Don't You Want Me? (22 page)

‘I’m hungry,’ says Frank eventually. ‘And I’m pretty sure, without having to ask, that Stella is too. What’s the plan, mate?’

‘Thought we’d chill for a while, mate, yeah?’ says Adrian. ‘And then maybe grab a bite down the road. I’m working at eleven.’ He pulls a load of flyers out of his pocket. ‘Here – you is all on the list. VIP room. All the extras, know what I mean?’ He sniffs pointedly and grins.

Oh, no, not drugs. Oh, no no
no
. I can’t stand drugs: they’re number one on my list of Things People Shouldn’t Do Past the Age of Twenty-five. (Top three: 1. Drugs. 2. Tantric sex. 3. Highlights/any hairstyle denoting generous use of ‘product’. And that’s just the tip of a very large iceberg.) All those middle-aged men in naff suits you see, running around Soho coked out of their heads, make me depressed. All those blokey blokes in their thirties, taking Ecstasy and dancing around their suburban living rooms, digging out their dungarees and waving their arms about and pretending that it’s 1988 and that their hair didn’t recede and that life didn’t disappoint them … could anything be sadder or more piteous? Grimmer still are the ones who spent their adolescence swotting up and dissecting mammals (instead of taking drugs and bunking off school, which is the French way: we get it out of our system early), and who now stagger around coked up to the eyeballs, believing themselves to finally be ‘cool’ at the age of forty-two – aargh. I know loads of them through Dominic, who was not averse to the odd line himself and who’d spend the occasional blokes’ night out with his male clients doing this kind of thing, usually involving dropping some Es. He’d always come back horny, too, and drool all over me, and when I’d finally be awake enough to respond to his drug-fuelled desires, I’d discover his penis had shrunk – Ecstasy does this – so that it looked like a little snail. A tiny, weeny little snaily. You don’t want to start thinking of your partner’s penis as a little snaily, believe me: thin end of the wedge.

I know this isn’t a very tolerant way of thinking – I’m sure millions of perfectly charming people my age take drugs – but I do think there are some things which youth
has a monopoly on and drugs are one of them. What’s funny and wild and fun in a twenty-year-old just looks desperate and sad-beyond-tears in someone twice that age. Eurgh. And the bloody coke-fuelled inane chat that makes you want to tear your ears off and throw them on the floor in disgust … Oh, bugger. Drugs. On top of everything else, we’re now to be the oldest swingers in town. I might have known. Cherry on the cake of my evening.

We move on to dinner, to one of those fur-coat-and-no-knickers restaurants that looks fabulous and serves disgusting food. Louisa and I slope off to the loo as soon as we’ve sat down.

‘So,’ she says from the cubicle next to mine.

‘So,’ I reply.

We both begin to pee, in perfect unison.

‘It’s going really well, I think.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Adrian really likes you.’

‘That’s nice.’

Rustle rustle with the paper, flush. A woman two cubicles down parps away like a trumpet. It always seems odd to me that people apparently store up their wind especially for visits to restaurants, the loos of which are always filled with women who seem to have considerable trouble with trapped wind until their buttocks hit the wooden lavatory seat of a public place.

Lou and I meet again by the sinks. My weird, sultry, pouty face greets me in the mirror, and gives me a shock. We catch each other’s eye and smirk; the woman in the cubicle actually groans with pleasure, or perhaps relief: she sounds like she’s just come. Lou and I start giggling
as we wash our hands. Then she floofs out her blonde curls artlessly and opens her mouth wide, checking her teeth for spinach.

‘Do you think Frank likes me?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

‘No, I mean, do you think he
likes
me, you know, in that way?’

‘Yes.’ I reapply a bit of blusher. ‘I’m sure he does. You have a va … you have private parts, don’t you?’

‘Stella!’

‘What? It’s true.’

‘Do you really think he likes me?’

‘God, Lou, I’ve just said so twice, haven’t I?’

‘Are you sure,’ she says, clutching my arm, ‘that you don’t mind? It’s just you seem in a bit of a funny mood.’

‘That’s probably because I’ve spent the past hour listening to a lecture about hip-hop,’ I smile. ‘Sorry. That’s cheered me up, though.’ I gesture at the parpster’s lair.

‘Adrian really fancies you, I can tell.’

‘We’d be a brilliant match if I were deaf.’

‘So you’re absolutely sure you don’t mind? About Frankie?’

Frankie now, is it? I heave a giant, ultra-exasperated, couldn’t-care-less sigh.

‘Absolutely sure. Now stop bugging me about it, Lou.’

‘He is just
so great
,’ Louisa says with a beatific smile, much as a born-again Christian might say of the Lord Jesus.

‘Mmm. He’s not
that
great, Lou.’ Do I tell her? Do I not? I am sorely tempted. But then I tell myself that Frank has never behaved badly to me, that his personal life is none of my business, and that I really shouldn’t pick this
moment to dump all over my friend’s evening. Which isn’t to say I am not tempted. But I resist.

‘What happened yesterday?’ I ask, unpinning my hair and then pinning it up again more messily for added sex-appeal. ‘When you went to see his pictures?’

‘His pictures are
great
, aren’t they? Just great,’ she gushes. ‘I must say, I do love a bit of the old figurative art. A person who can actually draw. Or paint. Or both. Have you seen his sketches? They’re beautiful. That lovely one of you …’

‘Of me? He’s never drawn me. He draws cows. As you’ll have seen.’

‘Yes, but there’s that titchy one of you and Honey. You must have seen it, surely?’

‘Oh, that,’ I lie. Knowing that Frank has a secret drawing of me, with or without Honey, gives me a strange mini-thrill which I am unwilling to discuss with Lou. ‘And then what?’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. After you’d admired his cows, me included.’

‘Oh,’ she giggles. ‘We had a cup of tea and I told him all about myself.’

‘Including Alex’s dad walking out on you?’

‘Oh, yes. He was so sympathetic. One of the things – the many things – that I like about him is that he seems to be really kind-hearted. But butch with it, you know, not all sappy and sandally and horrible. Don’t you think?’

‘Up to a point.’ I’m biting my tongue, though I must say Frank’s hypocrisy could win awards. ‘Superficially.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’

Lou shrugs and snaps her powder case shut.

‘And then,’ she says, ‘he kissed me.’

Aargh. Aargh. On the other hand, if there’s one thing I love it’s having a song lyric thrown into the conversation.

‘How did he kiss you?’ I ask.

‘With his mouth,’ Louisa says, grinning. ‘With his lips.’

‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘A normal kiss? Because Frank strikes me as very possibly the kind of person who would wine-kiss you.’

‘What’s a wine-kiss?’

‘You know, when men think it’s incredibly sexy and fwoar-ish to slurp wine into your mouth as part of the kissing. People who think of themselves as sexually sophisticated do it, I’ve noticed.’

‘Oh, God,’ says Louisa. ‘Does anyone really still go for that?’

‘I think so. They think it’s slick. Studly.’

‘I had it done once with pear Thunderbird. When I was at school.’

‘Well, quite. That’s part of the problem – no one ever wine-kisses you with Chateau d’Yquem. I’ve had it with Blue Nun, and of course if the wine is revolting you just end up dribbling down yourself, and then the wine-kisser tries to lick the dribbled wine.’

‘Like a dog.’

‘Exactly. Actually, I’m rather surprised Dr Cooper didn’t wine-kiss.’

‘He’s more of a naked-massage-with-oils type, judging by your description.’

‘Oh, God! Naked massage with oils! And the oils always have a label that says “Sensual”.’

‘Sssenssual,’ Louisa sniggers, sounding like Kenneth Williams.

Both of us are laughing out loud now. ‘Sssenssual naked massage with oils,’ Louisa honks. ‘And the guy’s always really rubbish at it, and keeps telling you to “relax” in a husky voice while he sort of kneads you, like dough. And the oil always goes into your bottom crack and feels horrible.’

‘Bloody oils,’ I say. ‘So then you’re wriggling around with an oily back bottom. And then you have to walk about – slide about – for two days smelling of hippie.’

Louisa nods in agreement. We both continue our makeup reapplications. I really love Louisa for understanding about the crapness of naked massage with oils.

‘With tongues?’ I ask nonchalantly, after a seemly pause. ‘The Frank-kissing. Without wine – which I’m pleased to hear – but with tongues?’

‘No, Stella,’ she laughs. ‘It was a friendly sort of kiss goodbye. On the mouth, though. Well, when I say “he kissed me” – I kissed him, and he kissed me back.’

‘Right.’

‘It was only quick, but he’s a very good kisser.’

‘Really.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Experienced.’

‘He’s certainly that,’ I say. ‘Let’s go back through, shall we?’

The woman comes out of the cubicle of shame as we pass by. ‘Disgusting,’ she sniffs. ‘There’s a time and a place for that kind of conversation.’

‘The bean’s a most extraordinary fruit,’ says Louisa.

‘The more you eat, the more you toot,’ I complete.

We stagger out of the loo crippled with laughter at this infantilism. Despite myself, I’m cheering up.

I’ve noticed that people who spend a lot of time in very
noisy environments – night clubs, say – are extremely poor conversationalists. Adrian can barely speak in complete sentences, though by pudding time he has become very physically demonstrative (this possibly has something to do with his racing off to the loo a couple of times and coming back unusually animated). He starts off by pushing back a stray hair from my cheek, graduates to feeding me mouthfuls of his pudding (which sounds like a really
nasty
euphemism – ‘Feed me mouthfuls of your pudding, babe’ – but isn’t) and concludes by engaging in a robust game of footsie, which I try and semi-resist as I worry about his giant trainers scuffing my boots. Frank, who has dropped a napkin, gets a close-up view of this, and re-emerges from under the table looking grumpy, which puts me in an excellent mood.

‘So,’ he says, putting his arm around Louisa so that his left hand is casually resting by her breast. ‘Where to next?’

‘Bangin’,’ says Adrian, trying the same trick with
his
arm. Unfortunately, my bosoms are considerably bigger than Lou’s, though less pert, so he accidentally ends up with a handful of chest.

‘Fuck! Sorry,’ he says, but for some reason it takes a while for his motor skills to catch up with his thought process, so that, though appalled, he is still clutching, squashing, my entire left breast, holding it as though it were a fruit. Confused, he squeezes it neatly twice, rather too hard for my liking.

‘Um,’ I say, ‘do you mind?’

‘Sorry,’ says Adrian helplessly, still inexplicably attached to my breast.

Frank reaches across and pulls his hand away.

‘Fook’s sake, mon,’ he mutters, sounding more Geordie than he has done for ages. ‘Aa’ll cloot yor jaw.’

‘I didn’t mean …’ says Adrian. ‘Sorry, mate. Dropped an E, yeah?’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, feeling a tremendous urge to laugh. I wink at Frank, my hero, who looks unamused, though Louisa is grinning as though she’d burst.

‘Nice pair, missus,’ she sniggers. She does it for slightly too long, so that her snigger turns into a horrible snort.

‘Oh, my
God
,’ she blushes. ‘I can’t believe I did that. Like a disgusting pig. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I thought it was sexy,’ says Frank, giving me a look and slowly unfurling his wickedest smile.

‘Shush, Frank. No one cares,’ I say, but a giggling fit is building up in the pit of my stomach.

‘Anyway,’ I continue, grinning at Adrian like an imbecile who loves nothing more than having her breasts groped over the
tarte tatin
, ‘you were saying?’

‘Um, yeah. Bangin’. It’s the club I’m at tonight. It’ll be a bit quiet for a while but you can have free drinks.’

‘Where are you from?’ I ask Adrian. ‘Because your accent is, ah, variable.’

‘That would be telling, my love,’ says Adrian, now sounding bizarrely like a West Country farmer. It must be the drugs talking.

‘Let’s go, shall we?’ says Frank impatiently. ‘I need another wee drink.’

He and Louisa walk down the street hand in hand. Not to be outdone, and very possibly crazed by the four glasses of red wine I’ve had with dinner, I squeeze Adrian’s behind forcefully when the four of us are standing in the Great Eastern Road, looking for a cab.

‘All righ,’ says Adrian happily, turning his head so that our lips brush.

‘Mmm,’ I whisper hoarsely. ‘Never better.’

But I still really, really want to laugh, especially when I catch Frank’s face, staring at me impassively in the drizzling rain. Still, considering I was dreading the evening a mere couple of hours ago, this has got to be a turn up for the books.

Bangin’ is the name of a night that happens at a huge gay nightclub called, sweetly, Fist. Yungsta – he most certainly stops being Adrian the second we approach the door – DJs in the big main, ground-floor bit, but there are apparently another couple of floors that play different (and hopefully more
sympathique
) kinds of music. What I’d really like is a little blast of Charles Aznavour, but never mind: I need to get to grips with the troubling issue of my grotesque musical taste, and what better way of broadening my outlook than a couple of happy hours spent listening to what I gather are technically known as ‘bangin’ choons’?

Yungsta settles us in at the ground-floor bar, orders us drinks and then departs to fiddle about behind his decks, planting a lingering, slightly slack-mouthed kiss on my lips and promising to return soon, yeah? He looks quite cool, now he’s on home ground, and I am pleased I squeezed his bottom earlier. Well, pleased-ish. Hardly delirious with happiness, but, you know.