London Triptych (18 page)

1954

Despite my awful experience
in the toilet, and my resolution never to step inside such a place ever again, today I took a trip to a cottage in Catherine Street, famed for its gloryhole, I’m reliably informed by Gore. He told me that regulars call it Cathy’s for short and arrange to meet one another there as if it were a gentleman’s club, which I suppose in a way it is. It’s just off Aldwych. I’d actually used it countless times when I worked near there, but never imagined anything like that went on there. I felt light-headed with nerves as I approached, anticipation and fear churning my stomach over. I almost didn’t go in, so strong was the memory of my last attempt.

It was empty, apart from one stall that was occupied. I walked into the neighbouring stall and closed the door. I lowered the seat and sat down, my head floating somewhere too high above my body. I cast a glance at the wall. About one third of the way up there was a hole the diameter of a tea mug, tucked behind the roll of toilet paper hanging from a bit of wire, through which I could make out part of a hairy leg. My heart began to beat faster. I leant forward, my gaze travelling up the leg, until, framed by the sweating rim of the hole, I viewed a hand clutching an erect penis, gently rubbing it up and down. My mouth ran dry. I sat upright, staring ahead at the back of the door, wondering what the protocol might be in such a situation. Before I had decided what to do next, the penis began emerging from the brickwork, like something growing from the wall. There, like a coat hook, protruding from the wall. Almost comical. Without a thought, I reached out and touched it, wrapped my cold hand around its warm solidity. It felt good. I could feel it swell and stiffen in my grasp. I lowered myself onto my knees and worshipped what I have so long believed I could live without: pleasure. I found pleasure, my pleasure, and it lifted my heart from the floor of that urine-stinking cubicle and sent it soaring past the clouds. There is no shame, not at first, because there is no identity. A mouth, a cock. Here, and now, those body parts connect in such a connectionless way that there can be but one response, that of the body itself, a body pleasuring another body, heeding its call. That is all, and that is glorious—until the guilt appears, the sense that pleasure should not be this easy that hit me as I rose and fastened my trousers, the taste of him still on my tongue. There is a price, and I don’t know I’ve paid it until I slink out of there, checking the knees of my trousers beforehand for dust, and hail a cab to take me straight home. This time, I can’t even meet the cabbie’s gaze in the rear-view mirror as I give him my address.

But still, even through the shame breaks this insolent feeling of joy. I did it. Wait till I tell Gore.

Something unbelievable has happened. I sucked Gore’s cock. Even to write those words excites me. We were working as usual. I was sketching away, and Gore was chatting about what he’d been up to in some cottage with a brickie, when I suddenly said, “I’ve been doing a bit of that myself, lately.”

Gore looked over at me and laughed in disbelief. Emboldened, I confessed that I had been visiting Cathy’s for the past couple of days, sometimes several times a day. It felt as if I was making it up, but I wasn’t. It’s the truth. Since that first time, I had found myself drawn back again and again, each visit making me hungrier than before.

“You must be getting pretty good at it,” he said with a grin, and before I knew it I had answered back, equally bold, “I’ll show you if you like.” My heart was racing, but my desire now dictated. He looked as startled by my boldness as I felt.

“All right, then,” he smirked.

I put down my drawing and by the time I had sidled over to him he was semi-hard, and I took off my glasses and took him in my mouth. It quivered and flexed. I had dreamed of this moment. I savoured the taste and the feel of it. I breathed in the dark smell of it. I pressed my forehead against his warm, smooth belly. He groaned and the sound was like a reward to me. I didn’t remove my mouth until I had swallowed every drop.

“How was that?” I asked, wiping my mouth on the back of my right hand.

“Not bad at all,” he said, wiping the tip of his cock with his finger and sucking on it.

I replaced my spectacles and sidled back and resumed my drawing and no more was said of it. After he had gone, I masturbated, recalling the taste and the shape of him, hardly able to believe what had occurred. Afterward, I panicked, wondering if I would ever see him again. A stupid thought, and one that took two generous gin and tonics before its malignancy dissolved.

1998

A friend of yours
ran a car hire company near Waterloo Station, buying cars in Holland occasionally and paying friends to fly over and drive them back, because they were cheaper to buy out there, you told me. So we flew over to Amsterdam, you and I. One bright April evening, 1996. (Did I really know you for so short a time? Why does time solidify so easily in the chambers of the heart, taking on the density of stone?) We took a train to Luton Airport, and within two hours we were in the city. You knew Amsterdam well, having lived there for a couple of years. You led me to the city’s vivid night-time heart through arteries of sound and light; you found us a room above a bar, a tiny room with a tiny bed. A stained mattress and a pile of sheets folded upon it. We had to make our own bed. And lie in it.

We went out, smoked a few joints, had some food, cruised a few of the bars. At the Blue Boy there was an amateur strip competition and the prize was a bottle of champagne. You entered, and as you climbed up onto the tiny stage in the corner some tacky disco tune burst into life. I laughed and you started to move. You were wearing, I remember, a tight black cap-sleeved T-shirt and faded jeans. And bit by bit you revealed your perfect body. The champagne was yours, and after downing it we went somewhere else and you bought a balloon filled with nitrous oxide from behind the bar, and we inhaled it, talking in squeaks and laughing, getting high. We scored some ecstasy. We played around in a few of the dark rooms. You dared me to take a turn in the sling that hung from four chains in the middle of the playroom. The room was full of men having sex, but no one as yet was in the sling. I rose to the challenge and climbed in, already naked. Slowly, men gathered around and watched you fuck me. One after another they pushed their cocks into my mouth, pinched on my nipples, caressed me. I was drowning in a sea of touch. You withdrew and someone else stepped up and pushed into me, then another, and another. Someone—you?—began working me with your fingers. The drugs made everything suddenly unreal. I submitted to the fiction of what was happening. Pain intensified and twisted itself into pleasure, turning back into pain and then exploding into fireworks of intensity that held me aloft in their momentary bursts. I felt myself turn into something animal as I moved beyond thought and into the white heat of pure sensation, my body saturating my capacity for reason, my groans feral and untamed. I floated on a cloud of steaming flesh, lost to everything but that moment of blissful and precarious existence, suspended on your forearm.

Eventually we went back to that tiny, tiny room with that tiny, tiny bed and fucked into another dimension.

Sometimes, when the body is taken, taken elsewhere, by someone else’s body, sometimes it can create a sense of euphoria so strong that the mouth ceases to utter anything approaching sense. The words
I love you
, spoken at such a moment, can be fatal. Perhaps this is a law of physics, I don’t know. All I know is that I said it, I moaned it, I rolled it around my mouth like candy-sugar and it tasted just as sweet. I gasped it, I whispered it, till tears stung my eyes, as your body pressed into mine with the force of a miracle. I actually felt I was being taken possession of, and I was happy to belong to you. I didn’t stand a fucking chance.

I lay beside you for the very last time, deliberately staying awake so I could watch you sleep, watch that face without fear of being caught staring. It was serene. And so was I. I spooned up next to you and slept with your cock’s warm fragility in my hand. I had a dream that I was in my bed back at home in King’s Cross, asleep on my front. In the dream, I am woken by the sounds of someone breaking into the flat, and, though I am suddenly wide awake in the dream, I don’t move. I can hear heavy footsteps stomping across the kitchen floor toward my bedroom door, which is directly behind me. The door handle turns and still I don’t move. Somehow I know that I am about to die, and somehow I welcome it with a quiet and paralysing resignation.

The following morning, red-eyed and thin-skinned, we sat and had coffee before getting on the train to reach the town from where we were to pick up the cars. I can’t even remember the town’s name. The woman serving us had cropped red hair, thickly kohl-rimmed eyes, a face as cracked as arid earth, teeth like a horse. We were the only customers, and as she made our coffees, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, she said, “You don’t mind this, do you?”—gesturing to the cigarette, from which hung a lobe of ash. Her voice was a deep unfiltered rasp. We shook our heads. “These Americans, they moan about the cigarettes. I say, why come to Amsterdam if you don’t like the smoke?”

We laughed. Exchanged a glance.

“And these English girls, they speak like little girls, in squeaky baby voices.” She squeaked away, her mouth turned down in mockery, her eyes turned up. The ash dropped, missing one of the coffee cups by the force of my will. She handed us the coffees and proceeded to entertain us with her impersonations of tourists of all nationalities, bemoaning the crowding of her home town. We were both glad of this distraction, I think.

“It’s all the year round now. Used to be, there was the season, and then peace. But now, it never ends.” She crushed her cigarette out in a large metal ashtray with a violence that matched her bitter mood. We agreed that London was the same. I saw a woman when I first arrived in London wearing a badge that said “I Am Not a Tourist.” Cities change. They are malleable. That’s why they are cities. The energy comes from the people, like oxygen travelling through blood.

She invited us to have a shot of some liqueur, some Dutch speciality. She poured out three measures of the thick liquid and we necked it. You rolled a joint and we left Lotte Lenya to her day.

We sat at a bus stop near the train station, smoking the joint, a cramped silence between us. I don’t think either of us knew where to begin, or, even if we did, where it would take us. The sun was shining, and a hurdy-gurdy was playing and the trams slid past each other in graceful choreography. The canal rustled by at our feet. I looked at you and knew that there was no way I could repeat the words
I love you
without the security of last night’s oblivion. But I wish now that I had. With what was about to happen, I wish I had, for there was, I now realize, nothing to lose.

We got off the train at some small, flat, regulated town, trees in straight lines along geometric streets free of litter. You had all the information, all the documentation. You’d done this trip before. I never asked who with. I just followed you as you strode into the car showroom, sat while you talked to someone, signed my name where you told me to, took the keys you held out to me, got in the car and started the engine. You got in the other car and drove off. I followed you. I’ve already told the police all of this. I have no more details than this. I’m sorry. I was stoned. I was in love. I don’t remember much. I do remember that the only CD in my car was R.E.M.’s
Out of Time
. I listened to it over and over during that long drive, following your car as if I were playing a video game.
Trying to keep an eye on you
. Like a hurt, lost, and blind poor fool. We stopped by the side of the road a couple of times and smoked some more weed. What can I say? It was a smooth, enjoyable, uneventful drive. The motorway sped beneath us, all the way through Holland and France, like huge grey wings bearing us along. I nearly lost you once or twice, nearly killed myself overtaking a long vehicle in order to keep your tail lights in sight, trying to keep an eye on you. But by four o’clock, I think it was, we arrived at Calais. We drove onto the ferry. We ate a forgettable meal. I do remember how happy I was, how fucking happy I felt. Happy as a lunatic. I even entertained the thought that you might be falling in love with me.

At Dover, we drove off the ferry. We had been smoking since about eight that morning. It was now about eight o’clock at night. The white cliffs looked like the surface of the moon, pocked with blue shadows. I think back to that moment, that moment at Dover when I last saw you, and I wish I could remember the last thing you said to me. It was probably something inane like, “See you back in London.” Something like that. Something utterly forgettable. I know it can’t have been anything worth remembering, otherwise I would have, but I wish I could remember nonetheless. I think I might find comfort in it, sucking on the words as a man dying of thirst might suck on a wet rag.

I’ve had time to think about it all. But there isn’t enough time to make sense of any of it. There’ll never be enough time to make sense of any of it. Did you know? Did you receive a call as we left Dover telling you the police were on to us? Did you drive off deliberately without warning me? Or did I simply lose you? Tiredness was beginning to set in at this stage. All I remember is losing sight of the taillights and putting my foot down to try and catch up with your car. Then suddenly there were police sirens behind me and flashing lights in the rear-view mirror, the car’s interior lighting up as they caught up with me, the headlights in the mirror momentarily blinding me. Of course I pulled over—I had no idea the car was packed with the finest cannabis money can buy. I thought I’d get a caution or a speeding fine at the most. So what if I had lost you? I knew the way to London, knew where we were going. So I wound down the window. Did you drive off so that only I would get caught? Did you save your own skin? Did you care at all what happened to me? Have you ever thought about that night, about my fate since last you saw me? I’ll never have answers, and I’m sick to death of the questions, but they can still keep me awake all night.

I guess the police could tell straight away that I was completely mashed. Eyes albino-pink like a lab rat. And the fact that I had so little information about anything relating to the trip must have added to their suspicion. Moreover, my nervousness at my own lack of information must have made it look like I was hiding something. I must have appeared guilty as sin. I retrace those few minutes before they opened the boot, and I find there the logic that makes it all fall into place. Why did I never mention you, never try and phone you to get you to explain? I still have no answers other than the ones that tear and destroy, and I cannot live with those. I got two years. I’ve had eighteen months to map out the geography that led me here. And still I wish someone would spell it out for me. Still I wish I knew I’d see your face again. Perhaps greater strength lies in the broken places. As I said, this is an old story. I’m not sure what it means, but it comes nonetheless, this stream of words. With its emergence begins the long journey of forgetting you.