That summer I started seeing a lot of Tjálvi. It happened casually, easily, as if no time at all had passed since we’d been kollegie-hallmates. And also, I guess, as if he didn’t have a boyfriend, one who might find it alarming, this recent closeness with someone with whom he could literally speak in a language of our own, or at least a language rarely heard, even in melting-pot London.

We had drinks and watched drag queens perform. We saw an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery — Damien Hirst, lot of skinned animal carcasses. Tjálvi smirked and said he didn’t particularly like these types of things, but he enjoyed bringing Ryan along sometimes, to watch his squeamish reactions. I took note of this callous disregard for his boyfriend. Also, squeamish? What did that say about Ryan, I wondered — specifically, in terms of sex? I’m ashamed to say I’d given a lot of thought to that. Their sex life. And who might be top or bottom — they both had the same lean, tall body type, not that physique is necessarily an indicator. But squeamish sounded bottom-y. I wanted Tjálvi to be a top, obviously, so that we might fit better, at least in my imagination, which was probably as far as it would ever go.

I tried to clear my head of all thoughts of fucking and focus on the rotting cow’s head in front of me.

Continue reading “Tjálvi” →

It was Saturday the 31st of October, and I was staying in. I normally loved Halloween. They’d revoke my gay card if I didn’t, har har, but I was broke and had heard of no cool parties anyway and had no idea for a costume.

I’d just stuck a pepperoni pizza in the oven, set a timer on my phone and walked into the living room when I saw the ghost.

He was lounging in my spot on the sofa. Reclining on his elbows, shirtless, grinning up at me. My laptop with Hocus Pocus was paused on the coffee table in front of him, frozen on a shot of the talking cat.

‘Hocus Pocus. Really?’ he said with a sardonic grin, his Northern accent flattening the O’s. Still so handsome, seven years since I’d last seen him. Ginger, with bright green eyes and a rabbit tattooed on his left pec. I’d once asked him if it was a pagan thing. He’d shrugged and said that he just liked bunnies, then shut me up by guiding my head down to his cock.

Continue reading “Ghost story” →

‘I was thinking about it a lot, and I think we’re… too similar?’ said César, his round dark childlike eyes narrowing as if in confusion at his own words. ‘I think we are the same type, and a relationship should be more… opposites.’

‘No, but —’ I made a sound between a laugh and a death rattle. ‘I’ve been in relationships where we were opposites. That — doesn’t — work!‘ Instinctively, my voice turned into Elaine from Seinfeld saying ‘sex in a bathtub? That — doesn’t — work!‘ The reference went over his head.

Continue reading “Too similar” →

Hooking up with a straight man is a weird experience. I wouldn’t recommend it. The Jared who surfaced the next two times I saw him that summer was a different creature from the slick, self-assured guy I had always seen at Mike’s Open Mic. Both times, he came to mine on stressfully short notice — thirty, forty minutes; hey I’m on my way back east could swing by yours if you’re around? — and was awkward, taciturn and tightly coiled, practically looking over his shoulder for enemy spies hidden behind the bedside table.

            Neither of these encounters had the thrill of that night at his flatwarming. I almost felt I’d been the victim of false advertising. That I was now discovering not a second, but a third Jared, a third Russian doll. The anxious, true Jared.

Continue reading “Jared” →

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… ‘

Continue reading “Queer as in weird” →

Aoife, Theo and I had gone to Mary Poppers, a small queer bar on Upper Street. It wasn’t the best venue in the world — kind of cliché with its neon lighting, booming pop music and semi-pornographic videos of muscle studs writhing on flatscreen TVs — but it was a decent place to sit and chat, and for me to scope out the mainly male clientele, if there was anyone hot, which there hadn’t been so far.

            Theo was telling us excitedly about having got one of their tracks into Mixmag, their bulky hoodie and short dreads shifting as they gesticulated emphatically and Aoife listened with a calm, fond smile. I loved to watch her sometimes, the way she watched them. She and Theo were the perfect couple. I always joked that the two of them reassured me that love must be possible in the queer world, even if it had never happened for me. Theo was a person of many talents — a fashion designer, music producer and LGBT helpline volunteer, South London born and bred, kind of amazing, yet so down to earth.

            While listening to their story, I suddenly found my interest caught by someone behind them, queuing at the bar.

            No…

            It couldn’t be.

Continue reading “Shy back then” →

‘Midway through my life, I found myself in a dark forest — for the straight path forward had been lost… ‘

            ‘Mal, what are you talking about?’

            I turned to face them, walking backwards. ‘It’s Dante! The Divine Comedy!’

            ‘Only you could manage to think of something like that while on LSD,’ chuckled Theo.

            ‘Someone as — brilliantly intelligent as me?’

            ‘I was gonna say pretentious… ‘

Continue reading “The forest” →

‘But why are you going home with me?’ he asked in his nasal Greek accent. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know if maybe I am going to kill you?’

            ‘Yeah, well. You probably won’t.’

            The morning was cold, clear and white. We’d left the club and walked to the Old Street roundabout. He kept asking me questions. I was taciturn, blissed-out and exhausted. Numb, no, dazed is the word. I still felt things. I stopped to kiss him again. Not really horny, but wanting to touch and taste and feel. Someone else, alive and warm. A homeless woman accosted us. I gave her a pound that had been rattling loose in the pocket of my sports shorts.

            We caught the bus to Bow. We asked each other what we’d been on. Both MDMA. We asked each other what we were doing in London. He said ‘research.’ Maybe he really is a serial killer, I thought.

Continue reading “Take care” →

I must have had one drink too many, because that morning I slept through my alarm, if you can call switching off your alarm and going back to sleep for an hour ‘sleeping through’ it. When I reawoke, I looked at the time, scrambled into the shower, microwaved a cup of coffee from Aoife’s cafetière, drank it with some of her almond milk and left, already making up an excuse in my head to explain being over an hour late.

Zesty Design was a moderately successful agency located on the second floor of a building down a leafy side street in Camden. On their website, they claimed to be ‘experienced purveyors of world-class content’, but what this really boiled down to was short ads for dishwasher tablets or sanitary pads, sometimes an internal reel for a car manufacturer or a supermarket chain, congratulating itself on how eco-friendly its practices were.

Continue reading “Performance review” →

In 2014, six months after moving to London, when she felt she was starting to get her bearings, Aoife found a queer book club online called the Orchid Tree Readers. Catering to ‘anyone LGBTQI-identifying of any gender expression’, but clearly more on the femme side judging by its members’ profile pics, it seemed as good a place as any to make friends in this new and overwhelming city.

            It was not. Aoife sensed this almost immediately upon entering the upstairs room of the small vegan café in Kentish Town. She was late and sweaty, her black hair — so carefully arranged in the office bathroom — plastered to her forehead from the oppressive Tube journey. The eight women around the table were all poised and thin and pretty, mostly white, in their mid-to-late-twenties and dressed in an oddly uniform fashion of muted denim shirts over white t-shirts, often with a little gold or silver chain running under the collar. Aoife had, for reasons now unknown to her, worn a childishly bright pink-and-yellow tie-dye tee. Which, she could tell from the group’s frowns, probably revealed the massive patches of sweat underneath.

            ‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman who’d been in the middle of an introductory spiel as she looked up at Aoife with a pitying smile. Her white t-shirt read simply: LENA DUNHAM. ‘This is booked for a meeting?’

Continue reading “Aoife and Theo” →