Call Me (5 page)

“In my shiny black skin-tight cycle shorts.”

“Oh, you sweet monster, yes! I'm so looking forward to the vision of you. Shall we say fourish then … and what do I call you? Love you calling me Mr Mok. It's so very…”

I knew exactly what it was and the effect it was having.

“Call me…” (slightest pause, continuing in a whisper) “… call me Bike Boy.”

“Actually I really like that, it's so…”

I knew exactly what it was, cheap and instant.

“Got a pen? I'll give you my address. No, silly me. You have it, of course. Well, let me give you directions then.”

“Save the dictation, Mr Mok. I have an A-Z.”

“Oh, you do sound like a cheeky chap! I am so looking forward to meeting you. You sound like quite a handful!”

“Fantasies become reality on Good Friday at four.”

Again I terminated.

*   *   *

They were all so keen to meet Bike Boy. Leading the way, they followed so easily. Any questions asked of me were teasingly deflected. All that mattered was that I came across as a sane, semi-erect, genuine and discreet large penis owner with nothing infectious to worry about. It was like making arrangements for someone else. Not myself.

Jack in Hampstead, an architect with a faintly Scottish accent, anarchic sense of humour and occasional smoker's cough, was fixed in the diary for Bank Holiday Monday. His place, four. I'd decided I would probably go ahead and have some sort of sexual experience. Allan, supposedly sixteen, was eating toast when I phoned. He was slotted in for the Tuesday, by the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Park Gardens. That was enough to be getting on with, easy as ordering pizza. Phoning the others from the
Yes
and
Maybe
selections, I said I was off on a week's cycling tour of Devon and would contact them upon my return. They loved the idea of Bike Boy braving the elements, alone in a tent by the sea. Boy Scout appeal. I had a long chat with Charles of Brockley. Bike Boy was to have his portrait done. I didn't know what to wear.

It was time to acquire a whole new skin, time to go shopping.

Morning

The downward-looking me knew that shopping was not enough: there were so many disparities between that reflection in the dusty upturned changing room mirror and the smiling Campagnolo team in the poster taped to the back of the door. Sharp, defined, glowing, with shining smooth legs glistening in the sunlight, they were a total contrast to me in that tiny cubicle in the basement of the Clerkenwell Road cycle shop that stank of damp and oil.

Unlike the cycle racing team in the Ever-Ready vests, I had shoulder-length hair, worn loose that day, plus horribly hairy arms and legs. I looked heavy, weighed down and uncomfortable. To make the transformation into fantasy Bike Boy I had to do much more than shop.

My bike was spot on. I'd bought it from the same place only weeks before on a day I vowed never to use London Transport again. Selecting the right cycle shorts took longer than choosing the maximum protection Oakley “M Frames”; the leather-palmed fingerless gloves; the sky-blue Giro helmet; the black baseball cap; the white Sidi socks (which hardly covered my ankles) and the black and blue Sidi Dominator shoes complete with ratchet straps. I tried on nine pairs of shorts in all, like some sort of pedantic fetishist. Eventually I got a perfect fit, like they were made for me: 80% Poliamide, 20% Elastan, made in Italy. Gorgeous.

I didn't like the tops. They all looked too much with the shorts, like a uniform. I chose a silver-grey racing vest from a bargain box, purely because the rayon sheen was like lightning. There wasn't much in the line of cotton but I wasn't worried. I had an idea at the back of my mind.

Funnily enough, it was while hooking up a new water bottle to the bike frame that I felt the first step into character. I could imagine sunlight, heat, summer thirst; light glinting off my glasses as I swallowed noisily, watched by someone, somewhere, some time in the near future.

In the shop I absorbed new information like an actor going through the Stanislavskian approach. Gears by Shimano, Japanese. A Flite saddle. I'd chosen a larger than average frame, 23″, got myself a ‘D' lock—before I'd just thought of it as a big black thing that was a bugger to get the knack of. I could name-drop. I'd acquired sexy smokescreen language.

The large wrap-around Oakley glasses had the effect of a black mask. When I put them on I kind of blanked. I liked the feeling.

Afternoon

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Elvis looked his best then, you're right. So, a number two at the back, tapering up to a three here, longer on top, bit longer than a flat-top, even longer at the front, like so. And the sideburns to … here? Right. I'll just get you washed.”

Rox was an Old Compton Street poof parlour where Soho habitués used to get their regimented looks crafted. It was my first haircut in three years. I wanted to look like Elvis when he joined the army, a tall order. Shaun, a black guy, Irish name and ginger dreadlocks, suggested a surplus of oil to give it a sheen once the clipping and fussing had finished.

The transformation really kicked in when his fingers pulled the oil back over my skull, darkening the thick, dark brown to black in an instant. I suddenly looked sharper, intensified and younger. Marketable.

Evening

As well as cutting out dairy products, I'd planned to swim daily but changed tactics in the queue at Ironmonger Row Baths, taking the lazy option of booking in for six sun-bed sessions instead. Enriching the tan I'd picked up escaping a family Christmas, alone on a rooftop in Tunisia, brought me closer to the Bike Boy image my idle mind had created.

Wearing Speedos to preserve my tan line, prostrate between two layers of blue-white bulbs, I felt like an Apollo astronaut about to be launched into infinity.

Night

Sporting the M Frames and white Calvin Kleins, I watched my reflected body tease through air, blank and comfortable and new, standing without expression for a long time in the privacy of my bedroom.

The M Frames, according to the colour brochure, possessed innovative features, accommodating every head size and shape with an ingenious Hammer Earstem. Unobtanium earsocks worked in conjunction with the nosepieces to grip my head tenaciously, yet comfortably, at nose and temples. Unobtanium is hydrophylic: it gets sticky as it becomes moist with sweat, helping the frames to stay put no matter how hard you run, ski or jerk off.

Even before meeting anyone, I decided on placing five more Bike Boy adverts, varying the wording to make them more teasing, more enticing. I wanted more letters, a continual response. Dirty little secrets were something to get up in the morning for. I wanted to be in a position to select and, more excitingly, reject.

Once again I filled out the coupons, thirty spaces for a maximum of thirty words. These were mailed, second class, every other day and placed in a variety of sections. I was to become quite a little earner for the Chronos Group. The replies would stink to an extent I could not have imagined. Maybe I wanted to encounter people worse off than myself as some sort of consolation.

BIKE BOY!
LEGS: Muscular. BODY: Slim.

SKIN: Smooth. SMILE: Wicked. HAIR/

EYES: Dark. PECTORALS: Pronounced.

BICEPS: Bulging. BUTTOCKS: Firm.

AGE:22. NAME: Liam. (Uncut. WE.)

Seeking Ad-venture! Like cycle shorts?

BIKE BOY:
Big Boy/Big bike/Big smile/Big

heart of gold/Strong dominant

personality/22/WE. Likes: swimming,

showers, oil, decent films, indecent videos,

Indie, imagination, Hubba Bubba, surprises.

BIKE BOY
in shiny black skin-tight cycle

shorts will turn fantasies into

realities. 22, slim, smooth, athletic, safe.

Genuine, discreet and honest. Cute bum,

wicked smile. (Horny devil!) Curious? ALA.

BIKE BOY:
Mountain bike rider. (Black skin-

tight cycle shorts.)22. Long smooth

muscular legs. WE. “Cute”. Likes: cycling

downhill in the rain. Dislikes:

Shakespeare/Ballet/Opera. Open to

suggestions. ALAWP.

MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDERS?
Shiny black skin-

tight cycle shorts? I'm tall, slim, smooth,

horny. (22). Legs: muscular. Eyes/Hair:

dark. (Size 10 feet!) Home alone, EC1.

Seeking social intercourse ASAP.

Interested?

Passing through Piccadilly on my way to Clone Zone to pick up the gaypers, I had the pleasure of walking behind a young body poured into denim. It was the lower half which was of interest. I followed along Shaftesbury Avenue, close to limbs in motion. If the body had been cut at the waist I'd still have followed the remains in fascination. A cut at the calf muscles would have been good too, losing those cowboy boots, leaving the two heaviest and strongest bones in the body to continue, as if walking on air. Femurs, my favourites.

It wasn't the arse which made me quicken my step to catch up, but the small hips and outer upper thighs. As one leg lifted, the other stepped down. I watched muscles I don't know the names of contract, then relax. Contract, then relax. These human parts were of shapes and proportions I wanted to touch, so lovely as they moved. Perhaps even lovelier stilled. When I overtook, I didn't turn back to see the face that headed it all, though the idea of glimpsing his packet, cocooned in denim, urged me to. I'd got to the point where I didn't care if someone caught me staring.

My favourite shelf-filler at Sainsbury's noticed me as he replenished the broccoli section. He was growing his hair. Maybe the expense of regular flat-tops was a financial consideration. It suited him longer. I remembered the day I'd seen him shopping in the bakery section with his mother, seeming years younger in the role of son. He'd caught me looking at him then, too, and blushed, pretending to be bored. Maybe he was. I'm sure I wasn't his only admirer.

I've still got a feeling I'll bump into him somewhere one of these days and when that day comes he'll momentarily blush and perspire just enough to be exciting, then look pissed off and turn away. Who knows, he might even smile, might say hello. Hello at the London Apprentice, Sub Station or the Anvil where he would lean back against a wall to porno mumble “Go on then, suck it!”

I wondered, as I did so often, about his chest.

Home in time for the nine o'clock news.

Twice that night I found myself struggling with a hard-on which hurt. My tongue wanted to meet warm wet lips and another soft mouth. My nipples wanted fingernails and teeth. My cock just ached to come any old how. Both times I totted up the minutes and energy tokens it would take to put on jeans, boots, Ray's old leather jacket and, second to the bike ride in terms of time management, shave. A fresh face isn't necessary for success in the shadows of a back room, but I didn't know that then. The Block, a jerk off establishment up by Angel tube, opposite Sainsbury's—a place I'd avoided hearing much about—was the one place on Earth my dick was begging to be taken.

While lorries rumbled, taking the best of British beef to Smithfield Market, I wanked like an adolescent, thinking of those limbs encased in denim and the shelf-filler whose hands had touched what I'd eaten and the mystery of his chest and the smell of the small of his back, those eighteen-year-old eyebrows and that voice I once heard talking to a mate on the subject of fake Armani jeans—I reached a violent, noisy orgasm as I imagined licking his thick, black neck. By the time I would have been paying the admission fee to join the herd at The Block, I was asleep.

*   *   *

I'd set the alarm, expecting another batch of letters. The postman had no trouble with the envelope this time, dead on eight thirty.

Someone at
Boyz
had made a mistake. An envelope was marked for Box NS465 but with a six that looked like a zero. I did the decent thing, returning it to their office with a second-class stamp as soon as I'd read it. The communication in large capital letters showed admirable economy:

I WANT TO BE YOUR HUMAN TOILET

0171 230 ––Mark

A Westminster code. Maybe a nice, respectable button-down shirt sort of a chap with a combination lock briefcase. Perhaps a lusty lawyer, a company medic, a bank manager, butcher, or toilet attendant.

Starting the day with a photocopied letter from Chris over in Nine Elms would have sent most people back to bed. For his 5″×7″ self-portrait, this leather queen had attempted the studio look, draping white bed-sheets in a corner as a backdrop. Edging into the picture, providing an insight into his other world, was a patterned carpet—granny variety—in grotesque reds and browns. I suppose one advantage was it wouldn't show blood, except to a forensic team.

God bless his shiny black knee-length motor-cycle boots. God love his super white socks rolled over the tops. God help him in those black leather trousers just that bit too tight in an effort to be sensuous.

Studded wristbands added to his discomfort and a badge-covered leather and denim waistcoat gaped open, revealing various weights dangling from huge, pierced nipples. Nipples the size of a lactating dalmation's. Nipples with the tough density of warts. Below his left bicep was a once discreet sacred heart which over the years had evolved into a complex skulls-and-daggers affair stretching halfway down his arm. Above it an eagle or phoenix rose up out of flames—loads of yellow and stars—perhaps reflecting an interest in animal wildlife. A certain empathy with endangered species.

Tight, black leather: pressing, restricting and restraining every inch, wrapping him like a samosa, muscles firmly encased. Eyes giving the camera that long thick dick look, mind adrift in a sea of seminal fluid. A photo full of … something … not raunch. God bless and save him.

The mass-distributed photocopy read: