Queer Life, Queer Love. E-Book
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- Herausgeber: Muswell Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Serie: Queer Life, Queer Love
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Following the critically acclaimed Queer Life, Queer Love.comes the second anthology, championing new and emerging writers alongside established authors. The anthology features voices across all narrative forms including fiction, poetry, memoir, essay and flash-fiction. The anthology will comprise 30 pieces of writing, the winning entries from an international competition to capture the best of queer writing today. Following the critically acclaimed Queer Life, Queer Love.comes the second anthology, championing new and emerging writers alongside established authors. The anthology features voices across all narrative forms including fiction, poetry, memoir, essay and flash-fiction. The anthology will comprise 30 pieces of writing, the winning entries from an international competition to capture the best of queer writing today.
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QUEER LIFE, QUEER LOVE 2
Edited by Matt Bates and Julia Bell
Contents
Introduction: In Our Own Words
In his TLS review for the first Queer Life, Queer Love anthology, Kevin Brazil observed that the subject of sex was ‘notably absent from many texts’, suggesting ‘a shift from a previous generation of queer writing, and an expansion of what [queer] love might be’.*
Brazil is right. The sexual revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s allowed queer writers to speak more explicitly about sex, a trend which persisted through the queer publishing boom of the 1980s and ’90s, when writers deliberately and provocatively positioned gay sex at the forefront of their work, relishing their prescribed deviancy. Describing, documenting, and celebrating sex was vital to resisting the narratives of compulsory heterosexuality which threatened to erase and negate queer experiences of desire. These narrations were a form of radical defiance to ensure visibility in the face of social discrimination, homophobia, Clause 28 and the devastating AIDS crisis.
So, what does it mean to be queer in 2023 and what are the some of the issues we are concerned with? Judging by many of the entries published in this anthology it would appear that new modes of queer relations, particularly those built around the subject of friendship, are central concerns. We read of friendships under pressure; friendships that could-have-been or fail to meet expectations; friendships grieved over or regretted; and friendships that, literally, become undressed. This engagement with ‘friendship’ chimes with some of the ideas that Michel Foucault floated in his 1981 interview, ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’. Foucault suggested that rather than grounding queer subjectivities solely within the confines of sexuality and desire, we might do better by reaching for new ‘relations’ through our queerness. ‘The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex’, he writes, but, rather, ‘to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships’. For Foucault, this is the reason why queerness is not simply ‘a form of desire’ but, rather, a mode of living, something ‘desirable’ in itself. Queer culture, he implies, has the capacity both culturally and socially to produce real societal change and is just as relevant to the disaffected heterosexual as it is to queers.†
Writing from a queer perspective in 2023, then, is about far more than what happens in bed; it’s also, as Foucault notes, about what we do with our time. About whom we choose to spend our time with and relate to, about our sense of ourselves in the world. Queerness is about a refusal and an inability to fit into a box marked ‘normal’, and its expression is often a deliberate re-conceptualisation of gender, chafing against the stereotypes that would put all of us into rigid categories. Queer words are an opportunity to consider and recover how we navigate our often-difficult relationships with friends and families. A point reiterated by J. Halberstam in The Queer Art of Failure. Here, the ‘queer version’ of ‘self hood’ is one ‘that depends upon disconnection from the family’, and its ‘contingent relations to friends and improved relations to community’.‡ These kinds of creative relationships can offer new, capacious ways of living. The reinvention of the family begins in the art forms that express the queer worlds we inhabit, which are full of grand-dandies, gender-fluid teenagers, trans men and women, lesbians, gay men and all the points of the compass in between from hypersexual to sapiosexual to asexual.
Published in the same week as this introduction is being written, the 2021 census included data on sexual orientation for the first time. The report estimates that just over three percent of the population in England and Wales aged sixteen and over identified as LGBT+, an almost doubling in number from 2014.§ Queer living demonstrates alternative, resilient ways of being, offering a successful model on how to live, manage, and thrive in difficult, liminal spaces through the cultivation of the queer collective which expands the traditional family structures. When we create our own queer families and break free of our genealogical ties, or, alternatively, look for creative ways to assert/insert the validity of queerness within those traditional family constructs, we edge ever closer to a queer utopia. The prospect is neither assimilation nor alienation, but, rather, a freer way of living, overcoming oppression, and founded upon equality, honesty, respect, and compassion. Perhaps that is why there is higher identification with being queer right now, as the census would suggest.
We had an overwhelming response to the Queer Life, Queer Love call out for this second anthology and, inevitably, have only been able to feature a relatively small number of the works submitted. We thank all of those who submitted for sharing and trusting their words with us. We believe that the stories and poems that are presented here offer a rich, wide and diverse selection of not just the themes and preoccupations of queers today but also different approaches to writing queer words. The anthology reflects the subjectivities of queer lives, wrestles with their construct and marginalisation, and attempts to articulate those spaces – both domestic and social – from which they operate. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that the LGBTQI+ community stands together. Both nationally and globally queer lives continue to be marginalised, oppressed, and erased. We are always stronger together.
Julia Bell and Matt Bates February 2023
* Brazil, Kevin, ‘How Good It Felt’, Times Literary Supplement, March 2022.
† Foucault, Michel, Ethics: Essential Works 1954–84, trans. by Robert Hurley, (London: Penguin, 2020).
‡ Halberstam, Judith, The Queer Art of Failure, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011).
§ ‘Sexual orientation, England and Wales: Census 2021’ Office for National Statistics. Accessed Online: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualorientationenglandandwales/census2021
Old Queen as Ecosystem – Nathan Evans
I grew up
between hard heart and rock
of family and school law and bible
each root downed nourishment found
was stake upon an even ground
each florid frond a win over winds
changing tune in lento tempo to relative major
now old but bold bent but unbowed
I have made myself home
to multiple organisms Bois buzz blossoms
palating first pollen Fetishists feather-up
in leafy locker rooms Twinks sing old favourites
over newfangled twig percussion Polyamorists branch out
Jocks bough up Monogamists nest in nooks Otters strip
bark to build designer dens with Geek boyfriends Pups lick
sap and low-hanging Daddies toss rewards to them
Bears winter
in my trunk’s
hollow centre
spooned around
Cubs and Chasers
Pigs rut roots for musky delicacies
Queers party in underground arches Discreets bury
histories Trans migrate microclimates
are one with all of us
Nathan Evans’ poetry has been published by Queerlings, Dead Ink, Impossible Archetype, Manchester Metropolitan University and Untitled. His first collection, Threads, was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize; his second collection, CNUT, is published by Inkandescent. He was longlisted for the 2020 Live Canon Poetry Competition, hosts BOLD Queer Poetry Soirée and is a member of King’s Poets.
Can’t We Be Friends? – Avi Ben-Zeev
No way, Justin on OkCupid likes me! The Justin? Justin, Justin?
All this San Francisco talk about asking the universe for personal favours and manifesting reality, as though our puny existence means anything cosmic. I’ve found it arrogant, at best, but wait … is Justin’s like kismet or what?
Compatibility can’t be reduced to a list, so why even bother reading his stats? Besides, I know them.
Or do I?
What if I find out something new? A deal breaker? Like if he’s taken up smoking or gone vegan. But who am I kidding? Nothing would be a dealbreaker, not when it comes to Justin.
Justin
43 • San Francisco
Man | Gay | Top | Versatile | Monogamous | Single
180 cm | Athletic Build
Black | Agnostic | Pisces | Liberal | Self-employed
Vegan | Doesn’t smoke cigarettes | Drinks sometimes
I deep-dive into his selfie’s brown eyes, lingering without needing air. Swipe. Justin with his arm around a woman. A woman? Must be a friend. Swipe. Damn, a half-naked beach photo? For years, I’ve fantasised about taking his shirt off and running my fingers on his chiselled chest, but this is too WHAM. I want – gasp, gasp, gasp – an old-fashioned undressing, a slow reveal.
So, what now? Like him back? Write him?
Ping. A message appears in my OkCupid mailbox. It’s from Justin; of course it is.
I can’t read it. Not yet.
What if he recognised me? No, it’s impossible; how could he have connected the dots? It’s been what? Seven years? Besides, Justin knew her, Talia, the over-the-top glittery straight femme, not me, Avi, the rugged gay bear. I look nothing like my all-too-passing drag-queen past, my pre-gender-transition incarnation.
The me I’ve come to trust is decisive, but my gut screams opposite directives.
Click and read.
Delete without reading.
As if I could do both at the same time.
It’s better to leave myths as myths, right? Impossibilities as impossibilities? I crave truth, and I’d do almost anything for a romantic adventure with him, the one-and-only Justin, but—
Ahhhhhhhh,
my fingers are paralysed.
*
In 2001 and at the age of thirty-six, Talia arrived in San Francisco in a full-blown existential crisis and dire need of a haircut. Her rainbow-coloured, Samson-like locks had grown into an oversized shield.
Talia didn’t always look this way – a glorious hyper-feminine extravaganza of poodley faux-fur jackets, pinup-style swing dresses, and platform heels so high she was walking a tightrope. As a kid, Talia sat with her legs too wide apart for a girl – at least that’s what our elementary teacher had said – and cut her hair as close to her scalp as Mom’s rusty kitchen scissors allowed. Then, in an outburst of inspiration or vengeance, she gave buzzcuts to our Barbie dolls too.
‘I’m a boy,’ she’d protest when adults would tell her what a pretty girl she was and what a shame about her hair. Why couldn’t they have seen that?
Our new neighbour on 22nd near Castro offered a local’s tip: ‘Honey, there’s only one person in the whole San Francisco Bay Area that will do your hair justice. Justin, On Mars. Let me tell you, he’s a spiritual guy, a shaman of sorts, so an appointment with him will be transformative.’
The City by the Bay offered a place for reinvention. People came here to find themselves, techies excepted. So, a shamanic hairdresser? Why not?
Early, as per usual, Talia peered through the salon’s front window. Was that Justin, the striking guy with the mohawk dreads? It had to be Justin! He was the only man in a gaggle of tattooed hipster women, and what a sight – his square glasses lent a bookish librarian sensibility to his otherwise edgy appearance, and his muscles rippled from a tight T-shirt.
She,
I,
… fell in love at first sight. The way Justin moved? This wasn’t the stuff of words. Sunsets are cliched until they aren’t. Or maybe Talia didn’t desire Justin as much as she wanted to become him. With hindsight’s lens, only precious few morsels can be recovered as truth.
‘What brings you to our fair city?’ It could have been a nicety, but Justin sounded sincere.
‘I’m searching for home,’ Talia said.
‘Is home a place?’ Justin dug his fingers into her unruly mane and massaged her scalp. His touch tingled her spine and exposed a tightness in her forehead.
On the counter, by the various styling products and other hairdressing paraphernalia, was a framed photograph of Justin with African tribal make-up.
Talia stuck her hand outside the gown and pointed. ‘My neighbour called you a shaman.’
Justin grinned. ‘Oh, that? It’s for Halloween.’ He combed her hair and snipped the ends. ‘Your neighbour, is she a white lady?’
‘Yeah, probably.’ It wasn’t always straightforward. Some light-skinned people, like herself, were mixed-race.
‘Then I’d venture to say she’s fetishising Black people as being magic.’
‘Deification as othering?’
‘Yup.’ Justin kept combing and snip, snip, snipping. ‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a psychology professor.’
‘Oh no, you’re the one with the superpowers to read people’s minds.’ He winked. ‘I need to be careful of what I say from now on.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m a researcher, not a therapist. Besides, it’s too late.’
‘Oh, yeah, and what’s the verdict, professor?’
‘At the risk of projecting, you have an artist’s soul.’
Every six weeks, Justin indulged Talia’s punky aesthetic, but beauty, shmeuty; seeing Justin was the real reason she kept coming back. Safer topics like books and movies soon morphed into confessionals.
‘I sometimes feel ashamed of being a hairstylist,’ Justin said, adding green streaks to Talia’s multi-coloured curls. He had stayed after hours to accommodate her schedule, or so he said.
‘How come?’ Talia’s voice betrayed her surprise.
‘I was the first in my family to go to college. Stanford, if you can believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘But I fucked up.’
‘What happened?’
‘My freshman year was rough. I felt too self-conscious to speak in class and drew blanks on homework and exams. But in my second year, a history professor I admired took me under his wing. He told me I had talent.’ Justin’s hands trembled as he grabbed a section of Talia’s hair and placed a foil underneath. ‘I joined his research team, felt like I finally found my calling, but then …’
‘You bolted?’
‘I did. I packed my stuff and left. The irony is that I idolised this man so much I was afraid of disappointing him. What a joke.’
‘It sounds like you’re being too harsh on yourself, dear man.’ Filled with emotion, the rest of her words got garbled in her gut. ‘I’ve been on that calling-it-quits edge more than once.’
Justin tilted his head. ‘But you have a Ph.D.’
‘I grew up in a working-class Israeli town, failed arithmetic in the third grade, and get this, got kicked out of my elementary-school choir.’
‘Now, that’s cruel and unusual.’
‘I know; who does that to a kid?’ Talia smiled. It wasn’t funny, but it was. ‘Imagine this horror show – a class of forty restless kids trapped in 40 degrees Celsius, no aircon, with one window facing the town cemetery.’
Justin laughed, and the brush fell to the floor, leaving a green smudge. ‘Sorry, go on.’
‘Nobody expected us to go to college, and I all but failed high school, but against all odds, I did get into university. The moment I started caring about doing well, I freaked.’
‘Yup, sounds familiar.’ Justin scrubbed the floor with a rag and slapped on a new pair of latex gloves.
‘I didn’t realise it at the time, but my worry had a name, stereotype threat. People ‘like me’ weren’t supposed to occupy intellectual spaces, so even the smallest failure risked proving I didn’t belong. So yeah, I packed my bags too. Several times.’
‘How did you end up sticking with it?’
‘Unexpected allies and imaginary conversations with my beloved dead grandmother who had escaped Jewish lynching in Russia. But how about I save this story for next time?’ Talia admired Justin’s creation. The fresh highlights snaking from her head were a work of art.
‘Six weeks is a long time to wait.’ Justin opened his arms for a hug, but Talia’s breasts got in the way of surrendering to his touch.
Living six weeks to six weeks was unbearable, but when Justin offered to get coffee or hit the town, Talia made excuses for why she couldn’t. Keeping a container felt important, and eventually, he stopped trying.
And just like that, a year flew by, and Halloween was once again around the corner. Talia immersed herself in Stephen King’s universe. Justin was a horror fan, and she needed to catch up.
On Halloween eve, she waltzed into On Mars with a giddy expression, grabbed a pair of scissors, and waved them about. ‘How about you sit in the chair today?’
Justin giggled like a school kid. ‘You’re freaking me out.’
‘But, I’m your number one fan,’ Talia tried for her best Kathy Bates’ Misery impression, and they laughed so hard, they wet their faces.
‘I have news to share, ready?’ She waited for Justin to drape the plastic cape over her latest outfit – a pink sequin jumpsuit from The Piedmont Boutique. ‘I met this guy online, and he’s flying over from Boston for the weekend for our first date.’
Hmmm, Justin muttered, mixing red and purple dyes with who knows what and filling the room with an acrid smell.
‘The thing is … he’s a transgender man.’
‘A trans guy, really?’
‘I didn’t know it was possible,’ Talia whispered. Perhaps my past incarnation should have tried harder to see me, but language is crucial for possibilities, is it not? ‘I’m excited to meet him, but I’ve been having all these dreams, nightmares really; it’s like something deep inside me has been triggered, and—’
‘You shouldn’t force yourself to do something you’re uncomfortable with.’
‘I’m not.’ She tried taking a deep breath, but her nose was clogged. Had Justin used a different, more noxious chemical this time? ‘Would you date a transgender man?’
‘If I’m honest, no, I wouldn’t.’
‘How come?’ Talia did and didn’t want to know.
‘I’m attracted to men, real men.’
They spent the rest of the time in silence, listening to Ella & Louis. Justin didn’t know it, but this album was one of Talia’s favourites growing up, a lucky find at a vinyl record store in Tel Aviv that had helped her escape an oppressive existence. Eyes shut, she hummed along to one of its sadder songs, ‘Can’t We be Friends?’ Why was heartbreak so damn inevitable? And how had Justin’s soothing touch turned painful?
That weekend everything changed. Talia made love to the trans man from Boston and stared into a rebirthing mirror. There I knelt, Avi, the boy, now man, begging to be freed. Naked and shivering, I held my new-born self like a father would, rocking back and forth.
Elated, petrified, seized by the future’s uncertainty, I didn’t know much, but this I did know – the only way forward was to mature into who I had always been.
*
The cold, hard truth is that Talia, no, I ghosted Justin. I refuse to rationalise why. I feel guilty, and I should. And, no, I still haven’t read his OkCupid message, but I haven’t deleted it either.
It’s time, yes? My heart whooshing in my ears, I hover my finger over the keyboard and … click.
Hi, Avi!
Love what you wrote, and you’re very handsome.
I’m a big believer in honesty, so I’ll be upfront. I accept trans guys 100%, but I could never date one.
I realize you’re looking for romance, but can’t we be friends?
-Justin
Friends? Really? Fuck you, Justin. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Clicking and clacking, I bang a response like a man possessed. How would you feel if a guy on a dating app explained that he would befriend but not date Black men? But I don’t send it. There’s a difference between rejecting someone as lover material based on race versus assumed body parts, right? Or at least I think there is, and I’m fuming, but under the anger, I sense a lava-like hurt, and I don’t want to pile harm upon harm.
Justin’s too precious for that.
I want to be better than that.
Breathe, just breathe.
Dear Justin,
You’re my type, too, more than you know. But like you said, I’m on this platform to date, so I respectfully decline your friendship offer.
I’m tempted to stop here. Perhaps I should, but I’ll add this — how could I be friends with a gay man who makes such a sweeping declaration about not dating trans men? No trans guy in the whole wide world, ever? If it’s about dick size, well, some trans men have had bottom surgery. If not, what then?
It’d be too painful to be friends, especially because you’re such an open-hearted and caring person. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.
I wish you much happiness with whatever you do next with your one wild and precious life, as the poet Mary Oliver so urgently put it.
And love, I wish you love.
Avi
P.S. I know I sound sanctimonious but trust me, I have regrets about getting stuck in my own fears and limitations and inflicting harm without intending to. That famous road to hell …
I was hoping for closure, but no, my mind is a bully. Why didn’t I write Justin a more vulnerable note? What hijacks my heart from living life to the fullest? And quoting Mary Oliver? Yeah, right. I’m such a hypocrite!
Ping.
Hello again, dear Avi,
It took my therapist to point out something I wasn’t ready to admit. I’m scared of what I don’t know. How do I pleasure a trans man? And what if I’m attracted to him, but when he takes his clothes off, his body doesn’t turn me on? The last thing I’d want is to offend him.
Then again, if we were to go there and sex went south, who am I to be your caretaker? I’m sure you can and do take care of yourself. My intentions were good, but I’d understand if what I wrote felt condescending. Yup, that good ol’ road to hell!
There’s something else. I didn’t finish my undergrad, and I’m worried I won’t measure up to a psychology professor. I had a client once, a good friend, who was also a psych prof, but one day, she disappeared. But I’m digressing. Sorry.
Meet up for a drink at Martuni’s tonight? My treat.
-Justin
Martuni’s is a San Francisco institution – a gay piano bar with dim lighting, ambient music, and a vast selection of strong and colourful Martinis. The perfect spot for a date.
I’m usually the first to arrive, but Justin has beaten me to it. He’s at the bar, heartbreakingly handsome, the new lines on his face softened by candlelight.
‘Hi Avi, I’m Justin.’ He offers his hand. ‘You look just like your pictures.’
Hey, it’s me, I almost say, but instead, I shake his hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I mutter, my throat dry.
‘What would you like?’ He’s holding a neon-green drink garnished with a Granny Smith slice.
I dislike Martinis, but it doesn’t matter. ‘Whatever you’re having,’ I say, heat stinging my face. My voice has deepened; I have facial hair, a square jaw, and my body is built, but my eyes – how can he not recognise my eyes?
‘Another Apple Sour,’ Justin tells the bartender. Turning to me, he says, ‘I want to apologise—’
‘Please don’t; if anyone should apologise, it’s me.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, before we go any further, there’s something I need to come clean about. You see, the psychology professor you mentioned—’
‘You know her?’
‘You can say that.’
Justin’s eyes pop. ‘Talia? Is that you?’
‘Yes, but no,’ I say, my voice trembling.
‘That’s a lot to take in.’ He puts his coat on and slams two twenty-dollar bills on the counter. ‘Sorry, but I’m outta here.’
I follow him, panting. ‘Justin, wait.’
On the corner of Valencia and Market, he turns around, tears gushing down his cheeks. ‘I must have left you a million messages asking what happened, and nothing? That’s so fucking cruel.’
‘You’re right. There’s no excuse, but please, hear me out.’ I don’t want to betray him again by twisting the truth to be pretty or palatable. ‘Talia, I mean I,’ I cough into my hand, ‘was foolishly in love with you. The thing is, it was easier to bear when I was a so-called woman. But then, when I finally awakened to what I’ve known all my life but didn’t have the words for – that I was a man, a gay man – to find out you’d reject me no matter what. Well, that was devastating.’ There, I said it. ‘And I might have been thirty-eight in human years, but in trans years I was an infant, and my skin was brittle. I couldn’t face you, face that ultimate rejection. I’m sorry; I really am.’
‘In love?’
‘Yes.’
‘I had feelings for you too, but I didn’t know what to do with them. A crush on a woman? It felt like insanity.’
‘Would a crush on a drag queen have been more acceptable?’
Justin smiles. ‘Yes, definitely,’ he says, pulling me close, our chests aligned for the first time. ‘Come home with me?’
‘I want to, but I’m terrified.’ I bury my face in his neck, inhaling his woodsy smell deep into my lungs.
‘Me too, but however things go tonight, promise you won’t disappear again.’
‘I promise,’ I say and lean into his kiss. Justin’s kiss. The Justin. Justin, Justin.
Avi Ben-Zeev is a gay transgender man, psychology professor, writer, and EDI facilitator, newly living in London, UK. He received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Yale University and has been faculty at Brown, Williams College, and San Francisco State University. A recent graduate of Birkbeck’s Creative Writing MFA, he is passionate about applying psychological inquiries to memoir and fiction.
Section 28 Coupling – Kath Gifford
(after Karen McCarthy Woolf, Malika Booker and Margaret Thatcher)
Children who need to be taught
about diversity
to respect
difference
traditional moral values
of love thy neighbour
are being taught
instead to deny or hate,
that they have an inalienable right to be gay
is lost, with an uneducated generation to HIV
All of those children
thrown to the wolves, without freedom to be themselves
are being cheated
of information,
of a sound start in life
and decent dance music, a camp I want to live in
Yes, cheated.
* the lines in italics are from a speech by Margaret Thatcher to the Conservative Party Conference, Blackpool, 9th October, 1987.
The Blue Boy – Kath Gifford
I painted the Blue Boy statue pink
in Exeter’s Princesshay
on the anniversary of Section 28,
then sashay’d away.
I bought red and white paint
in separate shops, my shaved head
and purple quiff too memorable
to be forgotten buying pink.
‘Sick Gay Activist’
Proclaimed the Excess & Error.
‘Traditional Moral Values’
bred shame and suicides.
Not ‘intentionally promoting’
‘pretended family relationships’
I also painted a black triangle
on his traditional concrete Mum.
Section 28 had blood on its Clause.
Kath Gifford was anthologised in City Lit’s Between the Lines 2021, 2022, Ripon Poetry Festival 2021, 2022, and Hot Poets – SPARKS, December 2022. She is published online by Urban Tree Festival Competition and The RSL Write Across London Poetry Map. Lyric essays about Sarcoidosis at healthandresilience.co.uk and in Wordgathering online journal Summer 2023. The winner of London Lit Lab Queer Competition July 2022, Kath Gifford was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize 2022.
I Want To Suck This Man’s Toes – Adam Zmith
For the past few weeks I’ve been obsessed with my new flatmate. There’s a part of him that’s just too mesmerising to resist: the beauty, the shape, and the promise of his feet.
I haven’t even seen them bare – only sheathed in the white cotton furry socks he wears every day from a seven-pack. He comes home from work, flops down onto the sofa, and elevates his feet on the sofa arm. The soles of his white socks are grey on the pressure points of his individual toes, the balls, and the heels. Sometimes I’m close enough to smell their musk. I’ve definitely taken a deep sniff inside his work boots when he’s out: a dense aroma, fuzzy and mossy.
One night at the end of the first week of our living together when I came home from work, M. was laid out on the sofa, feet up, texting. I had to sit down at the table across from him just to be close to those feet. I tore open the plastic carton containing the chicken tikka masala that I’d just picked up at the supermarket. I couldn’t waste time heating it up. I just sat and ate it opposite M.’s feet while he tapped away on his phone screen.
M.’s schedule runs like clockwork, which is great for me. He displays his two enticing twins to me daily, in this way, at exactly the same time. I’m able to plan to eat my evening meal with a view at just the right moment. It’s like eating in the restaurant at Disneyland during the nightly fireworks.
*
‘You can leave your shoes here,’ M. told me when he opened the door to his flat. I levered my feet out of my trainers and felt like he’d given me permission to look at his socks. We’d only just met. ‘I usually keep my socks on at home though,’ he added, half-laughing and awkward at the same time.
As I followed him inside M. said, ‘To be honest my ex left me in the shit.’ He touched a bag of beetroot on the table. I hadn’t taken off my coat, because I was only viewing the room. This is how we met – via an ad on a flatshare website.
‘I can’t cover the rent by myself,’ M. explained, watching me look around his flat, ‘So I have to get someone in.’
‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ I said, my eyes dropping to the floor, which wasn’t as soft as I was expecting. The carpet was pretty thin, same as in the bedroom he pointed to. It ran through most of the flat and had been the colour of cream when laid, I could tell. At some points it didn’t quite reach the wall. I kept my hand on the phone in my pocket so I could feel it buzz in case I got a yes from one of my previous viewings, or (more likely) if my next one wanted to cancel.
‘I’ll clear a shelf in the fridge for whoever takes the room, and there’s a whole cupboard here for them.’ He stepped onto the kitchen lino which ran along one side of the open-plan room. He opened the cupboard door to show the empty space there.
‘Right, and … erm, what type of flatmate are you looking for?’
‘One who pays the rent,’ he laughed, then stopped and toyed with the beetroot in the plastic bag. ‘I mean, just someone chill, really. I like space, I guess?’
‘Yeah, same really.’
‘I start work early,’ M. said, ‘and it’s a long day, and I come home and I just want to cook and relax. I can’t keep going like this, you know?’ He smiled shyly and looked at me, almost embarrassed that he’d revealed too much.
‘I can’t keep moving like this,’ I said, probably too quickly. ‘Flat-hunting is a nightmare at the moment.’
He flicked the kettle on, and I wondered whether he’d make me a cup of tea too.
‘Well, it’s open-ended, yeah? I’ve gotta see how I get on with living with someone.’
‘No, sure, yeah, no of course. I mean, I know your ad said maybe only three months.’
The kettle began to hiss. I looked down, towards M.’s feet again. His big toes filled out the front of his socks, but there was no sign that his nails were long. Those chunky big toes looked perfect, and I immediately tried to see his hands. You can make a lot of educated guesses about someone’s toes and feet from their hands, believe me. M. placed his bum on a chair next to the kitchen table and lifted his right foot, stacking the ankle atop his left knee.
‘I have to wear boots on site, at work,’ he said, as if he’d seen me looking. He pressed his thumb pads into the ball of his foot. ‘I have to walk around and climb scaffolding all day. It kills my feet.’
‘Yeah,’ I’d said. ‘I… Erm.’
‘Well, I’ve gotta make a start on this soup,’ he said, tipping his head towards the beetroot. ‘Lots to chop.’
‘Sure. OK. I’ve got another viewing, so …’
He plonked his foot down onto the lino and pulled himself up. As the kettle clicked off, its steam spread between us. ‘There’s three more people coming to see the room tonight too,’ he said. ‘So let me know if you’re interested.’
‘Yep, I mean, yeah, sure, I’m definitely interested. It seems pretty chill.’
‘Yeah, I am pretty chill,’ he said. ‘Cool, man. I’ll text you.’
That’s when I knew that my simple goal in life was to suck this man’s toes.
*
I’m trying to plan it without planning it. Sometimes it feels like there is no way I can do this, but usually it also feels like something that I simply have to do. And I think M. needs it. I’ve watched him every day since I moved in. He falls onto the sofa in the evening like a sack of potatoes. He places his hands over his face and breathes heavily. When he speaks, he says that his supervising chief engineer doesn’t understand all the things they have to do. He says they’re over-budget, and the subcontractors make crazy demands. I know that M. has to convey all this to his seniors, so he’s caught in the middle. He says that I don’t need to know all this, and he’s sorry for moaning. I say it’s fine really.
When he eventually rises from the sofa to make himself some dinner, his shoulders are raised like those of a lioness, tense before pouncing on prey. But there’s nothing for M. to pounce on. His tension only releases a little when he unwinds at the kitchen worktop – chopping, frying, stirring, blending. I listen to his process, and sometimes watch the dance of his socked feet on the lino.
Sometimes I pretend to scratch my nose when I see him walk, just so that I can smell my fingertips. I’m always hoping there’s enough of the scent of my own sweat that my brain might confuse it with what I see of his feet – that I might think my salty scent is his. Even at its weakest, it’s stronger than the flavoured instant noodles in front of me.
