“Fab night, darling!”
“Loved the act!”
“I was mashed out of my face!”
“I had a threesome!”
I entered the office and walked over to the area where my team sat. It felt as if I were walking into a wall of noise. High, shrill, camp bleatings about the Saturday night that had just gone.
“Ooh, you’re such a tart!”
“Smell ‘er!”
Tanya caught my eye and leapt up from her chair, “Morning Patrick! Didn’t see you at the Wizard’s Gown on Saturday. You avoiding us or something?”
I shrugged, keeping a loose smile on my face. “Didn’t fancy it.”
“Awww…” she said, sarcastic as I sat down. I switched on my PC and waited for it to boot up.
“So what did you do?” asked Keith, who moments, before had been chuckling with Ryan about their various shags from the past weekend.
“Just stayed in,” I said. It was true, and I was glad. It had been nice to have a change of pace from the usual Saturday night: clubbing away with all the other disco dollies. I’d felt like this for a while, actually. It had all got a bit too…the same, I suppose. A bit too routine.
Don’t get me wrong, I am gay. But for the last few nights I’d been thinking to myself, Wouldn’t it be nice to just do something different for a change. To be bit different. To be a bit more…well…straight?
Didn’t like the idea of that, though. Not one bit. Everyone was gay, weren’t they? You’re gay. I’m gay. My dads are gay.
It was unnatural for someone to be different; to be attracted to (dare I say it?) girls?
The opposite sex.
I mean, people just didn’t do it, did they? It wasn’t the done thing. It wasn’t natural...
Like with like, that’s what they said…
“Hey Patty!” shrilled Angus. I didn’t like Angus. Never had, never will. Angus was a cunt; typical queen, typically bitchy. I may have been gay – like Angus – but I wasn’t like Angus, with his many piercings, his sharp tongue, and his permanent pout. Not to mention his rainbow-dyed hair.
“Yeah,” I said, nonchalantly.
“Score a shag over the weekend did ya?”
“Nah,” I said, and logged on to check my e-mail.
“Hmph? When was the last time you took it up the arse. Or gave it for that matter.”
“None of your business,” I said, blankly.
“You know what I reckon…?” said Angus. He said the sentence darkly, then folded his arms, his pout more evident than ever. His eyes were full of malice. Like I said, he was a cunt.
“What?” I said, now turning to stare him in his eyes. Eyes that, enhanced by emerald contact lenses, looked opaque and inhuman.
Our Team Leader had not yet arrived. She was always late, anyway. And besides, we all knew she’d gone away for a dirty weekend with her wife. She hadn’t stopped bragging about it all last week.
“I reckon you might be a breeder. Yeah, that’s what I think. A breeder.”
“Fuck off,” I said, laughing. I turned back to my screen and started to get on with my work.
“I don’t know, Patty…I’ve got my suspicions,” he sing-songed. He didn’t add anything to this, just went to his own desk and started on some work.
But as I began typing up my invoices, that word crept into my brain, digging at me with its spiteful claws.
Breeder.
For some strange reason, I remembered being at school. How weird it was to have that thought. I hadn’t looked back at those days for years, for all my adult life.
I’d always been a popular kid at school, good looking, fancied by all the boys. That’d been where I’d lost my virginity to a guy named Kevin; six years ago that had been, when I was fifteen.
Now I was twenty-one and had been with tons of guys since then. But it had never seemed real to me. Like it wasn’t me. Like I wasn’t meant to be with other boys, but instead with…
But the thing that stuck in my head the most about those days were the other lads – the quiet ones, the ones who didn’t dress flamboyantly, who didn’t punctuate their every sentence with ‘darling’, ‘fab’ and ‘whatever!’.
The ones who’d get bullied; beaten up; have nasty notes shoved through their letter boxes and evil grafitti carved on their desks. You know the kind: ‘straight boy’, ‘breeder’, ‘hettie’…the list was almost endless.
I’d always felt a strange affinity with these boys. Though I told myself I didn’t agree with the fact they were heterosexual - something my fathers had drilled into my head was wrong from an early age - I still admired these few lads for standing up to their own beliefs. To do what they felt was right for them.
We had them here as well, at Blacklocks, the place I’d worked for the past year and a half. Straight people. There were a group of them: three girls and four boys.
Sally, Tracy, Yvonne, Gavin, Jake, Rob and Curt.
The breeders. The hetties. The scum.
They were the outsiders here. The dirty ones. The perverts. But they didn’t seem to care. It was like, as far as they were concerned, they were normal…they were proud of it, almost. It was something I admired.
There was one girl I admired in particular: Yvonne Carron.
She was beautiful.
But when I say beautiful, of course I mean it in a…a….platonic way. I guess. You know, the way you’d say you thought Madonna was beautiful or Jennifer Lopez. A “fag-hag” kinda way…
At least, I thought it was. Well, I wanted it to be. I didn’t want to be straight!
“Hey, Patrick, stop daydreaming!” yelled a voice.
I turned, blinking, pulled out of my obscure reverie, to see that it was Tanya who’d spoken. She was holding a pile of invoices that needed inputting onto the database. That was my job.
“What…?” I said. “Oh…sorry. Miles away.”
“Yeah. With Mark Whalberg, I bet!”
“Funny.”
“Listen, can you get these done by twelve? Crystal wants ‘em inputted before lunch.”
“Doubt she’ll ever get here before then.”
Crystal Dors, our team leader, was notorious for being late – even when she hadn’t been away in the Isle of Wight boffing the Mrs over the weekend. Beats me why she’d held onto her job for this long. But everyone thought she was having an affair with Melina Munro, the head of Blackstocks Call Centre.
And they were probably right.
“Probably,” said Tanya. “But you never know. Miracles might happen.”
I smiled at her and took the invoices.
She said, “You missed a great night out at the Wizard on Saturday, you know. I had these wicked pills. LaCoste’s, they’re called. I was wasted!”
“No change there then.”
“Better believe it. And I got a good shag.”
“Who with this time?”
“Some bird called…oh, what was it? Sophie? No! – Susie, that was it. She went all night. I was exhausted.”
I shook my head; chuckled. “You’re terrible, you are.”
“Tell me about it. Oh! And you’ll never guess who was there.”
“No, who?”
Tanya pursed her lips and shook her head. She seemed disgusted by something; repulsed.
“That fucking Sally. You know, from the Corporate Team? Fucking straight bitch.”
Nice to see tolerance of heterosexuals these days, I thought sarcastically. I mean, hadn’t society moved on from those straight-bashing days of yesteryear? Apparently not.
“That bitch,” I said blankly, not wanting to get into an argument. There was no point. Nonetheless, Tanya’s comments made me feel a little on edge – though why I couldn’t say.
Could I?
“Prancing around with her fucking bloke all night,” she went on. “It was disgusting. Shouldn’t be allowed.”
“No,” I said, but I knew it was a lie as soon as the word was past my lips.
I don’t know what it was that made me approach Yvonne that lunch time; really, I don’t.
Maybe because I felt guilty? Who can say?
But anyway, I did it.
She was sitting at a table in the cafeteria all alone. I normally had my lunch with my mates, but today, something stopped me.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked, approaching the table with my lunch.
“Free country.”
Yvonne worked in the finance sector of our office in Blacklocks. She was a quiet girl. Though everyone knew she was straight. Plenty of people had said this to me, though it was my own team – the administration team – that were so…well, cuntish about her sexual orientation.
I set my plate down and took a seat.
“So…” I began tentatively. “You all right?”
“Fine.” She snapped the word out.
She ate some of her pasta and then let the fork fall onto the plate with a noisy clatter.
“What do you want, Patrick?” she said.
“Excuse me?”
I said, “What do you want?”
And I couldn’t answer her. Because I didn’t know; really, I didn’t know. Yvonne was a breeder; a hettie. In the eyes of most people – my friends, family, colleagues – Yvonne was scum.
So what did I want?
No she isn’t, no she isn’t, I told myself. She just likes the opposites, that’s all.
Just like
(no!)
me.
I shut the thought from my mind.
She’s not like me. She’s not. She’s not!
I’m gay… Normal. NORMAL!
And yet…
Bravely I began, “I was…wondering if you’d like to meet me…”
Yvonne raised her eyebrows. She seemed amused. “And why would I want to do that?”
“What?”
I looked at her and knew I fancied her. Like I said earlier, she was beautiful.
But in a fag hag way. A fag hag way.
Yeah right, Patrick.
“Please Yvonne. Meet me for a drink.” I was horrified to hear myself begging.
I fancied her. There. I’d admitted it to myself.
But she’s a girl, said my head. A girl. It’s not normal. It’s not…
And then Yvonne said, “Okay.”
The word shocked me. It sat there, like an island in the cafeteria. “Okay, I’ll meet you,” she said at last.
“You will?”
“Yes. Tonight I’ll meet you.”
“Tonight?”
“Take it or leave it.”
I didn’t know what was happening. This was supposed to be an ordinary lunch time, in an ordinary cafeteria, with an ordinary girl. Except this wasn’t an ordinary girl, was it? Yvonne was straight. Straight. It was something that the majority of society was against, like I said. I mean, Yvonne liked boys. The opposite sex.
Sinful? Immoral? According to most points of view, yeah.
But it didn’t matter. Not to me. Because I wanted her.
Was I disgusting? Filthy? A freak, pervert? Just because I was attracted to something that wasn’t the norm?
I took a deep breath, and wondered what everyone else would say if they knew about this. “Okay,” I said. “Tonight.” Then more cautiously, “Where?”
“Sheridans.”
“But that’s a – “
“A straight bar, yeah. Problem?”
I didn’t like her barbed tone. Why was she being so aggressive towards me….? But I knew why. Of course I knew why.
It wasn’t me, I wanted to tell her. I’m not the one who cares that you’re straight. I’m not like them.
(not like them)
“There’s no problem,” I said.
“Good. See you at Sheridan’s then.”
For the rest of that day I sat in kind of a daze. It was like being in a dream, like I hadn’t done what I’d done; asked Yvonne what I’d asked. Okay, so I was curious about my sexuality, questioning myself. That was one thing. But now talking with Yvonne, arranging to meet her in the only straight bar in Milton Keynes? Talk about diving in at the deep end.
I looked around my office, at my colleagues, co-workers – my friends.
If they only knew.
I remembered what Angus had said earlier that day.
“I reckon you might be a breeder. Yeah, that’s what I think. A breeder.”
Something inside me congealed. I felt more solid suddenly. But not flesh and blood solid. Metallic. As if I were no longer human, but more of a robot, built of wires and connections in a factory.
I was a breeder.
But what did that even mean? A breeder? To reproduce? To copulate with the opposites? To fancy
(yvonne yvonne yvonne)
girls?
***
Sheridan’s.
The place was in a back street in Milton Keynes. It was very small, more average than any pub or bar I’d been to before. I felt a horrible feeling creep over me as I walked towards it. A strange, clogged-up feeling: gluey and suffocating.
Take a look, Patrick, whispered a threatening voice in my mind. Take a look at where your future is if you cross that line, enter that world…break that chain…
My dads, predictably, had not been suspicious of where I was going that night. But they didn’t really care. They were probably off clubbing anyway: they did most nights.
But I tell you this now, if they knew I was going to a hettie bar, to meet Yvonne, an opposite…well…
I walked inside.
It was smoky; low jazz music was playing. I couldn’t get over how small it was, and how quiet. Not like the shrieking, thriving, buzzing gay places that were everywhere. This place was so much more subdued, so very less there than the gay pubs.
I walked to the stocky bartender. “Pint, please,” I said. He seemed wary of me. Almost as if he knew I was gay. He probably thought I was going to start trouble. Start shouting out, “Straights! Fucking disgusting! Freaks! Hetties…!”
Whatever.
A quick scan of the bar told me that Yvonne hadn’t turned up yet. Then I started to panic, beads of sweat popping up all over my body. I’d worn dark blue jeans and a blue and white checked shirt. I wanted to fit in. To show Yvonne I wasn’t like the others.
Not like the others
There it was again. That doubt: awful self-doubt, biting my thoughts like an asp.
I sipped my drink and pretended to feel better.
Yvonne arrived about five minutes later. I was relieved to see her, and had even started wondering if the whole thing had been a set up. I mean, why should she turn up?
“Didn’t think you’d turn up?” I joked nervously.
“Why?”
“Just…you…fancy a drink?”
“’Okay”
I stood up and ordered her a glass of white wine. Yvonne was smiling as I handed it to her.
“What’s so funny?”
“I didn’t think you were going to turn up,” I said.
Yvonne didn’t answer. She was smiling. But not in a nice way. Yet it set my heart on fire.
“I thought it was a set up,” I went on nervously. She just nodded, making me feel dumb. What was her problem?
I knew the answer to that, though, didn’t I?
At last she spoke. She said, “I was curious, wasn’t I? I had to come.”
“Curious?”
“You always seemed so part of it all, Patrick.. So part of the crowd. All your mates – everyone. Everyone loves Patrick.”
I had no idea what she was getting at.
“Popular, good looking,” she continued. “Never without a shag…”
“Is that what you really think?”
“True, isn’t it?” She raised one eyebrow that looked like a crooked doorway.
“No. I just go along with them because…it’s the right way to behave, isn’t it? The right thing to do.”
Yvonne sippped her glass of wine.
“Right and wrong?” she said. “Who’s to say what’s right and wrong? Them?”
“Society, I guess.”
“Society.” She almost spat the word with disdain.
“I don’t know why we’re going over all this,” I said. “I’m here now. I wanted to see you!”
“To see the freak? The sideshow? Look around you, Patrick. Here it is, in all its hideous glory.”
“Don’t be so childish. You seem to be the one with the chip on her shoulder.”
She didn’t say anything for a bit.
It was me who broke the small silence. I said, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No. Not at the moment. Why? You offering?” A bemused smirk played across her face.
And you’ve no idea how close I was to saying yes. Because of course, I was. Wasn’t I?
A brief slide show ran through my head – of my fathers, strangely. Stupid things; pointless things; shameful things. Like the time they’d caught me in bed with a guy called Jesse and how I’d heard them giggling to each other outside the bedroom door like a couple of naughty girls. Or when…
The split-second memory was shattered by a loud cry of anger emanating from the bar.
“…a fucking breeder bar!”
Yvonne and I both swung our heads to the source of the noise. A couple of young gay guys – not more than twenty, I reckoned – were standing at the bar, surveying the small pub. Twin looks of rage and disgust adorned each face.
The bar man said, “Listen, we don’t want no trouble round ‘ere lads. Just fuck off and leave us alone.”
“Fuck,” said the first guy, disdainfully. “You don’t know the fucking meaning of the word fuck.”
The second guy said, “Think we should show ‘im?” He had a grotesque sneer on his otherwise good looking face. Still, it made him look ugly.
Think we should show ‘im.
The words drilled through me. What the hell did they have in mind here?
One of them grabbed the bar man by the scruff of the neck. “Fucking…”
“Oy!”
But Yvonne grabbed my arm as I stood up. She hissed, “It’s not worth it, Patrick.”
“Fuck off it isn’t.”
I stood up and marched over to them. “What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted.
One of the guys turned to me. He seemed to recognise me, squinting. And then I knew who it was; yeah, I recognised him.
Phillip Daniels from school. He and I had fucked once, in the changing rooms at school. Yeah; he’d fucked me hard. Fancied me rotten, too.
His eyes glittered with a mad hatred when he saw me standing there.
He thought I was a breeder. Knew I was a breeder.
A sick, but exciting, sort of adrenaline spread through me.
“Patrick?” said Phillip.
“Yeah.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” His rage had cooled to mild confusion.
“Are you…?”
“Maybe.”
“Urgh! That’s sick!”
“A breeder,” said the other bloke, the one I didn’t know; presumably Phillip’s fella.
“He ain’t a fucking hettie,” said Phillip, with icy conviction. And then he stepped forward and grabbed me by the waist. I could feel his erection hard against me. “No way are you straight.”
I struggled against him. No one was coming to help me. Why?
“You enjoy sex too much, don’tcha, Patrick? Normal sex.”
He held me tightly to stop me from struggling, then slipped his hand up beneath my T-shirt, then down into my boxer shorts, between my arse cheeks. He pushed his finger into the tight hole.
“My favourite part,” he purred. “I was still struggling. “You’re favouite part, too. If I remember correctly.”
“I’m not like that anymore.”
“Bollocks.”
He pushed his finger up into me harder, then a second. “I fucked you, Patrick. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? I fucked you and you liked it. Straight? You ain’t straight.”
“How would you know?”
“You like it when I shagged you, Patrick. You liked it when – “
“That was years ago!” I snapped.
Phillip shoved his fingers harder and deeper into my arse hole. “You ain’t straight,” he repeated. “Listen. You wanna fuck?” His voice was softer now; genial. “We’ll fuck. I’ll fuck your brains out, Patrick. Just say the word. I know you want to.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Liar.” His eyes glittered like poison.
“You want me to fuck you up the arse.”
“No, he doesn’t!” Yvonne cried. She pushed her way between Phillip and I. Only a tiny thing she was, but it seemed as though she possessed the force of a juggernaut.
“Who’s this?” snarled Phillip. “Your girlfriend?”
“A friend,” said Yvonne.
Phillip pulled his fingers out of me and my sphincter was allowed to breathe again.
“You are a breeder,” he said to me, the words spilling out in a whisper of disbelief.
“Yeah. So?”
“So? It’s sick. At school you were always so…I mean, we…you and me…you were so…”
“Gay?”
“Yeah!”
“Well maybe that’s what I thought I had to be. People like you, people like my parents, my workmates, my teachers, my bosses…you told me that’s what I was supposed to do.”
“You’re sick. Standing there with your little bitch. Sick.”
Yvonne said, “Come on, Patrick. Let’s just go.”
“Why should we?”
“Because that’s the way it is.”
“It shouldn’t have to be…”
“Yeah, well it is.” This was from Phillip. “Your little bitch is right. Your type aren’t welcome around here. This ain’t London, you know. Where you straight freaks are allowed to parade up and down the streets with your goddamn opposite lovers. Jesus! No wonder this country’s going to pot.”
Yvonne turned to walk out of the bar and I followed her. Neither of us bothered responding to Phillip’s comments. Would there have been any point? I doubted it.
“Yeah, go, you goddamn breeder!” he shouted after us. “Get out of my sight. And the rest of you!”
Yvonne and I continued to walk calmly outside. We walked down the street that Sheridan’s was on, right to the next block before either of us said anything.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” I said. We were standing at the corner of Malcolm Street. The light from the streetlamps cast eerie shadows across each other’s faces.
“What is?” she smiled slightly.
“To be straight,” I went on. “It must be hard.”
“Of course it is. Especially when you’re openly straight.”
“Like you.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m straight. I like blokes. It doesn’t change me as a person.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“It’s what most people say, though.”
“I’m not most people.”
Yvonne cocked her head and looked at me sideways for a moment. “Are you straight, Patrick?”
I hesitated. “I’m note sure. I…think so.”
“Well, think carefully, Patrick. ‘Cos if you are – if you decide you are – it’s gonna change your whole life.”
“Maybe I haven’t got a choice,” I told her. “I mean, did you? When you knew you were straight?”
“No. I guess not. But I was lucky my mums were fine with it. They respected my choice: that I was a person with rights of my own. Will your dad be like that? Will they accept it? You have to think, Patrick…”
“I have. And I’m straight. I know I am.” I went to take Yvonne in my arms, but she recoiled, like a rattlesnake.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she barked.
“I thought…”
“Well you thought wrong! Jesus Christ, Patrick! You think you can just come out to me, say ‘hey, I’m straight like you, let’s get it on?’ Is that what you think, Patrick?”
“I just…”
“We’re not promiscuous, like people think!”
“I never said that!”
“You fucking implied it! Pouncing on me like that!”
“I didn’t pounce!”
“You did! You’re not straight, Patrick. You’re not. You think you are, but you’re not. I’ve seen you, Patrick, running around with your group, your pack. You can’t tell me your not one of them when I know – and it’s so obvious – that you are.”
“How can you be so judgemental? You of all people?”
“Oh what, because I’m straight? The freak…?”
“Like I said, you’re the one with the chip on their shoulder.”
“You – you lot at work, them in the bar – you’re the chip on my shoulder.”
“I thought you’d be pleased,” I said.
“I’m pleased that you got it out – if that’s what you want – but it doesn’t mean I want to jump into bed with you.”
“I just… I thought you might like me, too.”
“I don’t even know you, Patrick.”
I sighed, then turned my head back in the direction of Sheridan’s. Absent-mindedly, I said, “I didn’t think it would be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Back there in the bar. All that abuse you got. We got.”
“It’s always been like that. And it always will be like that.”
“Why do you have to be so bleak?”
“I call it being realistic.”
I shook my head and looked deep into Yvonne’s beautiful eyes, studied her pretty, wavy hair. She had such a nice mouth: heart-shaped, with soft pouting lips. Lips that I wanted to kiss so badly…
The night air had grown icy.
“I thought things were okay for straights now,” I said. “You’ve got all those bars and clubs and…”
“This isn’t London, Patrick! Yeah, it’s okay there to be straight; no one bats an eyelid. But this ain’t London. All we’ve got is one poxy pub down some dirty side street. It’s hardly the high life.”
“Neither of us spoke for a bit after that. Finally, Yvonne turned to leave.
“Wait!” I called after her. The street we were on seemed incredibly quiet – too quiet. I half-expected a tumbleweed to go rolling by.
“What for, Patrick?” she asked, turning.
“I…think I love you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she breathed. But the way she spoke made it sound as if she wanted to believe it, but didn’t dare.
Did she…fancy me…?
To my horror and
(delight?)
amazement, I saw a single tear trail down her face. I reached out to wipe it away, but she flinched back, as if my touch burned.
“Don’t…” she whispered.
She turned and ran off into the darkness. I didn’t go after her. It didn’t seem right. After all, I didn’t want to force myself onto her.
“Goodbye, Yvonne,” I said, but I’m not sure she heard me.
You’ll have to think carefully, Patrick.
The words echoed through my head.
Was she right about what she said? Would it change everything? My life? Would I be resigning myself to a world of abuse and hatred, to a world where everything was as it had been in Sheridan’s?
I was going to have to think carefully.
At least she was right about that.
