50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (5 page)

“I'm sorry?” he shouts, starting to dance again.

I shrug. “Nothing,” I shout.

The world seems to close around me. Dirk shuts his eyes and starts moving his tall body, swaying his head from side to side in slow circles.

I watch him. I think of Brighton. I think of every time I've seen him and wonder how I can possibly be in love with him this much.

I try to look at him objectively, try to work out one last time what is so fucking brilliant about this guy. The party swirls around me.

Dirk dances in front, oblivious as my eyes moisten. The alcohol has weakened my defences; my spirits are plummeting like a lift with a broken cable. A hand grabs my arm and I turn bleary eyed; it's Claire. She pulls me through to the kitchen.

“Come on you,” she says looking at me with St Bernard eyes. “You need some air!”

We wander through the streets. No moon tonight – only tiny islands of light beneath the street lamps. The noise of the party fades into the distance. Claire hugs my arm, I can feel her shivering.

“There's nothing worse is there?” I say.

“Than what?”

“Than loving the wrong person.”

She hugs my arm a little tighter. “No,” she says, “there isn't.” Her voice is gravelly, cracked.

I frown. I think,
“What's that all about then?”
I wonder if she's in love with John.

She's holding my arm so tightly it almost hurts. “He's stupid! I'd marry you in a second,” she laughs. “I'd
snap
you up.”

I look at her from the corner of my eye. She is turned towards me, she's smiling at me.

“Yeah, well, you'd be disappointed in bed,” I say, trying to head it off.

She shrugs. “My Mum says that that could sort itself out,” she says. “She says that the only thing that's important is loving each other.”

She gives my arm a squeeze.

Internally I groan as I prise her hand from my arm. I turn to look at her. She frowns at me as I take hold of her shoulder.

“I'm afraid baby, your Mum, for once, is talking out of her arse.”

Claire looks as though she might cry. Her bottom lip is sticking out slightly.

“That one
never
sorts itself out!” I say.

She looks at me, wide-eyed.

“Got it?” I say.

Claire nods miserably.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's get back to that party.”

It's a dreadful winter. The rain lashes against the tin roof of the kitchen and from September onwards, we're trapped indoors. Everyone is stir-crazy, bursting with energy they can't get rid of. Laura Ashley closes, Jenny loses her job, decides to take a year out, do the great Australian world tour thing.

She asks me to go with her, but though I am tempted, I can't – our past is too complicated. She asks Claire instead; she only takes two days to decide.

On the third of October, John and I stand in the evening rain and watch Claire's mother drive them, and their backpacks, away. I think of the three years we have been hanging out together, of the drunken parties and shopping trips, of the cups of coffee, the shared smiles, the hugs. Tears slip out mixing with the rain.

John is choked too; he can hardly speak. “The end of an era,” he says dramatically.

Margaret Thatcher introduces the poll tax. Thousands of us march through the town centre shouting but no one seems to be listening.

The rain continues. John and I give up smoking outside; we blow our cigarette smoke into the extractor-fan and hope that the landlady won't smell it.

It's night-time when I drive to work, night-time when I drive home. At lunchtime when I see the half-hearted daylight, it makes me blink like a mole.

I have given up on the bus, standing in the rain is just too depressing and the mysterious, beautiful Patrick, the only reason it might have been worthwhile, never reappeared.

Late October, John is elated. He has a job in Edinburgh and he has doubled his salary overnight. I don't seem to come into the calculation.

I am amazed to be so severely slapped into place – just a mate, someone to send postcards to, but what else could I be?

Amazing to suddenly realise how peripheral we can be to other people's lives. The threads holding me centred in the middle of my own life are stretching, snapping. I start to wobble.

I go to see the doctor. He gives me a prescription for antidepressants – they are the same ones my mother takes. I don't even get it made up.

In November, John starts to remove his stuff from around the house; starts to put it in boxes that slowly fill the hallway.

In December, a week before Christmas he loads up the car, hugs me and drives away.

He says, “Come and visit.”

I smile. I say, “Sure.”

I feel like a jilted lover and I cry again, not for the time we have spent together, but for myself, all alone in a big house in a big town in a big cold world.

The government introduces the first homophobic law for years – books containing homosexual characters can now be removed from libraries across the country.

“History has started going backwards,” says Nick.

I wish he were right, John and the girls would come back.

We march through London shouting, “No clause twenty-eight, Thatcher OUT!”

No one seems to be listening.

The winter drags on.

Strange people come to visit the house, shown around by my gushing landlady. I put a gay-pride poster in the lounge, just to make sure.

In February, Nick and Darren split up. Nick is still to be found in the Burleigh Arms every night, but now the twinkle has gone from his eyes.

Now when I say, “What's the point?” he agrees.

I get postcards from John in Edinburgh, and from the girls in Kenya, then Madagascar, India and Sydney. I line them up along the mantelpiece beneath the gay pride poster.

In March, Julia moves into the house. She brings with her, Gemma – a huge but docile Alsatian.

“Is that your poster?” she asks me.

I tell her it is.

“Oh,” she says.

Her dog craps on the carpet.

When it shits on the stairs, I slip in it.

When it craps on the sofa, I explode.

Julia remains very calm. She says, “I don't suppose Gemma would have done that.”

My hand trembles with the desire to slap her. I say, “Oh it was probably me then.”

Julia makes floral slipcovers for the sofa, to cover the stains. “That'll cheer the place up a bit,” she says.

She's always in the house, always talking drivel to her stupid, shitting dog.

In April, spring arrives and briefly the sun shines through the gaps in the clouds. Suzanne Vega comes to sing at the Corn Exchange; I am in the third row and she sings just to me. It is beautiful.

But by May, spring has turned back to winter and it seems endless. Spring is forgotten, and summer seems to have become just a vague concept.

At work the board of directors sacks my boss. “All of the slacking that has been tolerated around here is over,” the new guy tells me earnestly.

So I stop working eleven hours a day, start working seven and a half.

Thank God for the summer holidays! I drive down to pick Owen up at dawn thinking about all of this. Thinking,
“Escape!”

It's not actually raining but heavy clouds are forming in the east.

At seven a.m., we are loading his stuff into my car, and by nine-thirty we are in Calais trying to get used to driving the wrong way around roundabouts. And as we drive south it all changes, just like it used to when we were kids.

Holidays abroad were the only time when our mother ever seemed to relax. Sure she still complained, said that camping was no holiday for a mother, but she stopped bitching, she actually laughed from time to time.

The clouds thin and then vanish somewhere near Lyon.

I doze as Owen thunders down the French
autoroute
. Every time we pass a sign, move from one
department
to the next, he wakes me, he cheers.

At eight p.m., numbed by absurd amounts of driving, we roll into Aix en Provence. It is hot, thirty-five degrees, or so my car thermometer tells me – my back is stuck to the seat with sweat.

We leave the car, complete with blue tarpaulined roof rack, in the leafy shadow of the plane trees. It's a “no parking” zone but this is France.

“Such a chic street, such a tatty tarp,”
I think.

We drink cold beer in Les Deux Garçons. We see everyone smoking; they all look relaxed, apparently unworried by lung cancer.

Owen says, “People's body language is so different when it's hot.”

“More open,” I agree.

The waiter brings us a little plate of olives.

I say, “Why on
Earth
do we live in England?”

Owen laughs. “Because we're English?” he says. “Bad luck eh?”

I sip at my beer. “Maybe that's not reason enough?” I say.

Owen shrugs. “Then move.”

It takes me until December to organise it all – selling the car, storing my stuff – but I plough my way through it all like a man obsessed, scared that if I think too long about it, I'll change my mind.

I leave my keys with Julia as I go, and as I pull them from my key ring I realise that there will be none left and hand her the ring as well.

The lack of keys makes me feel destitute and alone.

She stands on the doorstep with Gemma. She says, “We'll miss you.” She looks genuine, but she doesn't offer to drive me to the bus station.

I adjust my rucksack and say, “Thanks.” It's the best I can manage.

The walk to the bus depot takes me past the end of Andrew's house, sweet memories of the first time ever. The bus out takes me past the Burleigh Arms and on past Dirk's old place.

I see him on the grainy monitor. I am sitting at the bar and, with everyone else, I look up when I hear the buzzer. The barman looks too, buzzes him in. There is something cocky, self-assured about the way he walks in, the way he pushes through the crowd – some indefinable air of everything that I hate, everything I am attracted to. I can tell, from a glance, that he's cocky, calm, collected.

He thrusts a banknote towards the barman, a lazy smile across his lips. I know that he's not boyfriend material, but still I am attracted – he's
very
French. As he waits for his drink, he scans the bar. He sees me looking at him and grins.

I move to the pool table and watch some guys playing badly. The game takes forever – the balls roll around, scrupulously avoiding the pockets. I look up and he's opposite, brown eyes looking straight at me.

He's smiling, showing white teeth and dimples, smile creases around his eyes. I could never resist a smile but when I smile back he laughs and turns away.

I walk back to the bar, swig my beer quickly and push through the crowd to the door.

It's a hot July evening and a queue of traffic is edging past the bar as I set off towards the Blue Boy.

On the door La Mamma – a terrifying fifty year old with green glitter eyeliner – extracts fifty francs from me and lets me in. The music, the smoke, the people, it all whacks me in the face. No need for a smoke machine in France – in the gay bars
everyone
smokes. In the solitary act of cruising, smoking occupies a hand during those
hours of watching, waiting, hoping.

Behind the bar, four thin-camp-girly barmen are serving fast, dancing around each other. The air-conditioning can't keep up with the summer temperatures. I pull another fifty francs from my pocket and wave it, order beer.

As I proffer the banknote, a smooth voice says, “Non, c'est moi.”

It's him, still smiling. “Frederic,” he says, then to the barman, “Deux bières s'il vous plaît.”

“You don't mind?” he asks me.

I smile.
How could I?

We find a corner. We drink our beers, run through the basic introductory chat. He lives in Paris, he's here on holiday.

My heart flutters with disappointment; whatever this is it won't last.

He loves English men, he tells me.

My mind and instinct do battle – my dick doesn't care about long or short-term relationships.

Frederic strokes my leg, and as the balls fill, the mind empties.

“Shall I get another beer?” he asks. “Or …” He pauses. “Shall we go to your place?”

I choke on my beer.

“You want to,” he says.

He's right – it is exactly what I want to do. I look around the bar to check that no one has seen this – not that I really know anyone yet anyway – then I give him my address. He has a Harley, he will follow.

At home I frantically thrust dirty washing into the laundry basket, but before I can make any impact he's here, the same face staring into another black and white monitor. I buzz him up and make one last desperate attempt at tidying – I straighten the bedcovers.

He closes the door, pulls off his motorcycle jacket and his t-shirt. “It's so hot,” he says.

His chest is covered in swirls of dark hair.

I pull two beers from the tiny refrigerator and we sit on the sofa. Frederic seems relaxed; he undoes his belt, opens the buttons and starts to stroke himself. We sit on the sofa, we roll together and we kiss. His mouth is deep and wet and warm. His lips seem too soft, and I wonder briefly if he has silicon implants.

We have sex – it's wild. We throw each other around the bedroom. I wonder if all French men are like this. It's more like aerobics than sex, and I feel as though none of this has anything to do with me, as though this is just a part I am playing in a cheap porn film.

We ring the changes, do everything on my basic repertoire and some more, then we both come together in a long pumping orgasm. He kisses me, then we share his last cigarette, pulled from the pocket of his discarded jeans.

“Stay the night,” I say.