Chapter 11
Sunny
Notionally, Saturday mornings are for yoga.
Jumaane and I had both joined the Gay Men’s Yoga Club as part of our ongoing husband hunt, on the promise that performing regular downward dogs gave you a bum as tight as a drum, vee-gutters so sharp they could cut the waistband on your CKs, and pelvic floor muscles strong enough to shoot a billiard ball out of your arsehole and across a crowded bar.
Not that I’ve tried doing that. Someday, maybe.
It’s good to have goals. But on this particular Saturday morning, an ashram full of swamis could not have convinced me to haul my arse out of bed and travel into central London, even if they promised to help me avoid the Tube by levitating there.
My head was thumping. My breath smelt like a fox had curled up in my mouth in the night and died there.
But, worst of all, my guts were in knots.
I had gnawing regret about my fight with Ludo.
While it felt good in the moment, it had been a very, very stupid thing to do, and in the cold, hard light of day, I worried the consequences might be long-lasting.
My phone vibrated on the bedside table. Hurricane Stacey was touching down to leave her regular weekly trail of destruction.
“Hiya, Mum.” My first words of the day squeaked out of me like a rusty garden gate. I coughed to clear my throat.
“You sound rough, love. Big night?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, I hope you were safe.”
“Not that kind of big, Mum. Just hung-over.”
“You have to be careful, love,” Mum said.
“I was talking to Angie Skeggs the other day, and her friend Brenda’s sister in-law has a nephew who’s gay.
Well, apparently, he went to something called a ‘fisting party’ and busted the laggy band in his bumhole and now he has to shit into a bag. It’s proper tragic.”
“That didn’t happen, Mum.”
“It did too. Angie told me. He was up the ospiccle for six weeks. He still can’t eat solids.”
“Angie Skeggs thinks aliens abducted the real Nigel Farage the day after the Brexit vote and QAnon is covering it up. You should get your news from reputable sources.”
“OK, love, I’ll get all my news from the Bulletin from now on.”
My mother could be shady when she wanted to be.
Fifteen years on the till at the local Tesco supermarket being polite to knobheads is the equivalent of a vocational qualification in sarcasm.
She also definitely knew what fisting was.
She’d been running the local PFLAG since the year after I came out and knew more about the mechanics of homosexuality than I did. This was just her sense of humour.
“Thanks for your support,” I said, sucking the dregs from the glass of water on my bedside table.
“Only joking, love. Had anything good in the paper this week?”
“Nothing worth buying it for, Mum. I had a story on Wednesday about the government giving millions of pounds to some otters.”
“Otters? That’s nice. I’m glad they’ve got money for the otters,” Mum said.
“You remember old Shirley Trimble? They’ve cut her Universal Credit again.
That leg of hers is infected now, and she can’t get in to see a GP for six weeks.
She’ll be tickled bloody pink about the otters.
When she comes down the food bank on Monday, I’ll make sure and tell her. ”
Apparently, the answer to the question “Who doesn’t love otters?
” was Stacey Ann Miller. And, possibly, Shirley Trimble.
(Confirmation pending.) The sound of bus air brakes outside scraped around the inside of my skull.
I shoved a lazy hand under the elastic of my pants and scratched my balls.
You could dig for peat down there. I needed a shower.
“Did you have a reason for calling, Mum?” She called every Saturday. By consent. It was just past time in the conversation for me to wrong-foot her. Just for the variety.
“Just wanted to hear your voice, my lovely. Are you sure you’re all right? You sound off.”
If my mum had a superpower, it was knowing when something wasn’t right.
When my first boyfriend dumped me, she was on the blower within fifteen minutes to check if I was OK.
It was spooky. Though I learned later she’d seen him snogging Derek Potts in the Highcross Costa that morning, so she probably knew something was up.
“I got into a mardy with some posh bellend in a club last night, that’s all.”
“Jesus, Sunshine! What have I told you about fighting?” Mum’s voice was so sharp I could feel it in my eyes. “You’ve got to get that temper of yours under control, Sunny. Is anyone hurt? Are you OK?”
“It wasn’t a punch-up, Mum. Although I could definitely have taken him. To be fair, a sock puppet armed with a tube of toothpaste could have taken him.”
“But no injuries, no hospital, no cops. Just two idiots with more testosterone in their tongues than their bollocks? No harm done.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. (Also, ew, Mum, gross.) My stomach twisted. Time for a full confession.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “He’s a reporter.
For another paper. Where his dad is the editor.
A dad who is also one of the most powerful men on Fleet Street.
Oh, and he has a mum who is also incredibly senior at the BBC.
I think I might have made myself some very powerful enemies.
Of the kind that might come back to haunt me. ”
OK, so it was almost a full confession. I didn’t say the reporter in question also had piercing blue eyes and a floppy boy band fringe of black curly hair and the juiciest buttocks outside a Brazilian plastic surgeon’s outpatient ward.
Or that I found him both beautiful and confusing.
Or that he kept creeping into my thoughts, even before I tore his family to shreds in a drunken nightclub tirade.
“If it was just about work, won’t it all blow over?” Mum asked.
I cringed. “Not really. I got… pretty personal. I kind of attacked his whole family.”
“The family that runs the entire UK media?”
“Um, yeah.”
Mum sighed. It was more the thoughtful kind of sigh than an exasperated my-son-is-an-idiot sigh. So that was good, at least. I didn’t need a lecture.
“You remember when I got into a fight with Denise from Asda in the Five Bells that time?”
“When she threw her drink at Nan and you slammed her tit into her gravy?” How could I forget? The video resurfaced in my Instagram suggested posts at least once a month.
“I’m not proud of it, Sunny.”
“It’s had eighteen million views, Mum.”
“It’s not funny.” It was, though.
“The point is, Denise and I will always have our differences. It’s not just that I’m a Tesco girl and she’s an Asda slag.
I’m Wickwar Estate through to me bones. That means something.
And she’s a horse-faced trollop from the Scriggins Estate who can’t stop pinching other people’s husbands.
Or their sons, to be fair. We’re never going to see eye to eye. ”
Does everyone’s mother like to dress up old beef as round-the-houses storytelling, or just Stacey Miller?
“But I’ll tell you this for free, Sunshine.
That Christmas, when I walked up to her in the Bells and said, ‘Denise, we need to put this behind us, because I know you’ve got points on your Tesco Clubcard you ain’t used, and I’ve run out of the Kiss Salon French Acrylics from the Asda beauty aisle,’ it was one of the smartest things I ever did.
My conscience was finally clear. We let bygones be bygones once and for all. ”
“You called her a horse-faced trollop a second ago.”
“Yeah, but not to her face.”
It was time to wind things up. We said our goodbyes, I went for a pee, and I thought about what to do about Ludo Boche.
Then I crawled back into bed with two Tesco brand Nurofen and Berocca and opened GayHoller.
I scrolled through the pick-and-mix selection of bare torsos and hopeful faces and the “guess which one of the three of us in this photo is me, yes that’s right, I’m the minger” profile pics.
Eventually, I opened the app’s settings and clicked on my blocked accounts.
Cabbage98 was at the top of the list. Possibly the stupidest profile name in the history of GayHoller.
I clicked on it, almost without thinking.
I just wanted to look at his pictures again.
I’d never really looked at them properly.
I’d only had glimpses when VladPop held them up for me to see.
I wanted to study Ludo’s face while I thought about how to clean up the mess I’d made.
And maybe get another look at that arse in ballet tights?
GayHoller had other ideas.
GayHoller HQ: To view this profile you need to unblock this user.
It had two buttons: Unblock User or Cancel.
I hit Cancel, closed the app, and threw my phone onto the duvet.
If I unblocked him, Ludo would know I was thinking about him.
That felt like giving up power, like admitting defeat.
But I really wanted to look at his pics.
I slunk down into the bed, put my hands to my face, and rolled some sleep out of my eye.
Then I reached for my phone, reopened GayHoller, and unblocked Ludo’s account.