Call Me (7 page)

Just one whiff of indoors and I knew there were mouse turds in the pantry. Tea was served in Minton in a dining-room cluttered with Queen Anne chairs and gilt frames. The decor swayed between vulgarity and piss elegance. There was a ridiculous time travel feeling to the place. Mok was dying for a lick of my arse up against the Fleur-de-lis flocking. In his head he was fine-tuning for my ears the indecent proposal he'd made so many times.

When I'd had two sips of tea and a custard cream, he led me up a staircase, walls covered with photographs by a fancy French photographer who'd died of the big disease with a tiny name. Waterfalls, rivers, lakes—at dusk or dawn. Stilled waters. A hesitation on the first floor landing; from the window the cockney's shadow could be seen hosing down a wall.

“Maybe I should explain the situation here. My friend.”

“The cockney.”

“Yes, Eric. Well, we are
not
lovers.
Not
a couple,
not
together—though we
were
a long time ago. He's my housekeeper, makes things tick along nicely, keeps things shipshape. Keeps trouble at bay.”

I was more intrigued at the mention of “trouble”.

“We met over thirty years ago when it wasn't legal, or lethal. You know. Well, although young, fancying a bit, I didn't mind paying. Boys were dirt cheap then. I was his first punter and he was my first rent-boy.”

His eyes sparkled like there was proposition in the air and a condom on the bedside table. I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours. To avoid smirking I looked away at undergarments of mythic proportions on a clothes line next-door. Mok came from another time, a time when servants blackmailed having overheard a conversation, read a discarded letter, or found beneath a pillow a strand of young, full-coloured hair.

The master bedroom was dominated by a four poster
Antiques Roadshow
would happily give a couple of minutes to. Shutting all three sets of curtains his mother had chosen in happier times (when England was a green and pleasant land), he eyed me with practised speculation:
Can I get him to do it?
The copulating rhythm of the universe began to pound in that room which had the not unfamiliar stink of a used booth in a Times Square porno emporium. He wanted a nice slow quickie as he turned the key in the door.

“I do hope you're going to kill me,” I said, at a volume just above a schoolboy's seductive whisper.

He turned to me and smiled. Expensive dentistry seemed to glow in the dark. Switching on a bedside table lamp which instantly started to burn dust, he winked me toward a bookcase crammed with every kind of queer shit.

A sperm-fest of treasure which is not, according to the Obscene Publications Act (1956), supposed to sail so readily through letter-boxes all over the UK—hardcore. Thank heavens for foreign magazines.
Suck, Hard, Jock, Inches, Torso, Blue Boy, Chicos, Rump, Skinflicks, Honcho, Playguy
and many many more lined the shelves. Pretty boys, not so pretty boys and muscle men with enormous knockers and shaved butt-holes. How many subscription forms had this man filled out in his time? A time that ranged from the birth of the posing pouch to the fruits of the Regulation catalogue.
Body Beautiful
(Studies in Masculine Art) 35ȼ, 2/6 and
Adonis
(The Art Magazine of Male Physique) 35ȼ, 2/6, lay in two neat piles, exposing frayed spines.

On the walls were prints of paintings from the late-nineteenth century ‘aesthetic' school. The subjects: young working class men by water, ready for action. Rowdy crews of East End lads, stripped for the plunge. Boys being boys in the hot summer months, full of fun, some with mouths parted voicelessly. Boys being boys in the delicious hot summer months, golden skinned, slender and tight. Idyllic and innocent of compulsive workouts, weights and piercings, joyfully splashing, wet. Mates grinning spontaneously, looking into each other's eyes, happy in their warm congregations, not a designer label or naff tattoo on them. Cool after the water but warming nicely in the sun, costumes clinging to every curve and bulge. Sun kissed—and wanked over by a ‘mountain bikist' in South Harrow.

What a business it must have been to sustain that (estimated) three-mags-one-video-a-week handjob habit of his. The expense of it all. He probably also logged on to all the websites flogging big dick holograms.

He had a Dunkirk spirit when it came to orgasms, a real fighting determination to conquer cocks. I wondered how many buckets of spunk had soaked him one way or another over the years. They say spunk's good for the skin, it hadn't worked for that one. Bet he got busy with tit clamps, bottle of poppers and a latex real feel dildo the size of a baby-doll up his arse every once in a while. I know about men like him and their cheques don't bounce.

As I flicked through a vintage copy of
Vulcan,
a certain
Randy Ray
in a wet teeshirt and little else, spreadeagled over a motorbike, almost jumped off the page at me. Ray had said he'd done a couple of wank mags when he first hit London. I hadn't believed him, but the poppable pimples on his forehead and bum, undisguised with make-up, were so Ray. I suppose I went all quiet.

Mok was busy with the video he'd chosen in anticipation of another lovely wank and final suck off. Some pornographic slapstick called
The Hollywood Kid
starring Rock Hardon. America's clean-limbed youth all coming alive with a press of the
PLAY
button.

A sizeable penis shot a wad of liquid genetics over a blond boy's butt in the slow motion technique engineers have worked so hard to perfect throughout the twentieth century; soundtracked with homosexy oinks and grunts laid over a 130 bpm tune. Definitely too much for James Ferman and his colleagues at the British Board of Film Classification.

“Now, this is a
really really
lovely piece of action. Double plus good!” said Mok, sitting on the bed.

“Hey!” he whispered, head tilted coquettishly, patting the bedspread only to send dog hair flying into the air. “Sit next to me. Let's pretend we're in some filthy little cinema.”

He stared through the tv, hoping I'd soon be requiring relief. My penis, skin and capillary plus erectile tissue just like any other, was the one penis in this world he was desperate to have banging the phlegm beyond his tonsils.

An erect penis has the smooth, tight skin of a child. An erect penis has the look of an astronaut, ready to venture forth where no man has ever been … or not for a while anyhow. It implies speed, power, transience. When limp the flaccid penis folds back, turns in upon itself, trailing off (sighing). Wrinkly and lined, like a fingerprint.

When I sat next to Mok he smiled like he'd just been found not guilty on sixteen separate charges, displaying teeth, tongue and tonsils with absolutely no dental self-consciousness, furry candida thriving.

“What do you like best: anal, oral or straight penetration?” he asked with the banality that can only come from repeated over-exposure. I felt his breath on my face as the credits of fake names rolled. Only the very largest financial incentive might have made me get close, laughing at the whole situation as he sucked me off on arthritic knees. As I was thinking this, I saw the fountain pen, cheque card and open cheque book on top of the tv. He winked a zip eye. This strategy must have turned many a fantasy into an affordable (gettable) reality.

Explicit camerawork: four eyes watched sweat ooze from teenage pores as the pain of lost virginity was faked.

Mok was desperate for me to make the first move. Perhaps sensing that I'd happily bludgeon him to death with the baseball bat (a miniature version of a Louisville Slugger) kept under his bed for other purposes, he sat on his hands. I'm sure those stubby fingers wanted to make an inventory of my vertebrae. And I'm sure that beside his miniature baseball bat was a plastic bag containing Enlargo Cream, Stop & Erecta Cream, Stud Delay & Action Spray and a Mr Perfection strap-on double dong. Plus a Jumbo dildo, a Rambo Dildo, and—
a full eight inches of real-feel latex shaped and veined just like the real thang to bend and rotate inside you!
—a shiny new Squirmy Rooter.

“Well, Mr Mok, the clock's ticking by. It's time for you to truly amaze me. I want you to shock me, make me wonder. Time to make an imaginative indecent proposal.”

He looked disappointed and challenged. Normally he'd have been wearing a pubic moustache by that point.

“Okay, Bike Boy, I have just the thing, something you'll remember for the rest of your life.”

Leaving his pornography heaven we climbed two flights of stairs to an attic, followed by an alsatian who stared at me with old brown eyes.

“You let yourself in, I'll just go and get myself ready.”

*   *   *

There was a long, narrow room behind that heavy torture chamber door. The room was like a Tudor hall. I took the initiative of lighting all three candelabra. Gilt chairs with red velvet seats waited, one sized for Mok's derrière.

“This is Pogo,” he whispered, hugging a large white cat to his chins. “Always up and down on things. That's Puddles,” he said kicking the alsatian, which tore down three flights of stairs on nails in need of clipping.

He took a bottle of poppers out of his white leather jock strap, the only item of clothing he was now wearing.

“It would so excite me if you lowered your shorts and played with yourself a bit,” he said unscrewing the little brown bottle.

Sitting his fat arse down with deacon-like poise, he looked at me pleadingly, taking four deep sniffs.

“Oh, go on. Be a love and drop 'em like a naughty good boy. Let's get a look,” he said, stroking his crotch. “Show us your knob.”

A proposal lacking erection etiquette, I thought.

He played three French, seventeenth century pieces on three different-sized harps. As his penis hardened, he tiptoed his fingers in show-offy ripples, head and shoulders rashing up. The cat sat on my lap purring. Of course I clapped when he'd finished his showpiece, but that frightened dear Pogo, whose needle-sharp claws lanced into me in his hurry to escape.

Then things began to fizzle. The ball was definitely in my court and I wasn't in the mode to play. The blank space in the cheque book was at my command, but I wasn't ready to enter that arena. Mok sensed I wanted to get the fuck out of there and he admitted defeat graciously.

“Listen, Bike Boy, give me a tinkle one day soon and maybe we can come to, you know, some sort of arrangement. I like you very much. I do.” What he wanted was a lick of my arse, warm cum down his throat. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

*   *   *

The
CHORD MEMORY
had three separate banks used to store different accompaniments. I used this facility because it was fun, changing chord sequences in a variety of orders. This allowed me to record a verse and chorus in different banks then chain them in the desired order for playback.

Up to eight steps could be programmed. A synthesised voice announced the order of the programmed banks each time a
BANK
button was pressed. It was very well behaved.

*   *   *

There are lots of other people in this world besides Mr Right. Jack had been sent, had sent himself—to my box number. To me.

I manoevered from front door to bedroom without a word. There we both lay, on his bed, almost identical. Pleading eyes across the pillow wandered over my face and chest. There we both lay, on his bed, both tall, both slim, both smooth, both dark, each with a knee dragged up sideways, facing each other, icily regular. Peaceful, pale flesh on his bed, warm and real and ready. Curtains and windows flung wide open.

When I arrived appearances had it that he was sanding down an old chair but there was no dust on the backs of his hands, no motes in the sunbeams breaking through the bamboo cane blinds. It was all a part of his tough-boy act. His cropped hair, mashed up khaki shorts and tiny black vest too. But once in bed he did that gentle change-around which tough-boys so often do. Slowly unfolding, revealing a sensitive side needing a good fuck.

Having stared at the ceiling as if scared in the minute before he came, he said “Wow!” as the last drop of ejaculate splashed high upon his chest, then smiled too much as I withdrew, whipping off the slimy, shit-free condom to warm his deflating penis with what he'd been waiting for.

After coughing a bit he said, “That's better.” Our sperm, dispersed all over him, dried on skin the colour of frosted glass, cool to the touch. I felt the breeze from the open window.

“You're
cute,
” he said.

I felt nothing but the breeze.

“You're very cute,” he said. I hate that. If there's one thing I'm not, it's
cute.

He slept soundly, lying still and content. I felt left out. He'd had a happy orgasm and all I'd done was shoot my load to complete the operation. How very trusting he was, I thought, fast asleep with a stranger. How calm he looked after efficient sex.

I pulled the duvet over him. It felt like an unpaid task, so I removed it again before he felt either the warmth or the coldness of sudden loss.

My dick had been inside him but he didn't know my name. Didn't know that his was the first body I'd slept with in the three years since Ray. He probably thought I was just one of the Stepford Boyz. It was out of character to be so random, so easy to be had. He'd kissed every inch of my body, nibbled here and there, dousing me with his saliva. All he'd done was touch my outsides, the skin stretched over the grotesque mess of me. He hadn't made me smile. Ray used to put his arms around me and the warmth was magnificent. Our lovemaking was so much sweeter with the prospect of his death just around the corner. Jack wasn't face-down into a pillow—tied down—but he could have been. No, he was turned towards me sideways, free—in a delicacy of exposure. Pale flesh on the bed. Real and beautiful, trusting. It's a short leap from kissing to killing.