“He has very good hair, doesn’t he?”
Swipe.
“Here’s a picture of him with some old queen. Nice scarf, though.”
Swipe.
“Wow. For a skinny guy, he has impressive glutes. Have you noticed his glutes?” VladPop turned the phone around to show me the screen. “Do you think he goes to the gym?” Ludo was wearing ballet tights, bum centre stage, looking back over his shoulder at the camera. His athletic rear was in full view, round as two cantaloupes stuffed into a sock. Jesus. Vladimir turned the screen back to himself.
“I wonder how much he squats.”
Swipe.
“Can I have my phone back now?” I asked again.
VladPop looked up from the screen, as if I’d broken a spell. He nodded and handed the phone across to me. I snatched it out of his hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
“No problem at all. You should invite young Ludo along to the Otter Rewilding party on Friday night.”
This was too much. The chief whip’s interest in my private life had to stop right here. He was a source. We werenotfriends.
“I don’t date other journalists. It’s policy.”
“Seems a bit short-sighted. You must have so much in common, surely?”
“I havenothingin common with Ludo Boche.”
Determined to head off the prospect of VladPop adding a Sunny-and-Ludo folder to his (apparently not metaphorical) dirt file, I reopened GayHoller in front of him and made a somewhat theatrical show of blocking Ludo’s profile.
Chapter8
Ludo
The opening night ofYentlwas a triumph. Rachel Hoffman, the actor who played the eponymous Yeshiva Boy, took three curtain calls. It was alotof clapping. My hands stung like I’d given a hornet a handjob. When the curtain descended for the final time and the applause had petered out, I turned to Uncle Ben and saw that he had been crying.
“We don’t have to go to the after-party if you don’t feel up to it,” I said.
“You must always show your face at the opening night party, dear boy,” he said. “Whether the production was so good you want the cast to go right back out there and do it all again, or whether you know in your gut there won’t ever be a second night, you go to the party. Theatre is like family. You show up for the good and the bad. The bar mitzvahs, the weddings, the funerals.”
“I note you didn’t include the bris.”
“No one enjoys a bris, dear boy.”
“Especially the baby.”
“Quite.”
Which is how we found ourselves sitting on a pair of very tall stools in the corner of the theatre’s very noisy upstairs bar, teetering over an impossibly small table, sipping bubbles from plastic flutes. Not a single element of the whole ensemble had a sensible centre of gravity. The room was bustling with actors, theatre luvvies, and the assorted glitterati of London’s West End. With everyone jostling hither and thither, there was a very good chance of at least our drinks going tits up, if not the whole table and us with it. Especially when I was such a notorious Magnet for Calamity (patent pending).
“I’ve never seen a stage production ofYentlbefore,” I said. “I enjoyed the gender fuckery.”
“The what, dear boy?”
“Yentl refusing to conform to society’s demands. Dressing up like a man so she can study the Talmud, even though she’s a woman. Then there’s the attraction between Avigdor and Yentl when she’s pretending to be man. That’s a wonderfully complicated topic for the time, but relevant and probably quite empowering for a post-gender Gen Z audience.”
Uncle Ben looked thoughtful.
