Shameless (8 page)

It probably wasn’t a good idea to call Graham now, she thought, wandering into the bedroom and opening her wardrobe. Better to concentrate on making a big impression tomorrow night. One thing was certain—if she wore that dress, nobody would be admiring Pip’s cooking for very long. It would be worth it just to see the look on her face.

Martin was lying on his back with his legs in the air. Inches above his face, Carl was issuing instructions. “Okay, Martin. Take it nice and slowly. Tighten those tummy muscles for me. That’s good. Now, three more . . .”

The gym was far busier than Martin had expected. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure what he had expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The YMCA didn’t advertise itself as a gay gym, but it might just as well have been a queer-only zone for all the straight men in evidence. Everywhere he looked there were gay men working out in pairs or chatting together by the water cooler. The scene reminded him of his first-ever visit to a gay bar. Everyone looked so at ease with one another, and so comfortable with their surroundings, that he was left feeling strangely out of place. It was just as well he’d decided to hire a personal trainer for his first few sessions.

“Is this a gay gym?” he asked, looking up at Carl with a slightly pained expression.

Carl grinned. “All gyms are gay,” he said with a wink.

Martin smiled back, silently noting that while Carl may have been prematurely balding, he compensated for his lack of hair by having a perfectly proportioned physique. And a perfectly proportioned boyfriend tucked away at home, too, no doubt.

Carl’s services didn’t come cheap, but aside from ensuring that Martin didn’t do himself an injury or expend vast amounts of energy on exercises that wouldn’t make much difference, his solid, friendly presence meant that Martin wasn’t the only person working out alone. For the first time in his life, Martin had a sense of what it must be like to hire an escort for the evening.

The program Carl had devised for him wasn’t quite as demanding as he had anticipated. It helped that he knew his way around some of the equipment. Those few occasions when he’d tagged along to the gym with Christopher hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Still, it wasn’t exactly painless, either. Straining to control the barbell as Carl showed him the correct method of performing bicep curls, Martin had felt as if the veins in his forearms were about to pop. But that was nothing compared with the agony he was in now. Stomach crunches were definitely the worst, he thought, as he raised his knees and curled his head and shoulders up for the last time.

“That was great,” Carl said as Martin collapsed, red-faced and breathless, onto the rubber mat. “Now just five minutes on the StairMaster to cool down, then a good stretch, and you’re done.”

Standing under the shower afterward, gazing down as the water bounced off his naked body, Martin decided that John was right. He was definitely looking a bit flabby. He could do with losing a few inches around the middle and adding a few inches to his chest and arms. It would take a great deal of discipline and a lot more pain before he started to look anything like some of the bodies on display out there. And there was still the question of where the extra money was going to come from. The gym membership alone came to almost six hundred pounds. Plus there were Carl’s fees, and he could do with some new trainers. In fact, a whole new gym kit would probably help keep him motivated. He would have to advertise for a roommate soon.

Still, at least he’d made a start. He was taking control of things. Inside this slightly overweight, thirty-two-year-old body, there was a whole new person just waiting to emerge. He felt better already.

Seven

M
artin’s relationship
with his father had been through many different phases over the years. As a small boy, he had been painfully conscious of the fact that his father didn’t look or act like dads were supposed to. Other kids’ dads went to work in a suit and washed the car on Sundays. His dad rode around on a motorbike and spent Sundays leafleting the neighbors about the dangers of nuclear power and the benefits of smoking pot, or protesting about fascist dictators in far-off places. By the time Martin entered his teens and began staging his own form of protest with the aid of silly clothes and hair dye, his father’s casual-dress sense and firm beliefs had become a source of pride. When his parents’ marriage fell apart, it was his dad he sided with. For a time, he blamed his mother for driving his father away, before finally waking up to the fact that his father never did anything he didn’t want to, least of all compromise his principles for the sake of practical considerations like putting food on the table. His father had many fine qualities, but being a responsible husband wasn’t one of them.

These days, his father was something of a distant figure—partly because he moved around so much, and partly because, like many gay men, Martin had chosen to keep both his parents at arm’s length. This wasn’t because he felt embarrassed about the fact that he was gay, or even because he feared rejection. Both his mother and father had reacted pretty well to the news. His mother did spend the first few weeks blaming herself for the way her son had turned out, but she soon hit on the far happier notion of pinning it all on his absent father who, being absent in a very physical sense, wasn’t there to argue. But Martin felt that he had outgrown his relationship with the people who had raised him, and who now occupied a very different world from his. Maintaining a slight distance from his parents was a way of acknowledging the true nature of their relationship. Caroline pointed out that this wasn’t a situation peculiar to gay people. The difference was, their parents were much less likely to poke their noses into their lives for fear of what they might discover. Caroline only wished her own mother could know something of that fear.

The last time Martin had seen his father was over a year ago, at a family christening. They tended to keep in touch by phone, though the phone calls had become less frequent. Every now and then a postcard would arrive from whichever part of the country his father happened to call home at the time. The most recent communication had come from Brighton and revealed very little except to say that the business was doing fine—the business being a small shop that sold wind chimes, aromatherapy oils, yak-hair sweaters and the like. The postcards tended to be the sort you could pick up free in bars and restaurants, advertising cell phone networks or forthcoming films, though occasionally there would be one bearing the campaign slogan of some little-known pressure group. Martin often wondered why his father didn’t just send letters, given that he seemed to have missed the point of postcards entirely. Maybe the postcards were just his way of maintaining contact, while acknowledging that there was really very little to say.

Despite all of this, and the fact that his timing couldn’t have been worse, Martin found himself feeling oddly excited as he awaited his father’s arrival. It was approaching 10:30
A.M.
and he had been up for almost three hours, tidying the flat, trying on various outfits, and generally working himself up into a state of eager anticipation bordering on high anxiety. John would be on his second champagne cocktail by now as he entertained Fernando and whomever else he had managed to round up for his regular pre-Pride brunch. If nothing else, his father’s visit had given Martin the perfect excuse to wriggle out of this annual gathering, which tended to be less of a social occasion and more of a floor show, with John not so much the host as the star attraction. He could just picture it now—a room full of gay men who shared little in common except that they were having sex with John, had once had sex with John, were planning on having sex with John at some point in the future, or had been his closest friend for the past nine years and were too polite to refuse an invitation. It was an invitation Martin could happily do without—although a champagne cocktail would go down very well right now.

Maybe there was time to buy some booze, he thought, peering out the kitchen window at the overcast sky. It was always threatening to rain on the morning of Gay Pride—every year, for as long as he could remember. Perhaps it was God’s way of urging gay men to drag up as Barbra Streisand and march down Park Lane singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Mind you, it wasn’t as if Streisand was a major gay icon anymore. Half the people at Pride probably didn’t even know who she was, despite her having a gay son and a reputation for egomania that even John couldn’t match. He grabbed his keys, slipped a denim jacket on over his freshly pressed Diesel T-shirt, and headed for the door. In the hallway, he stooped to flick through the morning’s post, spotted a couple of official-looking envelopes with his name, and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. Today was not the day to face up to his mounting debts. After all, Pride was supposed to be a day of celebration.

He stepped out of the building and stopped in his tracks. Walking up the path toward him was his father, dressed in his usual attire of loose, collarless shirt, pale blue jeans and motorcycle boots. His hair was long and ruffled, his beard short and fading to gray, his face tanned and smiling. For years, Martin had been told how much he resembled his father—more often than not by his mother, who seemed to regard physical likeness as a measure of personal loyalty and sounded slightly resentful that her son hadn’t inherited more of her own genes. Martin recognized that he and his father shared the same soft green eyes, firm brow and strong, slightly upturned nose. But he had always felt that these features somehow suited his father, whereas he hadn’t yet grown into them. Perhaps this would be one of the compensations of getting older, he thought—that he would gradually grow into his face, the way his father had. On the other hand, he couldn’t recall a time when his father didn’t look completely at ease with his features.

Gazing at him now, Martin realized his dad looked exactly as he remembered. Except for one small but important detail. Pinned to his father’s shirt was a badge the size of a coaster. Emblazoned across it in bright pink letters were the words
PROUD TO BE AN EMBARRASSING PARENT.

John’s brunch was going well—swimmingly well, in fact, he thought as he marched into the kitchen and cracked open another bottle of champagne. Fernando was certainly making a big impression, and not just because of the quality of his cocaine. John’s remaining guests, in order of appearance, were as follows. First to arrive was Neil, whom John knew from the gym and with whom he had once had a disastrous one-night stand, the problem being that neither of them had shown particular interest in playing the part of the top. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, they had remained friends. The theory was that so long as they remained friends they were less likely to dish the dirt on one another, which was fine in theory but didn’t always work out in practice, as many of John’s past friends had learned to their cost.

Next through the door was David, sometimes known as “Camp David,” who had a thing about men in uniform. In itself, this wasn’t so unusual. Scattered all across London were clubs devoted to the pursuit of such pleasures. However, David’s choice of uniforms was rather specific. What did it for him wasn’t the usual army gear or even the Nazi regalia favored by more hardened sadomasochists. He preferred the kinds of uniforms worn by those in less commanding professions—kitchen staff, public-service workers, even (and this is where John came in) cabin crew. They met when David attempted to chat John up during a flight to South Africa. His attempt hadn’t been very successful, but the fact that he was traveling first-class prompted John to think that he might be someone worth knowing. Only later did he discover that David’s ticket had been paid for by his elderly aunt, who had amassed a small fortune during the days of apartheid and whom David visited once a year in the hope that he might be rewarded in the event of her death. So far, this event hadn’t developed beyond the planning stages.

And finally there were the two Steves. “Steve One” was a shy young student with an impressively large chest whom John had met a year ago through the Internet, and had been grooming as potential boyfriend material until the sudden arrival of “Steve Two” threw his scheme off kilter. John’s admiration for Steve One’s chest had since given way to resentment and the indignant belief that disco tits were somehow wasted on the young. The way John saw it, a decent body was one of the few compensations of hitting thirty. Queens who had barely learned how to shave had enough going for them already, and should show some respect for their elders by staying away from the gym, at least until their skin started crying out for liposomes. The only excuse for developing muscles before the age of thirty was if you earned them through manual labor, the way John was certain “CuriousCute28” had done long before he began questioning his sexuality and discovered the pleasures of Internet chat rooms and cybersex. Maybe this was something they could discuss the next time they met on-line, assuming they ever did. In the virtual world of the Internet, men came and went even more quickly than they did in real life. All it took was a change of screen name. For all John knew, “CuriousCute28” might have already dropped out of the World Wide Web, never to be seen again.

Not that any of this really mattered now. What mattered was that his living room was full of living, breathing people assembled to bear witness to his gorgeous new boyfriend, and to demonstrate their approval, which so far they were doing rather enthusiastically. Neil had practically choked on his mimosa the moment Fernando arrived. David hadn’t taken his eyes off him all morning. Even the two Steves, who had been together for almost six months now and who always made such a nauseating public display of their mutual affection and deep desire for one another—even they were sizing him up at every opportunity. And who could really blame them? Fernando was looking exceptionally horny today, dressed in a pair of baggy combats and a black sleeveless T-shirt which accentuated his biceps. Fernando did have incredible arms, the kind of arms a muscle Mary like Neil would go green with envy for. After all, pecs were two a penny these days. There wasn’t a queen in London between the ages of twenty-nine and forty who hadn’t joined a gym and developed a pair of disco tits. And now that young upstarts like Steve One were muscling in on the action, it was only a matter of time before the more discerning gay men moved their sights onto a different prize. Yes, pecs were definitely old news, John decided as he chopped himself a quick line of coke on the stainless-steel work surface. Biceps were the new pecs. He rolled a twenty-pound note and Hoovered up the line.

“Aha! Caught you!”

John didn’t have to look round to know who it was. David was a notorious coke whore, the kind of queen who never had enough money to buy any drugs of his own, but who was always more than willing to share yours. What made it worse was that he had an uncanny knack of knowing when somebody, somewhere, was chopping a discreet line with no intention of offering him one. John wondered if maybe David had been a sniffer dog in a previous life. He turned to find him standing in the doorway, champagne glass in hand, nostrils flared in anticipation.

“I was just looking for a little refill,” David said, waving his empty glass. “But if you’re offering . . .”

“I wasn’t,” John said. “But I suppose I can spare you a line. I mean, it’s not as if I have to go looking very far if I fancy a bit more.”

“I know,” David said, reaching for the champagne bottle and refilling his glass as John opened the paper wrap and began chopping a line. “That Fernando’s quite a catch. I don’t know where you find them, dear. Your poor sister here hasn’t had a bite in months. So spare a thought for us poor single girls, and don’t be cheap with the charlie.”

David had the kind of face that had never been particularly attractive to begin with, and which years of rejection by men better-looking than himself had done little to improve. For all his oily charm, he was the picture of petty jealousy and seething resentment. Smiling mischievously to himself, John tipped out a little more of the powder, carefully arranging it into the longest, fattest, most generous line he had ever made. Then, just as David’s eyes were about to pop, he chopped it in two and quickly snorted the bigger half before handing David the note.

“Thanks,” David said, the smile wiped from his face. “You’re too kind.” He Hoovered up the remaining half and ran the tip of his finger over the work surface before popping it into his mouth, like a small child licking the bowl clean after his mother has prepared a chocolate cake. “So where’s Martin?”

John made a point of carefully folding the wrap of coke and sliding it back into his wallet. “We’re meeting later. He’s got his father staying with him.”

“How is he?” David’s eyes grew wide with concern, though it could just as easily have been the effects of the coke. “I heard about Christopher running off with that hooker. He must be in a terrible state.”

“He’s okay,” John said. “I keep telling him he needs to get out more. But he’s going to have a good time tonight. I’m going to see to that.”

“He’s lucky he’s got friends who care for him,” David cooed, eagerly eyeing the wallet in John’s hand. “Especially ones who know how to make a girl happy.”

“I suppose so,” John snapped, tucking the wallet into his pocket and picking up the champagne bottle. “Shall we join the others?”

They returned to the living room in time to find Neil engaging Fernando in a conversation about the best protein shakes for building up muscle.

“I’m surprised you need any advice on that subject,” John snapped, glaring menacingly at Neil and placing a possessive hand on Fernando’s shoulder. “Neil’s a bit of an expert when it comes to protein shakes. He’s got quite a reputation at the gym. Never happier than when he’s got a mouthful of protein. Isn’t that right, Neil?”