Tattoos & Teacups

Copyright

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

382 NE 191st Street #88329

Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Tattoos & Teacups
Copyright © 2012 by Anna Martin

Cover Art by Shobana Appavu 
[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61372-590-0

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

July 2012

eBook edition available

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-591-7

To the fair city of Edinburgh,

my summer home,

thank you for the inspiration.

Prologue

O
NCE
, when I was on a trip to New York City, I stopped to watch a group of hip-hop dancers who were performing in the street. I was fascinated by the brash colors and thumping beat of the music, and the tricks and flips they performed with apparent ease. Although I stood back in the crowd—there were two or three people in front of me—I couldn’t help but be both impressed and intimidated as one of the dancers walked right up to the person in the front row, throwing his arms wide out to his sides and pushed his chest almost right up to the other man’s, shouting, “Boom!” Right in his face!

The sheer gall of the dancer made me smile, even as my stomach flipped at the idea of such confrontation. Much to my surprise, the other man, not the dancer, just laughed and made some funny noise in the back of his mouth, like he was rolling his Rs, and the dancer seemed to take this as encouragement to perform a backflip from standing, to the raucous approval of the assembled crowd.

Chris made me feel like that. Intimidated, and a little impressed. He was the same as that dancer in so many ways: loud, colorful, swirling into my life with a loud “Boom!” and disappearing just as quickly. Like those hip-hop dancers, though, I was left with the simmering feeling that I’d experienced something completely new, and I was irrevocably changed for it.

Part One

Chapter 1

S
EPTEMBER
on the Northeast coast was a colorful affair. In private, I still say “colourful” (with the added “u”) as a way of reminding myself never to succumb to the Americanisms that plague my day-to-day life. Despite the months that had melted into years since I had left my native Scotland, I liked to maintain a grip on my heritage and a certain amount of decorum when it came to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It may sound dull, but I assure you, I am not. I just appreciate the correct use of the English language.

I was sixteen, actually, when we left Edinburgh for New Hampshire. Sixteen years in Scotland, sixteen in America. The summer of my thirty-second year on this planet had made me feel itchy, like it was time to move again. Time to go somewhere new, do something different or find a new path for myself, maybe.

It was unlikely, though, the chance of moving. My career was settled, and I was starting to be appreciated for my knowledge and expertise in my field. I was invited to events and conferences and lectures to talk about my research into the work of Rudyard Kipling and his impact on colonial society. I sometimes repeated these lectures to glassy-eyed third-year college students, although I doubted many of them appreciated what I was trying to impart to them. None of them ever submitted my suggested essays, anyway.

The routine settled around me without me even really noticing; my apartment—my flat, and my cat, and my car, and my work all had their allocated slots, and I was happy, so was there any point in changing anything? I was lonely, though. The cat did something to ease the heartache of coming home to an empty flat, but he wasn’t anything more than a tuna-stealing companion. And wasn’t that just a lie.

On the love front, I was painfully bereft. And had been for longer than I would have ever, ever admitted. When we’d moved to America—Mum, Dad, me, and Jillian—I’d just completed my Highers, the qualification sat at age sixteen in Scotland that permits a child of that age to leave the education system if they so wish. I was essentially stuck in no-man’s-land, unable to do anything in the States without a high school education but having already finished my schooling according to my home country.

Since Jilly would also be going to the local high school, I agreed to go on the pretense of being there as her moral support. In fact, Jilly was more than capable of taking care of herself and quickly took advantage of her years at gymnastics club back at home and insinuated herself into the cheerleading squad. The other children at the school seemed to go through phases of either mocking my accent or revering me for it.

In a world where fitting in was everything, coming out simply wasn’t a possibility.

College was supposed to be my saving grace, a place where I could stand proud as a gay man and embrace love, life, and another man without fear of repercussions. The truth was something slightly different. Although there was an LGB society on campus (they had yet to add the T) it was headed by a frankly terrifying lesbian and the only men there seemed to be flamboyantly gay, and they scared me even more than the overtly macho men that surrounded me in my dorm.

I kept promising myself,
Next year will be different
.
Next year you’ll find someone
. But I never did. Jillian blamed it on me not getting out enough. So did my friends. The sad fact of the matter was, I’d labeled myself unlovable, a static, stoic bachelor, and myself and Flea, my scruffy cat, were doing quite well on our own, thank you very much.

And then?
Boom
.

“
F
OR
next week,” I called out over the sound of people grabbing bags and shoving hastily scrawled notes into them, “please read
The Man Who Would Be King
for me! We are leaving poetry behind for the time being.”

My response was a general muttering, which I took to be acceptance. The required reading list for my course was adequately prepared well in advance to give my students ample time to become familiar with the material, but it was always worth reminding them.

It was my last class of the day; a serendipitous glitch in the college’s lecture programming system meant that by 2:00 p.m. on a Friday, I was finished for the week and could start my weekend early. Not that I ever did. My position allowed me to demand a nice office, and after three years they finally granted it to me. I was young to hold such a prestigious position but not above abusing it.

The only downfall was the long trek across campus in between the Literature building, where I worked, and the History building, where my office was located. I could have moved into the Literature building, naturally, if I were to give up my nice office. So the walk was good exercise.

I kept the room decorated in a style Jillian referred to as “grumpy old man”, and it suited me down to the ground. One wall was dominated by a large bookcase, which I filled, delightedly, with secondhand books and copies of volumes I kept in my personal library at home. I had a lovely wingback leather chair kept behind an antique desk I’d found at a flea market and a long, comfortable sofa I rarely used except to nap on sometimes when I’d been at the campus from dusk ’til dawn.

After dumping my briefcase and notes on an increasingly perilous pile of stuff on the corner of my desk, I settled back to start reading through the e-mails that had accumulated in my absence. They were filled with the usual rubbish: students pleading for extensions due to the death of their granny/ dog/ second cousin in Peru, an invitation from my mother to Sunday lunch, messages to the whole faculty asking for our cooperation in the “Clean Up The Campus” campaign, and one from my friend Adam with the question:

The Boat or The Bird?

I laughed and sent an e-mail back:
The Boat, for sure.

There was a pub that we liked just off campus called the Ship where they served good beer and better food. On campus there was a bigger bar that the students drank in too, called the Two Magpies. We’d nicknamed the bars in an attempt to hide from our students where we’d be drinking on any particular night. Unfortunately, someone overheard one of our conversations, and now the nicknames had entered the general student consciousness.