“Ay,” he Iaughs, coughing and choking.
Then I’m telling him how I made a bacon sandwich with cheap, streaky bacon. Little shreds fell through the grill into the pan and lay frazzling in the thick grease. I thought, “All of it’s old meat, anyway. No such thing as new. It’s all belonged to someone else.”
“Ay,” he says, and fetches some more of the Bombay Sapphire. He gets it all from work. I’ve become shivery inside and I’m glad we’re back indoors. This is going to be a very boozy home, I think.
“Fucking look at this.” He opens the fridge and beckons me to come and see. Little Bill has written on all of the eggs in the rack. Boiled Egg, Boiled Egg, Boiled Egg. My landlord sniffs, “He said it was because he knew I’d get fucked out of my nut tonight and I’d go smashing them in a pan and try to fry then. But he’s already boiled them because they were going out of date. Fucking miserly erse.”
“Hm,” I say, aware how unpleasantly close my landlord has staggered now.
“He’s out tomcatting,” he says. “And I’ve got a fucking problem. Everyone I love is boys.”
“Everyone he loves is boys.”
“He loves women as well. He says he loves fanny, like.”
“So?” I go.
“It’s a problem,” he says. “He’ll leave me for a bit of fanny. For a fucking bit of skirt.”
“He’s with you, isn’t he?” I ask.
“I make it all possible for him,” he says.
I’m still thinking about how I made bacon sandwiches out of old meat, in old fat. And how I made them for Jep. I’ve discovered that bacon sandwiches are his favourite thing, too.
I haven’t brought him to the new flat yet. I haven’t told my new flatmates about my son, But here I am. I’ve got my foot in the door.
It’s still too chilly to sit all night with the window open and too airless to have it shut up. I feel like I want light and space here. I woke itching furiously so that I almost wept.
Sandra and Tom were round yesterday evening, to watch the portable telly with me. One Channel Four comedy after another, and I was bored. We sat on the settee and they held hands. I thought, this afternoon I was having madly anonymous sex in the dark and now here I am watching the telly.
This afternoon I sat next to two skinheads and was pulled into a threesome with them. I’d sat down blithely and they reclined, drawing me in, easily. What is it with me and skinheads these days? Halfway through I realised that it had to do with Mark Kelly. His baldness. I came with the pair of them, powerfully, touching that harsh scalp of the sexiest one. It was overwhelming, you could feel the atmosphere charge up, change gear as I sat by them. They were waiting for me to join them. I quicken things up.
Afterwards I sat in the sauna. This was only half an hour after I arrived. I’d planned to stay till closing, to wring my money’s worth out. To come as much as possible and test myself. But I felt the pressing need to sleep. Sometimes I get like that.
I’d arrived at the same time as a young, red-bearded bloke who told everyone downstairs that it was his first time there. I must be a regular if I wince when I hear someone trying to make conversation. I was wondering how I can now think of someone bearded as looking young. He was probably the age of my young dad when I still looked up to him. And this time I thought, how many of these men who come here are married and supposedly straight? You can always tell new guys because they wear their rubberbands with locker keys on their wrists. You learn to have them on your ankles. On your wrists the things rattle obtrusively if you’re wanking someone off. If they’re on your ankle, though, they make an alluring noise as you approach.
Watching telly with Tom and Sandra, I smile politely when they make jokes about the excitingness of my life. Well.
I keep imagining moving out of this flat in Thistle Street, moving away. And I get vertigo. I can picture me carrying all my things in boxes and unwieldy bags down the red fire escape in the rain. Down to the fat taxi driver who’ll be wearing an arran jumper, waiting at the wheel of his minibus. Down on the cobbles of the alley.
I dreamed last night I dropped Jep out of the window.
You meet some funny people when you fuck them. I talked to the less sexy of the skinheads in the locker room. We dressed and he said he was a mathemetician, he was doing a PhD. He said the first time he knew he was queer was when he started algebra at school. He was telling me all this in the open-plan changing room, where everyone’s looking at each other. He was saying that, for him, the beginning of algebra was the beginning of queerness. I said I never did o-level. I was no good. “Oh,” he says. “The possibility of crossing over the equation sign! If you do something to one side, you must do it to the other! Crossing over to the other side made all sorts of new ideas occur to me. finding the values of the secret x’s!”
It’s what I wanted to tell Sandra. All of this casual, brutalised sex – it’s educational.
Wednesday night I’m out pissed with Stephan. He’s new. New for autumn. I’m in the Scarlet Empress at past twelve o’clock – things are looking up. Big Bill offered me a job here, waiting on. I should be watching the waiters’ techniques, but I’ve had seven pints. Sitting at my favourite table here by the window and watching
