Da American Boyz

My dear, dear reader. Since you’ve been away so many exciting things have happened in my life. I won’t blame you – I’m sure it’s not selfishness on your part that kept you absent, just thoughtlessness – but I’ll forgive you and tell all about HW’s First Trip To America.

Stop one, New York! New York! Land of yellow cabs, little dogs and bagels. Little dogs in yellow cabs eating bagels! Yellow cabs running over little dogs sandwiched in bagels! How exciting! So many freakshows to see! So little time!

Little time indeed. For although my first trip to New York should have consisted to lazy days in Central Park and endless bereted coffees at MOMA, my boss had other ideas. Yes, I was actually in New York for work, setting up exhibitions to launch our lighting products across the pond. After a few days of this it rapidly became apparent that unless I took action the extent of my American experience was going to be the inside of a SOHO gallery, the morbidly obese man at the hardware store around the corner and a power-drill with a funny-shaped plug.

But hang on. “Staying in New York for work,” I hear you say. “That doesn’t sound too bad. Business class flights, a five-star hotel and all your food and travel expenses paid for.” Well, that was my boss’ experience. Me, I got to fly Economy while he sat up front, wasn’t allowed to claim receipts and got sleep on a variety of Aussie mates’ sofas while he stayed for a week in SOHO’s most exclusive hotel. That’s right; when he heard I had friends in town he asked if I could stay with them to save the company some money, because when you’ve just bought a multi-million pound house in central London you’ve got to watch the pennies. Well, watch someone else’s pennies anyway.

Armed with my indignation I negotiated two days of paid leave and resolved to get as far away as possible. That way when one of the exhibition lights caught fire and the gallery burned and south Manhattan was apocalyptically razed I could calmly answer the phone and say “Yes, hello? Oh, that sounds awful. Hmmm. I see. Look, I’d love to come back and help pick up charred bits of your completely irrelevant lighting product but the beach here is just lovely, and by the time I get back my martini will be warm, and Emmanuel says it’s a waste not to use up the whole bottle of massage oil now we’ve opened it. Oh, and you’re a cunt who’s too tight to pay my travel expenses. Bye now! Mwah.”

Fortunately I had a perfect getaway option in the form of my hot Yankee Banker. When not in London trawling the bars for innocent youths to debase he worked in Washington D.C. for a big bank, doing the kind of banking stuff that isn’t a teller and so I will never understand. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year but he was delighted at the idea of a visit, so I packed my bags and leapt on the first train out of town.

On the journey I consulted my copy of The Big Book of Gay Etiquette: Just Because It’s There Doesn’t Mean You Should Touch It for a few tips, and learnt that:

… when visiting or staying with an old flame timing is everything. If the invitation is for twenty minutes or less it can be safely assumed that a cup of tea or coffee is expected, possibly with a side platter of biscuits or fresh scones. If the invitation is for anything more than twenty minutes – say, up to a week – then etiquette necessitates engaging in Unmentionable Activities on a scale and volume appropriate to the quality of the accommodation provided. This timing distinction is critical. Adherence to it will avoid the embarrassment of arriving with a bottle of soymilk when a packet of prophylactics would have been more appropriate.

At the time I was still dating Coat Contents and Yankee Banker was loved up with a new fella, so I wasn’t sure The Big Book of Gay Etiquette’s advice of getting jolly with the lolly was appropriate. I skimmed through its section on relationship etiquette but since I didn’t need to know “How to keep his toy soldier at attention when the Major General has left” or “Riding Aladdin’s rug: Three wishes to get the magic back now the lamp is tarnished” it just confused me more. Eventually I fell back on the moral fibre that my mother had rammed into me and decided that arriving bearing leather chaps and a big grin would be indelicate. I settled for hydrangeas instead.

Arriving at Yankee Banker’s apartment late in the afternoon, I stood gazing fixedly at the jumble of numbers trying to remember which one I should buzz. Gazing fixedly only works if you allow your mouth to drop open too, and maximum cognition is only achieved if you scratch your nuts to get the brain working. I was thus engaged when a cheery voice called out “Hi! You must be HW!”

I turned to see a disarmingly handsome man grinning at me, decked out in the coolest glasses I have ever seen. I swallowed the fly I’d caught and turned my nut-scratching into a casual running of the hand through the hair while he introduced himself as Yankee Banker’s beau. The horror! I’d been replaced with someone better looking, with better glasses and – as it transpired – a better job. Oh look at me! I work for a senator in Obama’s administration, working to avert climate change and secure the future for our children and their pet dolphins. Yeah well, I bury hamsters in dirt and knock their heads off with golf clubs, you optically superior prat.

Yankee Banker came to the rescue with a large glass of something pink and cold, ducking my accusing glare. Honestly. How hard would it have been to pay a homeless man to bring his urine-stained, cardboard box hovel up to the apartment for two days, and introduce this piece of life’s detritus as his boyfriend? He could’ve even let the homeless man’s dog shit in the bathroom sink and left it there for authenticity. I wouldn’t have cared; I’d just have washed my hands around it. Anything would have been preferable to knowing I’d been upgraded, or even that such a thing was possible.

The next day things went from bad to worse. Captain Planet was so nice he made time in his busy schedule to give me a backstage tour of Capitol Hill, starting at the senate office where he worked. Ugh, hot and considerate; what a creep. I arrived to find a long queue of school brats blocking the entrance so I settled in to wait, only for Captain Planet to appear and VIP me in. Humph. Quite cool. Still a prat.

We whizzed through the marbled Senate offices and then downstairs to a reception area where a hapless maid greeted us. Captain Planet turned the charm onto full beam and explained to the bedazzled lass that although it’s not protocol he has a meeting with Mr W in room 312 but has forgotten to book it and is there any chance it is free for us to use and my goodness, he likes her hair today. She wilted. I was impressed. Prat though. Focus on the prat.

Through a security pat-down and along a white shiny tunnel, and I was only now wondering where the fuck we were going. Why were we in the basement and not arriving by car convoy to a brass band? Where was Obama, and why hadn’t he bought me a puppy yet? Why was there a set of train tracks up ahead? And here, a small 8-car train up with no driver? What was this, some kind of fucking James Bond movie?

And yes, yes it was. We stepped off the miniature platform into the leading carriage, the doors automatically closed and we were off, whisked from the Senate administrative buildings into the heart of Capitol Hill on the secret underground train. I kid you not. It was the coolest fucking thing I have ever seen. Suddenly I was Dr Evil shuttling towards my underground lair, and Captain Planet my diabolical accomplice Mini Me. Although he resented me stroking his head in that fashion.

The rest of the Capitol Hill tour passed in a blur of history and dark corridors. As we left through the main entrance into the glorious sunshine Captain Planet pointed to the “Room 312” tag I had been wearing since the train. Whereas once it was white it was now navy blue, the numerals nearly impossible to read. “It self-destructed in the sunlight to prevent re-entry,” he explained.

I accepted defeat. This man was too brilliant not to love, with his spectacles and his secret spyware and his cute ass. The Yankee Banker was a fortunate man, and as I watched them over dinner that night I hoped they’d be together so long that they’d wear the thread bare and be in need of Aladdin’s rug-riding tips. The lucky bastards.

A Fairy's Tale

Hi kids. I’m back.

I had once thought that this would be my last entry. One final chapter to neatly wrap up my story of loveless questing for Mr Right, a happily-ever-after ending to validate all the drunken fumblings, public nudity and revealing the depths of my homosexual depravity to my immediate family. Uncle Robert, if you’re out there, this one’s for you.

No, there will be no fairytale endings in this blog. Prince Charming will not be galloping out of the sunset in a lacy shirt astride his bucking stallion, because quite frankly that is fucking dull. Unless it’s “Prince Charming Rides His Bucking Stallion III” in HD surround sound, which is anything by dull.

Instead I proffer a tale of a budding young romance set amidst the delicate blossoms of a London spring, a romance flush with hope for a new world of candlelit dinners and joint bank accounts, a romance that I fucked up by thinking “ooooh, if I can just make this work out it would make a brilliant ending to my blog.”

It all started one fine March morning as I stood in the Salad Man’s queue, waiting for my usual bucket of health for lunch. For £2.70 the Salad Man will give you a tub of olives, couscous, carrots, feta, sun-dried tomatoes and chickpeas so big it has developed sentient life. To put that in perspective, £2.70 in London will usually buy you a postcard of Lady Di and a punch in the face, so the Salad Man was always busy.

On this particular occasion none of my work colleagues had come with me so I was whiling away the queue time with my favourite hobby; Perving On The Unsuspecting. Pickings were slim that Friday, and after the horrorshow of mentally undressing a man who turned out to be seventy I settled for admiring the tailored coat of the man two ahead of me.

What a lovely subtle pattern. Such a clever collar trim. Selfridges? No, Liberty’s surely. A great cut. Fits perfectly over those broad shoulders. Excellent tailoring in the body too; the shape emphasises that toned, muscular chest and waist. Oh, he’s turning his head into profile, and I say! that ain’t bad either. Hmmmm, forget the salad; break off a chunk of the Coat Contents for daddy.

Such was the depth of my anorak admiration that I wasn’t even put off when he opened his mouth and addressed one of the Salad Girls in the dulcet tones of America. Rather, I waited until it was my turn to be served and – under the pretext of confirming that yes, I was having the same salad I have had every single day since 2006 – I nipped ahead and planted myself beside Coat Contents. I took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the best opening line since "if I could rearrange the alphabet I would put U and I together."

HW: “My god, are you having the LARGE salad box? That’s an epic eat. Respect.” Yes, I actually said ‘respect’. I am Tony Blair circa 2004.

Coat Contents: “Yep, I get it most days. I love this salad bar.” Amazingly, speaking back.

HW: “Me too, although I sometimes find it a bit repetitive so I like to spice mine up with some smoked haddock back at the office.” Oh yes, take notes dating underlings. There’s nothing like imagining someone with a smelly, oily North Sea fish stuffed into their gob to crank up the sexual frisson.

And so it continued. Coat Contents took his salad and waited for me to get mine, and then we stood around awkwardly while he established that yes, I worked locally and yes, I also ate salmon, skate, cod, trout, barramundi and perch. Strangely he seemed unwilling to end this most educational of marine conversations. I weighed this against an estimation of the damage his clenched homophobic fist could do to my pretty-boy face, steadied myself on the vat of potato salad and asked for his phone number.

Coat Content’s face broadened into a fantastic grin. He reached into his wallet and pullet out his business card. I did the same and we exchanged like some dreadful 20th century cliché. If only we’d done this 200 years earlier, we’d have had servants in wigs to carry our monogrammed cards to each other on silver trays and lend the moment an air of majesty. As it was I discretely wiped the humus off mine and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Relief at having my teeth intact mingled with a sudden sense of achievement. I had just successfully hit on a cute man in a well-lit public place, without the assistance of alcohol, Straight Best Friend or Kylie! Truly I was a dating god.

A couple of risqué dates later and I had myself a bone fide boyfriend, and what a corker he was. While I nodded liked a labrador he’d describe Virginia Wolfe’s critical essays. While I gazed adoringly at his porno ‘tash he’d sketch arguments outlining Mozart’s compositional superiority. And while he read The Economist over breakfast I’d sit and think “when we get married this is what our breakfasts will be like every single day for the next seventy years until finally we die like Romeo and Juliet but horribly wasted and decrepit clutching each other in an embrace of enduring love.”

Sure there were difficulties. Sleeping together on those warm spring evenings, I’d lie awake and think “OK HW, just breath, it’s OK, don’t stress about this… It’s OK if he wants to sleep underneath a sub-arctic doona while the windows are closed in this heat. It’s OK that he has a fan running all night on high, it’s electric motor powered by coal-fired stations that are pumping out CO2 while the planet burns. No no, it’s OK because he LIKES THE SOOTHING WHIRR it makes. Breathe. Breathe the refreshing cooling air.”

But whatever issues I had with Coat Contents I always forgave him because knock me sideways to Christmas if the boy couldn’t actually kiss. Over the past seven years of having British men fondle my tonsils, plunge my tongue and suck out my oesophagus I’d forgotten how a real kiss is undertaken. Not with the express aim of eating your head, but with gentleness, passion and a tic tac.

Sadly, the good times were doomed not to last. After three months Coat Contents decided that things weren’t working out for him, and threw my heart into the trash alongside the articles on climate change I’d discretely cut out and left on his pillow. Yes, that’s right, imagine the horror; he couldn’t even be bothered to recycle. My heart went straight to landfill. That’s Americans for you.

Still, there are some pearls of wisdom in this cautionary tale. Number one, I learnt that years of internet dating, set-ups, one-night-stands, drunken touch-ups and dirty eye contacting had so reduced my self-respect that I could now happily hit on strangers in the glare of the noonday sun. Brilliant. Number two, I learnt that not all men who frequent salad bars are tofu-munching homosexuals, but if you’re lucky they might be. And thirdly I learnt that happily ever afters are the remit of dwarves, men in tights and stepmothers in drag, and thus have no place in any self-respecting gay man’s life.

Until the next time of course.