50 Reasons to Say Goodbye E-Book

Nick Alexander

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Mark is looking for love in all the wrong places. He always ignores the warning signs, preferring to dream, time and again, that he has met the perfect lover until finally, one day... Through fifty vivid snapshots of life as a young gay man in Brighton, Mark takes us on a very funny tour of the modern dating minefield: from s&m nightclubs to chintzy b&bs, from disastrous blind dates to promising internet hookups... It's all here. Wry, touching, witty and honest, 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye is a poignant exploration of that long winding road: the universal search for love.

Leseprobe

Fifty Reasons to Say Goodbye

Nick Alexander was born in Margate, and has lived and worked in the UK, the USA and France. When he isn’t writing, he is the editor of the gay literature site BIGfib.com. His latest novel, The Case of the Missing Boyfriend, was an eBook bestseller in early 2011, netting sixty thousand downloads and reaching number 1 on Amazon. Nick lives in the southern French Alps with two mogs, a couple of goldfish and a complete set of Pedro Almodovar films. Visit his website at www.nick-alexander.com.

Also by Nick Alexander

THE FIFTY REASONS SERIES

Fifty Reasons to Say Goodbye Sottopassaggio Good Thing, Bad Thing Better Than Easy Sleight of Hand

SHORT STORIES

13.55 Eastern Standard Time

FICTION

The Case of the Missing Boyfriend

Fifty Reasons to Say Goodbye

Nick Alexander

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by BIGfib Books.

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Nick Alexander, 2004

The moral right of Nick Alexander to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-85789-636-0 (eBook)

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

French Films

A Loving Relationship

A Beautiful Tart

Dork

Bus Dream

Eric Cantona

Gone Again

Mum Knows Best

Think of England

Quick Moves

My German Heroin

Medieval Obsessions

Roberto di Milano

City of Angels

Italian Duo

Words Fail

Chic Girls

Guy

Julian Barclay

Blow

Clueless

Friends Forever

Sell By Date

Being Clear

Drunk and Lonely

Slimming Stripes

Saxman

Won’t Hurt A Bit

Easter Surprise

Members Only

And You Thought You Were Gay?

The Universe Lets Us Down

Any Friend Of The Egg Man …

Bordeaux Biker

Love Me, Love My Life

Straight Night Out

Big Shiny Jeep

Control Freak

Country Life

20-20 Vision

Mobile Fantasy

Avignon

Barbie Boy

Groove

André

Red T-Shirt

Better Late

Five Kisses From Start To Finish

Epilogue

Each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land; on the ground, the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Prologue

My father was born in the top floor bedroom of his parents’ guesthouse, the mysteriously named “Donnybrook” – my grandmother told me all about it. It overlooked the beach, and on the cold stormy November night he was born, the rain lashed against the rattling sash windows. Between bouts of searing pain she glimpsed the raging sea, wondering if this was in some way not-meant-to-be; she was always looking for signs.

But as soon as he was born, the storm moved on and she dozed exhaustedly watching the sunrise, listening to the screaming laughter of the seagulls on the roof, the baby sleeping in her arms. She knew that everything would be OK after all.

Dad said his only childhood memories were of the beach. Long, endless summers of buckets and spades and adopted aunties, of gritty sandy sandwiches and cold, deep, wet burials by adopted brothers. Of dribbling chocolate flaked ice creams and sandy dams failing, crumbling against the incoming tide. As an adult he would forever wonder what city kids did all summer long.

It was on the beach he met his wife, my mother, not a mile away from Donnybrook. She was a Londoner on summer holiday alone; her parents were working. She looked like Rita Hayworth. Sometimes she laughed easily, sometimes she stared icily at the sea; he was intrigued. They slept together twice, she got pregnant, they got married.

His first girlfriend was heartbroken; she married the best man instead.

The baby died at birth; apparently Mum nearly died too. The war stopped them trying again for seven years.

Dad told me that in the drifting stifling sands of North Africa, he had thought of the beach all the time, a taunting symbol of a carefree past. That’s why when he returned he wanted to live there again, that’s why they moved into his parents’ house.

He said that the war had changed him, that the sadness of it all had softened him. My mother had changed too – she’d been hardened by rationing and air raid shelters.

They had a child every three years, regular as clockwork for as long as it was possible. I ended up the last of four.

Dad’s parents died only three years apart. They finished their lives in the top rear bedroom, his old room, with only the railway station to look at.

The sea view rooms were saved illogically for absent but ever-imminent paying guests, but people no longer went to Eastbourne on holiday, preferring exotic sands with foreign names.

Eventually they bought carpet for all of our rooms, mine was orange – it was the seventies. When the wind blew off the sea, the carpet lifted as the air pushed through the floorboards.

Our house slowly passed from being a screaming nursery school to a bubbling cauldron of adolescent and menopausal angst.

Of course, we were fine; we were busy being adolescents. We just reacted to Mum’s hysteria and Dad’s sulking by shouting even louder. We hated everyone anyway – society, grown-ups, each other; our parents were just part of the décor. But for them, it was hard, Mum spent a third of her time in bed with an endless series of mysterious illnesses, Dad spent the evenings walking along the beach, looking for calm and refuge.

During the endless summers they would pack us off with picnic, buckets, windbreaks. They would stay behind to do the adult things, the shopping, the repairing, the decorating, and the arguing. I think they envied us, with our friends and our games and our laughter.

Mum came to resent Dad’s friends. I don’t know how that happened, but one by one she found a reason to dislike them and slowly, one by one, they stopped coming. She never seemed to laugh anymore. I guess that was when he started to doubt.

One by one my brothers left, for wives or distant jobs or college.

One summer, sitting on a green, seaweed encrusted wall, with his feet dangling in the water, Dad admitted that he didn’t love her anymore. Three summers later on the same wall he decided to leave. He told me first. I felt sad, abandoned, but honoured to be the first to know.

When he told her, I was watching from the back garden. The window was open and by holding my breath I could hear. She stared out of the front window.

She said, “Well, whatever you want. I mean, why would anyone else matter. It’s always been all about you.”

She said, “I want the house, and if you’re dumping Mark on me, enough for us to live on. Hopefully he’ll be leaving soon enough anyway.”

She said, “And I want you to leave right now.”

When they said goodbye it seemed very formal, very correct, very businesslike.

Dad moved out into a flat; it looked out over a tiny backyard with a broken motorbike in it.

Every weekend he would walk to the beach. Sometimes he would spend the day with me.

When she was there he would watch from a distance.

If I saw him first I would wander casually down to the beachfront, escape so that we could spend the time together. He would sneak me into a pub, buy me a beer – I was sixteen. When they met she smiled tightly. There was never any drama.

I moved out only six months later, escaped to a rented room in a friend’s house – Mum’s new regime was all the motivation I needed; it felt like rationing was back.

I worked for a few years, studied enough to get the exams I had dropped out on, and then went to college. Sometimes I used to visit her, but she always seemed bitter, always depressed.

She ended up all alone in the big house and complained about it, said it was too big – as though it had been imposed on her. I used to come down to see Dad too. I don’t know why but he never visited me once in Manchester.

At night we would sit on the concrete steps leading down to the beach, now littered with indestructible McDonalds’ boxes. Mostly he was happy, but sometimes, without explanation he would weep.

Sometimes we saw Mum gazing from the window, just before she closed the curtains.

Dad always asked, “How’s your mother?”

I always replied, “Oh, you know, the same.”

I’m sure she saw us, but she never made any sign.

He died while I was at college.

He was with his girlfriend, big surprise! No one knew.

She was at the funeral too, a thin woman with wild red hair. She wept hysterically. Our mother went home the second the service had finished. Strangely, we, the brothers, went to a pub. Guiltily we got drunk, laughed, had fun.

I think that that was when we realised that without our parents we got along just fine. It was our first ever get-together without them, it felt illicit and strangely relaxed.

The funeral was the last time the whole family was together in the same room. Reunited to say goodbye, – goodbye to our father, and then one by one to each other.

French Films

Jenny is lovely. She has a set of keys to our house. She used to go out with John, my flatmate – she had a set of keys in those days too, probably the same ones. My big double bed catches the afternoon sun. Some days, when I come home she’s asleep in the sun with my cat Sizzler.

We spend so much time together. We have our favourite coffee shop, our favourite pub.

She doesn’t have a car, can’t get to the out of town stores, so I take her on Saturdays – people are always assuming … I don’t really know why we’re not together. She probably doesn’t fancy me, she goes for swarthy Italian types, although it has to be said that John is neither swarthy nor Italian.

He kissed me once, as we crossed on the stairs. I think he was drunk. No one knows about that, not even Jenny. I don’t tell anyone. It was quite nice, a bit of a surprise really, but nice. Still we’re very close.

I only had three girlfriends while I was at college. The first one slapped me the first time we kissed. It was apparently because I got a hard-on; I suppose she wasn’t ready. The second was beautiful, Spanish. Her ex-boyfriend hit me over the head with a crowbar. I hadn’t even slept with her and I’m not even sure that I wanted to, but I was in love with her. She used to make me laugh and I used to walk across town to see her. I used to go to sleep thinking about her. For some reason she didn’t want to see me after that, as though it was my fault!

The last one, Rachel, used to help me mend my motorbike. My friend Andy always said that Rachel was a dyke; many years later he turned out to be right. We used to share a bed, Rachel and I, cuddle up when it was cold, but we never had sex. Some say we snogged at a party once, but I truthfully don’t remember – too drunk. Andy, who was studying psychology, used to say that it was a classic case of justified memory-repression syndrome.

I suppose it’s not a lot for twenty-three, perhaps it should worry me. But my social life since I moved to Cambridge is so full on, and Jenny fulfils most of my emotional needs.

She’s here tonight; we’ve been watching television together. She’s snuggled up to me on the sofa to watch a French film, Betty Blue – typical French, basically an arty excuse for a shag-fest. I’m worried that Jenny will move her elbow, discover my hard-on. Being a man is like walking around with a shag/don’t shag sign in your trousers.

“He’s so cute,” she says.

“Yes, well neither of them are exactly ugly,” I reply.

“The French,” says Jenny. “Makes you sick.”

I shrug. “Not the French, just films. They don’t have ugly people in films.”

“Or even normal people,” says Jenny. “She’s sexy too. We try, the English, to look like that. But it’s just pointless.”

I laugh. “You’re exaggerating. Beatrice Dalle isn’t that pretty. She’s sexy, dirty, but she’s pretty vulgar too. You’re prettier.”

Jenny laughs. She fidgets, changes her position.

“Oh my God! Mark!” she exclaims. “Hard-on!”

A wave of red sweeps across my face. Lucky the lights are low.

“Sorry,” I say. “The film. Too much shagging.”

Jenny looks into my eyes.

I feel slightly sick. Embarrassment probably.

“It’s OK,” she says.

I fidget. I wish she’d move out of my face.

She kisses me. I am surprised – like really surprised. I don’t react at all.

She says, “Make an effort.” She tries again.

I try to make an effort but my stomach is churning. Jenny stands. I think, “Thank God!” But she leads me to the bedroom next door.

“It’s time,” she says. “Enough pussying around.”

I feel frozen, remote. A sort of does not compute feeling. I didn’t know that we had been pussying around. I thought we were watching T.V.

She pushes me onto the bed, undoes my jeans, and climbs on top of me. She doesn’t seem phased by the fact that I’m not really participating. She pulls off her top – she isn’t wearing a bra. She grabs my head, pushes me down, down between the mother-warmth of her breasts, down over her stomach, down, down to the forest.

I’m doing my best but it’s making me heave. I’ve never much liked all of that, down there; never could get off on those pictures of women with their ankles behind their ears.

She touches me, realises. “You have a puncture sir,” she says. “That car’s going nowhere.”

I am offended.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’ll come back.”

It germs as just an idea of anger, of outrage at myself. The decision to let it happen is quite conscious, calculated, a way out. “This always fucking happens,” I spit – a lie, for who could say? Too few opportunities to know.

I get up, pull on my chinos, and wriggle into a pullover.

“Mark, where are you going?”

I pull on my shoes. “Oh, fuck off!” I shout as I run out into the street. I wish I’d brought a raincoat.

I jog to the end of the road. I feel bad, but relieved. I’m shaking.

I crouch in the entrance to an alleyway and watch the rain spin past the orange streetlights. I have cigarettes in the pocket of my jeans. I blow the smoke behind me into the darkness until, eventually, I see her leave the house and go home.

The next day she comes to see me. “We need to talk,” she says.

She says many things. She says that I am a selfish bastard, that she was worried all night. She’s right, but there are things that are instinctive, things that you can’t help but do – things that you can’t explain, not even to yourself.

“Have you ever thought that you might be, well, gay?” she asks.

I say bad things. I say, “So anyone who doesn’t like the smell of your vagina is gay, right?”

She shouts, she cries, she leaves.

I’m upset, but I’m glad.

Later on the phone, she says, “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

I say, “I wasn’t aware that we were seeing each other.”

Later still, much later, we’ll be friends again. I’ll apologise to her, thank her even, for making me realise. But it will take a while.

A Loving Relationship

I start seeing Catherine six months after I split up with Jenny. Every night is insomnia night. Friends say things like, “Just use the extra time to read or something.” My eyes are too tired to focus on the page, but still sleep eludes me until four a.m.

I lie awake, watch the headlights sweep the ceiling. I can’t work out why, a feeling of unease, a tightness in the stomach.

Catherine’s OK, I suppose. I expected her to be much more involved. She never seems to say much, other than, “Umm,” and “I see,” and “How do you feel about that?” It annoys me – if I knew how I felt then I wouldn’t be seeing her.

“Why does that question annoy you so much?” Catherine asks.

It takes five visits for me to get to the point, because I don’t know what the point is. I suppose that’s what therapy is all about.

“Why do you think your girlfriend’s suggestion that you might be a homosexual upsets you so much?” she asks.

I had said, “gay.” Jenny had said, “gay.” Catherine is paraphrasing.

A week later and we’re having the same conversation, only this time I shrug. I say, “Maybe she’s right.”

Catherine laughs. It’s the first time she has reacted to anything I have said.

“What?” I ask. I missed the joke.

“Walk into any gay bar and you’d know!” she says.

“Know what?”

She laughs again. “That you’re not a homosexual.”

On the way home I walk past The Burleigh Arms. John has told me it’s gay. He knows from his days visiting every pub in Cambridge with the Sixty-Two Pub Club. It was the last one they tried, number sixty-two.

I peer through the windows; it looks like any other pub.

Wednesday evening, I go for a stroll, walk past it again.

Two men go in, laughing.

Thursday night, I open the door and walk in. It is the scariest thing I have ever done.

I stand for half a minute looking round the place, try to suppress the trembling in my hands. I lean against a wall – it feels awkward, uncomfortable, as though it’s not my body.

“Maybe that’s what Catherine meant,” I think.

A man in the corner smiles at me – a round warm face, a good smile.

I leave. Outside I gasp. I had stopped breathing – stress does that to me.

“Look,” says Catherine at my next visit. “You are not a homosexual.”

I wonder why she says, “A homosexual,” instead of just, “homosexual,” or even, “gay.” It sounds like a grammatical error, but I was never very good with grammar.

“Now tell me about this …” She glances at her notes. “Jenny, your “friend.” “ She lifts her fingers to form the speech marks.

On the way home I go back to the pub. I order a drink; I am trembling again. The man with the smile is there.

“Hello,” he says.

His name is Nick. He has brown eyes and gappy teeth. He smiles a lot. We drink our pints, I tell him the story.

He says, “It’s hard coming out.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” I wonder.

I like talking to Nick better than Catherine. He seems to have more common sense. He hates shrinks.

Saturday, we meet in the park. We walk; we talk. He tells me about his family. His boyfriend is a fireman.

“He’s very sexy in his uniform,” he confides.

Monday night, and I’m back with Catherine, supposedly my fix after the weekend. Gone is the cool detachment of our previous meetings.

“Why did you go there?” she wants to know.

“You said that if I went to a bar, I would know,” I reply.

“I doubt that I said that,” she says.

I frown. I shrug. “You did.”

She smiles. “Well if that’s what you think you heard,” she says. “Anyway,” she sighs. “Do tell me about your “gay” night out.” She makes the speech marks again.

I want to ask her what the “ “ is all about but I don’t dare. I say, “It’s OK really. It’s just a pub.”

“Did you talk to anyone?”

I nod. “Yeah, a man called Nick – nice, he has a boyfriend, a fireman.”

Catherine closes her eyes, breathes deeply. She looks as if she’s doing yoga. I fidget in my seat. I watch her.

“Look, Mark. You have to stop this before you do yourself harm,” she finally says.

I feel strange, caught between tears and anger. I don’t know why.

“Can I leave?” I gather my jacket towards me.

She looks at her watch. “In ten minutes,” she says. “In the meantime, tell me about … whatever his name is.”

I’m surprised. It is the first time she has ever forgotten a name.

“Nick?” I ask.

She nods.

I sigh. “I told you. He’s nice.”

“Are you, attracted to him?”

I frown. “In what way?”

“Well I’m not talking about his intellect now am I?!”

“What?” I feel angry but I’m still not quite sure why. “Do I fancy him?”

Catherine seems to swell, to sweat; her eyes burn. “Listen, Mark,” she says. “I’m going to stop this conversation right now; it’s not … good.”

I stare at her.

“The only question you need to ask yourself is this, Mark: do you ever want to be in a long term, loving relationship?”

I smile incredulously. “Well, of course.”

“Then, my dear Mark, you are not a homosexual.” She smiles again.

I wrinkle my nose and open my mouth. “Sorry?” I say.

“Homosexuals don’t have loving relationships,” she says.

My mouth drops.

She shakes her head. “They have sex, Mark. Sex in bars, sex in back streets, sex in toilets. Now if that’s what you want …”

In my mind I tell her to fuck off. In my mind I say, “If you are a heterosexual then I’d rather be gay.” But for some reason I’m scared of her.

I say, “Oh dear, times up. See you next week then.”

I am unimaginably angry. I lean against a wall outside until I can breathe properly.

I never return. I go to the Burleigh instead.

Sometimes I wonder if she did it on purpose, if she said it to push me. But my guess is that she just doesn’t like gays.

A Beautiful Tart

From that moment on, my virginity is a weight I drag along behind me. It is something I need to get rid of. I tell Nick this, he understands. “Once I had decided, I slept with the first guy that came along. He wasn’t even cute,” he says.

I need to sleep with a man. I need to know, need to be sure.

It only takes a week of hanging around in the Burleigh for the opportunity to appear. His name is Andrew. He’s beautiful – dark skin, high cheekbones, a sort of male Naomi Campbell. Only he’s not a model, he’s a postman. I like that idea.

At night he seemingly lives in the Burleigh. I tell Nick that I think he’s beautiful.

Nick says, “Yeah. I spoke to him once. He’s very lovely, very intelligent – a very beautiful tart. But you could do worse, for a first time.”

The next evening I see him there with some friends. He smiles at me. I am behaving like an adolescent schoolgirl. “He smiled at me!” I tell Nick.

He sighs. “Go and say hi then.”

I shrug. “Nah, he probably doesn’t fancy me anyway,” I say.

Friday, he’s there again. This time he offers me a drink and then invites me back to his house for coffee. We both know what coffee means and we both want it; I am terrified.

Nick slips a condom into my hand as he pushes me towards the door. “Good luck,” he says raising an eyebrow. “Don’t worry.”

Trembling, I walk back with him. His voice is smooth and calm.

I am scared. Scared of looking stupid, scared of not knowing what to do, scared of AIDS, scared of negotiating safe sex.

He sits me on the sofa and makes coffee. On the wall he has a safe sex poster. It shows a man holding a condom. It says, “Live to fuck, again and again.”

“That’s one thing I don’t need to worry about then,” I think.

He serves coffee on the little wooden table. My hand is trembling, the teaspoon rattles against the cup.

Andrew looks at me. “Are you OK?” he asks.

I smile at him. “Yeah, I erh …”

I am about to say that I have never done this before, but it suddenly strikes me as presumptuous. This could just be coffee after all.

He nods in an understanding way. He says, “I know.”

I wonder what he knows and how. I wrinkle my brow at him.

He says, “I know what will help.”

I cough. “Yes?” I say.

He says, “Put down your coffee cup.”

I place it on the table; it clatters against the saucer as it makes contact. Andrew places one hand behind my head, kisses me on the lips. He pauses, looks into my eyes. I launch into him, years of unacknowledged desire welling up in me, driving me forwards. I kiss him madly, maniacally, a man deranged.

He says, “Hey, HEY! Calm down!” He laughs.

We lie on the sofa and hug and kiss. He slows me down. It is softer, more romantic than I imagined. It is more wonderful, more magical than I thought possible.