Shameless (2 page)

Thankfully, Caroline’s panties hadn’t presented quite so much of a problem since she’d met Graham. That first night together, he had insisted on removing them with his teeth. Darling Graham. Not only was he the best-looking man she had dated in a long time—tall and wiry, with a mop of curly brown hair and bright hazel eyes. He was also the kind of man who didn’t turn his nose up at cunnilingus. In Caroline’s experience, men with that many physical attributes were pretty hard to find. Martin had told her once that he was finally forced to admit that he was gay at the age of fifteen when his girlfriend at the time asked him to go down on her. Try as he might, and desperate as he was to convince himself that he was really straight, he just couldn’t go through with it. Caroline had told him that if eating pussy was the only thing that separated straight men from gay men, then there were a hell of a lot of men out there who were gay and just didn’t know it yet. Before Graham, she had only ever known one man who knew the first thing about pleasuring a woman this way. The others merely snuffled around a bit, halfheartedly, like dogs sniffing a lamppost. And people wondered why girls like her learned to pleasure themselves from an early age. If she had waited for a man to bring her to orgasm, she would have been dry for twenty-seven years!

Yes, Caroline had had more than her fair share of bad sex. Men who squeezed her breasts so hard it hurt. Men whose idea of foreplay was to stick their tongues so far into her ear they practically burst her eardrum. Men who came so quickly it was all over before she’d even begun to feel any kind of pleasure. Men with dicks so small she could barely tell when the point of penetration occurred. It wasn’t their fault, of course. But if they only knew the lengths she had gone to, clenching her vaginal muscles in order to massage their fragile male egos, reassuring them that, oh yeah baby, it felt really good when really, she felt nothing. There was that guy she met at the Met Bar the Christmas before last—gorgeous body, sports car, the works. The only problem was, his penis was no bigger than her little finger. She tried so hard to compensate for it, clenching away for all she was worth. “Oh, it’s so big! It’s so big! Is it in yet?” That was the difference between gay men and straight women. A gay man would have just dumped him on the spot, or jerked him off in a doorway. Women would lie back and clench for England.

Still, whatever indignities Caroline had suffered in the past, she had certainly made up for it in the past year. Sex with Graham was the best she’d ever known. He was so sensitive, so attentive, so athletic. There wasn’t any position they hadn’t tried. That boob job had turned out to be a really sound investment. Not having to worry about her tits disappearing under her armpits had freed Caroline up in ways she could never have imagined. There were no inhibitions when she was with Graham, no games she couldn’t play, no fantasies she couldn’t explore.

Finally, after years of envying gay men for their lack of sexual boundaries, their ability to act out their desires, their appetite for experimentation, Caroline was having the kind of sex her gay friends boasted about. In fact, had she not spent every waking moment being so thoroughly conscious of her own femininity, she might have suspected that Graham was really gay. Which was kind of funny, when she thought about it. And she did—fairly often.

Martin arrived home drunk and lurched angrily into the living room. He was fully expecting to find Christopher sprawled out in front of the television with a slightly bored look on his face and an excuse already prepared. “I was delayed at work.” “I sprained my ankle at the gym.” “I thought we said the Edge, not the Village.” Only the lights were off, and there was no sign of Christopher.

Martin reached for the light switch and stared around the room in disbelief. The sofa had vanished. So had the CD tower. And the video. And that mirror Christopher’s mum had given them as a housewarming present, that had gone, too. Martin dimly remembered the girl downstairs telling him she had been burgled a few weeks ago. Apparently, there had been a spate of break-ins recently, all in the Stockwell area. They had taken practically everything, right down to her clothes. He ran into the main bedroom and flung open the wardrobe. All of his clothes were still hanging there—even the more expensive things like his Helmut Lang suit, his Schott combats and his ever-expanding collection of Diesel tops. The only clothes missing were Christopher’s, everything down to his underwear. Martin couldn’t understand it. What sort of burglar would steal someone’s underwear? And why take one person’s clothes and leave another’s? Something clicked and he hurried into the smaller second bedroom, the one that doubled as a guest room and a space used mainly for storage. Sure enough, everything belonging to Christopher had vanished. And next to the spare bed, propped up against the original ’30s deco lamp Martin had discovered one Christmas at Greenwich market and Christopher had never really liked, there was a neatly folded piece of paper with his name written on it. He picked it up and read.

“Dear Martin,” the note began. “I guess you’ll have worked it out by now that I’ve moved out. Sorry if this comes as a shock to you, but I can’t see the point in dragging this out any longer than necessary. I’ve made my decision and it’s time to move on. I could lie to you and say that it was a case of us wanting different things, but the truth is that I just don’t want you. You’ll probably think this sounds harsh, but I think it’s best to be upfront about these things. I’ve taken what’s mine, plus a few of the things we bought together. Everything else you’re welcome to. Try not to think too badly of me. It was fun for a while, but all good things come to an end. Christopher.”

Martin sank onto the bed and struggled to hold back the tears. How could Christopher just pack up and leave like this? Things hadn’t been going that badly, had they? They hadn’t had sex in a while, but lots of couples went through difficult periods, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to spice things up a bit. He’d even gone to bed wearing a jockstrap one night, knowing how Christopher used to fantasize about the school jocks as a teenager, but even that had failed to ignite any interest. What was he supposed to do now? They’d been together so long, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be alone. The pain in his chest was so strong, it was almost physical. He’d heard people compare sudden breakups to waking up and discovering that they had a limb missing. Now he knew what they meant. The feelings he had for Christopher were still there, the way people described still feeling a missing arm or leg. Only now there was this terrible pain, too, and the awful realization that a part of him had been removed and that there was nothing he could do about it.

He needed a drink. He went into the kitchen, fixed himself a large vodka and tonic, and stumbled into the bedroom. What time was it? The alarm clock said just past midnight. Caroline would probably be asleep by now. Maybe John would still be awake. Wasn’t he due back from Florida tonight or something? Martin reached for the phone next to the bed and dialed the number. The answering machine clicked on immediately, which usually meant that John was at home and was either asleep or didn’t want to be disturbed.

“John, it’s Martin. . . . Are you there? Christopher has left. I don’t know where he is. He’s taken his stuff. Can you come over? Call me back.”

Martin hung up the phone and stared at his reflection in the bedside mirror. He was such an idiot. He was an idiot to think that Christopher loved him. He was an idiot to think that a friend like John would be there when he needed him. And he was an idiot to think that having his hair cut this short would make him more attractive. It made his ears look enormous.

He felt a lump rise in his throat and realized he couldn’t choke back the tears any longer. It was time to let it all out. Then the room started spinning, and he threw up.

A few miles away in Earl’s Court (not quite Chelsea but handy for the airport), John heard the phone ring, saw Martin’s number flash up, and waited for the answering machine to click on. He’d been expecting this call—if not tonight, then sometime soon. It had been obvious to John from the start that Christopher and Martin would never last. Everyone knew that the gay world was arranged into pecking orders—or, as John preferred to think of it, pec-ing orders. Someone blessed with a face like Christopher’s was always going to be out of Martin’s league, and once he’d acquired a body to match, it was only a matter of time before the rules of attraction tore them apart. John had never said this to Martin directly, of course. They were friends after all, and it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you said to a friend. Similarly, when John discovered that Christopher was having an affair, he had kept it to himself. Well, unless you counted Shane, one of the gay cabin crew he had started to get friendly with. But Shane hardly even knew Martin anyway, and how else was a boy supposed to pass the time during those long hauls and drunken stopovers? No, all things considered, John had been the soul of discretion.

Which was more than could be said for Christopher. It was bad enough that he was having an affair with a whore. Rent boys weren’t exactly the most low-key queens around—these days they were treated like celebrities. But to work out together at the gym? That was tantamount to taking out a full-page ad on the back of
Boyz.
It was a well-known fact that muscle Marys were the biggest gossips in the world, never happier than when they were hovering around the bench press and ripping some poor queen to shreds. That was how John had learned about Christopher’s secret liaison. He’d gone to the gym to work on his abdominals and had overheard two queens gossiping in the changing room. This rent boy (Marco he was called—weren’t they all?), well, he wasn’t exactly the first. It seemed that Christopher had been putting it about quite a bit. They hadn’t all been full-blown affairs. According to these two gym queens, it had mostly been quick tricks in the showers. In fact, John was surprised there wasn’t a plaque on the wall in the changing room in recognition of all the men Christopher was reputed to have serviced there.

Martin must have been blind not to have worked it out by now. Poor, stupid queen. For a moment, John considered calling him back, but decided against it. He felt sorry for Martin, he really did. But sympathy was a bit like cocaine—offer someone a little bit and before the night was out they’d be back begging for more. For John, friends came in two varieties. There were the Low-Maintenance Friends, or LMFs—the kind of people who were fun to be around, but who didn’t demand much in the way of emotional support, and who were always able to pay for their own drugs. And then there were the High-Maintenance Friends, or HMFs—the kind of people you could enjoy the occasional night out with, but who had a nasty habit of unloading their problems on you, and who were always short of money. For the past couple of years, Martin had been an LMF, which suited John to a T. Now, with Christopher gone, there was a strong possibility that he might suddenly mutate into an HMF. And as much as he liked Martin, John had no intention of becoming a shoulder for him to cry on.

Besides which, he’d had a bitch of a day today. Flights to and from Orlando attracted some of the worst people on earth, people who shouldn’t be allowed to set foot outside Croydon, never mind fly to America and back. He could tell that stupid cunt and her meathead husband would be trouble the minute they had turned up with all that extra hand luggage and their shining pink brats in tow—her screaming at the kids to “shut the fuck up,” him stinking of lager and complaining about the number of queers on board. John wasn’t sure which was worse—the breeders who radiated hostility at any crew member who wasn’t wearing a skirt, or the queens who snapped their fingers to gain your attention and assumed that gay cabin crew were all part of the in-flight entertainment. If there was one thing John hated more than being referred to as a “trolley dolly,” it was the assumption that he was some sort of flying mattress.

Thank God Shane had been on the same flight today. Shane was always so good at dealing with difficult passengers. He always knew the right thing to say to wind them up without ever being seen to be obviously rude or deliberately unhelpful, thereby giving them grounds for complaint. And when words failed him, he always knew how to get back at them in little subtle ways—the wrong meal here, the spilled drink there. Really, he was a man after John’s own heart. It was a pity he only went for Asian types. That was partly why Shane had become an air steward in the first place—all those stopovers in Bangkok. John couldn’t see the attraction of Asian boys, and he certainly couldn’t understand rice queens with Shane’s level of devotion. It just didn’t make any sense. Walk into any gay sauna or back room in London and you were guaranteed to find an Asian on their knees. Why fly halfway across the world for a taste of the Orient when there was plenty going begging at home?

No, John had definitely been through enough today. Besides, it was already past midnight, and he was expecting company. That guy he’d met on the Internet would be arriving shortly. He went into the bathroom and studied himself in the mirror. His hair was looking good—blond and floppy at the front, kind of like David Beckham before Posh Spice got her hands on him and he started looking too processed, like some suburban queen let loose at the cosmetics counter. His skin wasn’t looking too bad, either, which was a miracle considering the punishment it took with all that air travel. Still, the job did have its compensations. The bathroom shelves were piled high with the fruits of his travels—cut-price Clinique for Men skin products in their reassuringly masculine gray packaging and an assortment of pharmaceutical drugs from around the world. Everything a gay man needed when he was feeling frazzled, inside and out.

John popped a Valium, applied some Clinique nonstreak bronzer to his cheeks and some John Frieda Sheer Blonde Ambition Dual Action Mousse to his hair, and vowed that he would phone Martin first thing in the morning. Unless his new friend stayed for breakfast of course.

Two

M
artin woke
with a start andpromptly wished he hadn’t. His head throbbed, the whole room stank of vomit, and the bed felt horribly empty. No wonder really. This was only the twenty-second time he had woken up alone in almost three years. Of course it felt strange. And cold, since there wasn’t a warm body lying beside him. Christopher was a heavy sleeper and barely stirred before the alarm went off. Some mornings Martin would lie awake for ages, just watching him sleep, before tiptoeing into the kitchen and bringing them both a steaming mug of tea. He wondered whose bed Christopher was waking up in right now, and whether they were drinking tea together. Maybe they were too busy having sex. Christopher liked a quickie before work—or used to anyway.

He’d have to start thinking about work himself. Just the thought of it made him feel ill, but if he didn’t go in, he wouldn’t get paid. Three years designing packaging for groceries at the same supermarket chain, and he was still on a freelance contract. No holiday pay, no sick pay, nothing. He couldn’t afford to take the day off, especially not now. There was the rent to think about, and the bills, and all the other household expenses he and Christopher used to split between them. He wished he were still at art college and could spend the day avoiding lectures and discovering ever more inventive ways of running up his overdraft. He wished he were still young and free, instead of just painfully single. He wished he were still twenty and looked like that barboy from last night. He probably had potential boyfriends lining up around the block.

Christopher would love it if he could see him now. He always prided himself on knowing that he had the upper hand. It had been that way right from the moment he and Martin first met, that night at John’s party. Christopher had gate-crashed, naturally. He was that sort of person. Always confident that he’d be welcome in any social situation, whether he’d been invited or not. Always sure of himself. Never embarrassed. Never apologetic. Martin had spotted that straight away. If he was really honest with himself, it was partly why he was drawn to Christopher in the first place. That, and the accent. Americans were an exotic breed in London, and always highly prized boyfriend material—except for that brief period during the mid ’80s when AIDS first began making headlines in Britain and “safe sex” meant snubbing the advances of American tourists who tried to chat you up in Earl’s Court. Things always seemed to come so easily to Christopher—charm, self-confidence, good hair days. Not like Martin, who had been known to wash his hair three times in one evening before finally summoning up the courage to walk out the door. Oh well, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. His mother had once told him that the average human hair grows a centimeter each month, so it would be baseball caps from now until the end of the summer.

He hauled himself out of bed, padded barefoot into the kitchen, and swilled down some painkillers while he waited for the kettle to boil. Maybe John was right after all. Maybe gay relationships were doomed to fail. How many gay couples did he know who were really solid? Two? Three at most? Most gay men didn’t seem to know the meaning of commitment. They were too busy sleeping around, always on the lookout for the next conquest, the next piece of trade to boast about to their friends, the next bit of meaningless sex that was somehow supposed to give their lives some meaning. He had kidded himself that Christopher was different, that he was serious about settling down. Obviously he’d been wrong. Perhaps it was better that he had found this out now, before they had entered the next phase of their relationship and taken out a joint mortgage. That was one commitment he could do without.

He was in the shower when the phone rang. He grabbed a towel and bolted into the living room, leaving a trail of soggy footprints. He was half hoping it was Christopher, calling to say that he’d made a terrible mistake, that he was coming home. But it wasn’t.

“Martin, it’s me. Are you okay? I called as soon as I could.” Martin’s heart sank. All the declarations of concern couldn’t disguise the note of excitement in the voice on the other end of the line. Martin could tell immediately that John knew something he didn’t. As soon as the conversation was over, he called the office and explained that he wouldn’t be coming into work today.

Caroline’s mind definitely wasn’t on the job. The day had started pleasantly enough. Graham had stayed over last night, and they’d woken up in a tangle of limbs, his morning stiffy pressing against her thigh in a cute yet still mildly titillating way. There wasn’t time for sex, but they had cuddled for a bit. Caroline had even got to the stage now where she would kiss him good morning before rinsing her mouth out with Listerine and brushing and flossing her teeth, which for her was quite an achievement. It meant that they had reached the point where they felt comfortable with one another, which made the row that followed seem all the more ridiculous.

For some time now, Caroline had desperately wanted Graham to move in. Of course she hadn’t said as much. That would have sounded far too clingy, and the only thing clingy about Caroline was her wardrobe. But she had dropped enough hints. She had also gone out of her way to make the flat seem more inviting. This had been difficult, since domesticity wasn’t really her style. But she knew from experience that men were more inclined to settle down with women who seemed nurturing and house-proud. Even so-called “new men” preferred a woman who was equally at home in Habitat as she was in the kitchen, and who could rustle up something healthy and appetizing at a moment’s notice. With the best will in the world, Caroline knew that she would never live up to Nigella Lawson’s shining example of a “domestic goddess.” But God knows she had made a concerted effort. She had bought some cookbooks and had arranged them decoratively on a shelf in the kitchen, right next to the tea and coffee jars, where Graham would be certain to spot them. Just the other weekend, she’d taken the curtains off to the dry cleaner’s and had all the rugs shampooed. Bowls of potpourri had suddenly appeared in every room. And she had even invested in a dozen glossy houseplants from Marks & Spencer, though keeping them alive had proved more of a problem.

Graham hadn’t noticed a thing. Or if he had, he certainly hadn’t commented. So this morning, while he was shaving, she had casually mentioned that perhaps it might be more convenient if he started leaving a few of his things over at her place. And since he spent so much time there anyway, maybe it was time they talked about something a little more permanent. The look on his face should have been enough to warn her off. She had closed enough deals in her time to know when things weren’t going her way. But something about his reaction provoked her. For a brief moment, she found herself resenting him for all the things he hadn’t noticed, all the things he hadn’t said. She felt she deserved some kind of explanation, and so she pushed.

“I’m not asking you to marry me for Christ’s sake! I just thought it was time we started thinking about where this relationship is going, that’s all. But if that’s your attitude, fine!”

She had definitely misjudged the situation, she knew that now. Her father had willed himself into an early grave to escape his wife’s constant nagging. The death certificate said lung cancer, but even at fifteen Caroline knew what drove him to smoke so heavily. At thirty-three, she hated detecting echoes of her mother in her own voice. What made matters worse was that Graham had left without saying a thing, so her own words were still hanging in the air long after the door had closed.

She had driven into work in a foul mood, more angry with herself for making such a mess of things than she was with him for storming out like that. Graham flew off the handle quite easily, especially if he was feeling pressurized. It was just his way. The important thing was that he tended to cool down just as quickly and was usually the first to apologize. She fully expected him to phone as soon as she arrived at the office, if only to say that they could talk about it tomorrow night when they met. But he didn’t. Then her boss had called her into a management meeting that lasted the entire morning. When she checked her messages at lunchtime, there was still no word from Graham. Martin had called, probably just to see what she was doing over the weekend, but that was all. The afternoon had been an endless succession of meetings with clients. She had been obliged to keep her cell switched off, which only added to the anticipation. When she checked her messages again at five-thirty, there was another message from Martin but still nothing from Graham.

Now it was after six, and some of the girls from the office were making their way to the local wine bar for their regular Friday-night drinkfest. She decided to join them, for an hour at least. As she left the office, she reached into her handbag and switched her cell phone on, just in case.

“Have you thought about going for an HIV test?” John asked. It was later that evening and he and Martin were hovering next to the bar at Kudos, waiting to be served. “I mean, I don’t want to worry you, but this Marco guy he’s run off with . . . Well, he is a rent boy after all. You can’t be too careful.”

“Keep your voice down, John,” Martin hissed. “I don’t want the whole world knowing my business. Anyway, I don’t need to go for an HIV test. We were safe, always.” Actually, this wasn’t strictly true. Christopher could be very persuasive, and it was true that sex without condoms always felt more intimate somehow. Still, the last time they’d had unsafe sex had been over a year ago, and they had both tested negative shortly after that. There was no point worrying about it now.

“He could still have given you crabs, though,” John said in a stage whisper. “I think I’ve got a bottle of Nix somewhere. Let me know if you need it.” Then, raising his voice until he was practically shouting: “Christ, the service here is useless! I wonder who she sucked off to get a job behind the bar. Nice arse, though. I couldn’t help but notice, seeing as she’s had her back to me for the past ten minutes!”

John had a tendency toward outbursts like this. He was the kind of scene queen who liked to cause a scene, and despite his rather lofty claims that he was making a solitary stand against the poor levels of service that were the scourge of every gay man in London, the truth was that he simply enjoyed the attention. When John walked into a gay bar, he liked to think that his reputation preceded him. In reality, the only thing that preceded him was his voice, which had the haughty tone and high volume of someone blessed with a complete lack of self-awareness.

The barman wasn’t impressed. Unaccustomed to finding himself the target of such a torrent of abuse, least of all from someone visibly older and less attractive than himself, he turned and scowled. Embarrassed, Martin retreated from the bar and waited at a safe distance while John ordered two Budweisers and made a point of pocketing his change and giving the barman one of his looks. John had a vast arsenal of looks, and he wasn’t shy with any of them.

“Quick, there’s a table over there,” John said, handing Martin a chilled can. “Let’s take the weight off our legs. I’m sure I pulled a muscle in my thigh yesterday. It’s like I was telling this queen at the gym earlier. You don’t need to spend hours on the StairMaster to keep your legs in shape. Just try pushing a trolley up and down a 747 for ten hours.”

Martin nodded and took a swig of beer. “I’ll have to change the message on my answering machine,” he said as they sat down. “I really don’t want to hear Christopher’s voice every time I phone home to pick up my messages.”

“If you ask me, you’re better off without him,” John said, lighting a cigarette. “I never thought he was right for you. Americans are far too full of themselves. And they talk too much during sex. All that, ‘Yeah, suck that big cock,’ like they’re starring in a porn film or something. And half the time they’ve only got four inches! I remember the first time I went to New York. I got laid twice in one weekend, and they only had six inches between them!”

“You never said anything to me about not liking Christopher.”

“I’m not saying I don’t like him. I’m just saying he wasn’t right for you.”

“Well, I wish I felt the same. I was sure he was the one. I really thought I’d found Mr. Right.”

John flicked his ash. “There is no Mr. Right,” he said, relishing the drama of it all. “There is only Mr. Right Now. The sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be.”

But Martin wasn’t listening. “I wonder what Marco’s answering-machine message sounds like?” he said, clutching his beer and staring intently at the table. “Very butch, I bet, with a thick Italian accent. That’s what people want to hear when they ring a whore. I bet he’s not nearly as butch in real life, though.”

“He’s probably not even Italian.” John sniffed. “Although I did happen to come across his ad in
QX,
and I must say he certainly looks the part. I think I’ve still got it at home if you’re interested. . . .”

Martin shot him a warning look.

“No, of course not,” John said hurriedly. “Sorry. Anyway, nobody uses Italian rent boys anymore. That is just so ’90s! I read an article about it somewhere. It’s all Brazilians now. Brazilians are the new Italians.”

Martin groaned and went back to his beer. John was always quoting from an article he’d read somewhere, usually in some stupid fashion magazine if his turns of phrase were anything to go by, although this latest pearl of wisdom did sound more like something he’d read in one of the gay bar rags. Most people only picked up those papers to look at the pictures—John based his entire worldview on them. He never read newspapers, never watched the television news, and wasn’t remotely embarrassed to say that he had no interest in current affairs, other than who was currently fucking whom and whether or not they were likely to be found out. There were times when John’s behavior led Martin to suspect that he hadn’t been raised in the real world at all, but grown in a gay test tube. He viewed the world through a gay glass, sometimes darkly, sometimes with rainbow colors, but always with his eye firmly focused on the next opportunity he could exploit for either profit or pleasure. According to John, there were three ingredients necessary for achieving happiness as a gay man—plenty of money, a well-toned body and a boyfriend (or preferably more than one if there was enough of you to go around and you could get away with it). Right now, Martin scored a resounding nil on all three counts. The more he thought about it, agreeing to meet John for drinks this evening probably wasn’t the smartest decision he had ever made.