Chapter 14
Harry
“So you like this Lincoln guy?” Lando says, in fact yells in my ear since we’re standing in the queue to buy drinks at a very loud bar in central Bath. It’s a gay bar named Penrose, and it’s only the second gay bar I’ve ever been to in my life.
I’ve already drunk my one allotted beer for the night—game on Sunday—so I’ve switched to Diet Coke. Also, because drinking seriously affected my sexual performance last time, I’m staying sober in case another situation with Lando and me should . . . arise tonight.
“Lionel,” I correct. “But yeah.”
“But you’ve never liked any other guys?”
“I mean, sure, in a . . . sexual way, but I like this guy.”
“Oh, you like like him,” he says.
I love him, but . . . same difference.
A bloke wearing a Gandalf Big Naturals T-shirt walks past Lando and brushes his arm. Neither of them says anything. They hold eye contact for a second, maybe two, and then he’s gone.
Not that I’m counting or anything, but that’s the fifth time this evening that this has happened to my companion. It hasn’t happened to me yet, and I can’t work out if I’m upset about it or relieved.
There is every potential I could fuck this up still.
“You’re just looking to get a few notches under your belt before you hit up Liam?” Lando asks. We move one pace closer to the bar.
“Lionel, but exactly.”
So I don’t have a repeat of last week.
“Okay, we’ll start small, then. Lesson number one: how to get a complete stranger to want to fuck you.” He claps his hands together once. “Class is in session. Step one, be irresistible. Congratulations, you’ve already aced that.”
I don’t know if he’s taking the piss or not, so I give him a playful shove.
“Oh, ha ha. I’ve never really had a problem with women.
Getting them to want to fuck me hasn’t been difficult.
It’s just dudes . . .” I feel like I’m leaving my sentence hanging open, but I don’t know how I want to finish that.
Men, especially attractive ones, are more intimidating? Are scarier? I’ve got more to prove?
“You know, deep down, men and women aren’t that different. Sometimes we wear different clothes, but we all just want to be held, and loved, and called babygirl.”
I laugh, move into his space, stroke his jaw with my thumb, and say, “How’s this, babygirl?”
Lando rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, bites his lip, and fake groans, then bursts out laughing. “See, you’re not as bad at this as you think you are.”
“You saw me last week at the karaoke party. I complimented your torch and stepped in horse shit.”
“Actually, that moment now lives rent free in my head.”
I palm my face and groan.
Lando pulls my hand away. “You don’t have any trouble with women, right? How do you convince them to go home with you?”
“Usually, I start with, ‘Hi, I play rugby.’”
Lando laughs. “Yeah, I can see how that works. Okay, so what’s your type? With men, I mean. What sort of guys do you imagine yourself with?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I have a type. Maybe . . .” I stop myself from saying, “You. You’re my type. Hopefully you’ll never meet Lionel because that’s going to be embarrassing.”
“What’s your type?” I ask instead.
“Trade,” he replies. And because I must look confused he adds, “Straight-passing guys. ‘Straights’ who are so far in the closet they need me to guide them to the exit slash . . . entrance.”
I’m suddenly feeling out of my depth again. There’s so much lingo and there are so many labels. How am I supposed to assimilate into this culture?
“Tell me what this guy you like is like,” Lando says, and something drops in my gut.
Panic. It’s panic.
“He works for my mum. He’s head of operations for her security firm. He’s like the onsite manager for events.”
“A security guard?”
“I mean . . . technically, I guess.” Though calling Lionel a security guard is like calling olives fruit. Strictly speaking, yes, but that’s where that comparison ends.
Lando points to a random bloke standing about three metres away. He’s tall and muscular, with enormous arms and a tiny waist. The type of dude you’d find at any public gym across the country. He’s what would be considered “conventionally attractive.”
I see-saw my hand. “Hmm.”
“I hear you,” Lando says, drawing out the words like he’s a detective uncovering clues. “What about him?”
The next guy he points to is a little older, maybe in his early forties. He has a beard and a big belly and is wearing a T-Shirt with a Care Bear on the front.
“Better, I suppose.”
Lando smooths out his non-existent moustache hairs. “What about the bartender?”
“Yeah, he’s cute.”
He’s a shorter skinny guy with bleached-blonde hair. Lando smiles, and I have no idea why.
“That guy?” He points to another lad with the slim physique.
“Also cute.”
“Okay, sure, okay,” he says while tip-tapping his chin with his fingers. He continues to point out different men, and I say yes or no based on nothing more than vibes. “You want to hear my conclusion?”
“Shoot,” I say.
“You like twinks, and twunks, and possibly otters.”
I have no idea what any of this means, but I’m logging the terms in my brain so I can google later.
“This is all about physical appearance, though?”
“Of course,” Lando says. We inch closer to the bar. “For hookups nothing else matters besides looks. Do you really care about someone’s personality if all you’re gonna do is shower them in cum and fuck off?”
I’m speechless for a few seconds. I actually don’t have a response to that. Lando’s right, in a way. I care about Lionel’s personality because I want more than a hookup with him, but if I’m looking for guys to practise on, what difference does it make?
“You told me the other night you go for jerks,” I say, feeling the random urge to turn this discussion away from the topic of me.
“I did say that.” But he doesn’t elaborate.
We’ve reached the front of the queue, and Lando is ordering our drinks. He’s having Disaronno with full-fat Coke because apparently the artificial sweeteners in diet soda trigger his IBS. We take our drinks and sequester ourselves in a more private space near the edge of the dance floor.
“Right, so, steps two and three of pulling. I have some absolute fail-proof methods I’m going to teach you. This is highly classified information, so I expect you to keep it to yourself . . .” Lando pauses and waits for me to answer his non-question.
I “zip” my mouth closed.
“The first thing you’re going to do is locate your next target.
Keep your eyes on him until he looks at you, and then what you’re gonna do is look away like he’s caught you staring, and then look back.
If he’s still looking over when you look back, you’re in.
Smile, look away very briefly, and then look back. Got it?”
“Um . . .” What the fuck?
“Like this, okay? Pretend I’m a handsome stranger, and you want to fuck me.”
Shouldn’t be hard. “Okay.”
Lando jogs over to a high table a few metres away. It’s waist height on him, but there are no bar stools. A group of people hang around the other edge and are intrigued by Lando’s arrival, but he blanks them.
I stare at him, but a second later he comes running back. “No, no. I’ll be you, and you’re a random hottie, and I’ll show you how to do it.”
He runs back, and I look away, count in my head for a few seconds and look at him. He does exactly what he said he would, averts his eyes, then glances back and smiles coyly, and holy fuck, is it effective.
How?
How is that possible?
“Now you try!” he yells, ignoring the baffled looks from the group next to him.
I do what he says.
“Nice, okay.” He’s back beside me. “Could use a little more practice to make it seem a bit more natural, but it’s definitely getting there. You can always bite your thumbnail like this.” He demos the thumbnail chewing, and he’s right. I want to fuck him more. Whoops.
“So, that was step two. Step three is the clincher, okay? And it’s another nonverbal cue.
What you do when you have the guy’s full attention is you lock the fuck in.
Make him feel like there’s only you and him and everyone else is nothing but a meaningless blur in the background.
Then you let your gaze sweep all the way down his body, right down to his shoes, back up again, and then you do this kind of half-smile, half-lip-bite thing.
Honestly, it’s never failed me.” Lando puts so much emphasis on the word “never” that I instantly believe him.
“Show me,” I say.
“Fine, but fair warning, you’ll want to fuck me.”
It’s already been established that I do. “A single look doesn’t have the power to do that.”
Lando takes a few steps back and stares into my eyes.
Then he slowly, achingly slowly, sweeps over my body with his gaze.
His eyes are so dark in the bar’s dim lighting that they appear to be black.
He brings his gaze up to meet mine again.
His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows, then he bites his lip and smiles, and if it weren’t for the fact he’d forewarned me about his plan, I would have fallen hook, line, and sinker for it and would be snogging his face off right now.
“I stand corrected,” I say. “Wanna come back to mine?”
“It’s good, huh?” he says, still maintaining the few feet of space between us. “Now you try.”
He has me practise several times before he’s happy with my performance.
I’m not complaining. Each time I get to drink in more of this beautiful man and my body floods itself with endorphins.
There’s something so incredibly pleasing about the way he’s put together.
It’s like watching the Six Nations, or gawping at baby animals in the zoo. I don’t want to not be looking at him.
“Now we practise on an unsuspecting stooge. Back to step one, identify your target,” he says, finally closing the gap.
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“We’ll keep trying until it does.”
“What if it does work?”
Lando laughs. “Then you can either get a handy in the bathroom, or get his number and never text him.”