Michael ventured forth. 'I, uh, have a boyfriend, but he won't be there now. I don't live very far from here.'
Despite his size, Dr Deep's face was thin, slightly cynical, and it did not respond to the suggestion.
Michael endeavoured. 'Would you like to come back with me?'
Dr Deep shook his head. 'I'm not what you're looking for.'
Oh, oh, but you are, thought Michael. 'You're sure?' he asked and tried to engineer a winning smile.
Dr Deep was sure. 'You know, I have been very tired and tense coming back here to see my family. I'm about to change countries again. So I just came here for the sex.'
They kissed and parted company. Deep was one of those perennial boys who only like older men. Over the next 45 minutes Michael watched Dr Deep kneel in front of one middle-aged man after another, his head bobbing away and then abruptly withdrawing, like a bee gathering honey. A medically trained bee who must know the risks.
The last Michael saw of Dr Deep, he was standing utterly alone, having sucked off every older man who wanted sucking. Dr Deep held up his towel, masturbating on show. Only one person was watching, but Dr Deep was looking pointedly away from Michael.
It's all you want, Michael thought in disappointment. And if I'd been able to give you that, would you have talked to me? Gone out to a movie with me? Become friends? Do you want to die that badly, that you can't even take time to talk? No one ever even talks. No one ever rings back. Is a hard dick really that important to you faggots?
How could I be stupid enough to get emotional? I know the score; I can't get it up, so I either put up or dry up. I know what will happen, it always happens and I always forget. I always keep thinking it's not that bad. But it is that bad. It's like I think it will clear up by itself if I leave it alone. Like a sock that loses its other half. You put it back in the drawer, hoping it'll find the other half by itself.
Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I look like such a big butch man who'll slap you and then fuck you silly. I'm sorry that I got a bit romantic. I won't do it again. I keep forgetting what you guys are like.
Michael dragged his ass back into his underwear and out to Waterloo station, and on the underground platform. He cursed sex. He cursed the need for it, and how men wanted it. He cursed being gay. He cursed all other gay men. He cursed his dick and he cursed himself. As all the day's happiness crushed around him like ruins in an aftershock, he prayed, or came as close to praying as he could get.
Michael pleaded for all the weary dead weight of his sexual desire to be taken from him. 'Look, just castrate me, get rid of it, please, please just take it all away!'
Was a train coming? Wind blew along the platform; a newspaper rose up by itself into the air.
And Michael noticed that his gym instructor was standing a few feet away. Oh Jesus, not now, thought Michael. He didn't want to see happiness; he didn't want to see joy. He looked at Tony and thought: all I want to do is see your dick.
There on the platform, with fifteen other people, Tony pulled down first his tracksuit bottoms and then his clean white briefs. The Cherub stood still and exposed, his bovine thighs and brown pubic hair on display. His stare was as blank and disconnected as a sleepwalker's.
The people on the platform looked disconnected as well. A greying man in a tan checked jacket glanced sideways and began to edge closer, eyes flickering. A woman searched her purse with immense concentration.
Then Tony sat down on the platform, and rolled onto his back, sticking the perfect bottom into the air, like an animal about to be spayed.
Oh, Jesus, thought Michael. So much for innocence. Bitterness and rage were countered by another thought: Tony must be in trouble.
Michael walked towards him. He saw the chords of muscle on the inside leg, and the head of the reasonably sized uncircumcised cock. Michael looked and then was sorry for looking. Tony gazed up at him, eyes unfocussed, dim with a half-formed question.
'Fancy a portion?' the Cherub asked.
Drugs, Michael decided. He doesn't normally do drugs, so he's gone and got what he thought was E only it was speed, plaster of Paris and battery acid.
'Tony. What are you doing on the ground?' Michael felt the eyes of the other people on the platform. His ears burned. He wanted them to know his intentions were honourable. The Cherub blinked, his head haloed by the grey and white patterns of the platform paving.
'Stand up, come on.'
Michael didn't want to touch him in public. Tony rolled to his feet. He stood without adjusting his clothes, facing the woman with the handbag. She looked like she might pull it down over her head.
Pull your trousers up! thought Michael, and immediately, the Cherub bent down and nipped both layers of clothing back into place.
'Did you take anything? Do you remember what it was?'
The mouth hung open, the lips fatter when they were not smiling. Tony's brows clenched, trying to find an answer. 'I didn't take anything.'
'Are you sure? Try to think. What was it called?'
Tony nodded his head solemnly, yes. 'Diclofenac,' he said. 'For my knee.'
Michael was a biologist. Diclofenac was a powerful anti-inflammation drug. Did it have side effects?
'Have you taken it before?'
Tony nodded yes again, like a child.
The wind blew. Like a friend showing up, the train rumbled out of the tunnel. 'This is my train,' said Michael, trying to keep the tone conversational. 'Where are you going, Tony?'
The Cherub replied as if the answer were obvious. 'With you.'
It wouldn't be right to leave him. Michael looked up at the handbag lady and she looked away hastily. The greying man looked miffed that Michael had got there first. Michael pushed his way onto the train as others were getting off, and Tony followed him. Michael clenched the handrail almost as hard as he was clenching his teeth, and looked around him.
Two teenage Indian boys were talking about cars or computers in a jargon he didn't understand. A woman turned over a page of her crinkly newspaper as if toasting its other side, and sniffed delicately. None of them had seen the banquet of Cherub laid out on the platform. Very suddenly, normality closed over them. The doors rolled shut. The noise of the train provided an excuse not to talk, as if it were embarrassed for them.
Tony simply stared, the flesh on his face slack, like old Hush Puppy shoes. There was definitely something wrong with him; he squinted up at the advertising, looking as if ads for Blistex were beyond his mental age. As the train approached Goodge Street, Michael wondered what on earth to do.
'Look, Tony. I get off here. Will you be OK?'
Tony nodded yes. The train stopped and the doors opened. Michael got off. Tony followed him.
'Do you want to see a doctor?'
Tony shook his head, no. Michael could think of nothing else to do, so he headed for the way out sign and the lift. Tony started to whistle, in a kind of deranged echoing drawl.
I don't like this, Michael thought. He said airily, 'So. Do you live around here, Tony?'
'I live in Theydon Bois.' Theydon Bois was at the end of the Central Line. This was the Northern.
'So,' Michael ventured. 'You're meeting someone?' A coldness gathered around his heart.
'No,' said the Cherub in the same numb, faraway voice.
'So where are you going?' Why, Michael thought, does the underground always smell of asbestos and urine?
'I don't know. I don't even have a ticket.'
They had reached the lifts. The windows in the metal doors looked like empty eye sockets. This was getting weird. 'Look,' Michael asked him, 'if there's something wrong, I'm not sure I can help you. Do have a phone with you?'
'I don't think so.' Tony patted his tracksuit pockets.
Michael began to be afraid. This guy can bench-press 130 kilos. The elevator arrived filling the two windows with light as if they were eyes that had opened. The doors beeped and gaped but Michael did not get in.
