Chasing The Stars
The bleak afternoon offers a choice. A gay sauna, small, dirty, and always crowded with business men clutching bottles of poppers and packets of Viagra in sweaty, ink-stained hands, is only a short walk away. A public toilet that, at this time of day is filled with desperate pensioners frantically rubbing their withered genitals, is a mere five minute bus ride down the road. A cruising ground, where young guys hover like ghosts within the dying undergrowth, silently slinking out of sight as a dog-walker passes by, is a short taxi ride over the river. A few bars are beginning to open, in which Chinese rent boys parade around like peacocks with their trousers slung low across their backsides in front of the rich daddies working away from home.
Sex is available on every street corner, in every shadowy alleyway, in every backstreet reeking of piss.
Cock is free, is there to be hunted in the dark corridors that wind like a labyrinth around the concrete multi-storey, is there to be sucked underneath the cobwebbed arches of the crumbling Victorian bridge, is there to be tasted, to be enjoyed, to be drained of every last mouthful in the secluded corner of the park, the tower blocks rising above it like prefects catching a first year student trying his first cigarette.
It’s there; it’s everywhere, and so how can I resist?
How can I turn down the chance of finding that one man, the one guy, in whose tight grip I find the high, the rush, the kick that tops any drug, any drink, and every sensation that I have ever experienced?
My mind still undecided, I climb into a pair of loose jogging bottoms that can be slipped down easily; the front is already yellow with dried semen from previous encounters, and the knees painted with mud. I pull on a baggy shirt that can swiftly be lifted over my head; I smell another man’s aftershave on it, faint yet masculine. I slide into a pair of scuffed trainers, jumping with shock as a wailing ambulance blazes past outside. Underwear is a hindrance; going commando is easier, with my bulge showing through the worn gray fabric of the joggers. I ruffle my hair, and head out into the hallway, brushing past a row of designer jackets sagging on hooks, unworn, the price tags still hanging from their sleeves.
The mirror by the door is covered over with black paper; it doesn’t matter how haggard, how tired, how drawn I look. Not to the men anyway. All they care about is my cock, wrapped against my scrotum, and my arsehole, the opening surrounded by the tiny crumbs of coke still to be absorbed.
My neighbour stands on the landing, searching for her keys. She carries a Harrods bag and a bouquet, the bright colours of the exotic flowers in contrast to her smart black suit. They hate me round here; they hate the loud music, the loud TV, and they hate the fact that while they had to work years in offices and banks and law courts to afford one of the apartments, I, at the age of 18, had it all. No striving for promotion, no hard studying for an extra qualification, no sycophantically playing along to every whim of some wealthy client just to get a recommendation to the fascistic boss, none of that for me. I just walked in, threw my CD’s, books and computer games in the spare room, and sat on the balcony sipping champagne and pretending to actually like it as I waved them off to work. I have it all. And they loathe me for it.
The building has its own concierge, an officious jobsworth who spends most of his time polishing the gold buttons on his tunic with his over-long sleeve. We’ve never had a proper conversation; usually he just glares at me with resentful eyes as I stroll in, a swagger in my stride and with yet another man picked up in some club at my side. Instructing him to order a taxi, I lean against the glass doors, and watch a window cleaner climb a ladder on the other side of the road. I know I’m a cliché, the walking epitome of a bored, spoilt playboy. That’s not entirely my fault. I inherited a lot of money from my parents; was I really then expected to stay on at school, and waste years in university studying some dull subject that meant nothing to me? The basic drives of mankind, the need for a home, for food, for comfort and protection are irrelevant in my situation; I have never had to worry about them. That only leaves one motivating factor, one insatiable urge that fuels me in my daily hunt:
Sex.
Not friendship, not companionship, not even love, just the ineffable joy of feeling my body shake with the seismic strength of an orgasm, as the spurting crown of a stranger’s cock hits the soft receptive sponge of my prostate.
That’s all my life is about. That’s all I’m about.
And the rage -
Always the rage -
That never goes away.
If you had it all, if you had everything you ever wanted, every toy in the shop, every cake on the tray, every man or woman you’ve ever secretly fantasised about, what would you do next? What then would you want? I’ve always been limited in the scope of my imagination. In the beginning, I had a financial advisor, who suggested investing in property overseas, and playing with the stock market. I could triple my inheritance with minimal effort, she explained, in a prim, cold voice as she smoothed the pleats in her long matronly skirt. After I’d fucked her husband in their oak-panelled office, I sacked her, and blew thirty grand at a casino in an unsuccessful attempt to impress an overweight Arab sitting on the stool beside me, his thick girth all-too-obvious through his tight pinstripe trousers. I have no relatives I like that I could lavish with gifts, I have no children to spoil, I have no friends to treat with luxurious holidays; in fact, I have no one, save for a therapist I see once a week. I was told it’s quite fashionable, and that having to endure interminable sessions of psychoanalysis is a status symbol in much the same way as plastic surgery and colonic irrigation. Sometimes I almost look forward to their company, if only to scandalise and shock, even though their sole interest in me is the cheque at the end of each assessment.
I smirked as the concierge pushed out his chest and marched aggressively towards a tramp loitering outside the foyer. Unthreading a set of headphones from around my iPod, I pushed them into my ears, and as the music blasted through my skull like a bowling ball smashing through the army of pins, I watched him wave his arms about and push the tramp away. The window cleaner jumped off his ladder, and smiled as the scene unfolded, his arms dripping with the soap suds pouring from the wipers he held in his hands. As the traffic tore past, separating us with its blur of screeching chrome and painted metal, I strained my neck to glimpse him, the taxi that pulled up before me only dimly registering. His head was shaved, his scalp lined with prickly dark stubble flecked with tiny pearls of sweat that trickled down his weather-worn face, creased with lines and gently glowing with a fading tan. He looked to be in his late forties, a flock of crow’s feet crowding round the creased edges of his small, round eyes, eyes that, coupled with a fat stump of a nose, gave him a pig-like appearance. And I wanted him. I wanted him there, right there, on the opposite pavement, to push him against the white wall, to feel his huge calloused hands thrusts me to my knees.
The cabbie wound his window down.
To smell the ripe scent of the window cleaner’s unwashed cock as he heaves it out of his tight pants, his fleshy scrotum spilling out of his palm as he fills my mouth with it, to taste his stale urine, to taste the sharp bite of his smegma, to taste - and to rejoice - in the first drops of his pre-cum bubbling like Bollinger on my tongue.
The cabbie called out to me.
To feel the man grab at my hair, tightly holding my head as, breathing heavily, he beats his cock against my lips, forcing me to take it, my throat shaking as I gag, like a snake struggling to swallow its twitching prey, my mouth foaming with saliva and my vision swamped with the sight of his groin rocking backwards and forwards, his bushy mane of greasy black pubes rubbing against my face.
The cabbie had started waving.
To hear the guy groan, to hear him pant, to hear him call me his boy, his lad, his walking fuck-hole, without any dignity, without any worth, with just a body to abuse, a body to ravage like a tornado, and a body to consume when his children were busy at school, when his wife was away at work, the fish-like aroma of her vagina still on his balls as he massages them with blunted fingers.
He comes without a sound, just like they normally do; he pulls up his pants and tucks his shirt into his trousers just like they always do. He won’t make eye contact; they never make eye contact. He won’t speak, won’t acknowledge me, won’t ask for my name or for my age. They never do that, instead, spitting on the floor, turn away, and disappear -
Out of the cubicle, out of the darkroom, out of my life, a fleeting encounter that means nothing, matters nothing, that will instantly be forgotten, just another featureless face and a featureless body in a constant string of anonymous meetings.
And it will always be like this.
A routine, a pattern, repeating over and over like a wheel forever rolling down an endless hill.
The taxi driver asks for my destination in a gravelly voice, the warm waves of his laboured breath carrying the smell of cheap rolling tobacco. I hand him a clutch of notes, crisp and new; it reminds me of the starched floral sheets of my grandmother’s spare bedroom, that felt cold and clammy against my skin when I slept there as a boy.
“Take me somewhere different. Take me somewhere new,” I instruct him.
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