‘What’s not to enjoy? You meet a guy from a part of the country you’ve never been to or a part of the world you know nothing about. The other person is a mystery. You’re imagining what it means to be them. They’re imagining what it means to be you. The downside is that often the people you like the most are the ones who mess you around the most. The painful parts of dating haven’t changed. There are new technologies to communicate the pain, but the pain is the same.’
Danny asked about the worst dates and despite the Ecstasy in his system Matt answered seriously. ‘Some people when I tell them I’m living with HIV, they walk straight out the door. Some claim they’re fine and I never hear from them again.’
Back in his twenties Danny was prone to trade boundaries for affection, particularly when he was into a guy and they asked not to use a condom, Danny agreeing to please them, hoping they might stick around. Until he met Luis, he had chanced his way through the AIDS crisis, alive by a fluke. So many outside forces had nudged Danny and Luis together, it was hard to know whether these historical forces had been as important as their individual chemistry. Back then, theywere exactly what the other needed. By asking him to marry him – the very question expressing a change of context – Danny was asking if they were what the other needed now. Perhaps it was true that every relationship, gay or straight, married or not, needed to regenerate after twenty years.
Sharing their most private stories Danny dusted off some of his favourite relationship quandaries, asking if Matt believed in the theory of love where there was one perfect person out there in the world – a soulmate waiting to be found. Matt shook his head.
‘I’ve dated a lot. Many of those guys could have been great in different ways if they had stuck around. The one is the guy who stays. The one is the guy who builds something special with you. The more you build the more they become the one.’
Looking out over the city, Danny said, ‘I couldn’t go back to living without love. Sure, I could get by for a time. I’m not scared of being alone. Not like I was when I was young. But sharing the world with someone is better.’
Matt qualified the statement.
‘Sharing the world with the wrong person is worse, my wards are full of patients with abusive partners. But sharing the world with the right person, I agree, that’s the secret. Not really a secret. The secret that everyone knows.’
Their conversation was interrupted by a raggedy train of party guests clumsily climbing onto the roof. Tiles clatteredto the street to the hilarity of some and outrage of others. Responsible neighbours began bellowing from open windows and threatening to call the police. Meanwhile, up on the chimney stacks, Danny and Matt judged it an opportune moment to swallow a second Ecstasy pill. Their fellow party guests began a countdown to midnight only to mistime it, forced to wait another sixteen seconds before Big Ben chimed and the fireworks erupted over the Thames.
It was the new year, the year Danny was set to marry, and here he was balancing on a rooftop, about to be arrested, high on Ecstasy with his arm around a handsome, emotionally available man who was not his fiancé. No chapter covered this scenario in any of the marriage guidebooks. Realizing he had not checked his phone for several hours he reached into his pocket, pulling it free, struggling to focus on the screen. He saw messages from his parents, Sophie, Jasper, various friends and colleagues but nothing from Luis. In that instant he was tempted to throw the phone as far as he could, to let it fly in a perfect parabola before it shattered on the street below. But the handset was new, he couldn’t afford to replace it, and it might hit a passer-by. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, turning to Matt who had been watching him the whole time, with his back to a sky full of fireworks, indifferent to the glittering gold and silver streams.
‘Happy New Year.’
And then they kissed.
Chapter Thirty-ThreeHolding Hands
The police arrived. There was a scramble from the rooftop. The house party was broken up; guests scattered and somehow Danny ended up in a club. Nestled under the railway arches, the nightclub was a warren of brick-walled rooms packed to capacity, so full of guys that at times Danny wasn’t moving of his own volition but as part of a collective held together by sound vibrations and sweat. He last went clubbing a decade ago and was surprised by the range of ages, including a muscular older man in his seventies wearing plastic sunglasses and decorated with neon beads like the high priest of this rave. As a young man Danny had never paid attention to the older guys before; they were invisible to him, as he was invisible to younger guys today.
Once inside, Danny and Matt were inseparable, sippingfrom a shared bottle of mineral water and confronting each bizarre encounter with a mutual sense of delight. Most presumed they were a couple with passers-by commenting, ‘You two are beautiful together.’
Danny was struck by the observation, curious whether it was merely a kind remark, part of the exuberance of the night. Luis and Danny had always enjoyed an intense physical connection in private, but they were reserved in public, an old-fashioned propriety originating from the fact that when they started dating public displays of affection risked ridicule and abuse. Merely standing side by side they had been shouted at by boisterous groups outside bars and once an empty can had been hurled from a passing car. Was it an accident, Luis had debated afterwards, thoughtless people threw rubbish from their cars, while Danny was in no doubt it was targeted, exasperated by Luis’s denial. Those experiences early in their relationship were not easy to shake off. Danny and Luis lived together, slept together, shopped together, travelled together but never walked hand in hand. Danny could still remember the very first time he had seen a gay couple walking hand in hand, outside the National Theatre, their heads tilted towards the sky, not making eye contact with passers-by but resolutely holding hands like that was the whole point of them going for a walk. In this club there was no self-consciousness between Matt and himself. As Danny longed for such a thing to be possible in the worldoutside the club he wondered if it had become possible and he and Luis had simply missed the moment of change. At heart, that’s what this wedding was – a chance for the pair of them to update, to become modern, ironically by embracing a tradition as old as any. What was a wedding, except an opportunity to hold hands and kiss, in front of a room full of people who would applaud or cry with happiness?
At the end of the night Danny and Matt retreated from the intensity of the club floor, standing on the outdoor terrace among plastic palm trees – the last remnants of Club Tropicana décor. They shared a spliff as a flag of surrender, a smoke signal to the universe that they had partied enough. With the Ecstasy fading they chose not to chase after the giddy pleasures of their initial high. One of the benefits of being older was knowing when to call it quits. On the dance floor Danny had taken off the cashmere sweater, pushing it into the back of his jeans, and several times it had fallen loose, trampled upon before it could be rescued. Examining it under a light he saw how stained it was with the ungodly slick of the club floor.
‘It belongs to Luis.’
Rejecting the symbolism, Matt shook his head.
‘Everyone kisses on pills. Everyone kisses on New Year’s. It doesn’t mean anything. And I say that as someone who would love for it to mean something. Danny, promise me that tomorrow you won’t get sad. That’s the opposite of why I invited you out.’
With defiance, Danny declared, ‘I’m done with sad.’
A stranger standing nearby high-fived Danny.
‘I’m done with sad too, baby.’
As the sky changed from black to bruised blue Danny recalled the sky on the very first night he spent with Luis. His mood was about to crash when Matt locked his arm through his and suggested breakfast. He wanted a full English with bacon, beans and fried eggs but Danny put forward another idea.
‘There was a falafel place near Hungerford Bridge. I was drunk one night, at my lowest, with nowhere to sleep, no job, no money, no love – I’ve never tasted anything so good. Life-affirming. But I could never find the place again.’
Matt accepted the challenge.
They left the club and walked along the river, passing teams of workers collecting the smashed bottles and crumpled cans from the celebrations last night, men wearing heavy jackets and woolly hats while the pair of them sauntered past, scantily clad, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Danny half expected a glare or a slur to be muttered, but none of them cared. The world really had changed, he thought. Arriving at Hungerford Bridge Danny broke off, looking into the currents swirling around the bridge’s pillars. Since the last time he had stood here, decades ago, the Samaritans had added a plaque with a telephone number for anyone needing help.
Wandering for a time, they eventually found the kiosk behind the Queen Elizabeth Hall, near Waterloo Station. ‘Semoorg Falafel’ was doing a brisk trade with New Year’s Eve clubbers, customers with eyes weeping glitter, tangled hair and smudged make-up. None of them worried about their appearance as they braved the fluorescent lights to buy hot pittas loaded with beef tomatoes and creamy tahini dressing. Perhaps all those years ago Danny had bought food here, a place that only manifested itself when you took yourself to the brink.
Danny and Matt returned to the river and ate their pittas on the steps down to the water while sipping cans of fiery Jamaican ginger ale and watching the weak winter sunrise. Matt declared, ‘This year I’m going to fall in love.’
Taking out his phone, Danny said, ‘I might need to join you in that search.’
