was angry. I imagined him as an adolescent, using fantasy and compulsive masturbation as fun, then as a distraction, then to avoid feelings or as a reward or just a time filler for boredom.

“I gave you my number. You could've called me. I think you should've called. Don't you?” Each clipped syllable had the clarity of threat. Here was yet another specimen illustrating the diversity of gay life.

“You're out a lot, aren't you lad? I've spent a fortune listening to your answerphone message.”

A countdown had been begun with the arrival of the ‘Living Card' he'd sent weeks back. I'd reached ten.

 
10
“I bet you've been out dipping your wick, haven't you lad?”

 
9
“Bet you've been slagging your arse up and down Old Compton Street, or in some sauna.”

 
8
“You slag. You gay slag.”

 
7
“I'm a decent, respectable, good, clean-living man and you're not interested.”

 
6
“You know what you are … and you should probably note this down…”

 
5
You're nothing but a hopeless, heartless little whore.”

 
4
A shaggable, shaggable little tart, whore, queer.”

A remarkably accurate description, if delivered in a somewhat melodramatic tone. Nicely put, though, I thought, noting down the definition as suggested.

 
3
“You bastard!”

 
2
“You fucking deceiver you.”

 
1
“I'll have your guts for garters!” he peaked.

 
0
“I only wanted us to be friends.”

My telephone manner became very Chinese take-away, saying as little as possible with an emphasis on good manners.

“Tell me…”(Pause) “is there any history of…” (Slightest pause) “… insanity in your family?”

His little breathing irregularity increased.

“Now there's no need to get nasty,” he whined.

After a little difficulty with both gripping the handset and the formation of a word beginning with ‘y' he managed to blurt: “Y-You little whore!”

I found his pronunciation interesting, delivered like ‘who-were'. In the silence that followed I imagined him with a probation teacher's dick in his mouth, then a gun, then both—shooting.

“What do you reckon Joe Orton was reincarnated as?” I asked, perhaps like a BBC2 game-show host.

“A little gay slag like you I should think,” he retorted with admirable speed. I felt somewhat honoured and maybe he could tell by my breathing that I was smiling.

“Believe me,” he said in the tone of an American Bible-touting huckster, “I'll have you, you young bugger!”

“Yes. I heard. ‘Guts for garters,' I think you said. I must fax that to Jean Paul Gaultier.”

He slammed the phone down.

Ten minutes later the phone rang, perhaps for a full sixty seconds. I ignored it.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang four times, then stopped.

Thirty minutes later the phone rang twice. Dead silence.

Forty five minutes later, just a little tring to say:
Thinking Of You.

*   *   *

Shaun nodded quite agreeably when he heard I wanted a number four crop.

“But,” he said, “you're certain you want it bleached and dyed orange?”

“Bright orange. That kind of Ziggy Stardust sort of reddish orange,” I said. “Like Annie Lennox when she was in the Eurythmics. Rent boy orange.”

“Exactement,” he shrugged, somewhat resigned to creating this hair-don't. Customer's-always-right attitude.

“I want to look like a hopeless, heartless whore. A shaggable little tart,” I said in a whisper with a smile.

“You probably will luv, pale as a ghost with it. Right, I'll just get you washed.”

The buzz of the clippers demolished any boyishness left in me. Ten minutes after the bleach had begun to sting, it was rinsed off. When the colour was applied it was like my head had been switched on. Ghastly. Just the ticket.

*   *   *

I thought it must be him with that first prolonged ring of the doorbell. When the letter-box flap started banging I was convinced. With the fist hammering, then the kicking, there was no question about it. This was not the Interflora man.

I crept out of bed ever so quietly to have a peep through the spyhole.

There he was, standing opposite me on the twenty-eighth of August, on the day of his fortieth birthday. He had lacked warmth for so long that he'd opted for hatred to even the score. Having exploded my life through the small ads, the fallout was about to hit.

D
-Day.

The view I had of him through the spyhole was extremely wide angled, appropriately distorted. He was red in the face, sweating in his macintosh on what had turned out to be another boiling hot day.

I had known this would happen. Maybe he'd known it would come to this as well. I silently closed the spyhole cover, thankful that it was of the kind that avoided the giveaway sign of lightening/darkening in the tiny lens. I returned to my bed, curled up under the duvet and waited for the racket to stop. What I heard was Jessie telling him to piss off.

I crept around the flat all morning, keeping away from the windows. Every once in a while I tiptoed into the hallway to check that he wasn't still on the doorstep outside. It was the strangest feeling when I came face to face with him through the spyhole hours later, to find him staring directly into it, listening out for signs of life inside.

It was when I went to the toilet that my guard slipped. If I'd looked at the letter-box I would have seen that it was raised and that his two black, shiny eyes were peeping in, catching a waist down glimpse of me in nothing but a pair of old Calvins taking a leak.

Taking another peek, certain he'd have moved himself along by that time, I got quite a shock when his hand thrust through the letter-box and grabbed the waistband of my briefs. He'd rammed fist and forearm in, grazing both. Veins in the hand quickly swelled up from the grip of the letterbox, tiny drops of blood staining my pants and skin. Each one of his fingers held fast. He just wouldn't let go. His shouting turned to high pitched, repetitive screaming.

“You
are
a whore. I
know
you are are whore!”

I had to rip the pants off to avoid them tearing into my scrotum and up the crack of my arse. Once off, they were dragged backwards through the letter-box. Maybe he was thinking he'd actually ripped them off me.

It was Jessie who phoned the police. When the ringing of the bell and banging of the letter-box flap started again, interrupting the six o'clock news, I strode the lightest of steps into the hallway. Through the spyhole I came face to face with a man in white shirt-sleeves and a black and white peaked cap. I could see Dai standing there, looking silly. I could see Jessie framed in her doorway wearing an apron.

I opened the door. All three blanched at the sight of me. It wasn't the Boy George teeshirt they were looking at, nor the baggy cut-down Levi's with huge buckled belt or unlaced DMs. It was the hair-don't.

Tears streaked his face. A clear mucus slimed his upper lip. The staircase stank of him.

“You look ridiculous,” he whined.

Jessie went back inside and shut her door but I bet she got busy behind her spyhole within seconds.

“Have you come about the drains?” I inquired.

“There have been complaints,” the officer said, nonplussed.

“I'm sure there have. Be a sweetheart and pop the old fool off at King's Cross before he misses the last train.”

I couldn't have been camper.

I turned on my heel as the officer was getting his notebook out. The doorbell rang once. I put on the new Felix single at maximum volume, returning to watch the officer have a few harsh words with Dai, tucking his notebook into his back pocket. Then they both left.

Through carefully adjusted venetian blinds I saw Dai hail a cab. The armpit of his macintosh was many shades darker than the rest of his raincoat. Inside his tightly packed cells a gene spelled N-U-T-T-E-R.

I put the kettle on.

*   *   *

Those fine, resourceful folk in Hamamatsu have provided customers with fifteen demonstration songs in the depths of the machine's circuitry. I'd never had the inclination to hear the delights stored within the
SONG SELECT
section before, but I was in a mood to try something new.

Unplugging the headphones, I listened to a few bars of Edelweiss (09) through the internal speaker system. Then, using the OUT jack to deliver the pathetic output through my stereo—close to maximum volume—I treated anyone walking along the Goswell Road to four classics chosen at random:
Carmen
(04),
Happy Birthday To You
(20),
House Of The Rising Sun
(08) and
Greensleeves
(13).

I wished for rain, heavy rain, the kind I like best, to wash scum off the streets, down into the drains. The forecast said everything was going to be just fine. I felt like getting beautifully drunk. I briefly considered phoning Glenda. I ended up having an early night.

*   *   *

The letter-box flap was up. Being invisible had put me in a new, elusive rank. Where was I? What was I up to? What had become of what's-his-name? Invitations and press releases had begun to dribble through once again. There was no mail. Nothing.

I unlocked and swung the door open. No one there.

I bent down to look through the letter-box to see the view Dai had stolen of me. I checked around the hallway in case some correspondence had nose-dived and skidded somewhere. Nothing.

Dai had been, that's what I thought. Back. Back to get me. I was more inconvenienced than scared. I wanted to be anonymous, uncontactable and untouchable. I wasn't.

Neither was my letter-box, letting in piss-stinking air from the staircase.

*   *   *

Feeling the way I was feeling, nothing, I could quite happily have slashed my wrists. Slashed my wrists, or jumped off the balcony. Perhaps slashing my wrists as I fell from the balcony, my blood wetting me in a sudden, heavy shower like the rain I like best.

*   *   *

I've always liked the Sex Pistols' cover of Iggy's
No Fun
as much as the Stooges' original. Ideally there'd be two mixes available, featuring the vocal talents of Lydon and Pop over the two different backings. One time I lined up Pistols on CD, Stooges on turntable, to make a rough mix. Didn't work, but I had a lot of fun trying. It was one of the last things that gave Ray a good laugh.

I was feeling like going out to a place of wild, natural beauty, getting my cock severely sucked or getting my head kicked in. Funny. Not funny. What I wanted most was to be an orphan. I wanted to disappear, without anyone worrying blandly about me.

It was one of those days when I'd decided to have the phone plugged in. Living dangerously. Picking up the receiver to ask, “Friend or foe?” brought silence.

“It's your mother,” the woman who'd borne me announced, with as little enthusiasm as Ray had delivered the words when we were together. “How've you been?” she asked, only wanting to hear good news.