Chapter Thirty-Two Another Year Is Over
The mental health nurse Danny had befriended during rehearsals for the Olympic opening ceremony invited both him and Luis to a New Year’s Eve party at his apartment.
As if anticipating that their response would be to politely decline, Matt described the hook of this house party as access to the building’s roof where they could sit on the chimney stacks and watch the midnight fireworks.
Having been invited to the wedding, he had sent a big bouquet of flowers and a handwritten card in which he explained that it would be his first gay wedding, saying it would be an honour to attend.
Danny admitted, ‘Luis and I are taking some time apart right now.’
There was a particularly sharp pain in sharing the news with a gay friend, as if Danny had let the side down after creating such a commotion around his marriage, accepting congratulations like he’d struck a blow against bigotry.
Danny didn’t mind the humiliation – he’d crawled through a few gutters in his time – it was the disappointment he couldn’t bear.
As a group his friends were so accustomed to hearing about break-ups, addictions and the toughest of times that he didn’t want to offer another sad story until it was the only one left to tell. Matt told him how sorry he was.
‘But you can’t stay at home alone on New Year’s Eve.’
Waking up on the morning of New Year’s Eve Danny contemplated the prospect of the year ahead, previously filled with appointments at prospective tailors and meetings with the caterers.
After a breakfast of cornflakes which he ate so slowly they turned to mush by the final spoonful, he was eager to leave the apartment.
His plan was to spend the entire day in town before heading to Matt’s New Year’s Eve party.
Wondering what to wear he rummaged through his clothes, opting for indigo jeans, pleased that he could still fit into a thirty-inch waist. With dread, he speculated whether he would soon need to create online dating profiles – something he’d never done, filling them with statistics and specifics.
He and Luis had never passed through the digital gatekeepers and Danny doubted there was an algorithm that would have matched them.
He paired jeans with one of Luis’s tops, an azure cashmere sweater.
He couldn’t decide if he was wearing it because he wanted Luis with him in some way or if it was an expression of sublimated anger.
The soft fabric carried a trace of Luis’s earthy perfume, sandalwood oils hand-mixed in the spice markets of Marrakech, nothing like the cheap-and-cheerful scent that Danny preferred, reminiscent of a salty coastal breeze.
At a café near Charing Cross station Danny bought a toasted poppy-seed bagel which he ate plain on the cold stone steps of Trafalgar Square, looking down towards Parliament.
Keeping him company pigeons picked at the crumbs he left behind.
On a whim he went into the Japanese hairdresser’s in Soho, an establishment that had caught his eye when he had been buying Luis’s engagement ring.
His stylist was a young woman called Akemi.
She studied his mass of overgrown wavy hair, auburn and grey, unkempt and uncut since Luis left.
Danny sheepishly observed, ‘It’s a mess. ’
She didn’t disagree, asking what he wanted his hair to look like. Smart or Sexy. Naughty or Neat. Danny replied, ‘Not broken.’
Akemi barely missed a beat, pointing at his hair.
‘This is broken. You want not broken.’
During Danny’s haircut they spoke about the snowfall in Hokkaido, the northern region of Japan where Akemi’s parents lived.
She expressed amazement that he had never been skiing.
Never married, never been skiing, what other deficiencies were there?
Danny had never owned a car and never kissed a woman.
Gazing at his reflection he thought he looked like lousy material for a party.
Cheering him up, Akemi’s haircut was excellent, an artful mix of messy and styled.
Somehow he did look less broken. He promised to go skiing in Hokkaido.
Strolling down Regent Street Danny studied the Christmas lights he had missed this year.
With the shops closing early he decided to treat himself to a pistachio-nut ice-cream sundae served at an Italian gelateria near Green Park.
The two scoops were presented in a crystal bowl with a slender silver spoon and covered in sprinkles.
Realizing he was the only person eating alone Danny took out his phone and read an article about the most expensive ice-cream sundae of all time, created in New York City, draped in gold leaf, flavoured with the rarest Madagascan vanilla pods.
During the past month Danny had discovered that random facts and radio shows made good companions.
After settling the bill he made his way past Buckingham Palace, wishing a Happy New Year to the Queen, managing to cross Lambeth Bridge before the centre of town was barricaded by the police.
Arriving at Matt’s apartment early Danny offered to help set up.
Matt hugged him and told him his haircut was hot.
Danny asked if he was trying to look too young. Sceptical, Matt looked him up and down.
‘In cashmere?’
The pair carried back eighty-eight cans of Swedish pear cider from a nearby off-licence.
With all the alcohol in the fridge Matt took Danny aside and opened his palm revealing a baggie containing small pink pills shaped like strawberries, explaining that they were Ecstasy pills, very mild, loving, and that he didn’t want Danny moody in the corner.
Danny hadn’t touched drugs in years. Matt wondered at this.
‘But Luis is Spanish. The parties over there are wild.’
Danny pointed out that Luis was from the south of Spain.
‘He grew up religious, attending hour-long services on Sunday mornings, running errands, fetching fresh bread from the bakery at five in the morning. He’s never done a drug in his life.’
Matt wasn’t sure that these facts followed each other.
‘We all started off as choirboys. What happened when he came to London?’
Danny thought about the shape of Luis’s life.
‘Work was Luis’s obsession. He never went down any dark holes. Maybe he’s doing that now? The breakdowns we all went through in our twenties. Could be, right?’
Matt closed his palm.
‘I hope not. Anyway, I don’t want you doing anything you’re not comfortable with.’
Matt was about to put away the pills when Danny reached out and took the bag.
He had grown tired with his mind. Peering inside he pinched a pink strawberry pill between his fingers and without another word put it on the tip of his tongue.
He opened a can of cider and washed it down.
Matt widened his eyes and checked his watch.
Aside from a gradual cider drunkenness, Danny felt nothing for the first ninety minutes.
Perhaps his body was too old for drugs, the walls of his cells had stiffened and toughened like those cheap cuts of meat that chefs turned into stew.
The drugs simply bounced off his rusted receptors.
This proved not to be true. As the first guests arrived, they must have wondered who this odd middle-aged man was – high at ten p.m. He couldn’t be sure if it was the drugs or his state of mind, but Danny found it challenging to strike up conversations with these young men.
Every topic seemed so arbitrary. Danny had developed a nurse’s knack for small talk but in the hospital conversation served a purpose, helping patients relax, and Danny rarely spoke about himself.
At this party the words were passed back and forth like Monopoly money until Matt reminded him that if you were searching for someone to kiss, every conversation could be thrilling.
As midnight approached Matt suggested that they make their way to the roof to secure the best vantage point.
They sneaked out of the party and climbed up the fire escape onto the slate roof, clambering to the central chimney stack where they took prime panoramic position facing in the direction of the Thames.
They wrapped their arms around each other like a pair of Victorian chimney sweeps who were only able to express their love high above the city.
With the Ecstasy causing Danny to grind his teeth, he asked what dating was like these days. Matt said, ‘Mostly it’s good.’
This seemed improbable to Danny, but Matt doubled down.
‘What’s not to enjoy? You meet a guy from a part of the country you’ve never been to or a part of the world you know nothing about.
The other person is a mystery. You’re imagining what it means to be them.
They’re imagining what it means to be you.
The downside is that often the people you like the most are the ones who mess you around the most. The painful parts of dating haven’t changed.
There are new technologies to communicate the pain, but the pain is the same. ’
Danny asked about the worst dates and despite the Ecstasy in his system Matt answered seriously. ‘Some people when I tell them I’m living with HIV, they walk straight out the door. Some claim they’re fine and I never hear from them again.’
Back in his twenties Danny was prone to trade boundaries for affection, particularly when he was into a guy and they asked not to use a condom, Danny agreeing to please them, hoping they might stick around.
Until he met Luis, he had chanced his way through the AIDS crisis, alive by a fluke.
So many outside forces had nudged Danny and Luis together, it was hard to know whether these historical forces had been as important as their individual chemistry.
Back then, they were exactly what the other needed.
By asking him to marry him – the very question expressing a change of context – Danny was asking if they were what the other needed now.
Perhaps it was true that every relationship, gay or straight, married or not, needed to regenerate after twenty years.
Sharing their most private stories Danny dusted off some of his favourite relationship quandaries, asking if Matt believed in the theory of love where there was one perfect person out there in the world – a soulmate waiting to be found. Matt shook his head.
‘I’ve dated a lot. Many of those guys could have been great in different ways if they had stuck around. The one is the guy who stays. The one is the guy who builds something special with you. The more you build the more they become the one.’
Looking out over the city, Danny said, ‘I couldn’t go back to living without love. Sure, I could get by for a time. I’m not scared of being alone. Not like I was when I was young. But sharing the world with someone is better.’
Matt qualified the statement.
‘Sharing the world with the wrong person is worse, my wards are full of patients with abusive partners. But sharing the world with the right person, I agree, that’s the secret. Not really a secret. The secret that everyone knows.’
Their conversation was interrupted by a raggedy train of party guests clumsily climbing onto the roof.
Tiles clattered to the street to the hilarity of some and outrage of others.
Responsible neighbours began bellowing from open windows and threatening to call the police.
Meanwhile, up on the chimney stacks, Danny and Matt judged it an opportune moment to swallow a second Ecstasy pill.
Their fellow party guests began a countdown to midnight only to mistime it, forced to wait another sixteen seconds before Big Ben chimed and the fireworks erupted over the Thames.
It was the new year, the year Danny was set to marry, and here he was balancing on a rooftop, about to be arrested, high on Ecstasy with his arm around a handsome, emotionally available man who was not his fiancé.
No chapter covered this scenario in any of the marriage guidebooks.
Realizing he had not checked his phone for several hours he reached into his pocket, pulling it free, struggling to focus on the screen.
He saw messages from his parents, Sophie, Jasper, various friends and colleagues but nothing from Luis.
In that instant he was tempted to throw the phone as far as he could, to let it fly in a perfect parabola before it shattered on the street below.
But the handset was new, he couldn’t afford to replace it, and it might hit a passer-by.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket, turning to Matt who had been watching him the whole time, with his back to a sky full of fireworks, indifferent to the glittering gold and silver streams.
‘Happy New Year.’
And then they kissed.