At the top, as I unlocked the glass door, he asked me if I had any porn. He said he believed in just saying what you really meant. “It’s the nineties – everyone has porn. And not just soft stuff.” I thought, like someone being into football or computers, the boy’s into being an urban gay man.
I watched him that night as I danced with Angie and Tommy and saw that he hadn’t changed much. He’ll be eighteen as long as he lasts. His gay-man routine was most touching when he was at his most vulnerable. He wouldn’t let me see him naked at first. He padded to bed in the dark from the bathroom. The regulation Calvin Kleins whispering down his white, almost hairless legs.
That night, even though he’d carefully promised not to, he had made himself too tired and drunk and overwrought to come. Those endless, sweaty nights of fruitless sex. My cock was hard, turning numb, feeling like someone else’s. He kept going, “Oh, fuck it,” every time we gave up for a few minutes to relax, or try to doze. He launched us back into it.
I thought he was like an angel. We matched compliment for compliment, stacking them up, playing snap. He was someone else I slept with all clasped up, hot and dog-breathy by morning. The first night I came two or three times without him, and he couldn’t till the next day.
I loved that heavy, smarting feeling you get the next day. Someone’s weight still lying on you. I had languorous, cat-like days.
Me and my new flatmate get drunk. He is the senior flatmate. He’s in his late thirties, he’s rich and spectacularly miserable. We drink a bottle of Bombay Sapphire between us. He tells me it’s much nicer gin, chockablock with bits of coriander and spices. He chops lemon wedges to plop into our tumblers. He has a bin bag of ice chunks in his freezer. This is the night of my moving in. His kitchen is at the top of one of the Georgian houses in the east end. We’re off Leith Walk. This is where I live now, up four flights of a daffodil-yellow stairwell. I’ve landed on my feet, I think.
Even up here in the attic space he can have a stone-flagged kitchen floor and an Aga which, he says, in winter gives a lovely cosy glow. They make mulled wine at Christmas. Imagine being settled for Christmas, here in the lap of luxury. My flatmate, the rich landlord, is called Bill, and he owns the Scarlet Empress. I’ll ask him if he’ll give me discount. He’s drunk. “Ha,” he rags me. “You’re a wicked man, Andy. A wicked, wicked man.” Under the table he keeps that leg of his trembling, trembling. He can’t stop it bouncing, wherever he is. It bounces to keep a certain beat going, its own particular time. When I asked, he said it was from a car accident. Pished, he said. Hurt a woman. But her number must have been up. He says, “What can you do when your number comes up? It’s all fated.”
“Ay,” says Bill my landlord. “Shit happens.” His eyes are pink and yellow and the flesh of his face is lurid and bruised from the drink.
They have this skylight you can climb out of. We stand on the stone balustrade and watch Calton Hill, all lit up. The Observatory and the Round Tower lit up white. We went there the night of the Festival fireworks. We got locked in the Observatory gardens as we hunted through the crowds for a vantage spot. Standing on the roof guttering, my landlord and I roll cigarettes and watch the buses and cars far below on Leith Walk, on London Road. The automated crossings are chanting ‘traffictoprincesstreethasbeensignalledtostop’ in a singsong Scottish burr. Crowds are coming out of queer bars and takeaways and off licences. Now I live in the top corner of the city’s gay triangle. I am at the centre of things.
“Ay,” says my landlord. “What a thing it is to have no ties.” Then he grimaces and I know it is to do with his partner, also called Bill. Little Bill is out somewhere tonight, up to what my landlord will only call ‘funny business’. “Ay, the ties I’ve got are all to do with that baldy bastard. That baldy twat. And tonight he’s out tomcatting like fuck. Tomcatting around and coming crawling back next morning as ever and I won’t say anything. And I give him his money for the day and he has nothing to do but watch cable TV.”
My heart gives a leap. Cable TV! Now I’ve moved in I’ve more than fifty channels to choose from. All those golden oldies. Tomorrow People. Bionic Woman. Charlie’s Angels. It’ll be like being a kid again.
My landlord’s tab end has gone out and he’s still sucking on the roach, until it falls to pieces between his fingers. We watch a woman dash and miss her bus. “The last fucking bus,” says Big Bill. “She’ll not have the money for a taxi. She’ll get raped walking home. You watch.”
He looks at me for my reaction. The exaggerated care with which he swings his head, you can see how pissed he is. He turns away again. “Life is all missed buses and taxis. You remember that, Andy. You wicked man.”
I snort. “That’s a classic, that. Life is all missed buses and taxis.”
“Too fucking right it is,” he snarls. The streaks of grey in his quiff are all bright with the lights from the bars and the takeaways. “Especially when they’ve banned you from driving for a year.”
We smoke and drink some more. He rolls terrible joints, around pencils to make a tube into which he pokes the bits of baccy and dope down with
