London Triptych (11 page)

1998

For almost the next
ten years, this was my life, this pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. The names changed, but the patterns remained the same. Lilli ended up in a mental hospital for a while before eventually moving back home to Newcastle to live with her mother. One night Edward and I had arranged to go round to her place after a club, only to find her drug-fucked and lost, staggering around with bare feet, and leaving bloody footprints everywhere from treading on broken glass in the kitchen. She wasn’t even aware of the pain. I went to visit her in hospital only once, and she was unrecognizable. Devoid of make-up, devoid of life, pale as ash, and silent, so silent, where once laughter and joy had reigned. She looked like a little girl, as fragile as a child, skinless and lost. When I said hello and asked how she was, she said nothing. I put the flowers and magazines I’d brought on the bed, but she didn’t look at them. She was elsewhere. Somewhere unreachable, somewhere off the map. Somewhere lost to any language. I watched her vacant face flicker with confusion, and I thought of all the times we had danced together across this city’s skyline, striding with the purpose of gods; of all the nights lost to that wild intense joy we found and threw about us like robbers laughing in a snow of banknotes. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hold her and tell her it would all be all right. Instead I sat in that silence, installed myself into its comfort, and simply held her hand as she stared into space, enraptured by something she no longer wished, or was able, to share.

That was the last time I ever saw her. A week later she moved back home.

Not long after, Edward got a real job, working for an art gallery in the West End, and started partying with another, richer crowd. I hardly ever saw him, just the odd postcard from some far-flung place. I hung out with other whores who would come and go, staying around just long enough to earn the money to take them elsewhere. But I had no real friends. I’m sure the only people that have missed me while I’ve been inside are my clients.

Do you miss me? I wonder.

I’d grown up feeling invisible, making myself invisible by every means possible. I had wanted to remove myself, to become someone else. Sex became a way of avoiding a great many things. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t want to recognize myself. I wore it like a badge, or a medal, this desire. I heightened it, and cheapened it, and worked it like a slave. I wore men’s names like scalps around an Indian’s waist. There was no victory because there was no challenge. It was my path of least resistance. I thought I wanted half the things I have forgotten even doing. Even the brutal sex I’ve experienced in here has been a welcome form of attention. I can pretend I am wanted. I can imagine that it’s me they want and not some quick relief. Perhaps that’s what I’ve always done, imagining a particularity in another’s desire for me when in truth anyone would have sufficed. Perhaps that’s what I did with you. To accept that would be the hardest lesson, but perhaps that is exactly what I am supposed to learn from all this.

The day before we met, I saw a regular client, an Irishman, the owner of a record shop outside Dublin. Once a month he travelled over to buy stock, and usually gave me a call. He was younger than the majority of the men who hired me, not bad-looking. One of the few I enjoyed. For that reason, it was much harder to differentiate between work and pleasure. It was with mixed feelings that I went to visit him at his hotel in Piccadilly. The previous time I’d seen him, he’d suggested flying me over to Dublin for a weekend, paying not only for the flight but my time. Although I’d agreed, I’d known that I would probably have gone even if he weren’t paying, and that made me uncomfortable. I’d never considered that I might be lonely. Not that anything emotional was involved, at least not on my part. That never happened. But I knew that my curiosity alone would take me. Sometimes, my curiosity knows no bounds.

We went to his hotel. I knew it well. In the same hotel I would often meet another client, an older man, a married Scottish businessman who once showed me a snapshot from his wallet of the wife and kids, just after peeling off the rectal examination gloves he had worn while his fingers worked the lubricated edges of my arsehole. A polite man, who always began the session taking Polaroids of my arse before asking, “May I insert a finger?” his voice tentative and uncertain. The Irish record shop owner had no such kink, it was straight down to fucking, first me him, then him me. I wondered where my life was going, not knowing that, a week later, an answer would present itself in the shape of you.

(But what kind of answer was that?)

The first time we met was by daylight, though it always feels like night when I think of you. It was a freakishly sunny day in late January when you appeared. 1996. I had been doing videos on a regular basis over the past couple of years for a man in Clapham named Harry. Harry wanted me to “recruit some new models,” as he called it. So he placed an ad in the gay press, using my phone number as the contact. My job was to screen out the uglies, to pan for gold. You came to me that way, my love, a glint in the silt. I’d get them to strip off and pose for a Polaroid. Of course, I had sex with most of the guys who came over. I’d say something like, “How would you feel about posing with a hard-on?” And that was that.

I opened the door to let you in, and you were every bit as sexy as you had sounded on the phone. Tall and dark. Tight white T-shirt and turned-up Levis, black leather jacket. I couldn’t wait to see you naked. And when you took off your jacket I knew then, I think, that this was dangerous. Nice arms. Nice tattoos. I itched to taste your sweat. Such a pull, such a wrench, such a light-headed, dry-mouthed need to touch another. I thought that that had died in me, that thrill, that excitement. I made us some coffee and talked about the modelling. You were new to the game, but showed no nerves when it came to shedding your clothes so I could take the obligatory snapshot for Harry. You were more beautiful unclothed than I’d imagined.

After I had taken the picture, you sat down, still naked, on the floor by the window, where your clothes lay in a pile, and rummaged in your jacket for a cigarette, and said, after lighting it and exhaling the first lungful, “So, how did you get into this game?”

I was enjoying the excuse to look at you that talking allowed. You asked if I had any pictures from the porn modelling I had done, and when I said yes, you asked to see them. I went and fetched them from the bedroom, these pictures I had never shown anyone before. We’d been talking for about half an hour before you commented on how strange it felt, this situation of you being naked with me fully clothed.

“I’ll take mine off too, if it’ll even things out,” I offered.

“I don’t know about evening things out, but I’d sure like that.”

I shed my clothes, and you asked if I had any grass. I sat there naked at the kitchen table, rolling a joint. When I looked up, you were smiling at me, a smile so bright it was as if you’d eaten stars.

“What?” I questioned, suddenly paranoid.

“Nothing,” you replied, and I mirrored your smile.

I thought I knew all there was to know about sex, but I’d never experienced before that dissolving of skin till nothing exists but a network of sensations that glow and sparkle, turning you inside out and back again, somersaulting rapids of touch and taste that you never want to end. Never knew this blending of selves, this fading into you. This cannibal, animal hunger and joy.

By the time you left, a couple of hours later, something had happened that had never happened before. I’d found myself thinking, I’d really like to see this man again. But before I’d had time to ask for a phone number, you had said goodbye, kissed me, and gone, off into the drab evening, which began working its insipid way through the windows. You’d been in the flat for hours. We’d chatted before, during, and after sex, and it had all actually made sense, and been funny, and felt good. I didn’t want you to leave. And this was unheard of in my experience. With you it felt like meeting an old friend, someone I hadn’t seen for years. Someone I was so glad to see because not only do we share a perfect familiarity already, but we have so much to tell each other, we could spend a lifetime recounting all those things we’ve done since we last met. And still it wouldn’t be enough time. With you, my spirit danced. A face and a body I could never tire of looking at, and a soul it seemed I could never tire of exploring. We laughed like children and tore the world apart. Because of you, I am beautiful. Because of you, my body is a possibility. My body is a gift. My flesh reconstituted in your hands, your mouth.

After your departure, my phone rang and I was called out to a regular client in Earl’s Court, a man who liked to be scrubbed all over his body with wire wool. I quickly dressed and left.

1894

I feel unsettled after
spending this last weekend with Oscar. He invited me to Paris and arranged it with Taylor for me to go. I’ve never before left London, let alone the country, and it was the most bizarre experience of my life so far. Away from London, and in the thick of such a strange tongue, my life became more and more peculiar, took on more and more bizarre patterns. What a world I’ve been born into. To think that there are places and people and languages beyond anything I could ever imagine. It makes you want to make the most of what you have.

He took care of me in a way no one ever has before. I’d been so used to looking after myself that I was a bit suspicious at first, wondering why would anyone bother being nice to the likes of me, even if he is infatuated with that petalled jewel I sit on, that smells, he tells me, like no other? He claims to be able to tell a boy’s age simply by the scent of his arse, and said he would be able to tell my arse apart from any other simply by the smell alone. “It emits a unique perfume, dear boy. If you could bottle it you’d have wealth and love beyond imagination,” he told me.

In Paris he was everything to me—lover, companion, guide, even my voice. I’d have starved if I’d been on my own. Instead I was treated to the most incredible delights. I couldn’t wait to get back and tell the other boys I’d eaten snails, though the thought disgusted me at first, and I didn’t want to touch them till Oscar scooped one up and popped it in my mouth. It tasted like butter.

As soon as we arrived, he took me to have my hair done. It was the first time I’d ever been in a hairdresser’s. Taylor normally cuts it with blunt scissors as we take it in turns sitting on a stool outside in the street, our locks blowing away in the breeze. But in Paris Oscar left me there to be pampered and preened while he went off to meet some fellow about one of his plays. In the afternoon, after the haircut, I entertained myself exploring that strange city. I wandered down by the river to watch the boats go by. I like to do that in London when I can. Then I found myself in some gardens where, between the orange trees, young men loitered suggestively. They say it takes one to know one, and I knew one when I saw it. My own kind. Their availability was written all over their faces, and I was instantly alert to their desire. It wasn’t not having a word of the lingo that stopped me having some fun, none of them said much to one another anyhow, but I was having enough fun just taking in the show, watching the chorus line of older gentlemen billing and cooing around the young bits of rough, who played the part of the leading ladies. I amused myself watching their courtship rituals and their pairings, and I was surprised how similar it was to London, a universal language of lust written on the body and spoken by the eyes and fingers. I whiled away a pleasurable couple of hours trying to predict who would swallow whom.

On the Saturday evening we went to a show. We didn’t see a play ’cos I wouldn’t understand a bleedin’ word—instead we went to Pigalle and the kind of show that delighted Oscar because it was bawdy and lively. A line of girls dancing to frantic music, lifting their skirts and kicking their legs high over their heads, showing the frills that frothed beneath, and just for a cheeky moment you could see that they wore no knickers. They were coarse and loud, them girls, their faces painted in heavy bright colours. Between shows they cavorted with the gents in the audience. Many of them sat on laps in various states of disarray; some fucked or sucked, curling up the banknotes afterward and sliding them inside the garters they all wore. I sat there watching, drinking one absinthe after another, and when I turned to Oscar he was watching me, not the goings on around us. He smiled and said that for him the greatest pleasure of all is witnessing the joyful corruption of another.

Late at night in bed, he whispered strange words to me in French. I asked him what he was saying and he told me. “You are a treasure.” It made me sad, though, the way he said it. For too brief a time London and Bosie seemed a million miles away, but I knew it must end. On the boat back to England I was quiet. I could feel tears swimming in my eyes, and though I tried hard not to let it show, I’m pretty sure he saw. When Southampton came into view he sighed and said under his breath, “Ah, this septic isle.” When I got back to Taylor’s, I looked the word up in the dictionary he give me, and had to agree with him. And as I lie here in bed with Johnnycakes snoring beside me, I find myself thinking about last night, with Oscar sleeping at my side, and I wish he was here with me now.

I just got back from seeing Oscar and am so full of rage I could kill a man with my bare hands. That’s the only way to describe how I feel. I swear I could tear the world apart and still not be calm.

For the last few months, as the old year turned to the new, he’s taken me places and spent time with me and made me feel special in a way no one ever did before, actually listening to me when I spoke and even asking me my thoughts and opinions, flattering me, making me feel things for him. l thought I meant something, and I know this sounds stupid coming from a whore, but it’s the truth. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. I don’t know whether I would call it love because I’m certain I don’t know what that word means, but something happened to me inside and a storm of emotions has awoken in me like never before, like a flock of roosting birds shaken from a tree. I know he also sees the other boys here, but I flattered myself that they meant nothing to him compared to me. And now he’s told me he can’t see me any more. I feel such pain and panic that the only word that comes to mind is rage.

Tonight, he took me to Kettner’s and I found myself remembering how ridiculous he appeared to me on that first time I’d met him, and it seemed like old news from another country. It was just me and him this time, though a friend who introduced himself as Robbie joined us for coffee and his intrusion started the anger I now feel.

Throughout the meal Oscar had been quiet and tense and I knew that all was not well, though we don’t ever really talk of such things. His personal life is a mystery to me. I knew that if Bosie wasn’t there it meant things weren’t good between them, though for my part I was glad of it for I prefer it that way. Most times, even in the little bastard’s absence, he is still in good spirits, but tonight he was somewhere else entirely, not with me at all. His laughter had no life to it and, as a result, neither did mine. He seemed to light up when Robbie imposed on us, which was probably planned and not the coincidence they both pretended it to be.

We were at a table in a private room upstairs. Oscar had just been to see his clairvoyant, an old bird called Madame Cybele. I could see he was agitated, and after a few glasses of champagne he told me what the tarot cards had revealed. Smoking one cigarette after another, he told me the stupid old sow’s predictions.

“It couldn’t have been worse,” he said, “it really couldn’t. I had the Page of Wands reversed, indicating the presence of a young man who will be my downfall, a youth who perpetrates scandal, a superficial creature with no thought for others. Who else could it be but dear Bosie? I had the Nine of Swords, which signifies miscarriages of fortune and unbearable mental torment. Card after card, all signifying separation and loss. And then, curse my luck, I dealt Death,
La Mort
, the grim reaper, which in itself doesn’t necessarily bode ill, but then I dealt the Tower reversed—which can only mean one thing. I’m in for a fall. The Tower reversed, my dear boy, spells prison.”

I tried my best to comfort him, saying it’s all a load of old hokum, but he insisted that the cards were never wrong. He was seriously scared, and I’d never thought he could feel fear. He always seemed so fearless.

“Every prediction that woman has ever made has come true so far,” he said, “and tonight not one card spoke well of the future. I am doomed. Next came the Five of Swords, signifying loss, affliction, defeat. Then I turned over the Fool reversed, the end of a journey, suffering by reckless action. I was petrified by this point, positively drenched in perspiration, and did not want to pick another card. My hand trembled as it hovered above the stack, and when I plucked one and turned it over I cried out and my heart sank, for it was the Wheel of Fortune reversed: ill-fortune, failure, another portent for the end of a cycle. My life is over, Jack. I sat there trembling with fear as she spoke in grave tones, thinking, Will there be no end to this nightmare? Have I angered the gods so profoundly that now I must pay with my life? Am I to be punished for the life I have led? I am not a bad man, am I, Jack?”

I assured him he was not. I said that he was never anything but kind and generous to me. But he was stricken with inconsolable grief and would not be cheered even when I made jokes and acted like a wizened and toothless old fortune-teller, fashioning a headscarf from my napkin. Never have I seen him so crushed.

“Separation and loss,” he kept saying, and stared down at the table as if he could see still the cards laid out before him spelling out his fate.

Then he started on and on about that fucking Bosie and his maniac father. Said something about them both being the death of him, and his tirade lasted until the food arrived. It seems that the father’s accused him of corrupting his son, and he is going to have to defend his honour and take the old bastard to court. He kept on calling him a damned interfering ignorant fool.

“Oh, the rules of love,” he sighed. “It takes us a lifetime to learn them, and when we do we find we no longer wish to play the game. A revolting paradox, to be sure. How lucky you and I are not to be cursed with loving each other, Jack,” he said. “How easy life would be if one could live without love—how easy and how dull.”

I don’t know why, it was probably the champagne, but I found myself blurting out that I was scared and, to be honest, I didn’t even know I was until I said it, and then I felt really scared—the words seemed to bring about the emotion they named.

He said, “To admit that one is scared is the beginning of bravery.”

He asked what I had to be scared of, saying that the young have nothing to fear because the world is on their side, time is on their side, and no one can tell them what to do because to be young is always to be right.

“Never ruin yourself with love, Jack, for you are a fountain of youth, and love would only age you as it has aged me.”

Then he told me the thing that turned my sadness into rage.

“I won’t be seeing you for a while,” he said. “All this nonsense has started to interfere and it is best for now if I am not seen cavorting around London with dangerous, beautiful creatures like you.” And then, after a pause, he added, “Enjoyable as that might be,” and gave me a weak smile.

I don’t know why this should make me feel so angry. Maybe it was that I wanted him to defy the world and not want us to part, or maybe it was the conversation with Taylor earlier today when he told me not to see so much of Oscar.

“You know, Jack,” Taylor had said after breakfast, “Mr Wilde is a fickle man. You might think that you’re special, but you’re not. You mean no more to him than any of the other boys he rents. You’re a whore—a very good whore, mind, but don’t lose sight of that. Don’t go getting all sentimental on me, now.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time, and I said it was up to Oscar how much we saw of each other. Taylor arched his eyebrows and said, “Oscar, is it? Don’t be a stupid tart, Jack. You’ve no idea how much danger you’re in. Just keep away from him for a while.”

It all seemed suddenly to make sense as I sat there hours later staring across the table at Oscar, and it all seemed to indicate a plan to keep us apart. But I can’t for the life of me understand why, and that makes me want to rave and scream and smash things in a way I’ve never felt before.

Then comes the time for me to leave. No hansom to the Savoy tonight, no frolic in the sheets. He explained he couldn’t risk being seen with me, so I left on my own feeling so torn up inside.

And that was when I had another surprise, one more thing to feed the furnace of my rage. Oscar and Robbie stayed behind. I couldn’t say for sure what made me wait across the street. I think, stupidly, that I wanted one more look at him, which sounds pathetic, I know, but that was why I didn’t return home straight away, but hid in a shadowy doorway opposite Kettner’s. And I’m damned glad I did, for not more than five minutes later a cab pulls up, and out of it steps Sidney, dressed up to the nines. My jaw fell as I watched him swan straight into Kettner’s. The cab didn’t pull away, though, and before all this had sunk in, I clocked the three of them emerge, laughing, and watched them climb into the cab, and watched it pull away, and then my fury was complete.