London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp Read Free Book Online

step my shadow got lighter. I made my way to the Bell, which I had read about in a copy of Gay Times I’d bought at the station before getting on the train that afternoon, and had read furtively from cover to cover during the journey. I walked past the bar several times on the opposite side of the street, my stomach churning. I looked at the Thameslink station next to the Bell, and thought of that game on the train tracks as a child, of that stupid, willful determination not to run away like the others.
    I crossed the road and pushed open the door.
    I hadn’t really considered what the place might look like inside, but I hadn’t for a minute expected it to look like any other pub. I was expecting decadence, I think, and I got a shock. Young men and women stood around drinking. Music played. The only difference from any pub I had been in at home was that the people knew how to dress and the music was palatable. The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” played as I sat there with a pint of lager, smoking a cigarette, withdrawing behind the clouds of smoke I was exhaling, and scanning the room. I watched their faces, the men and women who were there, while keeping a regular eye on the door for newcomers. I wanted to take in everything. I wanted to be somebody else, so I was. Where I grew up, it wasn’t possible to do this.
    I sat alone, armed with the eye of an anthropologist and the heart of a beggar. I knew there must be someone who would take me home and give me a bed for the night. It was simply a process of discovering that person. I looked at each boy in turn. Already I knew what I could achieve. Still, it was new. A test. In those days, everything was a test to see how far this new me would go. I had only ever had sex with men I found repulsive in exchange for money. I didn’t know anything else. I was hungry to learn.
    Only one person approached me all night. After I had been sitting there for hours, what can only be described as a flaming creature came over and sat next to me, blue hair spiking above a bizarrely made-up face. He wore a black lamé jacket over a tight yellow T-shirt, a tartan mini-skirt, and orange tights, his feet wrapped in purple platform boots with a silver ankle-star. He looked like something from another planet.
    “Hello, what’s your name?” he asked, offering me a Consulate.
    “David,” I said, taking one. That isn’t my name. It’s my brother’s name. I don’t know why my own name seemed so inadequate at that moment, or what I was trying to hide. Or who I was trying to become.
    “I’m Edward,” he said, holding out a lighter in his bejewelled hand. I leant forward till the cigarette’s tip hit the flame, and inhaled, noticing that his black-varnished fingernails were chipped.
    He launched into a monologue the majority of which I can no longer recall. He was an artist and a musician, and he organized clubs and gigs. He sang in a band called Hollywood Knee, who played hard-edged, cross-dressed covers of songs by ’60s girl groups. He proceeded to bombard me with questions. What music did I like? Did I like this, did I like that? Who were my favourite artists? What films had I seen, what books had I read? Initially I was barely able to string two words together, so shocked was I that such a person existed, but so glad that he was talking to me, this being who seemed to speak the same language as me. One of my own species. As a consequence of that shock, however, I responded with such monosyllabic answers that at one point he stopped, looking perplexed, and asked, “Were you a test tube baby?”
    “Why?”
    “I have friends who were some of the earliest test tube babies. You remind me of them. They never say a word.”
    “I was grown on a wet flannel,” I said. “Besides, I can’t get a word in edgeways.”
    He looked at me. He pulled on his cigarette, not taking his eyes off me. “This place is closing now, dear. Fancy going somewhere else?”
    I guessed I had my bed for