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” →

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.’

Continue reading “Are you still watching” →

‘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.’

Continue reading “Hot enough” →

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” →

‘I just can’t believe you missed it,’ said Caroline as she cut into her avocado toast. ‘It was my wedding, you know? And I really wanted all my friends to be there.’

            ‘I’m sure it was still a special day without me,’ I offered, sipping my cappuccino. I’d ordered nothing else, knowing how overpriced this place was and deciding to have breakfast at home (something else which had annoyed Caroline — ‘now you’re just going to sit there and watch me stuff myself, like the fatty pig I am,’ she’d moaned, stick-thin as ever.) ‘It looked great in the pictures?’

            ‘I know, but… ‘ She glanced at the bustling Dalston street with a sigh. ‘Well, you know!’

            ‘No, I don’t!’ I took a breath. ‘Look, I may not know much about weddings and romance and… healthy relationships, but… surely the day was about you and Matt. Right?’

Continue reading “Straight people” →

Life in London is tough. Especially if, like me, you’re single, foreign, queer, not exactly affluent. It’s tough. That’s why you need a secret weapon. A secret weapon to fall back on, just to make it through one exhausting week after another, year after disappointing year. No, it’s not drugs (although those help.) It’s your best friend.

            My best friend for years now has been Aoife. Aoife is fabulous. She can start a conversation with anyone, blag her way past any bouncer, knows an unlimited number of London life hacks, cheers me up when I’m down but knows when to tell me to shape up and stop the pity party. When I first saw her, she was slumped down drunk at a warehouse rave, with some skeezy guy trying to put his arm around her, despite her tired attempts to ward him off. I went over to them and asked if everything was all right, and she pulled me down beside her and said, pointedly, ‘this is my boyfriend’, which sent the other guy on his way. When I asked her if she was okay, she said no. Her friends had all gone and this place was full of fucking gobshites. I agreed, and joked that at least the gobshites had no gaydar; that must have been the first time in my life I’d passed for straight. I helped her get her coat from the cloakroom and order an Uber. While we waited outside by the queue, I kept up a mindless patter, thinking it might help her to sober up, listening to me there in the cool night air. I told her about my life, how I’d recently started doing stand-up, how it scared me shitless, but also felt great to tell my stupid jokes about ‘I don’t know, the misery of gay life or something.’ She was intrigued, said she loved comedy and told me to add her on Instagram and send her the details. I obliged, but didn’t think I would ever see her again after I’d sent her off in the car.

Continue reading “Aoife” →

We weren’t a good match, I can see that now. Picture him: Tom from Tinder, thirty-two like me, freelance architect dressed in a crisp blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, dark-haired and handsome as fuck, calmly reading on a tablet when I arrived. Picture me: Malte, Mal for short, ten minutes late, underpaid graphic designer and occasional stand-up comic, wearing an unzipped hoodie over a Joy Division t-shirt and sweaty from rushing down a sunny Dalston street. As I reached his table at the back of the long bar and climbed onto a stool with profuse apologies, he looked at me as if he not only didn’t recognise me, but was vaguely affronted I had the temerity to speak to him.

            ‘I’m so sorry,’ I babbled, shrugging off my hoodie, ‘it was one of those trains where it stops for five minutes between each station so that you can enjoy the view of… nothing… ’ I pulled at the armpits of my t-shirt where it stuck to the skin.

            ‘It’s okay.’ He gave a strained smile, snapped the tablet cover closed and set it aside. ‘Uh, I already ordered a coffee.’

Continue reading “Sick cat” →