Chapter 3
The night before we leave for Italy, I say goodbye to my three closest friends—my sisters.
We meet for dinner in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, in a restaurant that serves excellent seafood and has stylish décor, with oak furniture, ochre walls, dusky filament lighting, and succulent-lined shelves.
The only thing is, it may be a little sedate for what looks like it’s going to be a raucous night.
“Ladies, I need to tell you about my latest pull,” announces Gloria. “He had a face like a tortoise’s minge but I swear down, he banged me like a shed door in a hurricane.”
We gasp and giggle.
Gloria is the loudest, most outrageous of my sisters.
We met on a night out, when I spotted him dancing on a pole to Geri Halliwell’s “Bag It Up” and decided we had to be friends.
His name is actually Paul—a name chosen by his Ugandan parents to give him the best chance of fitting into their adopted country.
But fitting in was never on the cards for a bald, six-feet, four-inch-tall Black man who’s overweight, has a beard that’s usually covered with glitter, and a penchant for wearing bright makeup, synthetic wigs and gold or silver lamé body stockings.
At some point in the long-forgotten past, someone had decided the name Gloria would be much more suitable.
“So are you seeing him again?” I ask.
Gloria looks at me as if I’ve just suggested he lick a slug. “Girl, I don’t even remember his name. All I know is it was Eastern European and sounded like some poison the Russians would use.”
There’s another burst of laughter. We’ve just finished eating and a waiter appears to clear our plates and unload a tray full of cocktails. I take a swig of mine: I’ve no idea what it is but it tastes like smoke.
“How about you, Dom?” asks Gloria, twirling the ends of his purple wig. “Have you had any action?”
I snicker. “When has Dom not had any action?”
Of the four of us, Dom is the one with the most crowd-pleasing looks.
His white skin only needs marginal exposure to the sun to acquire a tan, and he has thick hair, an equally thick moustache and a smattering of chest fur that are the color of dark chocolate.
He also has a deep voice, chunky wrists, and—as a former football player—calves like hams. Since birth, Dom has been deaf in one ear, but most men only seem to think that makes him more attractive, almost as if without this flash of vulnerability his looks would be too intimidating.
He and I met on a hookup arranged on the website Gaydar, in the days before they were even known as hook-ups.
I would have taken it further but Dom made it clear he wasn’t in the market for a relationship.
After I saw him out on Canal Street a few times, we eventually became friends—and then sisters.
“Alright, alright,” says Dom, sitting at an angle so his good ear is directed at us. “I did actually hook up with someone last week. He was fit and I liked him. But I got the impression he’s looking for a boyfriend.”
“At which point you bolted,” I chip in.
Dom gives a rakish smile. “You know me too well.”
“Dom, every gay in Manchester knows you’ve got the sexual appetite of a baboon in the mating season,” quips Gloria. He takes his vape out from under the table and turns his back to have a sneaky puff.
“Honestly, you girls make me feel like a dried-up old spinster,” says Ian. “The closest I get to an orgasm these days is driving over a speed bump.”
We laugh and Gloria slaps Ian on the arm.
At fifty, Ian’s the oldest in our group.
He’s mixed-race, with silver glasses and equally silver hair, and tonight is wearing another of his collection of check or gingham shirts—this one in orange and green—with chinos and brown leather trainers.
I met Ian at university, when I was an undergraduate and he was studying for an MA, in his spare time running the student union’s GaySoc.
Like my other sisters, Ian is single. Unlike them, this is because his long-term partner died five years ago, after one uncharacteristic and experimental line of cocaine aggravated an undiagnosed heart condition.
For a long time, Ian was floored by grief.
When he finally started to pick himself up again, he abandoned his career in marketing and became a life coach specializing in working with LGBTQ+ clients.
But he’s never shown any interest in returning to dating.
“My sister, we need to reawaken your inner ravishing, sensual woman,” says Gloria, caressing his gold lamé-covered body.
Ian gives him a curled look. “Gloria, I don’t think I’ve ever been any of those things.”
Gloria gives him another slap. “Hush your mouth! You are fifty and fuckable!”
The straight couple sitting at the next table looks over disapprovingly.
“And how are things with our favorite twink?” Dom asks, turning the attention onto me. My sisters often wind me up about having a cute, clean-cut, boyish look—a typical twink. Although recently that’s shifted to winding me up about being an aging twink.
“Here, I’ve got a joke for you,” cuts in Gloria, after another puff on his vape. “What do you call a twink over forty?”
“T’was?” guesses Ian.
“Twinked?” says Dom.
“Twunk?” I pitch in.
Gloria shakes his head. “Nobody calls a twink over forty!”
We gurgle with laughter.
Ian takes his glasses off and cleans them on his shirt. “Ignore her, Adam. She’s just jealous because you’ve bagged yourself a gorgeous man.”
“Yeah, how’s it going with Theo?” asks Dom. “More to the point, why’s he not with us tonight?”
I smile. “It’s brill, thanks. But the kids only finished school today so he took them shopping and now he’s doing their packing.”
Gloria whistles and fans himself with a menu. “Girl, he could pack my suitcase any day. That is one serious zaddy.”
“And that whole headmaster thing is a massive turn-on,” adds Dom, loosening his collar and blowing down it.
Gloria adopts the voice of a little girl and flutters his fake eyelashes. “Please, sir, can I have a detention? I’ve been ever so naughty!”
Our laughter is starting to sound like cackling. The woman at the next table looks over again, this time turning up her nose as if she’s caught a whiff of an open sewer.
I decide the restaurant is definitely too sedate.
I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before but it’s frequented almost exclusively by couples.
Theo and I actually came here on our first date.
After matching on a dating app, we’d migrated to WhatsApp and chatted for a few weeks, then decided to meet in real life.
By that stage, I already knew he’d been married to a woman and had three children.
What I didn’t realize was that he’d only been out of the closet for six months—and not just that but was still uncomfortable expressing his sexuality in public.
At one point I leaned across the table to touch his hand—but he pulled it away. Warning bells rang.
I excused myself and went to the toilet to message my sisters on our WhatsApp group.
I’d missed warning bells in the past but did I need to listen this time?
Ian replied first and confirmed that this kind of behavior was a red flag.
“If he’s only just started to accept himself, then he’s probably not ready to love another gay man. ”
The others agreed.
I thanked them and returned to the table, determined to pull back.
But I couldn’t. Theo was so handsome, with his blue eyes, hairy forearms and chest, not to mention those cute tortoiseshell glasses he wore to read the menu.
Plus he made me laugh and made me feel safe in a way none of my ex-boyfriends had.
There was no way he’d cheat on me or disappear for the weekend on a drink- or drug-fueled bender.
I couldn’t even imagine him chipping away at my confidence or putting me down—wrapping insults in compliments if we were in company—as so many of my exes had.
That I was attracted to him and not to yet another man who could only ever bring me misery and heartache felt like a major step forward.
I’d just have to try and ignore the warning bells.
At the end of the night, we stood outside the restaurant and I risked giving him a goodbye kiss.
I was relieved when he didn’t flinch and the kiss developed into more than a quick goodbye.
Alright, he may have had a few glasses of wine but he didn’t seem awkward and didn’t look around to check if anyone was watching.
That’s when I knew that, if he was still adjusting to life as a gay man, he was at least ready to push himself and grow. Plus, he was a fab kisser.
The next day, Theo got in touch to say he’d booked us places on an Italian cookery course I’d mentioned reading about, only to find it was fully booked for months.
But Theo knew one of the instructors and had somehow secured us places for the following Saturday.
This was particularly sweet as I discovered he’s a terrible cook: he put one egg too many in the dough for his tagliatelle so it ended up soggy; he didn’t seal his ravioli parcels properly, so they all burst; and I don’t know what he did to his cantuccini biscuits but they came out so hard that when he bit on them he chipped a tooth.
We did have fun, though—and we laughed a lot.
It was then that I knew there was no way I could stop seeing Theo, even if he had only recently come out.
If he was still on a journey, I was going to be there to help.
“Seriously,” says Ian, “how do you feel about spending the summer with the kids?”
I drain half of my glass. “To be honest, I’m not looking forward to it.”
“I’m not surprised.” Gloria purses his purple, pink-lined lips. “It sounds as dreary as hanging out with a white girl who wants to discuss race.”
“What’s that saying?” offers Dom. “Kids are like farts—you can only stand your own.”
Now we really do cackle.