And then there was Dario, tall and hunky and dressed like it was the 70’s, vintage shirt half-unbuttoned to show a small silver medallion on a hairy chest, dancing on a half-empty dancefloor early in the night, moving like he was wholly unafraid of bumping into anyone, like they were the ones who’d better move out of his way.

            I didn’t move out of his way. In fact, I deliberately got in it and started talking to him and very soon kissing him. It was the type of first encounter that seems to happen more in your twenties, not so much in your thirties, when doubts and reservations crowd in.

Continue reading “Dario” →

‘This guy on Grindr wants me to come over and Netflix and chill with him,’ I told Aoife with a grimace as she padded back with crisps. ‘Do people still say that?’

            ‘Nooo, don’t go!’ Aoife protested, slumping down beside me. ‘Stay here and Netflix and chill with us… ‘

            ‘Did I say I was gonna go? I mean, look at him.’

            Aoife cocked her head at my phone. ‘Oh, but he’s not bad! In a kind of… Vin Diesel… bald tough guy way.’

            I cackled. ‘Vin Diesel! Whatever happened to her… ‘

            ‘Okay, what are we gonna watch?’ Aoife lunged forward and grabbed the remote.

            ‘I’m cool with whatever, as long as we actually choose something,’ said Theo from the armchair, rolling a joint. ‘… and don’t sit here scrolling for three hours like last time.’

            ‘Oooh, the LGBTQ+ Collection,’ said Aoife, over-enunciating each letter. ‘We get a whole collection. Look at that, fellas.’

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‘You’re very handsome!’ I told the tall, sleepy-eyed guy with dark curly hair who I had subtly stalked from the front hall onto the crowded dancefloor.

            ‘And you’re very drunk!’ he replied.

            I extended the hand not holding my cup in a gesture of ‘eh, what can you do.’

Continue reading “Three men in a cubicle” →

‘No.’ Rodrigo paused after peeling my trousers off. He sat back on his haunches, both of us down to our underwear, and looked over my body with sadness, like a doctor preparing to deliver tough news. ‘You are not hot enough.’

            I propped myself up. ‘What?’

            ‘I cannot — continue with this.’ He gestured with his sculptural arm at my soft, pale torso. ‘You are not hot enough.’

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I’m not really a party animal. It’s usually others who drag me along. Like the night when my date with dull, but nice-enough Phil got turned into something very different.

            Okay, I shouldn’t be mean; he wasn’t that dull. We just weren’t on the same wavelength. That much quickly became clear as conversation stalled and sputtered over rapidly gulped-down pints. Phil was telling me about his gym routine, how he’d recently found that the triceps dips really helped with his obliques for the side planks. Oblique is the right word, I thought, smiling and nodding.

            ‘But I never skip leg day.’ He steadied our table as someone bumped it. ‘It’s so important that you do an equal amount of leg exercises, and you don’t even need equipment for that… ‘

            ‘Totally. Yeah.’ I put my beer down, wiping my stubble with my forearm. ‘But so, er, do you do other things? For fun?’

Continue reading “Sidetracked” →