The night before we leave for Italy, I say goodbye to my three closest friends—my sisters. We meet for dinner in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, in a restaurant that serves excellent seafood and has stylish décor, with oak furniture, ochre walls, dusky filament lighting, and succulent-lined shelves. The only thing is, it may be a little sedate for what looks like it’s going to be a raucous night.
“Ladies, I need to tell you about my latest pull,” announces Gloria. “He had a face like a tortoise’s minge but I swear down, he banged me like a shed door in a hurricane.”
We gasp and giggle.
Gloria is the loudest, most outrageous of my sisters. We met on a night out, when I spotted him dancing on a pole to Geri Halliwell’s “Bag It Up” and decided we had to be friends. His name is actually Paul—a name chosen by his Ugandan parents to give him the best chance of fitting into their adopted country. But fitting in was never on the cards for a bald, six-feet, four-inch-tall Black man who’s overweight, has a beard that’s usually covered with glitter, and a penchant for wearing bright makeup, synthetic wigs and gold or silver lamé body stockings. At some point in the long-forgotten past, someone had decided the name Gloria would be much more suitable.
“So are you seeing him again?” I ask.
Gloria looks at me as if I’ve just suggested he lick a slug. “Girl, I don’t even remember his name. All I know is it was Eastern European and sounded like some poison the Russians would use.”
There’s another burst of laughter. We’ve just finished eating and a waiter appears to clear our plates and unload a tray full of cocktails. I take a swig of mine: I’ve no idea what it is but it tastes like smoke.
“How about you, Dom?” asks Gloria, twirling the ends of his purple wig. “Have you had any action?”
I snicker. “When has Domnothad any action?”
Of the four of us, Dom is the one with the most crowd-pleasing looks. His white skin only needs marginal exposure to the sun to acquire a tan, and he has thick hair, an equally thick moustache and a smattering of chest fur that are the color of dark chocolate. He also has a deep voice, chunky wrists, and—as a former football player—calves like hams. Since birth, Dom has been deaf in one ear, but most men only seem to think that makes him more attractive, almost as if without this flash of vulnerability his looks would be too intimidating. He and I met on a hookup arranged on the website Gaydar, in the days before they were even known as hook-ups. I would have taken it further but Dom made it clear he wasn’t in the market for a relationship. After I saw him out on Canal Street a few times, we eventually became friends—and then sisters.
“Alright, alright,” says Dom, sitting at an angle so his good ear is directed at us. “I did actually hook up with someone last week. He was fit and I liked him. But I got the impression he’s looking for a boyfriend.”
“At which point you bolted,” I chip in.
Dom gives a rakish smile. “You know me too well.”
“Dom, every gay in Manchester knows you’ve got the sexual appetite of a baboon in the mating season,” quips Gloria. He takes his vape out from under the table and turns his back to have a sneaky puff.
“Honestly, you girls make me feel like a dried-up old spinster,” says Ian. “The closest I get to an orgasm these days is driving over a speed bump.”
We laugh and Gloria slaps Ian on the arm.
At fifty, Ian’s the oldest in our group. He’s mixed-race, with silver glasses and equally silver hair, and tonight is wearing another of his collection of check or gingham shirts—this one in orange and green—with chinos and brown leather trainers. I met Ian at university, when I was an undergraduate and he was studying for an MA, in his spare time running the student union’s GaySoc. Like my other sisters, Ian is single. Unlike them, this is because his long-term partner died five years ago, after one uncharacteristic and experimental line of cocaine aggravated an undiagnosed heart condition. For a long time, Ian was floored by grief. When he finally started to pick himself up again, he abandoned his career in marketing and became a life coach specializing in working with LGBTQ+ clients. But he’s never shown any interest in returning to dating.
“My sister, we need to reawaken your inner ravishing, sensual woman,” says Gloria, caressing his gold lamé-covered body.
Ian gives him a curled look. “Gloria, I don’t think I’ve ever beenanyof those things.”
Gloria gives him another slap. “Hush your mouth! You are fifty andfuckable!”
The straight couple sitting at the next table looks over disapprovingly.
“And how are things with our favorite twink?” Dom asks, turning the attention onto me. My sisters often wind me up about having a cute, clean-cut, boyish look—a typical twink. Although recently that’s shifted to winding me up about being anagingtwink.
“Here, I’ve got a joke for you,” cuts in Gloria, after another puff on his vape. “What do you call a twink over forty?”
“T’was?” guesses Ian.
“Twinked?” says Dom.
“Twunk?” I pitch in.
Gloria shakes his head. “Nobody calls a twink over forty!”
We gurgle with laughter.
Ian takes his glasses off and cleans them on his shirt. “Ignore her, Adam. She’s just jealous because you’ve bagged yourself a gorgeous man.”
“Yeah, how’s it going with Theo?” asks Dom. “More to the point, why’s he not with us tonight?”
