(no subject)

[sekritomg]

Continued from here.

“So,” Eric said slyly. I noticed one of Kenny’s arms was twisted around one of his. The boy was resting his chin on Eric’s shoulder. He didn’t look disgusted at all, which was the reaction I generally expected of contact with Eric. He was being paid for his work, though, and if I knew something about prostitution (which, as it happens, I did), it was that the key to earning your keep was to avoid acting disgusted, because any number of fat older men might want you to not be disgusted by them, and if they were looking to repulse potential tricks they might as well just try their luck in the dating pool. While I was staring at the boy, Kyle was drinking again, slowly and curiously, still massaging my lower back. I didn’t balk at this, and soon enough we were all staring at Eric expectantly as he asked, “Who’s in?”

 

The boy answered first: “Me, of course.”

 

“Yes, of course,” Eric mumbled. Then he looked to Miss B. “Well?” he asked.

 

“Oh, but I don’t want any.”

 

“Goddamit, Butters, buy in.”

 

With a deep sigh, Butters reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. He licked his thumb and then cautiously flipped through his money as if it were a card catalogue. Too many years of working in a bookstore, maybe, or perhaps without Bradley’s income he was actually worse off financially than before, despite the fact that he now had a real job — and I wasn’t sure dressing up as a lady and singing throwback tunes from our university days really netted Miss B all that much pay. Still, he pulled a twenty out of the wad and asked, “Will that suffice?”

 

Butters had never learned, in all his years of dealing with Eric, that the way to approach these things was not to ask, but rather, to announce something more along the lines of, “That will suffice.”

 

Predictably, Eric sighed and said, “No, Butters, that will not suffice.”

 

Of course, Butters didn’t do what I would have done, which was say, “Yes it will,” and shut Eric up. This was the very sort of thing I loathed about Butters. He was so averse to conflict with anyone that he would let himself be led through this test of Eric’s will against his own general dislike of recreational drugs (other than alcohol, of course). The right thing to do in this situation was either to just say, “Goddamit, no, I’m not going along with this” so Eric would get tired of speaking with you and move on to bullying the next person, or just go along with it and perhaps enjoy a night of electrified anarchy. But that was Butters, the drag queen who gave ‘drag’ a whole new uninspired meaning. Predictably, Butters folded, and pulled out another twenty, and turned his head away from Eric, who turned his sights on Kyle now.

 

Turning to me, Kyle stopped rubbing my back and put his drink down. “Shall we go in together?” he asked. “I’ve got some cash, but if you pay, I’ll get it the next time.”

 

I rolled my eyes, because it was unlikely that Kyle would get it the next time or any time at all until one of us dropped dead, or we decided we’d finally gotten too old for nights out amplified by drug use. I didn’t know when that was going to happen, but I figured it was slated for around the time Kyle and I both found stable domestic partners — possibly sometime around the new millennium.

 

“Sure,” I said with some cheer in my voice. I tossed some money onto the table like it didn’t matter, but inwardly I cringed. I knew there would be a gap before getting paid for the story I’d turned in on Tuesday and the following assignment. The coming week might see me on the phone with my father, begging him for money, trying desperately not to answer his question with an irritated, “It all went to pot! Literally!”

 

Shuffling the bills together like a bank teller — a position I can assure you Eric had never held, as he found banking too Jewish — he sighed. “Well, whatever this buys,” he said aimlessly. He thrust the bills toward me. “Go get it, Stanley. Good quality, this time — I want a nice, clean high, not to be sick the next day like an amateur.”

 

“If you don’t want to be sick, maybe you shouldn’t snort cocaine, Eric,” Butters said wisely.

 

Eric didn’t even respond to this. He just rolled his eyes and made a face at Kenny, like the boy shared some great understanding of how miserable it was to be friends with us. I was hardly going to claim any kind of mystic connection with the lad, but he seemed all right, and it appeared we were getting on fine, so I wasn’t sure what Eric was attempting to communicate to him. Then again, his money should at least have bought him a sympathetic smile, which, in fact, did materialize, if not a bit late.

 

I really wasn’t in the mood to leave my comfortable seat, my drink, or Kyle in the hands of a fascist ex, a duplicitous prostitute, and Butters. “Why do I have to do it? I did it last time, didn’t I? If you want blow so bad, Eric, why not get off your arse and go fetch it yourself?”

 

“Stanley, just be a gentleman for once and go do it,” Eric insisted.

 

“I don’t see why I should.”

 

Eric was beginning to turn red with irritation at my stubbornness. I protested these things, at times, just to make a point to Eric that not everyone was happy to just follow his orders. But it did happen to be true that I was not really in the mood to go stumbling through the club. Who knew who I would run into? Moreover, the one person I was certain to meet on this trip was Damien, our drug dealer, and I didn’t really like him. He was like a rocker to my Mod, I felt — despite the fact he was probably 10 year younger than I.

 

Well, no, actually — he seemed 10 years younger now, but it occurred to me that in a very threatening way, he was ageless, dark and moody in perpetuity, dispensing narcotics from the women’s room in a gay nightclub on Charing Cross … never mind that all restrooms in any such establishment were, by nature, men’s rooms in the end. Beyond that, as Kyle liked to put it, “The world is a man’s toilet.” I think he’d said that to me while he was pissing in some alley in Islington; I may have been shielding him with my coat.

 

While they were all making faces — Kenneth amused, Eric disgruntled, and Butters sympathetic — Kyle tugged on my sleeve. “I’d appreciate it so much, dearest,” he said. He took my hand and nudged me. “Won’t you go get me a bit, hmmm? I’d appreciate it.”

 

“I really don’t see why Eric shouldn’t do it.”

 

“Well, perhaps he should, but he’s entertaining his new sweetheart” — even Butters couldn’t maintain a straight face at that — “and I feel the need for a buzz.”

 

So I did it. I felt so ambivalent about drugs — loved the effects; hated the process. As I brushed by the gyrating bodies spilling out from the dance floor and into the hallway, I pondered whether I wanted any at all. My relationship with drugs was so … unenthusiastic. I wasn’t truly sure if I had one. The clandestine way we discussed procuring and using them was so formal, so aggravating. It just wasn’t funny or enjoyable anymore, and I didn’t know from where this rage into cocaine had come, but it seemed like everyone was sucking it up like vampires after lymphocytes. If I was becoming old, I’d first noticed it in the way my appreciation and use of drugs had calmed.

 

There were two men snogging in the loo, and I had to shove them aside to get in. It annoyed me that they were blocking the door, and when I’d gotten past I was confronted by the drug dealer fucking a lad with blond pageboy whose shirt was lifted up to his nipples against the mirror. The slim, pasty curve of his belly was impaled on the ledge of the sink. The boy didn’t look too happy about this at all, but who was I to put a stop to it? I just stood there gawking at the two of them as the lad was thrust again and again into the protrusion of the toilet hardware, and Damien was gagging his pink, curled mouth with his dirty fingers. If this boy wasn’t bruised all over tomorrow I’d be very surprised.

 

Damien must have seen me in the mirror because, without looking, he said in two or three heavy groans, “Just stay right fucking there, Marsh.”

 

I shrugged and hung back. A second pair of lovers thumped into me, not pausing to offer an apology on their way to the open stall. Rubbing my own rapidly bruising upper arm, I backed again the wall and tried to ignore the show in front of me. The boy was squealing, piglet-like and terrified. Damien was soundless and blissful when he came, squashing his lover’s face into the mirror’s glass with intense, longing hatred. I knew what hatred looked like in a man dying the little death — I’d had sex with Eric.

 

Damien pushed himself off and out and the (page)boy bent over into the sink. I thought the lad might vomit, the way his hands immediately flew to his stomach, but he was merely protecting the lacerations from the pounding he’d just received. Whatever the case, he was retching.

 

Stuffing his pale, studded cock back into his pants, Damien stumbled toward me. “What do you want?” he asked — too irritated, I felt, for a man who’d just orgasmed.

 

“Um.” I nervously got the bills from my back pocket and handed them to Damien. “Whatever this buys.”

 

He rolled his eyes. “And I’m supposed to just know what you want?”

 

He had a point. “Eric’s usual. Whatever he likes.” I made sure to emphasize the he, because it wasn’t for me.

 

“I don’t memorize what drugs people take. I have far more important things to worry about.”

 

“Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It’s your goddamn job, after all.”

 

Before I knew it, he had me around the collar. “How dare you tell me how to do my job!”

 

I could swear in his fury his eyes were turning red. “Apologies,” I choked, feebly swatting at his fists. He released me, and I stumbled before regaining my balance. “Blow, please.”

 

“Pip!” Damien barked, staring at me with his teeth gritted, and the blond boy brought his button nose and grey eyes out from the sink in which he had been sulking.

 

“Yes, Damien?” he asked. His voice was effusive, but tinged with a tremor.

 

“Don’t just stand there. Get Stanley his purchase.”

 

“Yes, sir. Right away.” The lad, apparently named Pip, pushed himself off from the sink counter and limped into the stall that wasn’t being used for an incredibly audible act of fellatio. After a moment, Pip returned, and handed me a baggie of white powder.

 

“This is it?” I asked Damien, scoffing. “You must be mad.”

 

“Well, it’s quality product. You want something middling, or do you want something that meets with a standard?”

 

“Who standardizes these things?” I asked.

 

“I don’t have time for your whining today, Marsh. Pip needs me to administer to his lacerations.”

 

“Oh, no, Damien, I’m quite fine on my own, thank you, and—” A loud moan from the occupied couple interrupted him.

 

Damien rolled his eyes. “Not now, Pip.”

 

Pip lowered his eyes, and clasped his hands in front of his abdomen, elbows out. He looked like a schoolboy. “Yes, Damien.” With a gentle sigh, he hung his head.

 

~

 

“This is pitiful!” Eric cried when I dropped the baggie into his lap. “This is barely enough for one!”

 

“Is that one normal-sized,” Kyle said as I slid back into the booth, “or one disproportionate fat arse?”

 

Eric ignored this. “Well, Butters, it looks like you’re out on this one.”

 

Butters rolled his eyes and leaned back in the booth.

 

“Give me,” Eric said to Kenny.

 

Kenny was clearly well-trained, because he ducked a bit for cover and came up to hand Eric a small mirror. From his pocket he procured a credit card, and he began to cut lines of cocaine, neat and symmetrical, queued up like prisoners at inspection. If there was anything of Germany left in Eric’s genes, it was apparent in the way he did things: calculating, neat, straight and fussily.

 

“And no one notices if you just do this in the open?” Kenny asked. “Or minds?”

 

“You underestimate Eric’s sense of caution,” I said. “That curtain to your right actually does a fairly adequate job of concealing whatever is happening here, and the bartenders are too busy to watch.”

 

“Ah.” Kenny hunched over to inhale his line of charlie, which he did with a neatly wound fiver Eric had drawn from his front pocket. He slid the mirror in front of Eric. As Eric mechanically snorted his line, it occurred to me that I had never taken drugs with a prostitute before, let alone stuck the same 5-pound note up my nose. I wondered if Eric and Kenny had been taking a lot of drugs together, as they seemed to have a shared process.

 

 After finishing, Eric grunted in satisfaction and wiped his nose.

 

 “Not that I’d like to be made an example of, because I surely wouldn’t, but you’ll notice that everyone’s doing it,” Butters commented.

 

“Yeah.” Kyle reached across the table to snatch the rolled-up bill from Eric’s fingertips. “If I had some image to protect, like Craig, maybe, or Token” – he looked at me pointedly, with knit brows – “perhaps I might care. But what does it matter if anyone sees me doing this in the open? Who am I protecting?”

 

“Ah, whatever.” Kenny rested his head on Eric’s shoulder. “Don’t over-explain it or anything, now.”

 

I took the mirror in front of me and bent over to inhale my line. After this round, Eric made another mirror’s worth of lines, and I declined to take any more. Kyle volunteered to have mine, and I sighed as I told him yes, of course he was welcome.

 

It was more or less silent while we went through this ritual, but by the time we were done, Kyle was whining and running his lips over my shoulder, begging me, “Oh, why won’t you dance with me, Stanley?”

 

“Because I’m not in the mood,” I growled.

 

“I am,” he declared, climbing over my thighs to get out of the booth. “If you don’t come with me I will just have to dance with whomever I find.”

 

“Provided they’re interested.”

 

“Fine,” he said, taking a moment to gaudily and slowly tilt his behind in front of my face and waggle it at great length. “Suit yourself, Stanley!”

 

He ran off into the crowd.

 

“And why don’t you go after him?” Kenny asked.

 

Miss B and Eric looked at each other.

 

“Oh, dear,” Butters said, grasping Kenny’s hand. “It doesn’t work like that most days.”

 

~

 

An hour later, Kyle hadn’t turned back up, and I ventured out into the crowd — only to find him plastered to old Clyde at a table nearer to the entrance. He was grinding his crotch into Clyde’s, and the old bore didn’t seem to be enjoying it quite as much as I would have.

 

“All right, honey, let’s go,” I said gently, trying to wrench Kyle from Clyde’s slack form. “You don’t want to make it with him.”

 

“He doesn’t?” Clyde asked. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He was genuinely asking.

 

“No,” I said sternly. “Trust me.”

 

Kyle was trying to say, “No, I want to,” but he got a bit slurry when he was in his cups, so it was coming out more like, “Nuh, ah wanna,” and all the while he was pawing at Clyde’s trousers.

 

“I think he wants to,” Clyde informed me, as if this were a sincere discussion about whether or not Kyle might like to go home with him.

 

“No, he doesn’t. You live with your parents. You haven’t even got your own flat.”

 

“I’m between flats. I’m thinking I may move out to Shropshire. Go live in the country and all.”

 

“That sounds a wonderful plan, dear, and I wish you luck, but I really think you should leave Kyle out of it.”

 

“Well, he doesn’t have to come or anything. I just think he wants to go home with me.” This statement was roughly illustrative of old Clyde’s problem. Any other man I knew would have jumped on the opportunity to make a pun out of his statement that Kyle didn’t have to come. Old Clyde just left it there. He had no capacity for imagination.

 

Kyle now attempted to break into the conversation. “I don’t like him, I just want his cock. You’ll give me your cock, won’t you? I need it so.” Then he began sucking at Clyde’s neck.

 

It was making me ill to watch this.

 

“Oh, all right.” Clyde shrugged at me, and I shrugged back. “Well, how about we just do it in the loo, then?”

 

 I didn’t even know who he was asking.

 

Kyle was rather enjoying himself, I could tell, so in exasperation, I threw my hands in the air. “Suit yourself,” I said, although I also wasn’t certain of to whom I was saying it.

 

Old Clyde, despite the situation he was (undeservedly) fortunate to be in, seemed preoccupied by something behind me. I snapped my fingers in his face.

 

“I think someone is coming toward us,” he said, shoving my hand away from his nose.

 

“Who?” I asked. I whipped around, only to find Kenny trotting over.

 

“Oi, Stan,” Kenny said in greeting. “Eric’s wondering where you’ve both gone off to.”

 

“Is he now?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

 

“Oh, sure. He’s babbling away like I’ve never heard him before.”

 

“That’s the charlie for you,” I said.

 

“Who’s Charlie?” old Clyde asked.

 

I smacked my own forehead in exasperation. Then, realizing that Kenny probably did not know that, in the most pointless and obtuse way, old Clyde worked for the government, I gestured to him. “This is Clyde,” I said flatly.

 

“Clyde Donovan,” Clyde said, grinning broadly. “Undersecretary for Passport Services at Her Majesty’s Home Office.” He stuck out a hand, which Kyle easily avoided whilst drunkenly slobbering down Clyde’s shirt collar.

 

Kenny took Clyde’s hand and pumped it slowly. “Kenneth McCormick,” he announced, his eyes narrow. Anyone should have been able to discern the mocking tone to his voice, but this was lost on old Clyde, obviously. “Male prostitute. And I do birthdays.”

 

“How do you mean you ‘do’ birthdays?” Clyde asked.

 

“I’ll tell you for a tenner,” Kenny replied. “And I’ll show you for 50.”

 

“Er.” Old Clyde put a wary hand on Kyle’s thigh, which got him to stop licking Clyde’s collarbone and cling instead across those boxy shoulders. I will say this about the man: He was not physically unattractive. What he was, however, was physically indistinctive. “I think I’m occupied,” Clyde said, ruffling the hem of Kyle’s sweater, which earned him an appreciative purr.

 

“Stanley, really.” Kyle tried to wave his hand in my face, but he wasn’t looking at me because he was too pressed up against Clyde’s chest, and his fingers managed only to brush my neck. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

 

At a loss, I bit my lip.

 

“Well.” Kenny cleared his throat. “Come on, then. Buy me a drink, won’t you?”

 

“Sure.” Swallowing regretfully, I followed him to the bar.

Continued here.