Recall

Recall





He has been on my mind all day. In a way I cannot explain. As though he were a presence other than his body. Other than the arms, the legs, the head, the person that stood next to me yesterday evening. The man who came up to me as I stood at the bar.
Why was I there in the first place? Why had I walked though the door? knowing it was not a bar where business was discussed. Where strategies were considered. Where men toasted one another politely before hurrying home to the sanctuary of their bourgeois castles. Where their hearts are silently clawed out in the dead of night by unhappy wives. And spoilt children. A slow dissipation of energy. Each step on the ladder a further burying of the fire of living.
I instigated it. And neither was it the first time. Now I felt myself to be on a journey. Unnervingly undefined. Without a visible destination. Risking failure as much as triumph. Degradation as much as joy.
I told her I was on a business trip. A couple of nights. Did she mind? No she did not mind. For there are the mornings with her beautician, the yoga classes, our children's ballet and rugby lessons. She can occupy herself. As she always does. Vaguely dissatisfied. But not scratching far enough beneath the surface to come to the festering reality of our lives. Their aching emptiness.

The phone rings.
'The report? Yes I have it ready. I'll bring it through.'
I get up from my desk. The collar of my shirt is soiled. Only lightly. No-one will notice I hope. I am tired. Sleepy. I want to lie down, to let go. Wish I could disappear into the sky that floats above the city like a sea. That if I lay back into it, I would be carried away. Into that room. With its unmade bed and half-light. Full of the terror and joy of the body. Of sex. The ache as I closed the door after me. I would be carried into the fire of his touch. The roughness of his half-shaven face. The strength of his body against mine, his arms about me.
'What do you want to do?' he said. 'Do what you want to do?'
I hesitated.
'I don't. . . I. . '
'Do what you want to do,' he said, almost ordered. But gently.
My passivity. My surrender was . . .

I step into the corridor, carpeted, soft. The air-conditioning makes my throat dry. Greg from sales passes. His small eyes crinkle into a virtual smile. I respond, half-heartedly.
'Ah Gordon. Where are you off to?'
'Nowhere really Greg. Just bringing the monthly figures through to John.'
'Hope there's good news for me in there,' he says, giving me a wink. A stage wink.
Do people still do that, I think to myself.
'Yes Greg. Most probably is.'

I stood at the bar. Nervous. I tried to gauge how obvious I looked. The couple of times previous I chose more discreet places. Did I have straight written all over me? A tender flower ready to be plucked.
I felt like Persephone waiting on Pluto. Or perhaps Ganymede waiting on Zeus. Except I was no longer young. No longer had the flush and freshness of youth. The soft flesh, the restless energy of late teens. I was near to forty. Yet, inside me, I had come to realise, I was still a child. A sexual child. There were parts of me that had never really been touched by deep desire. Or maybe lust. Or passion. That had never experienced the body as an instrument of revelation. Meaning.
Some people get on a train at the wrong platform. Yet the rhythm, the tap of the wheels lulls them to sleep. The familiarity of the carriage makes them drowsy. We never look out the window. The voices of others tell us to do like them. And we drift onto the wrong destination.
I felt awkward yet determined. I pulled open the buttons of my shirt. Showing a little more chest. I tried to finger my drink casually. To appear nonchalant. As though this were something I had done many times before. My chinos and brogues may have looked right in the yacht club. Here I felt somewhat overdressed. Prissy. Like a debutante who has just too good an opinion of herself. Is in for a fall.
It was he who came to me. He was wearing the shirt he had said he would wear. Looked similar enough to how he had said he would look. The advert I had placed in black longing. From some hollow place that haunted me each morning when I woke. Kept me awake at night. And had done for months.
I was wearing the red flower I had said I would wear. Wondering after if that was a bit camp. Overstated. Yet now glad. For he pointed to it and said, 'Chris, I'm Edmund.' I understood this was his real name. From his manner. The simple way he said it. I had lied about mine.
'Hi Edmund,' I said, relieved. Yet my mouth suddenly dry. I extended my hand. He took it. An anxiety swept over me. A realisation that if now I were to walk away, to run, it would be with shame. That, here, next to me, this man, would be a witness to my cowardice. And because he had witnessed my cowardice I myself would not escape its attention. Again a line had been crossed. There was only my emptiness, my despair to return to. Not that I wished to walk or run. For even as I thought this a similar wave of warmth covered me. As I sensed his body, at once heavy and masculine; its smell mixing with his eau de toilette. As I looked as his solid, well built frame, the open work-shirt, the broad and hair covered chest, slightly greyed, the sun-brown skin and felt the blood flow, felt it run to my groin, tease me into action. A half-heard whisper of desire and passion. A suggestion of release and freedom. So I nearly then, leaned forward and kissed him, placed my mouth on his in a manner carnal and forward. Knowing too I would destroy the moment of tension in that one action. And what would happen between us during the evening still needed to be mapped.

'Gordon,' John says, 'have you the figures?'
John is sitting back in a leather chair. The window behind him views over Bishopsgate. I hear the traffic. Its growl is muffled by the double-glazing, the air-co, our height. The red roofs of buses and cars snake along.
John likes to appear friendly. I'm a frank guy,' he says. He likes to make a lot of the years he spent in America. In Atlanta. His Tottenham accent is papered over with mid-Atlantic. He likes to tell of his childhood. Tough and gritty. (his words). Running the gauntlet of the Arsenal boys on the terraces as a teenager. No silver spoon in his north London mouth.
John is two people. John the frank and easy going. And John who always gets his way. He pulled himself up by the boot-straps. (Again his words). I prefer to see it as he ripped a hole in the fabric of the company and pushed his way through. Like an avenging angel from those grim and jealous north London streets. Or from a puritan past.
Before John there was Richard. Richard too had spent time in America. In Seattle. In Florida. On holiday. His accent was all home counties. He was born to his position. And fell headlong into it. Yet despite his Tory sympathies, his paternalism, his awkwardness, I preferred Richard. Richard at least was embarrassed by naked greed and raw self-aggrandisement. Richard used his well connected father and a first in Economics from Oxbridge not a six-shooter.
'Gordon,' John says, 'you're looking tired.
'Am I John?'
'Hey, I hope these reports haven't been giving you sleepless nights.'
'Sleepless nights John. My goodness no.'
He leans forward. His head is bald, his skin sun-tanned. His eyes have an avaricious glint. He winks. (Did he learn it from Greg or Greg from him?)
'Bet you could do with some sleep?'
'I could certainly do with some sleep,' I answer.
John returns to his leaning position. He puts one leather shoed foot over his knee. He brings his hands up behind his head. Then down again and fiddles with his tie.
'Anyone we know?' he asks, smiling, lecherously.
I look blankly at him. He leans forward.
'Its not that Sophie in HR? Now there's one hot piece of ass. Brownie points to the guy who is having her.'
I think of Edmund. Imagine him standing here beside me. The shaved head, the thick moustache, the small gold earring in one ear. I see his skin, sun-darkened from working in the open, the warm, brown eyes, the lines of sadness in his face. I see his work-shirt, open, his blue jeans tightly belted. And I think of his physicality yet his gentleness. His kisses. His words. His dock-worker's hands on my shoulders, in my hair, guiding my head down between his legs.
'Sorry,' John says, suddenly looking bored. Then, 'that's what I like in you Gordon. You're a regular guy. You play no games.'
And I know this is untrue. It is what he despises in me. For I do not play his games.

We each ordered a beer. Edmund was not nervous. Though he seemed careful. It was me who was nervous. Who had still to make a case for himself. Edmund, I thought, has been through this many times before. He is at ease in this bar. This atmosphere.
We talked a little. I was not sure how much to say. So I said little. I made it clear I had secrets and I wished to keep it that way.
I watched Edmund as he drank. I tried to imagine him as Pluto. God of the Underworld. Festooned in jewels, the wealth of the earth. But I only saw Edmund. His close-shaved head, his very seventies moustache. His work-shirt and naked chest. Then I tried to imagine him as Zeus. Yet Mount Olympus seemed too remote for him. He looked too human. His musk was too strong, too physical. He seemed so human. Quickly, I drank down my beer.
We ordered another. I remember him looking at me. Smiling. Saying, 'you're nice you know,' and biting my lip, pulling myself back from replying, 'I bet you've said that many times.' Which would have been insensitive and cruel. And going where I had no right to go. We were both middle-aged men on a sexual encounter in central London.
I thought of my therapist. Sitting in his plush office. Trying to explain how I felt I had lost something. That when I was a student, I used to. . .I was sometimes attracted to. . .now I wake up on a black and stormy sea. I feel I am an alien in a strange world. I look at everything I have made and it is nothing.
After some beers we left the bar. The streets were busy. It was mid-week. I was surprised.
'It's like this all the time,' Edmund said. 'It doesn't stop.'
'Are there that many hungry men,' I asked.
'Perhaps,' he replied.
I felt naïve, not knowing about this. Or rather knowing only what gossip and prejudice spread.
'And,' I added, 'these bars are always busy?'
'Mostly. Then there are clubs and saunas and heaths and escorts and. .'
'A river of debauchery,' I interjected.
He laughed. Then he grabbed my arm.
'Or a river of life.'
We stopped in the middle of the street. Again I felt conspicuous in my chinos and brogues, my windbreaker. He looked into my eyes. There was a challenge there and tenderness. There was also passion and pleasure.
'Are you hungry,' he asked, unexpectedly.
I was taken aback.
'I. . . I don't know. . .'
'The advert made it seem like you were.'
I winced.
'The advert. . .'
'Don't be embarrassed,' he said softly, putting his hand on my shoulder. 'I've seen much more explicit, much raunchier. In fact it was kind of cute.'
'Cute?' I cried.
'Yes cute.' He put his finger over my mouth. I smelt beer, cigarette, eau de toilette, all mix. It seemed like the night rose too, the street, his musk, my longing. He stepped nearer to me. Until his breath was warm on my face, his eyes looking right into mine.
'Man, late thirties, clean, gsoh. Would like to met other men. Not much experience. For. . .
'Stop,' I said sharply. Taking a sudden breath. I felt awkward.
'Why did you respond then? Did that appeal to you. The inexperience. Or was it my naivety?'
I heard him sigh. Expel his breath deeply and not without a hint of exasperation.
'Don't be angry and I'll tell you.'
'Ok,' I backtracked, 'I won't be angry.'
It caught my eye. I tossed a coin. Head yes tails no.'
'You tossed a coin? That's a bit arbitrary,' I protested.
He kissed me on the mouth, suddenly, taking me aback. His breath was hot, his tongue strong and searching. I felt I was being pried open. Was being prepared to be broken in order to be remade as something new. Being set adrift in the world, alone and shorn of innocence. Vulnerable and strangely strong.
He pulled back. He smiled.
'It's the river of life,' he said. 

I stand by the water cooler. I feel like a commuter in a rail station. Waiting for a train that may or may not turn up.
I have just left John's office. The report is on his desk.
'Good work,' he said, flicking lazily through its pages. Half looking. He will have someone in accounts read it over for him.
My mobile buzzes. I pull it quickly out of my pocket. I hope it's not Jane. Maybe in one of her social moods. 'Hw r u darl - dnnr at so&sos Sat eve.' But no. It is Edmund. 'Tnite. Same bar 7ish.' I laugh. To myself. Tracey from HR walks past.
'Something funny Gordon,' she asks.
'No Trace, nothing. Just a personal message.' 'From one of my kids,' I add quickly.
'Awww, that's nice,' she says, looking sympathetic. Tracy was one of Richard's people.

We took the underground. I thought it was better than going to the hotel. He agreed. We sat together on the train, heading north. Up through Kings Cross, Highbury to Seven Sisters. I suggested a taxi. He said we would take a mini-cab when we left the station.
It was strange, sitting there next to him. Wondering how other people saw us. If they guessed how we had met. Or where we were going. Or what was on our minds. If they looked at us and saw two strangers. Saw signs of the sexual tension between us.
I thought, as two old ladies passed, that they would look at us curiously, from under their blue-rinses. One saying, there are two of those queer fellows. 'Look. I think its quite disgusting.' The other looking back, perhaps with sympathy. Thinking of a drunken confession by her Tom or John. Or maybe a brother that no-one in the family talked about. 
The mini-cab driver was called Jihangir. A twenty-something British-Pakistani. He knew Edmund. 'My Mogul prince,' Edmund called him. I wondered if they had slept together.
He talked about football.
'I'm a big Spurs fan Mr Chris,' he offered. I tried to feign interest. But somehow the cramped mini-cab, the forced conversation made my mind fill with fantasy. The type of sexual longing that gathers in sleep. That breaks into consciousness when waking in the hollow of night. I felt that if the mini-cab were to turn out to be drifting though cloud, to have fallen as though through a fissure of our world into some other dimension, the fantasies would become real. And I would act on them. Abandon myself to their energy. Be carried by them to some strange garden of horror and wonder. A place at the end of the world. Or beyond time itself.

I walk back into my office. I sit down at my desk. The sun is beginning to set. Bishopsgate is darkening. Cooling into blues and greys. Its glass and chrome is caught in a twilight between day night. Before the lights of offices and traffic, the neon and tungsten make it shine, make it a sad wonderland pushing back the vacant night.

Edmund's flat was small but warm. At first it was dark. We walked up some steps and then along a gallery. When he opened the door I smelt a spicy smell. Like dried but exotic flowers.
He switched on the lights in the hallway and told me to go into the living room.
'There's a switch for the lamps over by the far wall,' he called out. 'They look better than the main light.'
I found it and flicked it and the room opened to me. Moody and shadowed. I noticed it was tidy and sparse. I wondered if he spent much time there.
I found a couch and sat. It was made of a cheap leather. Burgundy and matched with the walls that were painted in warm colours. Autumn browns and amber. It was a little strong but there was something about it I liked. I could not imagine him sitting around with friends discreetly letting drop how much a particular item cost. I thought they would more likely laugh and joke about how little each item cost. And be comfortable.
I heard the toilet flush and taps running and then he went into the kitchen. He came into the living room with two cans of beer. He handed me one. Then he walked over to a hi-fi and rummaging through some CDs, picked one out and turned to me.
'You're an educated man,' he said. 'Do you know this? I'm going to play my favourite track.' He smiled a crafty smile.
I watched as he pushed the buttons and green numbers flickered in the half-light and waited. He turned the volume up.
It came through the air, slowly at first. Falling into the space about us. Glissando. And I knew. He was watching me, his eyes sparkling, his mouth beneath his moustache open in a broad grin.
The weave of the lone alto at first, the bass, the build of the strings.
'It's Recordare from Mozart's Requiem.'
'Yes,' he beamed. 'With the Vienna Boys Choir. Isn't it beautiful.'
'It is,' I answered.
We listened and then I laughed. He was clearly enjoying every moment, every note. Swaying, his eyes closed.
'Can I ask you something,' I said.
'What,' he replied, opening his eyes, warm and quizzical.
'You won't be angry,' I said.
He looked at me, a light frown crossing his brow.
'Like tossing the coin,' I added.
'Ok,' he conceded.
'I just would not have expected it. It seems incongruous.'
'Why?' he asked.
'Just the work shirt, the gay bar, the . . .'
'What did you expect?'
'I don't know. Pop or something like that. The Pet Shop Boys or . .'
'That is so middle class,' he replied.
'Well,'
'It is. It's very middle class.'
I thought for a moment.
'I suppose you're right,' I said. Bringing to mind our friends, my wife's friends. Our polite choices. Music always a background to conversation. Conversation that revolved around business and possessions. Careers and futures. Music not really listened to but owned. Then I imagined Edmund sitting here on his own, listening to this. Smiling to himself. In his own world.
'Your colleagues,' I asked, do they know of your tastes?
He laughed out loud and put his beer on the floor. He crossed the floor to a set of shelves. He began to fiddle around, talking back to me over his shoulder.
'My colleagues, or rather my mates know all about my tastes,' he answered. What's it to them what I listen to and do?'
'But,' I continued, 'don't they disapprove, don't they find it strange. I mean you told me you were a dock-worker. . .'
He interrupted.
'Darling,' he said mockingly, 'you know so little of life. It's not working people who disapprove of things. It's the middle-class who have the rules and regulations. Haven't you read any history? A lot of what we believe to be right and wrong has little to do with ethics and everything to do with bourgeois manners and ambition.'
'What do you mean? What has being middle class to do with history or morals?'
'Read the story of Wilde sometime. Prime Ministers, Dukes and rent-boys. All happy to spend time in each other's company. At the heart of Victorian Britain. With its preponderance of morals. So to speak.'
'Maybe,' I conceded.
He came back and sat on the floor, cross-legged. He had a bag of something in front of him. He looked up at me.
'Would you like to smoke some grass?'
'Well. . .'
He raised his eyebrows, questioningly.
'I haven't smoked any since I was in college. Since I was a student.'
'Tonight you are a student again!'


I wonder if I should text him back. There is a sort of wildness, a freedom coming over me. I have told Jane I will be away for maybe two nights. I can call the hotel and say I will not be leaving until tomorrow morning.
I lift the mobile. I stare at its screen. Last night was important. There was no guilty scurry. No grabbed or furtive pleasure. The surrender was sweet. The letting go, subtle. Like diving into the sea. Like waking from a dream. To find that the world is good. Is warm. Is full of strange things and yet those things are neither bad nor good. Nor up and down. They are all part of a play. We are actors. Telling a story. We make it up as we go along. A colleague once told me that Muslims believe that when the die they will be asked by Allah what they saw, what they did while on earth. This, my friend said, shows that we are God's eyes and ears. Allah needs us to see his creation.
I do not believe in God; or Allah. I would rather think we are life's eyes and ears. We are humanity's story in the telling. 
I begin to punch in the letters.

He put on more CDs. Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, a collection of Bach's cantatas. Zimmerman playing Mozart's violin concertos. We drank more beers and he rolled spliffs as we talked. Their smell mixed with the incense and tobacco, with the music, with the low lighting until I felt I was both inside myself and outside myself. That I was moving about the room. And yet was perfectly still. As was he. Sitting there before me. His shirt open. His chest bare. I watched his eyes and was mesmerised. Remembering what I had come for. And then I began to take off my clothes. I suddenly needed to be naked. I pulled off my shirt and my shoes. I tore off my socks and unbuckled the belt of my trousers, throwing my chinos to the ground. He did not take his eyes from me all the time. When I sat there in only my shorts he leaned forward and kissed me. Taking my head in his hands and forcing open my mouth. His kiss hot and eager. I responded and recoiled, yet wished for him to continue. Wanted him to take control. To force my hands, my mouth where he wanted them to be. He stopped and stood. I knew I was high and that it was late and the flat dark and warm and this was what I had come for. Yet I also felt a ripple of trepidation. He quickly pulled off his shirt, his socks, and let his jeans fall to the floor. He was wearing tight trunks. White against his strong and muscular body. His sun-burned skin, his dark hairy chest and legs. He looked down at me.
'Well,' he said gently, 'are you also hungry?' Is this what you are looking for?'
I looked up at him. Smiling with the effects of the grass yet unsure.
'Tell me what to do,' I answered, my voice hoarse, almost a whisper.
He put his hands on either side of his trunks and slid them down. Revealing himself. His dark and thick hair. His long and well-formed cock. Slightly hard. Its pink and rounded head shining in the low light.
'Tell me,' I repeated.
He looked long at me.
'What do you want to do?'
'I don't. . . I'm not sure. . .'
'Do what you want to do. What you know you want to do.'
'I want to. . . to take you in my mouth.'
He put his hands on my shoulders, on my head, began to guide me down.
I leaned forward and took his cock in my mouth. Tenderly. Clumsily even. Closing my eyes at first. Feeling my own cock stiffen in my shorts. Until I felt him rise, grow in my mouth. Until I was moving forward off the couch, kneeling before him and sucking him. Sucking him hungrily. Taking him into me. Feeling, with pleasure, his size, his heat. Hearing with pleasure, his whispers, his soft words. Putting my arms around him an pulling him close to me. Then letting him come loose and rubbing him against my face, as though I were being anointed by his odours, his excitement, licking him, then sucking again. Awkward one moment. Smooth the next. Until I heard him say, 'I'm coming,' and pull back, take his cock quickly in his hand before he shot out, hot and white and sticky, onto my shoulder and down my chest. Beautifully.
Even as he groaned I leaned forward hugged his thighs and groin to me, put my free hand into my shorts where I was hard and ready and let myself go.
I woke about six, on the couch, a blanket over me.

The light is falling over Bishopsgate. Darkening. The sky is purple and turquoise to the west. I walk to the Underground. Turning onto Liverpool Street. Then into the station.
I take the Central Line, getting off at Oxford Circus. Then down Argyll Street and into Soho. First I will get something to eat.

We embrace on the bed for some time. Kissing. I am growing to it now. Learning how to give and take. Different from kissing a woman. For I play two roles. Put on two masks. Hunter and hunted. Pursuer and pursued.
It is about nine. A mild, early spring evening. The lights are low. We are high again. As before Mozart comes from the hi-fi.
I lie back. He leans up on one elbow, looking at me. I reach over and stroke his face. I have been full of him and he of me.
Recordare comes to me. The reach of the young voices, the soprano, the alto, the bass. Interweaving, speaking of mystery, of timelessness. From boy to man to old man to death.
Lying here, him next to me, our bodies spent and easy. Bending as though plants in the warm earth. Free to share pleasure. In their ability to speak what the heart knows to be true. The pursuit of love is all that counts.


Copyright (C) Dirk Zomers 2006