50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (20 page)

Jean-Paul says, “Mark, meet Laurent.”

Laurent smiles at me, and Jean-Paul moves away. I can tell that he's dumping him on me but I think,
Cute
and I think,
Young
.

Laurent grins, smiles, winks and moves to my side.

When we move on to a restaurant, Laurent sticks with us, sticks to my side. He is gushing, enthusiastic; he stares at me with huge brown eyes. He asks me what bike I have, tells me that he loves motorbikes and that he loves bikers. I smile at him indulgently.

Around eleven p.m. he says, “I'd
love
to go out with a
biker like you.”

I make my excuses and escape.

Over the next two weeks he pursues me by all means, low and high tech combined. I get postcards, telephone calls, emails and SMS messages. Jean-Paul calls me as go-between to tell me that Laurent is “desperate” to see me again.

I ask him why he dumped him on me in the first place.

“No reason really. He's nice,” he insists. “He's just a bit, well,
clingy.”

“I KEEP THINKING ABOUT U,” says an SMS, “CALL ME!”

The truth is that I do like him; he's very cute, relaxed and funny, in a twenty-year-old kind of way. I wonder myself why I don't go for it.

It's the age thing, but why should the idea worry me so?

I discuss the dilemma with gay friends who ask me how old he is and wince as they calculate the difference. They say, “Why not, but what would you have in common?” or, “Well the ancient Greeks did it, but then we're not ancient Greeks,
are
we?” At the same time they egg me on. “And
do
call me and tell me what happens if you do,” they say excitedly.

Laurent is ever present, ever persistent.

One Friday I phone my oldest straight friend Steve.

He's flabbergasted. “But I thought you were supposed to be immoral sex machines, endlessly shagging everything in sight,” he says. “I thought it was easy for you guys, I thought that was the whole
point.”

“Not the
whole
point, surely?” I say.

“Well if
I
was single and met a cute twenty year-old bird who was up for it I wouldn't hesitate for a second,” he says. His demonic laugh reveals it as complete truth.

I
like
this advice, so I call a couple of other straight male friends. They unanimously
would
have sex with a twenty year old, and their enthusiasm is such that I suspect they probably wouldn't mind doing it together. They are all shocked that the idea should present me with any kind of moral dilemma. “The guy is an adult for God's sake,” they say.

It's true.
“He does have a beard,”
I think.

In the end of course the hormones win, I go with the straights. I like to have opposing advice; it lets me do what I like and still feel justified.

So I drag little Laurent into my lair and it's not so difficult.

The first week goes fine, in a vanilla kind of a way. He has no real opinions on anything, so it feels a bit like trying to read an empty exercise book. But he's always in a good mood, always willing to do anything, and for once his homosexuality seems to pose him no problem at all. His friends at college know, his parents know.
“A different generation,”
I think.

I lie in bed watching him sleep: his face looks lovely. He always smiles as he sleeps, sometimes he actually laughs as he dreams.

I ponder the fact that the gays I know these days have more hang-ups about sex than their straight equivalents. I wonder if we thirty-somethings haven't gone from defining our sex lives
in spite
of what others may care to think about us, to defining them in the
very hope
of disproving what we worry others
might
think about us. As far as Laurent is concerned no one actually seems to care enough to think about us at all.

I wake up one morning next to him. He's sleeping soundly and as I lie there I wonder if the sex will get any better – he never seems to actually move very much. I think,
“Whatever, this is fine.”

As I stroke his bare shoulder, he wakes up, stretches animal-like then turns and hugs me.

He says, “I love you.”

I cough. I say, “That's nice, but you might want to slow down there.”

He says, “But I
know
. I really
love
you.”

I go to make tea and he follows me to the kitchen. He's nude and his dick stands out at ninety degrees.

I look at him, slim and fit and youthful. I don't remember
ever
having a physique like that. “What sport do you do to have a body like that?” I ask him.

He grins at me; he shrugs. “I don't,” he says. “I'm naturally muscly.”

“Typical,” I say, stirring the tea.

He says, “So can I come and live here?” The question comes out naturally, apparently, a waking, logical, obvious thought.

I turn to frown at him. I shake my head. “Absolutely,” I say. “Not!”

“But it does make sense,” he argues.

“We've been seeing each other a little over a week,” I say.

“Nearly two weeks,” says Laurent. “Anyway, my friend Josette moved in with her boyfriend after a week. Now they're getting married.”

I stare at him. I shake my head. “Laurent!” I say, “It's
not
gonna happen.”

He frowns at me; he goes a little red. He looks angry, upset, and his eyes start to shine.

I know that this won't last and I wonder,
“Why not?”
When did the relationship game all get so heavy, so weighted, so complicated? When did it become impossible to just say, “Sure, why not?”

Even the way it starts is strange, a simple text message on my mobile phone, a message to call Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc – the cute one, the guy I have been bumping into infrequently for nearly ten years, every time with a different boyfriend in tow. Jean-Luc who always seems pleased to have a coffee with me but nothing more.

Jean-Luc has the kind of charm that people recruiting salesmen dream of, that flirty way of giving you his complete attention, of staring deep into your eyes with a cocky smile, whether you're his landlady or his prey.

I phone him immediately. I guess he needs instructions on how to get to Isabelle's party, or maybe someone's phone number.

When he asks me to dinner, I am more than surprised.

Jean-Luc has changed. He's still beautiful; he still has those big brown eyes and the little smile lines emanating from them, and he still asks endless streams of questions. But he no longer listens to the replies. Most of the time I can't even finish the phrase before he interrupts me with the next question.
“Maybe he was always like that and I didn't notice,”
I think.

I wonder what I am doing here, but in a very detached kind of way, as though I am reading a story, as though it is unfolding before me one page at a time, I am intrigued – an actor in my own life. So I accept the invitation to his flat just to see what will happen.

What happens is that we have frigid, sterile, dull sex. Afterwards – and it doesn't take long – I leave feeling more bored than cheap.

The next day he calls me again, he wants me to spend
another night with him.

When I say, as kindly as I can, “No, sorry, but this isn't working for me,” he breaks down and weeps into the phone. Luckily he can't see my surprised grimace.

“I'm sorry, I should have told you,” he explains. His sister is dying – cancer. He can't think of anything else, he's not usually like this; he
wasn't
listening to anything I said. “I couldn't even concentrate when we were having sex,” he says.

The conversation floods on and on and on until I feel saturated. I am interrupted by a knock on the door and so I promise, out of kindness, to visit him later that evening.

Back in his flat, he tells me the whole story. She's in the terminal stages of leukaemia and he's leaving tomorrow to stay with her until the end. He needs me to stay with him tonight. “I've got no right to ask you this but I'm asking you anyway,” he pleads.

So I stay.

He grips my arm as he sleeps a deep tormented sleep. I lie looking at the patterns the blinds make on his ceiling, listening to the passing cars, wondering why I'm doing this, wondering if anyone
wouldn't
do this for a fellow human being.

In the morning he's sullen but grateful, and I am tired. I take him to the airport.

The text messages start an hour after he arrives.

“I MISS U. I WISH WE COULD BE TOGETHER” This is surreal enough to start to interest me intellectually; strange enough to make me follow through, just to see where this will go.

Day by day, by telephone and by text message I follow the death of a woman I have never met, the sister of a man I barely know.

“SHES HAVING TR BREATHING. I NEED YOUR ARMS AROUND ME.”

The next day, “SHES ON VENTILATOR. WE DISCUSS WHO LOOKS AFTER KIDS.”

Then, “THEY'VE STOPPED THE DRUGS
…
I THINK IS THE END.” And, “HER EX IS HERE SHE HATES HIM. V DIFFICULT. I MISS YOU”

Finally, exactly a week later, the chapter ends, “THATS IT ITS OVER. PLEASE CALL.”

Robotically, at three a.m. I counsel him over the phone; he needs to know that I will be there for him when he returns. Dishonestly I assure him that I will; I think he needs that answer.

I don't love him; strangely I don't think I even
like
him – he strikes me as dishonest and hysterical and selfish.
“But,”
I reason,
“who wouldn't be under these circumstances?”

I follow the preparations for the funeral, the negotiation of the inheritance, the visits to the notary. I get confused and think I'm following a radio play.

Friends seem confused as well and ask me for the latest instalment, but this play is real life, it actually moves me to tears.

It makes me sad with the loneliness of my role, of his role, of the whole plot.

Two days before he returns, I have to go away to England. My own brother Peter is in intensive care with a burst appendix.

Everyone says he should be OK, but my mother says he could die. “You just can't tell with a burst appendix,” she says, as ever, the prophet of doom.

“Synchronicity,”
I think.
“Maybe it's a sign.”
But a sign of what?

During my trip, Jean-Luc's SMS messages dry up. I resist the temptation to keep him posted on Peter's illness and he doesn't seem interested anyway; he's had enough to deal with, I tell myself.

I spend Christmas in the hospital trying to make conversation. Peter and I know virtually nothing about each other's lives, but we still can't think of much to tell each other.

By the time he's out of danger, over a week has gone by and it's nearly New Year's Eve. I think about staying, going to some major bash in a London nightclub for a change. But when I phone Jean-Luc he says, “Oh, please come back
…
it'd be so good to spend the New Year together. And we haven't seen each other for nearly six weeks after all.”

I'm actually having a little trouble remembering what he looks like. Of course, I remember vaguely. I remember individual features – I've known him for years, but I can't quite picture the whole thing, can't quite piece them together in my mind's eye.

In my letterbox back in Grasse, I find two free tickets to the Cannes dance festival for the thirtieth of December – they're from Hugo.

I phone Jean-Luc and he's charming. “Brilliant!” he says. “I'd love to go.”

He asks me to pick him up early. “That way we'll have time for a drink beforehand,” he enthuses.

When he opens the door I can see that he's himself again, he looks fine. He steps back from me, appraising me as one might look at a painting. I wouldn't be surprised if he half closed his eyes to better appreciate the tones.

I say, “Me voilà!” and wave the tickets at him with a grin.

He frowns at me.

I frown back. “What?” I ask.

He pauses. “I'm sorry,” he says.

I wrinkle my brow. “Sorry?”

He nods. “I've been an arsehole. This whole thing has been a mistake. I wasn't myself, I thought I
…
I thought I loved you, but well, I wasn't myself, and I'm sorry, but I got over it I guess. I'm really sorry.”

I wrinkle my nose and say, “Uh?”

“Would you be hurt if we just forgot this ever happened?”

I am flabbergasted. As I stand in silence staring at
him, I realise for the first time in my life the true meaning of
flabbergasted
.

For some reason he repeats himself, only this time more slowly, changing the emphasis. “I wasn't
myself
. I'm sorry, would you be
hurt
if we just
forget
this ever happened?” As he says “this”, he points between himself and me.

I realise he thinks that I haven't understood. I stare at him and slightly shake my head. “You're completely mad!” I say.

“I'm sorry!”
He repeats.

For some reason my anger focuses on the wasted tickets to the dance festival; I wave them at him. “And what about
these? Arsehole!”
I say.

As I drive to Cannes I feel stupid and ugly and rejected and worthless. I want to have a good cry for myself, but it will have to wait till I get home. I can't let the tickets go to waste.

I try to give one ticket away to the stupid, suspicious people who are queuing to pay, but they look at me as if I am mad, then stare at the floor to avoid the absolute
terror
of a free ticket.

I angrily leave it on the counter and, after a few seconds, more than one person makes a grab for it. But no one thanks me. It wasn't my ticket once I put it down, I suppose.