mad men withdrawal

[sekritomg]

Title: The Rectum is a Tomb (5/10)
Author: Guess
Rating: NC17, this chapter
Pairings: S/K; others too numerous to mention
Summary: A 1980s British historical AU in which the idiosyncrasies of the decade drop from the sky like anvils.
Author's notes: a) Homage to the literary gay fiction of the 1980s, specifically Hollinghurst, but now it's just all over the place. b) I'm not British. c) This is so, so AU.

Now half done!

Also, I just cannot do coding on this. I'm so sorry. It's just too hard and LiveJournal always ruins the formatting somehow and ... it's long and I have other things to do like roll around on the ground moaning.

So, standby for FF.net link if you want to read this thing with italics. And they are flamboyantly gay in this fic so seriously it is like half italics.


Kyle was not there when I awoke, which did not surprise me at all, even if it was somewhat disappointing. I was nonplussed, on the other hand, to see that he’d done his side of the bed up, and when I say ‘his side of the bed’ I mean this in the least ostensible way, because I did remember us sleeping latched together on what I suppose was my side, hands plastered to each other’s flanks like potter’s ribs in wet clay. Kyle was sweaty in his sleep, which made me damp in turn, and for some reason I was wearing nothing. For a moment, I was horrified that there might be a fire alarm at any moment and I would burn up trying to get my pants on. The thought of my flesh incinerating was enough to get me out of bed, tossing on some pajamas before I went downstairs.

My second surprise of the day, after the half-made bed, was that Kyle had not left my flat at all; he was, rather, in the kitchen, wearing a set of my pajamas, standing over the stove. “Morning,” he said very jovially. “I am making you breakfast.”

I gave him what must have been a very odd look, because he gave me one back, and I said, “Okay.” There was a moment in which we stared at each other, and he dropped his stupid smile and looked very dejected, at which point I cleared my throat and pointedly asked, “Why?”

Then he perked up again. “You need a nice breakfast, dear. I’ve got the kettle on, and we’re having eggs and toast — although your bread’s a bit stale, Stanley. Maybe we should go to the market later or something. Anyway, salt, pepper, butter, it’s all on the table.” I just kept staring at him. “Have a seat,” he said warmly, although I definitely caught the edge of threat in his voice. I did what he said, and felt like my mind was swimming.

This was very surreal for me, and all I could think about was the sex we’d had the night before — not so much that it had happened, but that it had been painfully sober all around, with no pretense; just two men perspiring in each other’s arms, and now he was making me breakfast. On top of that, Gary was still dead, and each time I thought about one of Kyle’s budding nipples brushing past my forearms, I remembered how painful it had been reconciling my ability to love two men at once, or juggle my affection for them both around and around until one of the balls dropped. What was I doing?

Kyle served breakfast, which was preceded by a cup of tea. His eggs had hard, very crumbly yolks, which had never been my preference, but having lived with his family one summer, I knew very well that Sheila Broflovski overcooked eggs. I suppose Kyle, therefore, had an emotional taste for dense yolks —I in no way doubted that he could cook a loose egg that wouldn’t give the eater salmonella.

At first, while eating, we were both very silent, and then he managed to ask me, bluntly, “What was last night?”

I felt myself blushing. I felt myself cringing. “Oh,” I said. I felt very irresponsible. I wanted to blink away tears that weren’t there. “I think we just … I don’t know, it’s happened before,” I wagered. “Didn’t you like it?”

He nodded, slowly, picking crumbs of egg yolk off the sleeves of my pajama top. “I loved it,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I feel awful, though. Here I am, making an effort to be celibate, and I’ve gone and seduced my best friend while he’s emotionally vulnerable.” He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “I hope you can forgive me.”

I let my knife clatter onto the plate. “Forgive you?” I asked. “Darling, you haven’t done anything. I had the most wonderful time last night.”

“But, Gary,” he reminded me, as if I had forgotten.

“Well, Gary is dead. What’s it to him if we fuck?”

“But … you should be distraught!”

“Well, I’m certainly not happy about it. But my emotions can hardly be expected to follow a script! No one I have ever had even an inkling of concern for has ever passed away, you know. I just need to … figure it out, I guess.”

“You could speak with Miss B,” he suggested.

“Oh, no, forget that. I don’t want to talk to her.”

“But she’s been through it!”

“Kyle!” I slammed my hand down on the table, which caused my flatware to rattle further. “I haven’t lost a spouse, all right, I haven’t even lost a lover. It’s just a man I fell in love with once, and lived with once, who put me through the ringer, and now he’s dead.”

“Yes! Dead!” Kyle reminded me. He was beginning to sound hysterical.

“Well, that’s what happens. He’s dead, and it is very confusing, but I needn’t be forced into one of your mother’s emotional analyses.”

“Well, are you going to go to the funeral, Stanley?”

“I don’t know. Look, his family does not want me there. Whichever lovers he’s had since moving back to Colorado, I am sure they don’t want me there. I am not even convinced he would want me there. All in all, considering I was the depraved bastard who led that lovely young Mormon missionary astray, let’s consider the feelings of every single other person who would mourn him.”

“I am just trying to be helpful.”

“You are being very, very helpful,” I tried to assure him.

“Everything I do is wrong.”

“No, everything you do is not wrong, darling. You are single-handedly holding me up in this very uncertain moment, and this breakfast is delicious,” I lied, because it wasn’t to my liking. “So, let’s enjoy some butter and toast and then go grocery shopping.”

“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he muttered, rising gingerly.

I decided now was a good time to eat some egg. The mood in the room (or whatever one calls it when one’s space has no walls) made me feel as if we were both strapped to the masts of great Grecian ships surging toward each other on opposing currents. I was chewing egg — trying to get some crushed yolk off the roof of my mouth with my tongue, actually — when he sat down squarely on my lap.

“Hello,” I said. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” he breathed, before crushing his lips into mine in an unexpected albeit not uninvited way. I felt embarrassed for a moment as we readily opened our mouths together that actually, I was mid-meal and still had some residual food in my mouth, but then all sorts of reassurances began crashing through my consciousness: He knew I was eating, and he decided to get into my lap anyway and begin snogging me madly, all the while grinding his erection into my thigh.

My cock was aching and my head was singing, but I had to take a moment to swallow. His arms were slack around my shoulders, and I was feeling very foolish for neglecting to shave before coming downstairs. But he hadn’t shaved either, and I guess this friction wasn’t altogether unpleasant, the way our jaws moved together in time with his cock grinding into mine, finally, as I inched to the left. When he reached that moment where he couldn’t breathe any longer, he pulled away, letting some salvia, thick with softening yolk, linger on my lips. On a tight exhale, he gasped out, “Fuck me.”

He was still rolling his hips back and forth, frotting against me in an unbearable rhythm. I really didn’t have an answer for him, so I just let forth a very inelegant moan, drawing it out about as long as I could.

“Yeah, no.” He moved his right elbow to my shoulder, and brushed his forearm against my ear. There was a scary foreboding in the room, despite the very sunny day pouring in through my expansive, dirty windows. The angst and pathos of the two of us staring at each other might have driven me to tears if he hadn’t said, in a husky way, “I feel very empty this morning.” He batted his eyelashes. “And I want you inside of me.” I opened my mouth, and I still had nothing to say. “Fuck me, Stanley. Go on.” I swallowed. He put a finger to my mouth. “Please?”

“Well,” I said. He was already slipping pajama bottoms down to his mid-thighs. “There’s, um … I mean, something for lubricant, it’s upstairs, in the—”

“Well, never matter.” He yanked on my pajamas now, and I took the hint and lifted slightly off the chair, just enough for him to tug the waistband down around my knees. I grabbed him by the shoulders, and he turned around to look at the table. “Oh, it was just here a moment ago. … Oh, right.” I should have known it was the butter he wanted, a fat brick of genuine English salted butter, golden foil wrapper clumsily folded over where he’d taken some to make eggs and toast. “I should say this’ll do,” he said dreamily, palming a handful of the stuff and, without blinking, smearing it lovingly on my cock.

“Christ,” I gasped, drawing out the hiss in the ‘S.’ I felt blood surging, naturally, as he coated me up and down, smears of butter getting wiped off inadvertently in a faint nest of pubic hair. It was very slick, and it did smell like a creamery, but all it took was one greasy twist of his palm to banish all thoughts of whether or not this was a good idea. It suddenly seemed like a wonderful idea, a perfect idea, the sort of idea happiness could be built on.

I locked an arm around his neck and drew him in. “That’s excellent,” I said into his ear. “Keep going.”

“Well, you’re awfully greedy.” Kyle pulled off of my cock and my jaw at the same time. “What about me?”

I reddened, because, well, if we were going to have some kind of pastoral mutual masturbation session with dairy products, it was only fair he get a turn. “Pass me whatever’s left and I’ll do you.”

“Oh, no thank you.” He took another handful of butter, clenched his index and middle fingers into it, and then proceeded to sort of use his other hand to masturbate those fingers. Satisfied, he waggled his butters-coated fingers in my face. “Want a taste?” he asked. I shrugged, and he let me dart my tongue out to lick some. Then he shrugged, and with a grunt, he very coarsely lifted his arse up and, to my immense surprise, shoved his two greasy fingers in.

This caused my eyes to bulge out. Among other things.

How does one begin to describe something like that? It was scintillating. It was maddeningly erotic, because there was that one element of the unexpected, or the unsanctioned. He was making the most expressive faces, too, biting his lip and clenching his eyes and very clearly enjoying it. Before I could will myself to beg him to touch me again — my cock was literally weeping for contact, being forced to deal with this wanton man so close — he removed his fingers and, in one fluid motion, entombed my member. Both of us gasped, and he grabbed me by the ears and pulled me into another kiss. I could feel his fingers trailing butter into my scalp.

He did all the work, bucking and heaving on top of me in a lovely, pathetic sort of way. I lost all will to do anything other than let my tongue entangle with his while he rode on my cock, repeatedly impaling himself.

I cannot possibly know how long it all went on for. A few minutes, possibly, as I was quite ready to go from even the slightest stroke of foreplay, but it may have been hours, and it wouldn’t have made a damn difference to me. As I was languidly enjoying this display of previously unknown amour on Kyle’s part, he stopped snogging me, and began to moan against my mouth.

I knew that moan. I knew what he wanted. I tried a quick glance down and saw his cock struggling between us, trapped between different sets of cotton pajamas. I reached around him to the table and with only a brief flinch of hesitancy, got my own handful of butter. Within a few moments of this, everything went off: His cock in my hand, his seed mingling with dairy in the creases between my knuckles. Before I knew it, I was coming too, burying my head in his chest and widening my mouth.

For a moment, he cradled my head, but I felt odd, because the position was uncomfortable. So I pulled away and out, and gazed into his eyes with their raw appeal and delighted in each of his shuddering breaths. I was shuddering too, and I felt myself smiling. I wasn’t certain if it was polite to smile in the afterglow anymore, but I felt just delightful about everything for a moment. Then, after a choke, Kyle shut his eyes and burst into tears.

He fell onto my shoulder, and wrapped his arms around me. He was sobbing, just absolutely sobbing, and I felt the tears moistening my neck.

“Darling,” I said carefully. My hands were both greasy messes, but I rubbed his back anyway. “I’m so sorry,” I breathed, trying to keep him balanced on me while he wept. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “I … I…” Well, I didn’t know what to say. All of it was rather out of the ordinary. “Sweetheart, what are you crying for?”

“I’m sorry,” he managed, but it was warbled. “It’s taking advantage.”

“What is?” I asked.

He clenched himself against my cock, which, in its softened state, was still half stuffed inside of him. “This,” he choked. “It’s wrong, it’s not fair.”

“How is fucking you not fair to me?” I asked despite my better judgment because I was certain I did not want to know, precisely.

“It’s not fair to anyone.” He lifted himself off of my chest, and with a jolt he began to get himself up off of my lap, but then he sat back down, sliding a bit closer on the greasy aftermath on my pajama bottoms. He wiped his nose with a sleeve. “I do not know why I insist on doing this to myself. Or to you. Or, or…” he trailed off, and collapsed on me again. “I’m so sorry, Stanley.”

“Please don’t be sorry.” I took one hand off the small of his back and used it to stroke his cheek. “I adore making love with you, darling. Even if I need to buy a new brick of butter now, it’s worth it.”

“It’s very wasteful.”

“Shhh, no, it’s not.” I kissed him gingerly on the bridge of his nose, and in the corner of his eye, and on his bottom lip. He met my lips with his tongue, and soon we were dryly feasting in a stilted, welcome rhythm. Then he drew away again, and I said, in a creaky voice, “Death is not programmatic, you know, it’s random. You cannot predict it. If I cannot spill any additional tears over Gary now it’s because I already mourned his loss when we ended things, and I haven’t dwelled much on it since. Do you see me pining for him?”

Kyle shook his head. “It’s not only that,” he said. “Although it is that. It’s this…” He bit his lip. “That dreadful Douglas poem, you know, it’s still true. It has been 100 years and we have come so far and yet … it’s still true.” He wiped one of his eyes, and finally crawled off of me. Gingerly he put a hand to his bottom, grimaced, and pulled up his pants. Sitting down, he said, “I’ll pay for your laundry bill.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” I said, waving it away. “Life is just a series of random, tragic events. I really don’t care if some pajamas get ruined in the process.”

He put his elbows on the table and sighed. “Do you care for a shower? I think we both need one.”

“Certainly.”

“I mean, together.”

My eyebrows arched. “If you like.”

“Yeah.” He tapped his foot against the floorboards. “I’d like that very much.” And after a swift glance to over to me — butter and semen smeared across my half-bare thighs, bottoms crumpled and top pushed to my ribcage, hair absolutely destroyed — he shrugged, grabbed a piece of toast off the plate in front of him, and helped himself to a dollop of butter. I watched him do this, wondering how he could just eat like that immediately after sex, a crying jag, and a florid Victorian poetry reference. With a full mouth, he said, “Really, Stanley, we’ve got to get you to the market. After we shower and dress we’ll drop off your laundry, and swing by some grocery, maybe Tesco. Is that what you’ve got around here?”

With my jaw hanging open, I nodded, slowly. “Yeah,” I managed to croak. “It’s not too far.”

Wiping the crumbs from his lips, he smiled. “And you have to eat something, dear.”

“I think I’d prefer just to get something for tea later, a sandwich or something,” I managed.

“All right, then, this is an excellent plan.” He said this in a way that assured me I would not be deviating from it without his consent.

~

When it came down to it, Kyle was predictable in his devotion to the last bastions of the British aristocracy. It was funny, in a way, that the only person I knew to actually take cars everywhere and shop at Fortnum and Mason was a homosexual half-American Jew. His mother certainly didn’t shop there. The summer I stayed with them I learned promptly that there were to be no pig products brought into the house, and we must never drink a glass of milk with our prime rib, and god forbid we should mix the two sets of dishes, or Gerald Broflovski would set off on an unending lecture about the categorization of sets of china.

Perhaps the first time he informed me I was genuinely uninitiated to this antiquarian outlook on the adherence to moral dietary codes. By even the second time I was beginning to unintentionally sigh in resignation when he got out the family Bible, or whatever the Jews called it, because of course they couldn’t just say the standardized name for any particular concept, and then read me the various passages on scripture pertaining to why we weren’t to eat that way. Afterward Kyle would look at me sympathetically and sigh, “That’s what it was like growing up here, you know,” and take me out for a steak-and-stilton pie with jellied eels.

By mid-July he had brought me with him to Fortnum and Mason. He encouraged me to buy a half-pound of Scottish smoked salmon, and then we took it into St. James’s Square and we sat on a bench in our tight trousers eating it with our fingers. “My mother would kill me if I brought this into the house,” he reasoned. “It’s just salmon, but it has to be killed a certain way and gotten from a certain fishmonger. I will never impose this on my household or my family, or, or—” His voice hitched, and he peeled another piece of fish off of the foil-wrapped cardboard with deliberate carefulness. “Well, I suppose I’ll never have anyone to impose it on. So fuck it all, really. I’m so sorry my father cannot bring himself to stop lecturing you. There are so many delicious things in this world that Judaism would not generally approve of.”

“Example?” I asked, distracted by the majesty of the buildings around us.

“Well, homosexuality, for one. There’s a passage on that, too.”

“Oh no,” I said summarily. “Has he read you that one?”

He shook his head and ate his piece of fish before answering, “No, he never has.”

I am sure it would be cliché to claim that I was able to pinpoint the very moment in which I fell for him. I am well aware that I just couldn’t do that — there were too many moments like this in which he sighed, his full lips settling into a miserable shape, and I could feel between us the unspoken pain of knowing there was something in the universe keeping the two of us from settling, either together or separately. I think this is the closest I have ever gotten to internalizing what love really is — knowing that the two of you share the same, deep-seated pain that you can never be rid of, and the closest you can come to healing is looking into the face of someone with the same sort of hurt and recognizing their agony as your own.

Moreover, I have always felt that love on its own is insubstantial, that to be truly in love with someone, you must like them; you must enjoy their company. Kyle and I had great fun that summer, going to the opera and touring the Victoria and Albert Museum. We stood in front of the great cast of the Column of Trajan, our necks aching from the strain of gazing upon the orderly twists of burly, half-naked German Barbarians and well-muscled auxiliaries. “Do you think I might have been a Classicist?” Kyle asked after a silent 10 minutes, during which time a young mother and her probably 7-year-old daughter glared at us menacingly from behind a row of sepulchers. I am not sure if it was because we were very clearly two gay boys wearing unsettlingly tight slacks, or if Kyle’s disproportionate hairdo was blocking her view of the cast. “I think I would have done well with military history. All these strapping Germanics are making me feel a bit lascivious.”

“I think something so large and obviously phallic has no place in your studies,” I theorized. “Besides, you are so good with William Blake.” And it was true; he had been walking around campus quoting Songs of Experience to anyone who would listen for the last month of the term. The first night I spent in his family’s dining room, he read aloud his prize-winning essay on “Broken Marriage Vows and Smog: Reality and the Imaginary in Blake’s ‘London.’ ” It was the third time I had heard him read it, as he presented it once to our Enlightenment Literature tutorial, and once before the English department. He glowed as he read at the dinner table, stealing quick glances at his parents, hoping to notice some approval. Ike rolled his eyes throughout, occasionally making demonstrative yawning gestures.

After Kyle had finished, he turned to his brother and said, in a bruised tone, “So sorry to have bored you, Ike.”

“You’ll make it up to me somehow,” Ike had said with a shrug.

Their father deigned to speak: “That was a very intelligent paper, Kyle. You must be quite proud of yourself.”

“The English department is quite proud of me, actually. Are you proud of me, Stanley?”

I was 19, blushing, and suitably embarrassed to be in the presence of this odd, cultured, dignified family. With a nervous glance around the table, I smiled at my friend and said, “Of course.”

“Good,” Kyle answered. He set his napkin on his chair and began to clear the dishes.

~

So devoted was Kyle to this overpriced luxury grocer that by the time we were bathed and dried and dressed and generally recovered from our curious sex, he had decided we were going to make the trek to Mayfair to get me some bread and butter. It was not exactly far, but far enough to make a taxi seem a needless indulgence.

“But there’s a market right over there,” I weakly protested as he dragged me down the street to find a cab. “What’s the point of paying someone else to drive us all the way across town? It just seems ludicrous, is all.”

“Stop whining,” he chided me, sticking his arm out to signal at one of those black behemoths he loved so well. “We both need food, and there’s no better place to get it.”

A taxi pulled up in front of us, and we climbed aboard. I hunkered myself down into the farthest seat, and Kyle curled up against me, hand on my chest.

“Green Park Tube,” he instructed the driver.

“And what do you need food for, anyway?” I asked as we merged into traffic. I could see the driver squinting at us a bit too narrowly via the mirror.

“Why, tonight, of course,” he said. “It’s Saturday, or have you forgotten? I’ve got to feed you, and me, and Miss B, Eric, and that towheaded slattern you find yourself gravitating toward. I mean, feeding just Eric is something of an obligation.”

“He’s not a slattern,” I said.

“Who, Eric? Obviously. Who’d have him?”

“No, the boy you just called a ‘towheaded slattern.’ He’s not a slattern. He’s just a regular old prostitute. … And he’s not bad.”

Kyle’s eyes flew open as wide as they could go. “Oh my god,” he said. “You are sleeping with him.”

“Well, I didn’t mean in bed! I meant he’s just an adequate person, nothing awful or wonderful about him.”

“You’re sleeping with him!” he repeated. “That’s why you’re not upset about Gary’s death — you’re replaced him! Oh, this is bloody fucking magical. Was it before or after you found out? Did you fuck me and him both yesterday? Because I—”

I sighed. “Kyle, shut up. You don’t own me. And I haven’t replaced Gary; they’re entirely different people.”

“I do now! And yes, you have!

I was relieved that he wasn’t furious, but rather shocked. But then, I’d fucked an awful lot of people, and Kyle’s week-long period of celibacy wasn’t really a point of superiority for him, as much as leaping from one monogamous affair to the next was just a cloak for a wishful kind of promiscuity. After all, he’d apparently let Clyde pick him up while cruising some park — it was less a relationship than some tawdry sex he wanted badly to rewrite through the force of sheer will. Steadily the implication that he was going to expect some sort of monogamy occurred to me — but I didn’t find it troublesome; it felt relieving.

“Is he good?” Kyle asked.

“I’ve had better,” I admitted. “Good for a prostitute, I suppose — although I should admit he’s my first prostitute.”

“Does Eric know? And are you paying him?”

“No. And no.” I felt this was less a lie than my own sort of aspirational overhaul. I never really gave him money — he just took it. And anyway — I had ended it.

“Oh, this is just dandy. Lord knows I can’t compete with that. And to think — I felt I’d just won some magnificent prize.” He sounded sad.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’ll have to fight harder for your affections.”

“Nonsense.” I pulled him toward me and kissed him on the jaw line.

He sighed. “Let’s not fool ourselves,” he rasped. “Kenneth is a young, attractive boy who isn’t looking for anything, except a screw and some dinner.”

“Sure he takes cash,” I mumbled.

“Details, details. It’s all just stupid details. If I were you, I’d be physically drawn to him, too. It’s not simply his scrappy little build or the fact that he’s been making such eyes at you. … Oh, Stanley. Don’t make that face. I know.”

“I’m not making a face.”

He was very quiet. “You … need me, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do.”

“No man has ever needed me before.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Hard or not, it’s certainly true. I’m not one to be needed. Wanted, maybe, and fucked, certainly, but no one really ever needs me. That’s why I can’t — why I haven’t found anyone else … well, I don’t know. You need me, but nobody else does. That’s why you’ve never gone away. That’s why every time I meet a new boyfriend you are lurking in the shadows. When you find a new boyfriend, you hold on to me just the same. No one else would do that. You do it because you need me.”

Certainly I couldn’t deny this. And yet discussing how I felt was one of my weakest skills. I had no inclination toward the self-psychoanalytic. This was something that annoyed me — if anything annoyed me — about Kyle. He yearned to make a mountain out of every molehill in Britain. Nevertheless, he was correct.

And when I didn’t answer, he tucked in closer into me, kissing me on the jaw, and twice at the corner of my mouth.

In the reflection of the rearview mirror, I saw the driver gazing ahead intensely, perhaps trying to ignore what was going on in the backseat of his cab.

“Promise me you don’t need that little boy,” Kyle said. “I’m too old and too fat to fight for you, dear. I can’t compete with some baby with perfect skin.”

“Well, he hasn’t got perfect skin,” I replied. “And his teeth are all a mess. Darling, this is really foolish.”

“Oh, you think I’m fat?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, you didn’t deny it!”

In the rearview mirror, I could discern the driver snickering at us. “Kyle, this is too cliché to fathom. I don’t have the mental energy to extol all of your virtues right now. It would take a lifetime to do that, as there are so many.”

“Well, I think I am prepared at this juncture to provide a lifetime. So, why don’t you attempt to begin?”

His lips were near mine, and in lieu of playing his insecure game I simply laid a kiss against them, which he proved receptive to, grasping me a little tighter. The driver was now visibly shaking with laugher at this, so I just closed my eyes and let him writhe against me. To be entirely honest I was so tired from fucking and drinking and grieving and overwhelmed with the sheer madness of Kyle attempting to scale my lap in the back of a taxi that I couldn’t even call to mind what it was that I liked about him. I was sure, however, that the fact that he could make me forget these things had something to do with it.

At Fortnum and Mason Kyle bought three pounds of smoked salmon and a jar of crème fraiche. He grabbed things off of shelves until his wicker basket was sagging in his grasp. “Here,” he said, thrusting it into my hands. “Hold this for me, please, dear, wouldn’t you?”

Kyle’s bill was exorbitant and as he wrote a check for the cashier I contemplated how he could spend like this and remain so comfortable. I barely ate more than a packet of crisps, an apple, and a hard boiled egg on a daily basis. A long time ago I’d had to make a choice between drinking or eating lavishly, and to no great surprise I hadn’t picked the latter. That Kyle managed to do both, and maintained a posh flat full of Baccarat and Afghani carpets, and had his waistcoats handmade in silk jacquard by tailors who apparently held royal warrants — it slowly dawned on me that he was really quite wealthy. (On the other hand, it did occur to me that often clients gave him these things out of courtesy, or diplomacy.) I liked bespoke clothing and nice things as much as anyone, but I had probably never spent more than five pounds on groceries in one go in my life. Kyle was spending 20 times that simply for a Saturday evening before going out.

Something about that saddened me, perhaps because I was also quite aware that he was dreadfully stingy, to the extent that he often found tiny ways to make me pay for his meals and drugs and alcohol. Given that I couldn’t really afford my own meals, drugs, and alcohol — at least, not all three at the same time — I wondered where he got off spending like this for no particular reason, or if he was just self-unaware. With my eyes wide and the sack of food in my arms, I followed him outside to hail another taxi.

In his building’s lift he pressed against me again, palming my dick through my trousers and crushing a cluster of hothouse tomatoes as he leaned into the bag to get closer to me. Once at his flat, he shed all of his clothing and put away all the groceries entirely in the nude. Unsure of what to make of this and desperate to fuck him again, I stood in his kitchen with my arms crossed, willing my erection to disappear, which of course it did not.

“I think you like me,” Kyle sang, stepping off of a chair he’d been using to reach a platter on a high shelf. “You want to fuck me and kiss me and marry me!”

I laughed, but not in a derisive way. “Well, yes,” I admitted. “Of course. In that order, obviously. One thing at a time.” The first two proved easily enough accomplished in about an hour, followed by a shower, which he let me take first so he could do something or other to his hair. As I lathered my hands with his shampoo, which smelled ashy for a moment before I realized it was meant to be rosemary, I realized that I was somewhat relieved that the latter was quite impossible — the thought of it, so suddenly, just terrified me. In a wire basket hanging from his showerhead I spied bottles of liquid soap with French labels and a generous container of feminine douche, next to an enema bottle. That made me smile.

~

Kyle was dressing, and I was sitting on one of his couches, nursing a flute of champagne. He’d opened a bottle of Taittinger for us before putting the veal pasties in the oven on low to keep them warm. “This is very good champagne,” he’d said, palming the phallic end of the bottle. “I’ve had it in the cooler for about a year now.”

“So why waste it now?” I asked.

“It’s just for us, of course.” He shrugged. “It feels like the right time.”

“I thought you were off of champagne after Christophe.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, my. Between all the drama, I keep forgetting about him. Why do you keep bringing him up?” He thrust the bottle into my hands, and its chilled, glassy surface almost caused it to fall from my grasp and shatter on the floor. “Careful, now,” Kyle whispered, steadying the bottle between my fingers. From the counter, he produced an opener. “Won’t you do the honors?”

I opened the bottle of Taittinger; it was a 1976 vintage, stiff and brisk in our mouths. Silently we drank, staring at each other, a clock on the wall ticking insistently like something out of a film. Shortly he dismissed himself to change out of the ill-fitting shirt he was wearing as a makeshift dressing gown, unbuttoned and long enough to cover his behind, but only just so. Through the cream-colored gauze of the fabric I could make out the shape of his arse clad in black briefs. If I hadn’t had sex already twice that day I would have torn them off again and had him on the cocktail table.

I had finished a second glass when he reappeared. “It’s a very nice night,” he remarked, signaling his return in tight jeans and a white Aertex short-sleeved button-down. “Do I look all right?”

I nodded. “You always look all right to me.” I put my drink down on the table. I thought for a moment, and emboldened, I added, “I think you look beautiful.”

“That’s kind of you to say.” Sitting on the couch next to me, he crossed his arms. “You do realize that I’m very, very needy, of course. Where is that bottle of champagne? We should finish it before anyone else arrives.”

I got up to fetch it for him, and brought him a new glass as well. “I wouldn’t say you are needy,” I said, and I heard the falsity, the brittleness in my own words.

“Please don’t lie to me.” Kyle sighed, and drank. The mood in the flat was indescribable, and I realized that for the first time in a very long while, I was no longer in safe territory.

“I think I deserve not to be lied to, and I know very well that I am very needy, and I suppose the thing I have always liked — or rather, loved — about you, Stanley, is that you are aware of this. Yet you treat me with a respect that I have not been given by anyone else save my father, perhaps. You are the only man who has ever looked at me without contempt. Jealousy, lust, possessiveness — I don’t mind those, so I forgive you for feeling them. But ultimately in a partner or a lover I think what I really want is someone who relates to me as a partner, and I have never had that. All I have ever had is a series of brutes who may have been willing to fight for me, but fighting is hardly protection, because protection is emotional.”

I didn’t know what to do, so I took Kyle’s hand. “Why now?” I asked. Further words weren’t forthcoming. I think what I was feeling was an immense vulnerability.

He sniffed. “Do you know, I was waiting for you to do something. I’m not the sort of girl who makes moves; I enjoy being courted. But I think you’ve been courting me for years, to be honest, and suddenly when I heard about Gary…” He trailed off, allowing his words to fester between us, abandoned. He was frowning, somewhat more than slightly.

“Let us be cliché and attest to the fact that life is quite short, and I have spent much of it expecting us to have our day at some indeterminable point in the future. But I’ve recently been reminded that anything can happen — random, tragic things, like you say. So what’s the use in waiting? When I was younger, 10 years ago, I consoled myself with the idea that I was in my youth, and that our great romance might commence later. But I am not really sure when there is going to be a later. This is life, isn’t it?” He sighed, heaving his shoulders and tipping his head.

“To be honest, darling, I’m … well, I don’t quite know what to say to you.”

He squeezed my hand. “Well, Stanley dear, the very nice thing about love is that you really don’t have to say anything. You aren’t some blockhead like old Clyde. I trust well enough we have an understanding.”

“It’s been a while since I last had an understanding, you know. Actually, let’s not forget that the last man I had an understanding with is dead.”

“And another’s married. So what?”

“Well, so this means either you’re going to die, or get married, I suppose.”

“Ha,” he said dryly. “Life is very peculiar, isn’t it?”

“It’s peculiar indeed,” I agreed.

He wormed his fingers out of my hand, and sipped champagne.

~

When Butters arrived we were on the sofa snogging, my hands barely brushing the warm skin of Kyle’s torso underneath the straining buttons of his fitted shirt.

“Oh, hell,” he spat as he pulled away — literally, saliva clung to his lips before he wiped them. “I wish they would all go somewhere else just for once.” While he was answering the door, I did my best to quickly maneuver my erection around so that it wasn’t quite so apparent between my legs.

When he walked into the room, Butters stopped and pointed and me and squealed. “You have been kissing! Don’t lie, don’t lie!” He began clapping his hands, something I hadn’t seen him do in years. “This is so exciting.”

“What?” I asked. At which point Kyle returned from the door with a bouquet in his arms.

“I have to put these in a vase,” he said. “Butters, hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s simply impolite to hand flowers that need arranging to your hostess?”

“What?” Butters turned to Kyle, blushing, a hand over his mouth. “I, no, I haven’t ever heard that.”

“Well, it’s true. Instead of enjoying your company, she has to go bother with arranging flowers!” For some kind of emphasis, Kyle stomped his foot. He was barefoot, though, and the effect of this gesture was adorable rather than audible.

“Do you want me to do it?” Butters asked.

“Oh, no, don’t mind me at all. Please, have a drink. Stanley, be a dear and get Miss B a drink. I need a vase.”

There was a bar in the corner; it was very 1950s, and Kyle followed suit by keeping it well-stocked. Often we didn’t drink straight alcohol together, and generally Saturday nights were too celebratory for whisky or other stiff drinks. But Butters asked for a gin and tonic, which I fixed him in a Baccarat tumbler that caught light where it was aggressively cut.

As soon as he had his drink in hand, Butters thanked me, and said, “I caught you kissing, didn’t I?”

I sniffed. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Well, that’s true, you generally don’t. But this time I think you should! It’s wonderful, so I have to know. Please tell me.”

“Is it obvious?”

“Well, I think it will dissipate shortly,” Butters assured me, indicating my crotch. “But your lips — both of yours, I mean — are so swollen. And when he answered the door poor Kyle had that flushed look. And the marks on his neck, too. I don’t think the collar quite hides them.”

“Oh, those could be from anyone.”

“No, they have to be recent. Broken blood vessels lighten to a kind of pink after a bit, and those are just too violet. Unless you’ve been hiding a third man in this apartment, that’s your work.” Again, he clapped his hands like a schoolgirl. “Oh, I know I’m right!”

“Fine, Butters, you win.”

“Win what?” Kyle asked. He reappeared with the bouquet, now neatly if hastily arranged in an uninspiring manner in another cut-crystal vase. He set it on the windowsill and brushed some orange pollen from his hands; it settled onto his trousers. In the fading light of day, Butters’ wildflowers looked lush and healthy — they were screeching magentas and violent greens, dusty pinks and ivories. Butters had some kind of eye for color coordination — but perhaps it did not apply to flora.

“I’m afraid Miss B is on to us,” I told Kyle.

“All right.” Kyle crossed his arms. “Why shouldn’t she be?”

Thinking of Kenny, and solely of Kenny, I said, “The last thing we’d like is for Eric to make some kind of scene.”

“A scene about what?” Kyle asked. “I don’t give a damn about Eric. He’s barely fond of you, and he really hates me, so what do you think he is possibly going to care if he knows we’ve been fucking a bit?”

“Fucking?” Butters asked, eyes widening.

“A bit? Darling, twice today.”

“I think my personal best is four,” Kyle replied. “Can you beat that?”

“That was when you were 20!” I snapped.

“Details.”

“And it’s not as if you were doing the work, such as it is.”

“Oh, it’s work, is it?”

“Excuse me,” Butters cut in. “Kyle, however many times it was today, and whomever you’d like to know, maybe you’d prefer the evidence of your liaison weren’t so blatant?”

“It is blatant?” Kyle touched his neck, as if he could feel this. “My god, how perfectly stupid would that look? Lord knows I’m really much older than 20. But I guess I might as well be, how we’ve been carrying on.”

“Eric is doubtlessly on his way,” I reminded my friends.

“Butters, does it look stupid? I don’t want to look stupid.”

“I would never say stupid.”

“Can you help me?”

“I don’t know. What kind of face makeup do you have?”

“I have some old foundation—”

“I think that’ll do. Do you have anything green? It balances out redness, actually. I can cover it up, if you like, but if you perspire a lot it might run off. Have you got cream-based, or powder?”

Kyle looked lost. “Not sure, ah — both?”

“Oh, all right. We can combine them. That’s a convenient trick I’m fond of.”

“Butters,” I said. “Where did you learn this about makeup?”

Miss B grinned, clasping her hands. “Twenty years of female impersonation, Stanley, and you learn something about covering things. Beard lines in particular.”

“Well, I don’t have that, do I?”

Miss B shook her head. “Why, no. That is amazing, actually. How do you manage?”

“I shave thrice a day.” Kyle was beaming, and he held up three fingers in illustration. “I don’t know, I don’t want to look too butch.”

“Kyle,” I said. “The time—”

“All right!” he cried. “Stanley, Jesus. You are unbearably naggy this evening.” This was a ridiculous thing to say, as I’d spent the majority of the day with either his tongue or his cock in my mouth — nagging would have been quite impossible.

In any case, Kyle and Butters were busy fooling around with makeup in the bedroom when Eric and Kenny arrived, so I answered the door and offered them a drink.

“Don’t bother,” Eric croaked, pulling a packet of something from his jacket pocket. “I’ve a more attractive offer for you.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” I said.

Kenny cleared his throat. “I would like a drink,” he said, “Stanley.”

“All right. What would you like?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Something expensive.”

“Just tell me what you want to drink,” I insisted. “I think Kyle has some Fuller’s—”

“Where is that miserable Jew?” Eric asked.

“He’ll be along,” I said. “He’s with Butters.”

Kenny pointed to the bottle of Taittinger on the counter. “I want that.”

“That’s champagne,” I said. “Not an ale.”

“Well, who said I wanted beer?”

“I just assumed—”

“Well, don’t assume, Stanley,” he sneered. “I can drink sophisticated things, too, actually.”

“Fine,” I said. “Help yourself.”

Eric put his hands on his hips, which was the type of thing he did whenever no one was paying attention to him. “Come over here and look at this,” he barked. “I have a proposition for you.”

I walked over, head spinning. The evening was young and too much had happened; I was developing a looming sense of dread I could not place, although it may have had something to do with my suspicion that Kyle was talking to Butters without any kind of self-censorship mechanism in place. Moreover, Kenny’s attitude was bothersome, although I had no idea why I should even care.

“What?” I asked Eric. “What is this you want me to look at?”

He held a brown paper package aloft and smirked. “This is manna,” he said. “A gift from whatever god you believe in, you agnostic Catholic bastard.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just tell me, Eric.”

“Cocaine, naturally.” He began to unwrap the package in his hands, and sure enough there was a fat baggie of it inside. “Our well-connected friend assures me this is the top of the line product, and he is usually accurate about these things, even if he prices his stuff like a Jew selling bread scraps at Treblinka.” (I was sure his well-connected friend was Damien, the drug dealer I tried to avoid to the best of my abilities, but Eric did have a way of talking about things like you knew what he was on about, when there was often little chance you had any idea.)

“So what’s this to do with me?”

“I want to offer you some.”

I rolled my eyes. “You make a worse drug dealer than you do an insurance salesman, Eric.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a fucking brilliant at what I do, which is why I can afford high-status trifles like this cocaine and that beauty over there.” He nodded his head toward Kenny, who was pouring himself a glass of the Taittinger, attempting to appear as though he weren’t eavesdropping.

“How much?” I asked.

“Let’s not be crass. What are numbers between friends?”

“You are not my friend.”

“How could you say something like that?” His indignation melted away. Now he seemed disappointed.

“Well, look, I’m broke,” I told him. It wasn’t exactly true, but it was true enough, and I didn’t have any patience for this. “You can give me some cocaine gratis or you can go after Kyle and maybe he’ll follow you down whatever demented path you’re on at the moment but if you’re looking to fashion yourself as some kind of second-tier drug dealer, go to hell.”

“Drug dealing? Stanley, this is just smart. It’s more like I need someone to subsidize this. And being friends, or so I thought, I thought we could reach some mutually beneficial arrangement. It’s good stuff, you know.”

“I don’t care. I have no money.” To demonstrate this, I pulled my wallet from my pocket and opened it up. “See, I have two fivers and a 20. That’s it. That’s all the money I have in the world right now.”

He laughed at me. “Well, now who’s pathetic at what they do? Wait, wait — I’m sorry. You don’t do anything. I’d forgotten.”

“Go to hell, Eric. Pick on someone your own size. Or rather, since there’s no one alive as bloody fat as you, don’t bother.”

“Why don’t you go ask the Jew?” he suggested.

“Fine,” I said. Anything to get away from him.

I was about to be delighted to be out of his presence, but as I was halfway down the hall, Kenny said to me, “Where are you going?” It wasn’t surprising, because I had a vague inkling of being followed, but the layout of Kyle’s flat lent itself to someone creeping behind you undetected.

“To talk to Kyle and Butters,” I said, sizing him up. He was holding a flute of champagne, cocking his hip against a wall in a fairly lurid manner, almost asking me to reach out for him. I didn’t. “Anyway, you’re not invited,” I added, thinking he would understand and slink away, back to Eric and their sordid little situation.

“Oh, but I’d so much rather come with you.”

“I suppose that’s too bad, then.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, Stanley. I read people.” With that, he disappeared around the corner, perhaps back into the living room.

Knocking before I entered and receiving no response, I found Kyle sitting at the vanity facing Butters, who was on the bed. They were both giggling at something, but they stopped when they saw me.

“Look,” Kyle said, pulling the collar of his shirt away from his neck. “I’m all fixed.”

“Then why ever did you leave me stranded out there?”

“You can handle Eric, can’t you?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. Both of them were looking at me. “He wants me to buy some cocaine.”

“Well, you should,” Kyle said.

Butters shook his head slowly, indicating grave disapproval.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Look,” I said. “I don’t really want any of his bloody drugs and for that matter, I don’t have any money.”

“Just give him some food and he’ll leave you alone. I left those pasties in the oven, remember? He can eat mine. That should shut him up.” He paused. “Wait a moment. How is it that you don’t have any money?”

“Haven’t cashed my checks lately,” I said. “I don’t know, I got distracted with everything. I’ve 30 quid in my wallet and perhaps another six in change in my pocket. Although maybe it fell out when you tore off my clothing earlier.” This wasn’t so, and I could feel the heavy coins in my back pocket, but it was just as well I should remind him. “I don’t even know what he wants to charge. He won’t tell me! Which indicates I probably can’t afford it. And I don’t want any, anyhow.”

“Smart man.” Miss B nodded, folding her hands together. “I’ll go talk to him. You can’t leave him alone, really. Then he gets bored, and you surely don’t want that. I’ll go ask him what he had for lunch. That’ll get him off your case. Excuse me.” Butters slipped off the bed and took his leave of us.

Kyle got up off the vanity and came over to me, uncrossing my arms and wrapping them around himself. “I’ll take care of it,” he whispered. “Don’t you worry.” I assumed he was talking about the cocaine, but he just as well may have been referring to anything. I was sick of vagaries and wondering what it meant that Kenny “read people” and worrying about what was going to happen tomorrow when this night was over and it was Sunday.

Returning to the kitchen, where Eric was happily gnawing on a veal pasty and Butters was speaking at length about slum literature and antiquarian editions thereof, Kyle picked up the empty Taittinger bottle and said, “Oh,” sounding very sad, or disappointed. “It’s all gone.”

“Yes, I had the last glass,” Kenny replied. “Perhaps that was a mistake. It was so bitter! What gives?”

“Ah.” Kyle sniffed. “I’m sorry you didn’t like it.”

“Who said I didn’t like it? I liked it all right. It tasted special. Was it special?”

“Yes, it was.” Kyle frowned.

“Well.” Kenny was grinning. “Thanks for sharing it with me.” He laughed, long and high-pitched, as if he had already been imbibing and snorting things for quite some time.


Continued here.