Call Me (23 page)

“Fine,” I said, slipping into another voice. “Busy.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Oh, things you could never imagine.”

“You don't know what I could imagine.”

It was a strange thing for my mother to say. There was a pause, which was quite exciting. Excitement is rather rare when it comes to conversing with any member of my family. I wondered if Dai had been on the phone to her.

“Oh Liam,” she said, voice rising, sounding like her mother's. “Come home, Liam. It's your Dad. I tried phoning before but there was no answer.”

“What's up?”

There was a pause in which I crossed my fingers.

“Your father passed away, eleven o'clock this morning.”

My reflection was warping so nicely in the kettle, shaking the crossed fingers loose. Christmas had come early. I had to turn away from the warped semi-circle of teeth, the corners of my mouth folded up, so as not to laugh out loud.

“I'm sorry, Liam,” my mother said, as if she were in some way responsible for disrupting my social life over the next few days.

“How did he go?” I asked.

Through sobs:

“He hit one of his moods after walking the dog. I could hear him coughing in the toilet. Then I heard him fall. The doctor says it was a heart attack.”

Just like Elvis.

I called a cab then phoned the operator to say I wanted to change my telephone number. By the time I'd confirmed this in writing and packed a bag, the driver was knocking at the door. Within a minute of being in the cab I decided on a detour to Soho. Shaun was going to have to do something about my hair.

After years of hoping and private planning, he'd died—just like that. I was robbed of two particular pleasures: the cruel, hard gaze I'd direct at him from the foot of his bed while he experienced—point two—a short but painful exit.

The fact that he'd finally kicked the bucket would be a turning point for my mother and release her from those
splitting
headaches.

My father's funeral left a lot to be desired. Everyone was there, the majority drycleaned especially for the event. The weather had turned cold, September was feeling like February. I wore a grand, jet-black Saville Row coat my father hadn't got much wear out of. The Paul Smith suit Ray had deviously acquired, but never worn, fitted well. Black.

I was told in a number of Irish accents what a good man that father of mine had been. It seemed a fair idea to just nod a little and keep my mouth shut. Women had put their heads under hair-driers, men had dressed slowly, applying eye-watering drenchings of aftershave, probably thinking of the business of the will. It seemed like every Irish couple in need of a sandwich and Guinness from Greenford, Hanwell, Kentish Town, Camden Town and Ealing had turned out, equipped with one clean handkerchief which was shared. I didn't know a lot of the people there. That was a comfort.

Outside Ealing Abbey, Church of St. Benedict, I studied the flick-up and root perm of the woman from the prefabs in Hanwell as her beefy legs struggled up each of the sixteen steps. My mother had rescued her in the Parish Centre one night when she was ruining her make-up, diluting gin with tears. A peroxided woman who ran up bridal ensembles from Pronuptia patterns on a machine in her kitchen, working round the clock through a haze of nicotine and appetite suppressants to cater for the bad taste needs of the local community. Mrs Piana. What a woman.

Tawny, dusky pink base foundation was favoured by all the aunts, one even wearing it on the back of her hands to hide liver spots. Ray always took great pleasure in tearing a strip off the relatives, outdrinking the men, pushing the boundaries of a dirty joke with the women, teaching the children rude words and inappropriate hand movements they'd grow into.

The top-of-the-range coffin was carried by six serious men, not unsurprisingly in black and white, only worth mentioning as it looked so out of place on those chaps who'd surely all once served as car park attendants.

As a prepubescent I'd served on this altar. I enjoyed giving the incense a mean swing, ringing the bell like a go-go boy in slow-motion.

Along that same aisle my parents had trotted to marry. Along that same aisle all four innocents had been marched for Baptism, First Holy Communion, then meaningless Confirmation. Along that same aisle sculptured flounce affairs in masses of moire with iridescent pearl motifs, pie crust edgings, wired chiffonette bows shot with silver, dozens of silk roses (blooming and also in bud), teardrop pearls on necklines, lace sashes and rococco themes on veils had drifted. Cunningly concealing foetuses beneath all that swirling silver satin and ivy leaves; packs of cigarettes and emergency make-up in heart-shaped pockets; tattooed forearms under trailing sleeves of antique effect lace in economic polyester.

I was glad it was a funeral and not a wedding. I've always found the spectacle of so many poorly matching hats hellish. Not having to move on to a reception with a display of vibrating electric blankets, digital egg-timers, hostess hotplates and the obligatory wok all neatly ticked off the pressie list was a relief. Black was kinder to people with so little colour sense.

The opening chords of a hymn I didn't recognise sounded up. The organist, however, was familiar: a useless retired music teacher who used to drone on about the joys of camping by the sea.

I put one arm around my mother as she hyperventilated discreetly, placing my dry face on show as I stared back from the front row to witness the advance of the coffin—breaking with all rules of etiquette of course, absorbing clouds of poisoned darts shooting my way from Irish eyes which weren't smiling. I wondered if his jaw had fallen open in death the way it did in front of the telly so often. Perhaps it had been superglued shut. Eyes too.

The paid for solemnity of the march down the aisle was upstaged by a cousin's “special” daughter, Tara, who got busy tearing pages out of a holiday brochure she'd dragged through her life for the past four years. She shouted, “I want go Malta!” God made us all different and he made little Tara very different.

The idea of selling ices, soft drinks and popcorn crossed my mind when my mother was hamming up her dutiful mourning widow performance.

I'd only been to one funeral before. Ray's. The funeral he'd prepared for himself was particularly riveting. No chance of reggae at this send-off. Or OutRage! teeshirts. In death, Ray became not the stink I last saw, but a kind of pure essence of himself, a knot of happy memories defying chronological order.

Since my father's death I've been seeing things his way a little. I probably caused him a few (hundred) disappointments. Personally, I don't give a fuck.

I wasn't nervous but hungover from days of watching my mother go through cupboards and drawers, wiping out all trace of that man's existence. I got through quite a few bottles of QC Sherry prior to the big day. People said I was taking it real bad, looking so pale. Gaunt. “Ah yes, he'll be missed.” “Such a loss.” My arse. I was celebrating, delivered from evil at last.

I felt nothing for the panto around me as the priest spoke of the monster who'd impregnated an egg in my mother's womb with a couple of splashes, passing on those genes. I was more than ready for another sherry and a slice of Soreen by the end of the service.

The pace of the drive to the graveyard was painfully slow.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside still waters,

He restores my soul.

Watching the falling of soil in that Southall graveyard was frustrating. My memories required a much greater depth of burial. There were far too many people about for me to spit discreetly down into the old grave.

Why can't life be pink and fluffy? Like a picture book. Why can't life be soft and sweet?

Once the dirt had been pushed over him, six feet down, all cars sped away.

I kissed my mother on the cheek and sneaked out the back-door when everyone was too pissed to notice, not staying on to empty the ashtrays or hoover up. I was tired of being a son. I was tired of being alive.

It was strange travelling by London Underground after so long on the bike. Didn't seem as bad as I remembered.

*   *   *

The Edge is one of those Soho faggot watering holes which goes to town pretending to be laid back in a New Age kind of way. Lots of varnished wood, stainless steel and lighting you wouldn't notice. Very Key West. A colour scheme suited to a multi-ethnic reception class. Upstairs it's all very meeting room, show flat. The downstairs area is split into two sections, a below deck ambience bar and a long narrow cafe effort on the street. It's a hip place to waste time. When people get hungry they go to the Hare Krishna restaurant next door.

It was shortly after four. A group dressed in boots, beads and huge buckled belts stood in ballet positions by the stairs, chewing what I guessed to be sugarfree gum. Cash-corrupted fools, waiting to be toyed with and tortured, singing along with another remix of Donna Summer's
I Feel Love
and meaning every word of it. Doomed but beautiful wretches, waiting to be wined, dined and sixty-nined.

My eyes fell on the open back pages of
Boyz,
pages neatly spread as if ready for me. Like a hint, like an arrow saying, This way.

Sling, stocks, toys, red, duos.

Dungeon, playroom. SW17.

Uniform, CP, Bondage, games.

Hotel visits. Brian, 0181 682 ––– /

0956 ––––––. C Cards.

e-mail: [email protected]

God bless Brian. And Fabrizio the XXVWE Latino, every stinking inch of construction worker Toby, along with Derek (22) in Victoria—5 mins from tube (Recent photo) and the new, genuine ex-soldier Steve. Fit, tough, versatile manly good looks, 6′ 2″, Can do duos—the lot! Aiden, BJ, Jesus and Jock. More than just the one Mr Gay UK contestant, the occasional porno star and poet. God bless them all, every last queer lad, and there are pages of them winking anyone and everyone their way from thirteen quid a week picture boxes. Just waiting for your call. Picture boxes in
Boyz,
Thud
and
QX
where little is left to the imagination as to what their best physical asset might be.

Call me. No, call
me.
Hey, I can be over in ten minutes … just pick up that phone.

A detonation of laughter. The lights dimmed a bit. Music up.

The barboy who served me had flesh and blood encased with skin still tanned from weeks on a beach all by himself. Ivory fingernails, perfect smile, prepared for compliments. A handsome, fiercely groomed, gym-trained young man with no whiff of ‘the game' as yet. Security
Sex
Style
. This wearer of one jumbo sized silver hairgrip sing-songed the inevitable
Can I get you something?

I fancied a fruit juice (I'd been tipsy for days), but when he cocked his lovely ear to my mouth I asked for a whisky, a double. I had the feeling he was fresh to London, learning the ropes. I wondered what he'd be like a month on, having danced the nights away at GAY, Queer Nation, Fruit, Fridge, Heaven, Trade and The Beautiful Bend, places where sweat drips off noses, pours off walls, runs in rivulets down the small of backs to make arse-licking salty. He was very handsome, innocent. An attractive target to conquer. (How long before the straitjacket of gay identity suffocated him?) Despite that giant hairgrip he was still not quite yet a fully paid up narcotic narcissus. (How would he look if he ever reached the ripe old age of thirty?) I wondered if prostitution would be entered into with the planning, calculation and premeditation a farmer devotes to fields of maize. Or a contact ad fanatic choosing and reviewing sex. Sex as an experiment, a game with changing rules. A commodity. A very special need.