Chapter 4 #4
Cal pulled his hat down over his ears before he went in to see Flash.
He hoped he could help out like he had in school: cleaning the toilets, changing the beds, hoovering the sticky carpet.
Flash seemed like he was pained to disappoint him, but his wife Jeanie was watching and under her gaze he was forced to admit that they couldn’t afford any help.
The mainlanders who had bought up the surrounding crofts left them empty most of the year and it was getting harder for him to remain open just to serve the two dozen locals and the handful of tourists that occasionally passed through.
He pulled Cal a warm stale pint to welcome him home.
Cal nursed it, with no money to buy another, and Flash did not offer to fill it again.
Afterwards, he walked to the slipway and dangled his legs over the water.
He read his book for a while, but he had read it many times before.
In the last of the daylight, he searched his bag and found the newspaper he had bought for the journey home.
He had circled Ella’s horoscope; this was the season to follow your dreams of stardom.
Then he turned to the jobs section. He had searched the vacancies when he lived in Edinburgh, and in looking through them now, he was depressed by the columns full of pyramid schemes.
It seemed all the world wanted was tile salesmen or sex-line operators.
His eyes came to rest on the Lonely Hearts and he read them to amuse himself.
Underneath the pages upon pages of men searching for women, was a short column of men who were looking for men.
It always seemed to be middle-aged men crying out from small towns.
They said they wanted ‘lasting friendships’ and longed for something ‘sincere’, the word repeating over and over again.
The ads were abrupt because the men paid by the word.
They were charmless because they had abandoned hope.
The men gave the vague outline of what they were and made lists of the things they longed for in return.
Perhaps they had learnt it was best to be honest because they didn’t oversell themselves.
There was no ‘handsome’, or ‘fit’, or ‘sexy’.
Instead, they used unpromising words like ‘average’, or ‘lean’, or ‘nice’ They listed their physical attributes as though they were second-hand bikes, or old settees, a little worn perhaps, but sturdy and reliable and good for a few more years of gentle use.
Cal could tell when a man was truly unremarkable because then he mentioned things like a ‘good personality’ or a ‘kind heart’.
He ran his finger down the column, alternately cringing or chuckling unkindly.
He couldn’t tell who he felt sorriest for: the few whose solitude had allowed them to flourish with weird, niche interests: Renée Fleming, Moorish architecture, canal boat holidays, or the others who had no interests and were nothing but a list of verbs: walking, travelling, reading.
The column was dominated by men who had paid the discounted rate to keep the same bland ad running for the long-term.
He recognised the repeats – a fifty-year-old theatre lover from Oban, and a retired police officer who seemed as dry as his father.
But then he saw an ad that seemed entirely out of place:
M 4 M.
Male 28, Inverness area.
William. Living in a humdrum town, where the rain falls hardest.
Looking for my Johnny Marr.
Ex-rugby. Tall. Short brown hair. Sincere.
*No Madonna queens.
P.O. Box INV3553
He was soaking wet by the time he arrived home.
The house was dark and his father and grandmother were already in bed.
He took the pillow from his bed and stuffed the gap at the bottom of his door.
Then he propped a hand-held mirror on his desk.
It was the mirror his father used to shave, the same mirror Cal had hunkered over at fourteen to discover the confusing pleasure of his own sphincter.
He gazed into the mirror as he composed his reply.
The first time he met another gay man was in college.
Up until then, they had seemed almost mythical to him.
Past the age of fourteen, most rural children had been required to lodge in hostels in order to attend the Nicolson Institute, the big high school in Stornoway.
Lodging was nothing like boarding. Staying in the dingy hostels offered none of the experimentation that seemed natural, almost guaranteed, for the English upper class.
All the island boys were the sons of practical fathers or, worse still: Protestant elders.
There had once been rumours of a gay boy who lived on one of the Catholic isles.
The boy hailed from Vatersay, the most southerly of all the Western Isles, a place so remote it had been overlooked by the seasick Reformers who had brought Protestantism to the islands.
Cal overheard Shockie telling Beady that this homosexual was exactly what these Catholics deserved, being, by nature, Romanist paedophiles who decorated their churches like Russian palaces.
At age fourteen, Cal began to dream about this boy.
He thought about him for months. He plotted the hours of travel that could bring them together, noting all the timetables on the inside flap of his geography homework, totting up the cost of the bus-ferry-bus-bus-ferry-bus that would carry him down to the southern isle.
It gave him the faintest hope, a feeling of being lost on the road and spotting a light in the distance.
He thought of the boy for the first time in years. He hoped he was happy.
He read the personal ad again before studying his own face in the mirror. He lifted his jumper and considered his pale, hairless chest, and his shy, inverted nipples.
Dear William,
Where do you start with stuff like this? I don’t write many letters so please don’t hold it against me, since no one has ever expected me to describe myself before. Everyone already feels like they know everything there is to know about me.
I’m nearly 23. I have green(ish) eyes and long(ish) brown(ish) hair.
I’m tall, probably too tall. Thin, but not too skinny.
Someone once told me I have a swimmer’s physique but to be honest I can’t swim (which is a shame because I live on an island and there is a waste of water).
I’ve never written to someone from the paper before, but something in your ad caught my eye and I thought, fuck it, why not?
I’m not ‘out’, so I have to be discreet.
If you write back, please send your letters in as plain an envelope as possible.
I love the Smiths (I even love Morrissey but he’s not the same without Johnny). I’m well into the Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, the Mary Chain, Gene, and a wee bit of Northern Soul.
I just finished art school and I’m living at home until I can figure out my next move, South?
Maybe Glasgow? Maybe even London. I’m working for my ol’ man till then.
I can knit, weave, print, and embroider .
. . sexy, I know, but if you ever need a cushion for your auntie’s Christmas I’m your man.
Anyway, please write back. I’m bored as fuck.
Le deagh dhùrachd. (Oh, and I can speak the Gàidhlig.)
Cal x
P.S. One more thing: I’ve been told I have nice thighs. You can keep looking, but you will never find a better pair of legs than those of a weaver.
He thought better of it and crossed out the x. Then he coloured the scribble into a terrible drawing of Morrissey holding a limp tulip.