London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp Read Free Book Online Page A

the night. “Sure.”
    Throughout the conversation I had been staring over Edward’s shoulder at a handsome man farther off, near the bar, who had caught my eye. Our eyes had met, but I had not known how to extricate myself from Edward, and didn’t really want to, and Handsome had eventually left with someone else, taking my gaze with him. I tried to imagine myself having sex with him, but my thoughts were diverted by Edward standing up quickly and saying, “Come on, then, heartface, let’s go.”
    He led me to some den in Shoreditch, where transsexual prostitutes played pool and rent boys in tracksuits and baseball caps sat around smoking joints. One boy, in a leopard-print baseball cap worn back-to-front above eyes lit with mischief, was repeatedly shouting at one of the trannies, “How much, girlfriend?” to which Girlfriend’s increasingly annoyed response was, “Too much.” He continued to repeat the question until she threatened him with a pool cue. We walked past two middle-aged would-be gangsters playing cards in a fug of blue cigar smoke, up to the bar where a beer-bellied cabbie was sucking the face off one of the lady-boys. We were soon deep in conversation, and I told Edward things about my life I’d never told anyone before, stories of my escapades that I had kept locked inside. There’s nothing like a bent ear to dispel shyness. Stories erupted like smoke from my mouth and the trail they formed led straight to his flat in a council estate in Hackney.
    In his hallway, one wall was lined with framed covers of old movie magazines—Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Bette Davis all stared down at us as we entered the front door—while the other wall was filled with the framed covers of pornographic gay magazines. Inches . Honcho . Drummer . We stepped into this corridor of tanned men and glamour girls and he led me to the lounge, where fun-fur rugs of every colour covered the floor like some Muppet-culling. The walls were furnished with silver moulded plastic, like the inside of Barbarella’s spaceship, which reflected the light emitting from the sleek ’60s lamp that hung from the ceiling. A white leather sofa rested against the far wall. Dominating the room, though, in front of the window, was a large Art Deco display case, inhabited by dozens of Barbie dolls, most still in their boxes. An army of smiling, vacant faces, like pretty corpses in glass coffins.
    I assumed sex was almost inevitable. And though I didn’t want it, I was still disappointed when Edward said, “I don’t wanna fuck you, David. You’re not my type. But you can stay here. For a while. Till you find somewhere, find your feet.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Let me show you around.”
    Above the kitchen door, right at the back of the hall and pinned back to form a curtain leading into it, hung two brightly sequinned dresses, one green, the other red. The light in the kitchen was already on, creating the effect of an empty stage. Once we stepped through the sequinned dresses curtaining the doorway, it was fairly plain and functional. The fridge and cupboard doors were completely collaged with postcards and pictures from magazines.
    Edward’s bathroom was done out like a Vatican shipwreck. Statues of the Virgin Mary and cherubs holding seashell fonts fought for space with plastic lobsters and starfish. Above the sink was a golden bathroom cabinet with a ceramic fish perched on top. Above the toilet, a Tom of Finland drawing of a merman. From the top of the toilet seat an enormous cut-out goldfish with its mouth open stared up at you.
    The bedroom was the dullest room in the entire flat, like a Whitby B&B circa 1962, complete with twin beds. I must have looked confused, because Edward said, “Oh, I can’t be doing with all that sharing-a-bed malarkey. Even when I do have someone stop over, which isn’t often, I always make them sleep on their own.” He kicked off his platform boots and collapsed onto the nearest bed