I saw Jared twice that week, and both times our interactions seemed to go strangely off the rails. The first was at Mike’s Open Mic, where we were among the regular performers. Although Mike didn’t officially have regulars — you had to sign up for the event on a first come, first served basis — he somehow always found a spot for us because, unlike some of the other hopeful amateurs, we usually garnered at least some laughs, and I guess a baseline of quality had to be maintained for the night.
I was on stage, doing my self-deprecating thing.
‘Now, in case you’ve never heard of being gay before, it’s like being straight, except you don’t have a love life. You have a ghosting life.’ A small ripple of laughs. ‘You get ghosted… a lot. We are the UK’s most haunted.’ Laughs. ‘No, seriously, I’ve had my heart broken, I’ve… oh, goodness!’ A woman at one end of the front row had just given the weirdest cackle. I seized on it immediately. ‘Are you all right? Do you need a cigarette after that? That sounded orgasmic.’ I imitated the laugh. The woman and her friend laughed harder. Good, it was rubbing off on the rest of the crowd. ‘Were you laughing at me having my heart broken? Whose side are you on?! Yeees, break his heart! A-hah-hah-hah! Make him lose all confidence in himself so that he doesn’t believe anyone could ever love him and it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle! A-hah hah hah hah… Jesus, I didn’t know I’d have… Maleficent in the house tonight. Anyway… ‘
***
‘That was good!’ said Aoife afterwards in the bar. I’d just introduced her to Kwami and Greg, two other regulars besides Jared, who was on the phone outside to his girlfriend. Greg was a middle-aged Scot who liked to riff on the irritating behaviour of his wife and kids. Kwami, my favourite, tended to cover modern dating and microaggressions.
‘I don’t know,’ I moaned. ‘The stuff I thought was gonna work didn’t. And some things that weren’t even jokes got laughs! What the hell?’
‘It’s almost like people have independent minds and you can never predict how they’re going to respond to anything,’ said Kwami.
‘I don’t know,’ said Greg, sipping his red wine. ‘I can usually predict how they’re going to respond to your gentrification bit, Kwami. Which is by dead… fuckin’ silence.’
‘Oh, like you did so great tonight, gramps. Try travelling back in time to the eighties when your stuff was relevant.’
Greg mimed being shot in the heart.
‘Anyway,’ said Kwami, ‘the bigger question is, why does Mal have stuff in his set that isn’t jokes? Mal, you do know what we’re doing here, right? You know this is supposed to be comedy?’
‘Oh, ha-ha… ‘
‘Excuse me,’ Aoife entered the fray, ‘but didn’t he just get more laughs than the both of you?’
Greg and Kwami turned outraged glares on my flatmate.
At that moment Jared, who’d done better than any of us tonight, reappeared. In his mid-twenties, he was the youngest of us, had a rich family and some high-earning finance job, or so I’d heard from Kwami. Did material about struggling to keep up with his save-the-planet eco-obsessed girlfriend, the unhealthy drinking habits of his friends and sometimes — less succesfully — British politics. And he was hot. Horrendously so. Maybe it was his clean-cut face or the way he, unlike Kwami or Greg, at least made a minimal effort with his clothes, or his toned, broad chest, or just the glaring fact of his heterosexuality, that standard thing of wanting what you can’t have.
‘There he is,’ said Greg, handing him his pint. ‘Trouble with the missus?’
‘The missus?’ Jared gave a quizzical grin. ‘Oh right, you mean my girlfriend. Sorry. I didn’t realise we were in an eighties sitcom.’
Kwami pointed dramatically. ‘Stole my joke!’
I ignored them and introduced Jared to Aoife.
‘Nice to meet you, Aoife,’ said Jared, smiling warmly. ‘I love that name. You’re Irish?’
Oh, what? Was he putting the moves on her? He’d be barking up the wrong tree. Plus she was taken.
Aoife’s response was drowned out by Kwami interjecting: ‘Can we talk about pretty-boy’s hair?‘
Jared pointed a confused finger at himself. ‘Me? I’m pretty-boy?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Greg with ominous relish. ‘What in God’s name have you done to it?’
I saw it now, too — Jared had mussed up his blond hair with some kind of product tonight. It jutted from its usual side parting in wet, spiky strands. I actually liked it — I certainly didn’t think it was worth cracking jokes about — but Kwami and Greg pounced.
‘Did you do that just for us? Or are you late for a shoot with L’Oréal?’
‘L’Oréal? Bollocks to that, he looks more like he’s auditioning for some knock-off One Direction… ‘
‘Hah-hah, very funny,’ said Jared wearily.
‘He’s probably sponsored by all these beauty brands we don’t even know about. I always knew he would turn out to be the David Beckham of the comedy world.’
‘I think he’s trying to seduce us. Keep your distance, Greg. Think he wants a threesome.’
‘Fuckin’ hell, Kwami, I think I’m tempted, with that hair… ‘
‘Yeah, it’s so irresistible, you… ‘ I realised I’d started speaking with no idea what my joke would be. And now four sets of eyes had locked onto me expectantly. ‘You’d — better be careful I — don’t kidnap you and lock you in a basement and have my way with you.’
The others stared.
Jared raised an eyebrow as if to say, well, original at least.
‘Fuck, man, leave it to Mal to go dark,’ said Kwami. ‘All right, who wants another drink?’
***
‘Why did I say that?’ I muttered as Aoife and I walked down Islington High Street in the breezy summer night. ‘Why the fuck did I say that?’
‘Hey, at least you’re finally reclaiming the meaning of the word queer,’ said Aoife, zipping up her bomber jacket. ‘As in not just gay, but also — fuckin’ weird… ‘
‘Oh God, I’m a monster. I’m cancelled. I’m Woody Allen.’
‘You are not Woody Allen.’
‘And to Jared! I said it to Jared, of all people… ‘
‘You know, my meditation app said the other day that embarrassing moments only have the power we choose to give them.’
‘I mean, I actually like Jared. He’s the one I like the most out of those three.’
Found the most fuckable, was what I meant. But why worry about that? The guy was straight.
‘Yeah, I liked him as well,’ said Aoife. ‘He didn’t seem as mean as the others.’
‘Should we go to his party on Saturday?’ Jared had asked us earlier in the evening about the event he’d invited us all to on Facebook — his and his girlfriend’s flatwarming at their new place in Stratford. ‘Oh God, do you think I’m still invited?’
‘I’m sure you are.’ Aoife patted my shoulder as we weaved around two dog-walkers and their fighting dogs. ‘And yeah, I mean — will it be fun? Do you know anyone who’s going?’
‘No, not other than Jared and Kwami and Greg. And Jared’s girlfriend, who I’ve met a few times.’ Phoebe was a tall, dreadlocked, white girl, very sweet, who complimented me on my stand-up everytime she saw me at Mike’s Open Mic.
‘It’ll probably be really straight, right?’ said Aoife, crinkling her nose.
‘No! I’m sure Jared and Phoebe have a… diverse circle of friends… Also, he’s a good person for me to be friends with, because he performs at all these other clubs. He can put in a good word for me.’
‘Oh, now I see why you want to go… ‘
‘Maybe if I bring a really nice wine, it’ll make up for threatening to rape him.’
‘Maybe. All right, well, If I’m not doing anything better that night, I’ll come with you.’
***
She wasn’t, so she did. And that was the second time my interactions with Jared would go weirdly awry. But this time, at least, it was all his fault, not mine.
Aoife had come on the condition that she bring Theo, with the reasoning that even if it was a total cishet freakshow, they could at least sit in a corner and discuss how much they hated everyone. When we entered, though, even she had to admit it seemed like a cool party. People crowded every area of the tastefully furnished flat, dressed in the kind of grungy fashion I knew Theo would approve of, having lively conversations in front of the panoramic view and over a pounding remix of a Christine and the Queens song.
‘Mal! Hey!’ Jared came towards us from the kitchen space, where he’d been involved in the mixing-by-committee of a punch bowl. He wore a vintage Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned down his chest, the kind of thing you could get away with if you were him and had a chest and, you know, confidence. ‘You came!’
‘Of course!’ We hugged. I smelled a pleasant aftershave on the crook of his neck. He hugged Aoife as well, who introduced him to Theo. He seemed only mildly and briefly surprised at her having a partner. I gave him our ten-pound bottle of red.
‘Oh, thanks! This is great,’ said Jared, briefly studying the label. ‘It can go in the sangria.’
‘Oh! No, but — you should drink it,’ I exclaimed, more forcefully than I’d intended. ‘Sorry, I mean, it’s… a fancy one. It should be drunk… as it is.’
‘Oh, it’s a fancy one, is it?’ Jared smiled and clasped his free hand on my shoulder, giving me a little shake. How drunk was he? ‘In that case, for you, Mal… I’ll drink it as it is.’
Was he flirting with me? What on earth? At least my awkward joke from five days ago seemed all but forgotten.
I looked around for Aoife and Theo, who’d suddenly gone AWOL, and spotted them in a cluster by an open window, Theo holding a joint someone must have passed them. Wow. Surely that was record-time for being initiated into the spliff-smoking circle at a party where you didn’t know anyone.
Jared’s hand had dropped from my shoulder. I looked back at him to ask if Greg or Kwami were here. At that moment a woman shouted my name, and I saw Phoebe rushing up to hug me. She thanked me for coming. I congratulated her and Jared on the flat.
‘Oh, this place — yeah, it’s nice,’ said Phoebe with a grimace as Jared slid an arm around her in that calmly proprietary way of straight men. ‘I wish it could have been closer to an organic shop or, you know, any kind of culture, but… ‘
‘No, don’t do that,’ I said with a smile, ‘that self-deprecating thing. I know ’cause I do it too. It’s a good flat! You should be happy!’
Phoebe laughed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. It is a good flat. We’re very happy, right, babes?’ She looked over at Jared. He kissed her.
I looked away, smiling good-naturedly at nothing.
‘Yeah,’ said Jared. ‘Absolutely.’
***
The party got busier. Kwami arrived and exchanged some banter with me before venturing into the crowd to, in his own words, ‘find a cute girl with low self-esteem and tons of liberal guilt.’ I hung around Aoife and Theo, but they’d attached themselves to a trio of chic lesbians and were deep in a discussion about gender expression which I did not have the sobriety or wherewhithal to follow.
That was when Jared found me. He grabbed my shoulder in that weirdly intimate way again and asked if I wanted to do coke with him in the bathroom.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said, immediately excited by what the offer meant — a kindness, an approximation of friendship. ‘Can I ask Aoife as well? Or should we get Kwami?’
‘No, no, there’s not that much,’ he said, already pulling me towards the hall.
‘All right. What about Phoebe? Does she… ‘
‘Oh no, Phoebe doesn’t like coke.’ He guided me into the bathroom — miraculously free — and locked the door. ‘She doesn’t even like that I do it, to be honest.’ He gave an odd chuckle. I’d been in here already, but marvelled again at the size and pristine newness of the room. The long shelf above the sink was full of women’s beauty products to one side and men’s things at the other. Between them, Jared poured out the contents of a baggie and started cutting lines.
I realised I needed to pee. Better do it now before the coke tied a knot on my bladder. Hesitantly, I asked Jared if it was all right with him. He said go ahead. I raised the toilet seat, unzipped and stood there next to him, but was suddenly pee-shy. Jared continued cutting lines, as focused on his endeavour as any scientist in a lab. I told myself I shouldn’t worry about him. Relax. But then, the longer I stood there with my dick in my hand, relaxing, the weirder it felt. Outside the muffled noise of the party continued.
Finally, it came. All that stress just for a quick stream of piss.
I zipped up and flushed and washed my hands awkwardly under the hanging flaps of his shirt. ‘All right, here we go,’ he said proudly as he finished his work. He pulled a rolled-up note from his wallet — he’d clearly already been at it — and handed it to me. ‘Ladies first.’
I grimaced. ‘Homophobic.’
‘Oh!’ He laughed. ‘No, not at all, I’ll have you know.’
‘Sure.’ I bent over the lines and snorted one. Straightened, pinched my nostrils and sniffed again. It burned, as it should.
‘No, I mean it.’ Jared took the note from me, bent and did his line. He straightened up and groaned and sniffed again. ‘Really. I think you’re cool. I love your stand-up.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘I love that you talk so openly about being gay. I wish I had something like that to make me, you know, unique.’
‘Uh, I don’t know if it makes me unique.’
‘But you know what I mean. Something to draw on.’
‘I mean, everyone has something to draw on. Right? You just have to, uh, find it. Anyway, we should — get out of here… ‘
‘No, wait.’
I’d turned to the door to unlock it. Now I turned back.
‘Let’s stay in here and chat.’
Jared grinned. He ran a hand through his styled blond hair.
I gave a dubious smile. ‘Why? When we could be chatting out there… ‘
He shrugged. ‘Because it’s private in here.’
I stared at him. ‘You’re being weird.’ My limbs prickled electrically, whether with anxiety or excitement or just the coke, I wasn’t sure.
‘No, I’m not.’ Again he grinned, jaws moving restlessly. ‘You are. With your jokes about locking me in your basement and… ‘
‘Oh God, I’m sorry about that… ‘
‘And your standing there for ages, trying to pee… ‘
Oh. So he had noticed. I tried not to feel the embarrassment. ‘I was just pee-shy.’
‘Yeah, I could tell.’ He grinned. And was silent, for an uncomfortably long moment. Voices laughed and argued outside. The music throbbed. The bright white glare of the overhead light glistened in the sweaty sheen on his chest, through the halfway-unbuttoned shirt. Below it, he wore pink shorts and white Adidas socks. I suddenly felt like complimenting him on his dress sense, but that would have only made the moment weirder.
Then he made it weirder himself. ‘You don’t need to be shy with me, Mal. We’re friends, right? And, like, comrades in comedy.’ He moved closer.
At that point I laughed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. What are you doing?’
He slid his arms around my waist. Pulled me step by step back from the door until his back was against the frosted glass of the shower panel.
I still couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’re, like, holding me… What the fuck? Is this a joke? Did Kwami and Greg put you up to this?’
‘No. No one put me up to this.’
He stared down into my eyes. My hands, which had been at his hips, gently pushing him away, fell. I inhaled his pleasant, musky aftershave. Eau de Straight Man.
‘Are you attracted to me, Mal?’
Eau de Straight Man avec Girlfriend.
Again, I gave a helpless snort. ‘Yeah, but that’s not… you’re not even… available. So that doesn’t even matter.’
‘But… do you find me attractive?’
Eau de Maybe Not So Straight Man.
‘Yeah, I mean. Of course I do. But like, in the way you appreciate a flat that you could never move into, like a… Barbican penthouse. You’re my Barbican penthouse.’
His smile grew. Still he held me. ‘Funny boy. Always cracking jokes.’
I could definitely feel a hardness in his shorts. And one of my own, straining against it. My heart pumping like a scared little rabbit’s.
When he kissed me, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
He led me to the wall and pressed me against the tiles, the shower curtain rustling beside us. He was a good kisser, too. Slow and smooth. I could feel freshly shaven stubble; I wanted it to scratch me raw. I thought dimly that he must have kissed guys before, I couldn’t be his first. Someone knocked on the door. Without missing a beat, he drew back and shouted: ‘Yeah, just a minute!’
He went back to kissing me. Then, as if the knock on the door had reminded him of what he really wanted, he reached down and unbuttoned his shorts, grunting slightly as he freed his cock. I stared down at it, still not quite believing what was happening. Still wondering if Greg and Kwami would miraculously jump out, perhaps from behind the shower panel. Gotcha! But then, feeling Jared’s hands on my shoulders, pressing me down, proving that this was really happening, I knelt.
‘Suck it,’ he said, holding my eyes, fingers in my hair.
And I knew I should say but wait, I should say Phoebe, I should say she’s right out there, what the fuck. This is not okay. But I was winning, for fuck’s sake, I was getting what I wanted, what I’d never thought I could even allow myself to dream of, and why should I take that away from myself? When it was here right now, when he was whispering: ‘Suck it. Please, Mal.’ And so I did, at the sound of the magic word — not please, but my name; the name did something to me. I took him in my mouth, let myself clap my hands on his lovely, soft arse, let him glide in and out of my lips slowly, then with increasing speed, as the back of my head pressed against the wall, as someone out there knocked again, impatiently —
And as he, at that exact moment, gave a shuddering groan and came.
He drew back. As did I.
I looked up, swallowing sticky saltiness.
The gaze that met mine was hard to read. Not as warm as before. Not unkind either. Haloed by light.
He clapped my cheek gently. ‘Good boy.’
Jesus. I was so turned on, I didn’t know what to say.
As for him, he was getting ready to leave.
He pulled up his shorts and buttoned them, checking himself in the mirror.
I stood, running two shaky hands through my hair. ‘Uh, Jared, what just happened? We should talk about… ‘
But he looked back at me over his shoulder, hands on the doorhandle and lock, and I trailed off. He shook his head. ‘Not right now, man. We have to go.’
‘Uh. Sure,’ I managed. ‘Of course.’
A man’s drunken shout reached us from outside: ‘Hey, what are you doing in there? Some of us actually have to piss… ‘
Jared gave a sheepish half-smile. Then looked straight at me. ‘Thanks, man.’
I stared back. Thanks, man. Okay. So that was all I got, for this. For now.
He unlocked the door and stepped out, wiping at his nose, snorting loudly.
I followed him, squeezing past a burly guy scrambling to get inside. Like Jared, I gave a loud, demonstrative sniff as I moved past the queue of two bored and annoyed-looking girls. Yep, nothing to see here. Just two guys doing drugs. Just inhaling some good old, class-A drugs.
As we emerged into the living room, Jared went one way and I went the other, into the booze-filled kitchen to pour myself a drink.
