A short story about mental health and the boys that fall between the gay scene’s cracks.
By Patrick Cash
During the summer, one of the magazine designers rang me on my lunch break.
‘Um, your friend Nameless has just turned up at the office,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t seem to be… Very well.’
‘How so?’
‘He’s started watching porn on a computer.’
I’d met Nameless when he was eighteen, two years previously, in a club in Vauxhall. He’d been the trophy boy of the gay scene then and we’d slept together several times over the course of a two-day bender, before both almost drowning in an ill-advised bath. We’d since stayed haphazardly friends.
‘Can you tell him to come to Soho Square, please?’
He was wandering around topless, clearly drug-fucked, asking random guys to have sex. I took his hand and he grabbed me, coal-like eyes blazing.
‘Let’s go to the public toilets.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m great. I’m a superstar.’
‘Have you slept?’
‘I don’t need to sleep.’
I quickly realised I wasn’t equipped to deal with this situation.
‘Can you come somewhere else with me?’
‘Where?’
’56 Dean Street.’
*
Alone together in the Dean Street lift, he pulled his shorts down and asked me to fuck him. I’d managed to get them back up again by the time we got to the third floor.
Nameless had been diagnosed HIV positive at the clinic, and knew most of the staff. He nodded hello cheerfully to a passing doctor, who stared at his state.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Is David Stuart available, please?’
David was a friend and the Lead Drugs Advisor.
‘I think he’s with a client,’ said the doctor. An attractive male nurse walked past and Nameless asked him if he wanted to fuck. ‘But I’ll let him know as soon as possible.’
In the waiting room Nameless oscillated between leaning his head in tiredness on my chest to trying to shove his hands down my pants, or get me to do the same to him. He spoke explicitly about sexual acts, as the other men pretended not to notice. I wondered when he’d last eaten and began to give him pieces of fruit and a sandwich from my supermarket lunch.
‘What happened to being sober?’
We’d been meeting recently, when we’d drink only water together.
‘Being sober’s boring.’
‘How’s your boyfriend?’
He scowled.
‘We split up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a bucket slut.’
Cogs were clicking into place.
‘What happened?’
‘He gave me chlamydia from a whore.’
‘And you’ve been on chems since?’
*
‘How can I help you?’ asked David.
‘I don’t need help,’ said Nameless. ‘Drugs are great.’
‘What brought you here today?’
Nameless nodded at me.
‘Him.’
We’d been going around in circles. Nameless had been persuaded to put on my gym vest, but he was proving flirtatiously resistant to deeper conversation.
‘He’s hyper-horny,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ sighed David. ‘What I can do is give you condoms and lube. Look after yourself. And if you want help with your drug use, come find me and I’ll be here for you.’
Before Nameless and I left, David spoke to me on my own quietly.
‘Pat, it’s not just drugs,’ he said. ‘It’s a dual diagnosis. There are deeper issues going on here.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘It’s going to be hard for you to handle it on your own.’
‘Yeah, but he’s my friend.’
*
He didn’t want to go back to his half-way house, as he found it depressing and lonely. I could imagine his deepening fatigue as the drugs ebbed away. It would be better to keep him safe, I thought, than leave him on the streets.
‘You can come home with me,’ I said. ‘But not for sex. To sleep.’
He seemed to accept this boundary, and intertwined his fingers into mine on our walk down to Charing Cross. As modern a homosexual male I might imagine myself, I realised how unused I was to public displays of intimacy within daylight hours. Yet I kept his hand in mine.
‘I love you,’ he said.
I smiled at his weary slur. A month ago these words would have been all I wanted to hear.
‘I love you lots,’ I replied.
*
The train journey was excruciating. In a packed carriage of rush-hour commuters, Nameless inexplicably perked up and chose both gay sex and drugs as his sole topics of loud conversation. I’d never seen so many people so totally absorbed by the Evening Standard.
Back at mine, I gave him a bath and put his sweat-soaked clothes in the wash. He asked if we could get some drugs.
‘No. Do you not want to go to sleep?’
‘Can I have a glass of wine first, please?’
We only had red wine in the house, and I knew it to be a soporific.
‘I guess one.’
*
Nameless didn’t drink, but gulped. He finished off the best part of a bottle in half an hour, and was staggering around the flat naked. Each time I tried to get him to sleep he began to initiate sex.
‘Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,’ he repeated like a mantra.
‘I don’t want to fuck you!’ I shouted at him. ‘Listen: you’re more to me than your cock and balls and ass. I brought you here to look after you.’
He smiled up at me, mischievous and gorgeous in my bed.
‘Fuck me.’
Eventually the inevitable happened. I believe my initial intentions were true, but it took a stronger mind than my own to stand steadfast against his incessant need for sex. I knew he wanted it for validation, but as he spoke its words the erotic thoughts crept into my head, and as he rubbed his buttocks against me, I felt the threads of arousal weave together in my crotch.
After I’d cum, I felt the greatest wave of shame descend. I’d wanted to protect something vulnerable, and I’d failed. I lay in the bed as Nameless jumped up, blissfully happy, and went looking for a cigarette.
*
By 3am he was still up and still manic. My housemate Rose, being both a lesbian and from Yorkshire, took it in her stride when Nameless appeared naked in her doorway asking her for sex. But after some time speaking with him, she voiced her own concern over his wellbeing. Not knowing what to do, wine-drunk ourselves, we involved his ex-boyfriend.
‘This is what he’s like when he’s not taking his meds,’ he said. ‘He won’t calm down. You need to phone the paramedics.’
As Rose distracted Nameless trying on outlandish outfits cobbled from my wardrobe, I rang 999.
He came into the kitchen.
‘Who are you speaking to?’
‘The paramedics.’
His face fell.
‘Why? I’m having fun here.’
It’d been an emotional night. I suddenly began to cry.
This made him uncertain.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said
I hugged him fiercely to me, and kissed him on the cheek.
‘I just want you to be okay.’
‘I’m always okay,’ he said. ‘I’m a superstar.’
*
Confusion had clearly lead us to the wrong decision, when the A&E receptionist informed me there was a five hour wait.
‘But he’s got mental health issues,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she replied, self-satisfied. ‘And that means if he leaves, we’ll have to phone the police.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he might be a danger to the public.’
We looked over at Nameless, kicking his feet and munching on a packet of crisps.
‘He’s not a danger to the public.’
‘I’m sure he appreciates you saying that.’
We were in the hospital for forty-five minutes, before Nameless stormed out in impatience.
Effectively, we were now on the run in wild, wild Camberwell.
‘Where are you gonna go?’ I asked.
He looked at me as if I were mad.
‘Back to yours.’
*
At 6.30am a police car drew up outside the house with blue lights flashing but no siren. I lead two burly, gruff male officers up the stairs to our flat where they found a tired, tousle-haired boy in bed.
He grinned, sleepily.
‘Are you here to strip for me, guys?’
Neither of them seemed particularly pleased by this proposition. I saw one glance around the room where he stared at the condoms I’d left strewn around.
‘Are you gonna… Look after him?’ he said to me.
‘Well, I’m going to go to sleep with him, yeah.’
I’d meant this literally rather than sexually, but it apparently sounded carnal enough to rapidly convince the policemen that Nameless was neither a threat to himself or others. They made a swift exit.
I climbed into bed and put an arm around my Nameless as I thought of all the other nameless out there in the world. I see them often, and each weekend: nameless as they collapse in clubs, and nameless as they step over the casualties. Nameless as the G takes them at chill-outs, still trying to hold their phones aloft. Nameless dancing in orange pants; nameless in constant sex and pleasure; nameless in their rejection. And I knew that part of me was nameless, myself.
‘Nameless?’
‘Yeah,’ he murmured.
‘You know when I left you, after that weekend we first met in Vauxhall. Do you remember what I said?’
‘You said I was cute.’
‘I always meant to say,’ I whispered, as the dawn stole through the window. ‘I never thought you were just cute. I never thought that, at all.’
He said nothing, but I felt him draw my arm closer around his body.
This sounds all so familiar
beautifully written
thanks