Page 10 of Glitterland
“The wheelie bin,” I said, “is a particularly classy touch.”
“I fought it was ahwight actually. Sorta urban. Not like Black urban. Just urban urban.”
“I think you mean grunge.”
“Oh, you’re so clever, babes.”
“Can we just go somewhere now and fuck? Without talking.”
“Calm dahn.” He grinned at me. “It’s just rand the corner.”
We went round the corner onto a residential street that rose steeply along one of Brighton’s sudden, illogical hills. It was lined by prissy white-fronted cottages, the sort of self-consciously quaint dwellings that came with window boxes, balconettes, and jauntily painted shutters. It was not an auspicious location for a filthy, anonymous, homosexual liaison, and I entertained the horrifying thought that he might be taking me home to meet his nan before I remembered he’d said he was staying with friends. At last, we came to a huddled-over house with a wonky To Let sign and pile of bulging bin liners sitting outside it. Chez Essex.
“Ah, where’s my key?” he muttered, trying unsuccessfully to insinuate a finger into the pocket of his skinny jeans.
Oh, for God’s sake. Surely not. Having unearthed some fragment of wanting for this—for him—was I now going to be denied it?
He caught sight of the look on my face and started howling with laughter, staggering about on the pavement, almost doubled over with hilarity. Instead of putting all his clearly abundant energy into finding his fucking door key.
“It’s ahwight, babes, it’s ahwight,” he said, gasping for breath and hooking the key from a string around his neck. “Fahnd it.”
He battled with the door for a moment or two, finally bashing it open with his shoulder. I followed him into a narrow hallway, washed briefly and unprepossessingly orange from the street outside. A click signalled his attempt to turn on a light.
“D’you want summin?” he said. “Like a tea or some water or summin?”
“No, thank you.”
He opened one of the doors leading from the entrance hall and flicked on the light inside. A bare bulb hung from a pockmarked ceiling, illuminating knobbly, mismatched furniture and a bare mattress pushed against the peeling wall. There was an open, mostly empty suitcase on the floor, but its contents had been arranged with surprising care about the room. Lined up on the desk was an extensive arrangement of male grooming products. And hanging in plastic covers on a metal rail was a collection of clothing, amongst which sparkly epaulettes represented the epitome of restrained elegance.
I turned the light off.
He turned it back on.
And I turned it off again. My body had too many secrets for me to share them with strangers. And there were too many questions I didn’t like having to answer.
“Ahwight, babes,” he said gently, for once getting a fucking clue.
The darkness came between us, sealing me safe inside my skin with the too-rapid rhythm of my heart. The thin curtains admitted only a faint glow from the street outside, enough to see the shape but not the certainty of things. Essex was just a shadow in the room, the shadow of a thing I wanted, which was itself a shadow of wanting. But it was unspeakably sweet to feel even that, and terrifying to know how quickly it would pass. A moment inscribed on water, a memory that would fade to grey. I was nothing but a ghost hunter, chasing the wraith of the man I used to be. A beachcomber of my own detritus.
I closed my eyes, adding dark to dark, and the wanting unfurled like the sails of a phantom ship. This could be my universe. This nowhere world, circumscribed by skin and breath, where nothing mattered but two bodies moving together. The past and the future rendered irrelevant by the beauty of the now, the sum of the self transmuted into a moment. Oh, was there ever a more seductive definition of madness? Behind my eyelids, I saw him dancing in spirals of coloured light, emerald, blue, and brilliant purple, enfolding him like the wings of an electric angel.
His hand brushed against my cheek. When had he moved close enough to touch me? I caught his wrist and pulled his hand roughly up so I could kiss his fingertips. I half imagined I could taste the silver on his nails, as sharp as glitter in my mouth. Maybe when he touched me, colour would spill from his hands like heat. I ran my tongue between his fingers and over the creases of his palm, drinking the pure, clean nothing of his skin. I came to his wrist, pushing against the sleeve of his jacket, my lips catching on the delicate, jutting bones beneath the base of his thumb. Against my opening mouth, his pulse thudded like a bass line. Heat swirled through me and I leaned against the wall, clutching his hand and dizzy.
I felt him move and turned my head to deflect his kiss so that it landed on the side of my jaw instead of my mouth. It shimmered there briefly like some iridescent, impossible butterfly. I dragged his hand to my hardening cock.
“I ’aven’t even got my coat off,” he said, but he still rubbed me through my trousers, clumsy friction that sent shivers of frantic pleasure racing through my body.
I made a strange, desperate sound, my nails sinking into his wrist. “Just…touch me.” It came out somewhere between directive and supplication. But what did it matter? What did any of it matter? I’d never see him again. Nobody would ever know. All sense, all judgement, overthrown by an h-dropping, glottal-stopping glitter pirate, and I didn’t have to care. And he could think whatever he wanted, as long as he kept his hand moving against my cock.
Suddenly, he caught my chin and turned me to face him.
“S’ahwight to kiss me,” he said. “Essex ain’t contagious.” I didn’t need to see him to hear the smile in his voice, rich as honey.
I had just enough time for a sound of protest before he kissed me. Oh God. It was beautiful, the softness of his beard and the rasp of the stubble that had gathered beneath his jaw. My mouth opened under his, inviting the flood of heat that followed, the sweet-slick entanglement of tongues and breath. I reached up to pull him closer, my hands sinking into his hair. Which was rather akin to sticking them into a swamp, he had so much product in it. My eyes snapped open at the damp crackle of gel beneath my fingers, my startled cry half smothered by the kiss.
“Careful, babes. A quiff like mine don’t maintain itself.”
The dim light gleamed on his cheekbones. Up close like this, it was distractingly easy to lose myself in the mysteries of his face. I shut my eyes and tried to find something to do with my sticky hands. But then he was kissing me again, driving me back against the wall. His arm was still pressed awkwardly between our bodies, my cock bumping arhythmically against his palm and against the wrist whose pristine, tender skin I had tasted.
