Gilliflowers (23 page)

At least they got to walk away at the end of it to enjoy a nice cup of coffee and a biscuit or two in the lounge while I had to face the kitchen. It looked like a war zone.

It took me ages to clean up.

Later on I settled back at the computer and was just signing into Yahoo when the monitor blew scaring the crap out of me and fusing the downstairs lights. It was obviously some kind of revenge attack by Microsoft for having failed to buy out the Yahoo organisation and aimed at striking terror into anyone accessing anything associated with Yahoo, well that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Shane reckons the most likely cause was me leaving the computer turned on for hours on end even when not in use and thus causing the monitor to overheat and explode. I made a comment about him getting it confused with Dick. He cuffed me smartly across the derrière and threatened to leave me monitor-less to teach me a lesson. He didn’t follow through, probably to save his ears from a whining attack. We spent the May Day Bank Holiday shopping around for a new one.

Shane isn’t a big fan of shopping around. He would have preferred to spend the BH at home chilling out and relaxing in preference to trawling around a crowded retail park. To make it more interesting from his point of view he insisted Dick and I dress up for the occasion by wearing jewellery.

Knowing and feeling what was concealed within our most intimate places

certainly added an interesting and highly erotic edge to the experience. It was three horny men who returned home from the shops. You can guess how the remainder of the holiday was spent and it had nowt to do with monitors.

Shane’s having dinner with a business associate tonight, so Dick and I are having Chinese. I reckon it’s about time to phone in the order so Ciao for now, or should that be Chow.

I did get a cold, a really sniffly, snotty head cold. Snogging the houseboy has been off the menu because the men folk do not want a mouthful of my phlegm should I sneeze at the wrong moment. (People of a delicate nature look away now) Having a mouthful of one’s own phlegm is gross enough; a mouthful of someone else’s phlegm is a gross too far and possibly matter, green matter, for a horror story. I’ve had to settle for kisses to the cheeks (upper deck) or to the forehead plus sympathetic hugs.

I’m much better now, though my lips are a bit dry and cracked and the end of my nose is chapped, I’ll never make the cover of this month’s Hot Houseboy Magazine, not unless the ‘Hot’ bit denotes a raised temperature on account of viral activity.

I detest having a cold. It means you’re usually not ill enough to not do anything at all, but not well enough to do what you usually do and I do a lot I do. This houseboy is no slattern. I even iron bedding, towels and underwear. I would never allow my men’s loins to touch anything that hadn’t felt heat from this houseboy’s highly tuned professional hotrod iron.

We’re off to Leo’s house for Sunday lunch today, not my personal choice of venue, but as the boyfriends are fond of saying: the small print clearly states that what I want doesn’t come into it. Whinging on about it is optional and will be ignored anyway.

I had some news from my mate Lee yesterday. He and his woman have finally gotten around to organising an official engagement party. They’ve been unofficially engaged since last September, but apparently Lee has now saved up enough to buy Bethany the ring of her dreams, a very expensive one, along with a party at a fancy hotel to officially launch them on the road to wedded bliss or whatever. She’s one of those girls who don’t make do. She wants the best. She wasn’t prepared to choose a ring from the Argos catalogue and have a party at the local workingmen’s club. She’s an avid fan of celebrity and what she wants is usually based around whatever her fave celebrities are showing off in the glossy magazines she buys.

Do I not like Bethany then? Yes, no, I don’t know. I’m ambiguous, perhaps because I don’t really know her as a person yet. I’ve met her a few times, but not enough times to know her in any real capacity. I mainly know her through Lee’s communications and most of what he communicates about her is her material ambitions along the lines of - Beth wants this, saw that, bought this, wants that because Madonna, or whoever, has one, and so on. To be honest, on the occasions I did meet her she got on my tits a bit. She has a habit of hijacking everything Lee says.

He can’t speak a sentence or offer an opinion without her cutting in and giving it her own perspective, habitually adding:
‘that’s what we think isn’t it, Lee?’

I’m being hailed to shift my arse. It’s time to set off for château Leo. No doubt he’ll have uncorked some fancy fruit of the vine, which I can have no share of. It pisses me off.

I almost passed out with shock when the pharmacist at my doctor’s surgery demanded I part with £21.30 for my prescription this morning. Twenty-one pounds and thirty pence! TWENTY-ONE POUNDS AND THIRTY FUCKING PENCE!

Only the fear of having another £7.10 slapped on to pay for the smelling salts to bring me round kept me upright, that and a tight grip on the counter. Bloody hell! All I wanted was my usual ep meds plus some antibiotics and a nasal spray for a sinus infection (courtesy of my cold.) I hadn’t planned on buying shares in the pharmaceutical company responsible for making them.

I moaned about it to Shane when he called to ask what the doctor had said. Oh silly Gilli. He went into nag mode. It amazed him,
fucking-amazed-him
, how I could happily shell out pounds on useless shit without giving it a second thought and yet complain about paying for something I really need.

I decided to play a quick game of wind up Daddy. I told him I’d got my ep meds but had ditched the antibiotics and prescription nasal spray in favour of buying a packet of extra strong Hacks and a cheap spray from Superdrug to clear my sinuses.

He said I’d better be joking or he’d use his hand to clear my sinuses via my bare arse.

It sounded like a tricky and unpleasant procedure so I admitted I was joking. He made a sour comment about my inappropriate sense of humour and hung up.

I hope the antibiotics kick in soon. I’ve had mega facial pain and a headache for days.

As predicted Leo had a bottle of good vintage wine adding elegance to his Sunday lunch table last weekend, a rather fine white Rioja. It had everyone all but swooning and words like, tropical, buttery, guava and long finish were bandied about. Bloody sadistic wine snobs. I was green with envy.

Leo had a surprise for me. He’d tracked down a company specialising in alcohol free wines, 0.00% stuff and had bought a bottle of ‘Sauvignon Blanc’ for me to try. I was inclined to be appreciative of the gesture, until I tried it, after which I was inclined to be ratty. I tried not to be ungrateful, but I was. It was horrible and bore no relation whatsoever to the alcohol variety of SB. It had the consistency of thick bleach and a horrible sour taste reminiscent of chronic acid reflux. They were sipping nectar while I was swilling bile fluid. I couldn’t drink it.

Shane was inclined to think I was being awkward for the sake of it, until he tried a sip and was unable to suppress a shudder. Dick also tried and Leo and Mike. The verdict was unanimous. It was shite!

Leo was unperturbed. There were plenty of others to try. I suspect finding an acceptable alcohol free wine for Bébé brat is going to become something of a quest for him. The thing is I don’t want him to find one. I want the real thing.

Dick is away from home at the moment, attending a design seminar in Glasgow.

He won’t be back until tomorrow evening. I hope he gets back early because I’ve got something I want to ask him. I need to ask both of them really, but I want to get Dick onside first. If he’s in my corner it will make it easier to broach the subject with Shane.

Time to sign off. I’ve got a steamy date with a naked man in a hot bath ostensibly to help ease my congestion, but I’m sure one thing will lead to another. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what the one thing is and where it ends up.

I hate fucking antibiotics, not that I ever have, fucked…oh sod it I can’t be bothered to take poetic licence and run with that statement. You’ll have to make it up yourselves on this occasion. I hate taking antibiotics because, and I’ll be bald here (not that I am bald, I have a good head of hair I do, there’s no comb overs for this boy) I hate antibiotics because inevitably they have an adverse effect on my bowels.

Whenever I take them I anthropologically regress and become no more than an arse hugging a toilet seat, my only language is fluent shit and I am that homoshattien - the missing stink.

I’m at the point where having a plug of peeled ginger inserted into my anus seems appealingly cool in comparison to the fire currently raging in the region. I’m not kidding. It’s hell back there. I wouldn’t dare insert my sparkly bum hole bling. It would become molten steel.

I’m seriously considering (and those of a sensitive disposition may wish to leave now) hiring myself out as a kitchen gadget - a blowtorch to caramelise sugar. I could squat my cute bottom over a crème caramel and have the sugar crust bubbling in next to no time. In fact if you stuck a metal rod up my arse to transmit the heat I could probably bake a potato in record time, only don’t tell Dick. It’ll appeal to his kinky streak and he’ll want to have a go. Neither boyfriend has attempted to play hide the bratwurst lately, they like their meat raw not cooked. Okay I think I’m done being crude now.

I was tempted to abandon the meds only I once read that if you fail to complete a course of antibiotics then the bacteria responsible for your illness become immune to them. If you get ill again they come back bigger, badder and more brutal than ever bringing their relatives with them so even Sigourney Weaver with a Bruce Willis hairdo and Ron Perlman as a sidekick would be hard pressed to eradicate them. I took the last one this morning, so hopefully my guts will settle soon.

I reckon there should be a special clause in the list of contraindications for antibiotics, one especially for gay men who bottom: warning, may seriously disrupt your sex life, may also melt condoms. It gives a whole new meaning to the term
lets
burn some rubber.

On the bright side if we have a power cut we’ll still be okay for a cup of tea because my ring could boil a kettle with no problem. Okay, okay, vulgarity IS over.

Thank you for listening.

So, he said, briskly changing the topic, did I ask Dick whatever I had to ask him and did he come onside? Yes I asked and no he didn’t come onside. It was a fraught discussion, which lead to a fraught few days culminating in a fraught chat in the study yesterday morning. I’ll elaborate, but not now. The bathroom beckons once again.

According to musical folklore June should be busting out all over, presumably on account of it being summer and therefore too hot to wear any clothing. That’s the theory anyway. The reality in my neck of the woods today is that June, poor lass, is bloody freezing and is covering up in warm clothing as opposed to busting out all over. She isn’t the only one.

I was so cold I put the heating on this morning, but only when the dominant ones had gone to work. Shane is one of those people who believe once the legendary phrase ‘British Summertime’ appears on the calendar then all heating goes off and stays off until October at the earliest, even if it snows in between times. I’ll have to hide the leccy bill when it comes in otherwise I’ll end up being interrogated as to why there was an increase in therms over the summer. I don’t want to risk being hogtied and whipped, not by Shane mind you, but you know Dick, any excuse to put his kinky boots on.

Talking about Dick, as oft I do, he’s like a rampant stag at the moment. He’s been busy working on a new client project. The deadline is Monday coming. As per usual, stress and tension are manifesting through his dick, which is permanently taut. He needs reinforced underpants just to prevent it breaking loose and terrorising the nation.

I never thought I’d burst into tears at the prospect of more sex, but honestly it’s become a chore. I’ve taken to carrying a personal alarm so I can send out an alert for Shane to come rescue me should Dick sneak up on me on the stairs, or drop a pencil and ask me to pick it up. I bet you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not, well not much anyway. I love the man to death in a figurative sense, but jeez, he seems intent on literally loving me to death. Talk about being screwed into my coffin.

Leaving aside levity and sex talk. I haven’t had much interest in journaling of late.

There’s been tension between my men and me and I don’t mean sexual tension, but rather an unhappy conflict of wills due to more fallout from the Easter bombshell about me drinking. I suspect it won’t be the last incident. Some things in life are resolved once and for all and some things are like viruses, they constantly re-evolve and have to be challenged again and again in different ways.

Mum has been unwell. She went up to the Freeman hospital in Newcastle a few weeks ago for some new treatment. It’s a last ditch kind of thing, a final offensive you might say. I wanted to go with her, but she said Frank was going, which was only right. All the same I felt a familiar stab of resentment. It was made worse when mum mentioned that Kelly had driven them there. I don’t see why she has to be involved. I mean it’s not like Frank is really even her stepfather, not in any deep sense. He was only married to her mother for a year or so and she grew up without him being around.

I foolishly voiced my resentment, not to my mother, but to the men folk. Shane sharply told me I was a selfish little sod and it was about time I tried to see things from Frank’s perspective. He said I needed to remember I wasn’t the only one facing the prospect of losing her.

Because my mother and I were estranged for so long I want to be there for her now, to make up lost time, but Frank keeps getting in the way, well, that’s how I see it, so Shane’s probably right and I am a selfish sod.