Best Gay Romance 2012, page 6
When you’re sixteen you are very aware of who you fancy, but often quite slow on the uptake when it comes to noticing who fancies you. At least that was my case. So it didn’t cross my mind that all my lustful thoughts about Charlie might be mirror images of Charlie’s thoughts about myself.
Until that Saturday.
The stage manager asked the two of us if we’d like to earn a little extra cash. One of the rooms beneath the stage, the curtain store, was in a mess, he told us. A fire hazard. If there was an inspection the fire chiefs would have a fit. It was arranged that Charlie and I would go in the following Saturday morning and tidy it up.
There were a number of interconnecting rooms in the bowels of the theater below the stage. The band had to make its way through them on the way to the orchestra pit. One room contained small items of furniture, another, which we explored at the start of our visit that morning, was full of an intriguing assortment of props. We saw some broadswords and gingerly took them into our hands for a few seconds, feeling their balance and weight. The last room, the curtain store, answered to the stage manager’s description of it: a mess. Tabs and drapes of all sizes, colors and thicknesses, from plush red velvet numbers to plain black masking had been thrown down by people in a hurry, month after month, instead of being folded and stacked on shelves. Most of the floor was occupied by a sort of compost heap of curtain, about four feet deep.
Two people folding theater curtains go about it much like two people folding tablecloths or sheets; it just takes longer, and requires a lot more muscular effort, which becomes more noticeable with the passing of time. Again and again Charlie and I walked toward each other with a fold of fabric scooped up from the floor, passed it into the clasp of the other’s outstretched hands, and backed away to pick up the next section of curtain and create a new fold. It was like performing some absurd variation on an ancient courtly dance. Every time we came together, hands touching hands, we felt the warmth of each other’s breath, looked searchingly into each other’s eyes. And whatever that thing was that I wanted to do with Charlie, I wanted it more with every series of forward steps, with every pleat. I felt that something in me was being wound up to a dangerously high pitch, like a violin string, and that if this went on much longer, like a violin string it would snap. Maybe the whole instrument would smash too.
But Charlie snapped first. He suddenly dropped the heavy velvet tab we were working on, grabbed a smaller one and shot out through the door with it. I gazed after him, rooted where I was and perplexed. But in a second he was back. The curtain was draped around him dashingly, like a Roman cape, and he carried two of the broadswords we’d handled earlier in the other room. He held one out to me.
Obviously I needed my own curtain cape. I plucked one up at random and luckily it was not impossibly big. I threw it around me with an optimistic swish, hoping it might achieve the same swashbuckling appearance as Charlie’s did, and then we began to fence.
Actually, to say we fenced would be seriously to over-describe what now took place. A broadsword is a mighty heavy thing and neither of us was very big. Also, I didn’t know how to fence. Neither did he. So all we did was stand and face each other, rather slowly clashing the sides of our weapons together, forming iron crosses each time in the air between us. I think we were both aware that had we tried anything bolder or more dramatic we would probably have taken off each other’s head. Even so, the noise was pretty good.
Then Charlie dropped his sword and ran (ran three feet? More like jumped) toward me, forcing me to drop my weapon too. Excitedly Charlie threw his cloak around my shoulders so that it enveloped us both, and his body pressed against mine. Oh, god, I thought, he’ll discover that I’m hard, and how embarrassing that’s going to be. But I didn’t spend long thinking that.
Charlie had got one hand inside the cloak and was fumbling with something. I wasn’t quite ready to believe it was his zip. But then I felt him tug mine down and had to believe it. Our two cocks seemed to emerge of their own accord, both hard, both hot, mine pressed up against his, unseen in the curtained dark.
We abandoned our hiding place, letting our cloaks fall to the floor. And discovered that the sight of our two cocks was not enough. We wanted balls too, and pubes, and tops of thighs. It was less than a second before our jeans were halfway down our legs.
The sight of Charlie’s partial nakedness, all that part of him between pulled-up T-shirt and pulled-down pants was the most wonderful thing ever. It etched itself upon my inner eye and is with me to this day. His cock, short, thick and circumcised, stood straight up against his belly, flattening his scanty pubes. You couldn’t have got a cigarette paper behind it. Mind you, the same went for mine.
We threw each other, toppling, onto the still deep pile of curtains on the floor. Each took the other’s cock in hand and pumped it at ferocious speed. We lasted less than thirty seconds, I think. Then our milk came gushing out of us. We let it find its way down through the curtain pile.
We found it impossible to chat normally and look each other in the eye during our green room breaks that Saturday matinee and evening. The shock and dislocation of self that occurred as a result of my first sexual experience with another were even greater than they’d been on the occasion of my first private orgasm, in bed, two years before. I felt that Charlie and I had somehow broken something—like breaking a family heirloom, or something of that kind. During the Sunday that followed I was glad not to have him around. I didn’t want to face the confusion that had been caused between the two of us. Caused by him. Caused by me.
But guess what? By Monday evening my cock was ready for Charlie again, even if my bruised soul was not. When we met in the green room at seven o’clock we exchanged a shy grin, which somehow accepted and explained that, though we weren’t yet quite ready to speak, given time we would be.
We did speak. Later that evening. And a few days later we found a moment, and an excuse, to visit the curtain store together once again. It wasn’t easy to arrange such a tryst without being noticed. We only managed it six more times before the panto ended its run. And then we parted. We said we’d phone each other, but we never did. Life moves on quickly when you’re sixteen. We went to different schools, had different friends. Things happened to us. We did other things. We grew up.
The theater bug had bitten hard and deep. When I was at university I got involved with the theater in the town, working backstage part time, on and off. Around the time I graduated a vacancy for an ASM arose there. I applied and—no big surprise—got the job. Degree in economics? Forget that.
Over the next few years I moved up the ladder fast. If you were willing to up sticks and move to another part of England or Scotland hundreds of miles away—something that many people were not prepared to do—you could do that. ASM means assistant stage manager. Most theaters employ three or four. DSM means deputy stage manager, and there is only one. I was DSM in Glasgow at the age of twenty-two, stage manager at Plymouth at twenty-three, then production manager—a senior post with big budgets to control and ten full-time staff to manage—at twenty-four. Aged twenty-five I was the general manager—top dog except for the director of productions—at a theater in Wales.
You learn fast in that job. You discover that the manager is, in the last resort, the changer of roller towels, fixer of decrepit ball-cock valves in the toilets and un-blocker of drains. He must stand up to the bullying of directors on the board and hold his own against experienced senior staff, some of whom have been in post since before he was born. I found myself the licensee of two bars, one in the circle, one in the stalls, and would have to attend court every year or two, dressed in a suit, to plead my case for those licences to be renewed. I was also, de facto, a member of the Regional Theaters Council, which meant attending a meeting in London once a year, again in a suit. The same suit. The only suit.
There was a certain grim delight, I found, in meeting on an equal footing those venerable souls who had interviewed me for jobs during the past four years. Especially those who’d happened to turn me down. At the first meeting of the council that I attended I was by far the youngest present. I already knew, or thought I knew, that I was the youngest general manager of any regional theater in the UK. But then I saw him, also in a suit, across the… (Yes, yes, I know.) Across the crowded room. I remembered at once not only who he was, but that he was two months younger than me. But never was a record holder more delighted to relinquish his title.
There was barely time to say hallo before the business of the meeting began. At least, with that hallo I’d established that he remembered me. We sat together. From the corner of my eye I could see the taut bow curve of his thigh in the close-fitting trousers of his suit. That familiar short, straight nose. The full lips of his handsome mouth. His head of shining black curls. He’d grown a little taller in the years since I’d known him, and so had I, but in both our cases not very much.
But if someone fancied you at the age of sixteen there is no guarantee that nine years on they still will. So much happens in those particular years, so much of your life is crammed into them. You’ve changed. You’ve learned to earn a crust for a start, and you’ve taken some knocks in the process. You’ve been in love a couple of times and had your young heart broken once or twice.
And, quite importantly, I had to remind myself that not every teenager who’s played with another boy’s cock grows up to be gay. If that were the case we wouldn’t be worried about overpopulating the planet. Rather the reverse.
It was an afternoon meeting. Neither of us actually rose to speak during the course of it. It was a first time for both of us, and the cockiness with which we’d arrived and greeted our older peers had quickly evaporated. We were overawed by the seniority and expert knowledge of the other delegates, intimidated by the very thing that made us special there: our shared, exceptional, youth.
When the meeting was closed and people stood and general chatter broke out, Charlie turned to me and said, with a diffidence in his voice I hadn’t heard before, “Do you have time to go for a drink?”
I smiled, reassuringly I hoped (though it’s a clever man who knows his own smiles), and said, “Yes.” Did I have time? The rest of my life.
The meeting had been at Covent Garden. We walked to Rose Street and into the old Lamb and Flag. We bought pints of Young’s bitter and sat among the age-black furniture and beams. We talked about how we’d got to the positions in the theater that we now held. There were two standard routes to the job of general manager. I’d come up by one of them, Charlie by the other. His way had lain on the other side of the safety curtain: front of house. Box office assistant, box office manager, front of house manager, PR and advertising manager, and now here he was, doing the same job that I did, but in Cambridge, two hundred miles away from me. Like me he’d achieved his rapid rise by going for jobs again and again, in no matter what godforsaken part of the country they might be. Like me his track had crisscrossed the kingdom. It was surprising that it hadn’t, until now, crossed mine.
We had so much to talk about. We could have talked for hours. Actually we did. On our third pint I looked at my watch for the first time and saw it was nearly eight. Then Charlie said, “I suppose you’re married and all.”
I didn’t reply at once. I’d wanted, yet not wanted, to ask the same question. His answer of yes would have sent the evening on a downward curve. Not at once, but gently. We would have parted friends in an hour’s time and promised to stay in touch. Only we wouldn’t have done. We might meet again at the next annual meeting of the Regional Theaters Council. If we still had our jobs then. Charlie was looking at me. There was something a bit despondent in his eyes. Time to answer. I said, “No. What about you?”
“No. Nor me,” he said, and looked away.
Charlie, the bolder of the two of us, had done his best. Now I had to help. “Actually,” I said, “I’m not very likely to be. I’ve turned out gay.”
He said very softly, “Me too.” I didn’t try to meet his eye. I don’t think he tried to meet mine.
There were stages to this, I realized. The conversation would proceed tantalizingly, as if we were unwrapping a gift parcel that might, but only might, have something inside, or disassembling a Russian doll, or unlocking some door or treasure chest with an elaborate succession of catches and bolts. There was only one order in which to proceed; the sequence could not be shortcut. And when the process was complete, the treasure chest might yet prove empty, and there be nothing behind the door.
“Boyfriend back in Wales?” he tentatively asked.
I shook my head. “No time.” I’d actually had no sex with anyone since starting my newest job, pressure of work and time being elements of this situation, though not the only ones, but I wasn’t going to volunteer all this just yet.
“Ditto, ditto,” he said. Then he looked at me. His blue eyes looked troubled now. Surprising myself, I laughed. Not rudely, not loudly, but I laughed. And he reacted by doing the same. His eyes looked less troubled now. Curious perhaps. “Do you remember the curtain store?” he asked.
I was surprised into a sort of splutter. “How could I ever forget?”
There was another pause, while we looked at each other. We still didn’t have absolute proof that we fancied each other. Hindsight is one thing, dealing with the situation on the spot is quite another. Charlie spoke. “I suppose you have to get back to Wales tonight.”
“Work in the morning,” I said. “Same as you.” I could sense, rather than see, Charlie’s disappointment. I wriggled. “I mean, I should go back.” I paused for a split second. “We could catch a show, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “But isn’t that a bit too much like work? I mean, for you and me. Doing the jobs we do. Show every night.” He gave me a look. The kind of look that writers call quizzical. “We could go for a meal. You can talk in a restaurant, you can’t at a show.” There was a slight pause during which he looked away. “We could get a room for the night.” He waited apprehensively for my reply.
That switch from bold to diffident went to my heart. But that wasn’t the only thing. The idea of spending a night together set off such a rush of feelings that it was like a firework display inside me. “Let’s do that,” I said quietly.
When you work for a boss you have to phone them and make your excuse if you’re going to arrive late. When you are the boss you have to phone a member of your staff and do the same thing. Charlie and I got our phones out there and then and phoned our front of house managers—the most senior people present at our two theaters at that time of evening. When you tell them you’re going to be detained in London and won’t be at work till tomorrow lunchtime they know exactly what this means. Charlie and I mugged grimaces at each other as we trotted out our lame half-truths.
We didn’t have to go far in Covent Garden to find a good restaurant—an Italian one. Then we found the nearest cheap hotel. “Twin room?” the woman receptionist asked.
“Can you make it a double?” Charlie asked. Two months younger than me, but twice as brave. As he’d been in the curtain store all that time ago. The receptionist did blink, but then she politely handed him a key.
We looked solemnly into each other’s blue eyes as we undid each other’s shirt and took it off. For practical reasons we then dealt with our own shoes and socks. But we returned to each other in order ceremoniously to remove the trousers of each other’s suit, pull down each other’s underwear, release each other’s springing cock. Then we stood back to admire our work.
I thought he looked gorgeous. Not big, but gently muscled, still boyish. A little tongue of dark hair licked up from below, straight up the center line of his belly where it petered out. There was no hair on his chest; as if to compensate, his nipples were proudly big. Back in the curtain store days we’d only ever seen the middle third of this view of each other that we now appraised in full. We’d known the other’s body only from belly button to knees. I already knew I’d love his legs when they were revealed. But, heavens, I even found his knees beautiful. Even his long-toed feet. I told him so.
“You’re beautiful all over,” he said, very solemnly and running a finger tremulously down my chest. “We’re not much bigger that we were,” he went on thoughtfully, as his finger encountered the resistance of my own little flame of belly hair, flaring upward from my pubes. Then he grinned. “Except in the matter of this.” He gently touched the up-reaching tip of my penis, which immediately caused the foreskin to slide back and a dewdrop to appear like magic on its tiny lips. “How we’ve both grown.”
It was no longer true that a cigarette paper could not have been slid between our bellies and stiff cocks. Now a cigarette packet would have done. But that’s the price you pay for growing bigger, growing heavier. Growing up. With my own forefinger I touched the chunky head of his cut, sturdy cock. It reacted just like mine had done. Spilt a little juice. We giggled. Then, serious again, we moved into each other till we touched at every possible point. We began to kiss.
It wasn’t long before we had to move to the bed. My cock was threatening to spill over, weighty with a load that seemed to be already gathering inside. I guessed it was the same for him. Neither of us had brought condoms: it was a business meeting we’d come to London for, or so we’d thought. And we didn’t want, tonight at any rate, to have to interrogate each other with uncomfortable questions, possibly to hear answers we didn’t want. I was certain of my own status—negative, but Charlie didn’t know that, just as I didn’t know his. We lay clasped together, duvet pulled down so we could see each other properly, and did exactly what we’d done on the curtain pile all those years before. Because of that bank of experience from way back we were supremely comfortable and confident with each other’s physicality and need. We pulled just far enough apart at the end to have the satisfaction of seeing each other’s creamy spurt, just as we’d done when we were little more than kids, then lay pressed together as if we might stay that way for all time.
