Man's World

PRAISE FOR RUPERT SMITH

‘I was startled and fascinated by Man’s World in which Rupert Smith draws a meticulously researched, thought-provoking comparison between gay life in London of the repressive 1950s and in the hedonistic present. The impact and significance of this accomplished novel has to do with the way it suggests how much has changed for the liberal better while showing what damage to themselves and others narcissistic gay pleasureseekers still do’ Nicholas de Jongh

‘A very good writer, and his novel looks at the lives of gay men both in the present day, and 50 years ago – so much has changed, so much hasn’t’ Stella Duffy

‘A writing talent that is distinct, absorbing and witty … A sensational book, funny, smart and compelling’ Attitude

‘Man’s World has a great deal to say about friendship, solidarity and being true to yourself. That it does so in such a witty and warmhearted way is testament to Smith’s ability to spin an engrossing story … A delightfully funny book that is both moving and thought-provoking’ Cathode Ray Tube

‘Sharp observations of character and situation, and some classic one-liners to remember’ Chroma

‘Smith’s new novel examines gay life in London in a particularly inspired way’ DNA Magazine

‘His most ambitious novel to date … As befits a writer who loves gay history but is very much part of gay culture in 2010, Smith brings both worlds vividly to life’ QX

‘A witty page-turner’ Gay About Town

‘A smashing book’ Paul O’Grady

‘Lethally accurate, spitefully funny and occasionally genuinely chilling’ Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph

‘Hilarious showbiz satire … A riotous romp’ Christina Patterson, Observer

‘Pacey, funny and cheerfully vulgar’ Kate Saunders, The Times

‘Hugely ambitious and deliciously witty’ Paul Burston, Time Out

Man’s World

RUPERT SMITH

For Marcus

and

In memory of Tim Clark

Contents

Praise
Title Page
Dedication
01
One
02
Two
03
Three
04
Four
05
Five
06
Six
07
Seven
08
Eight
09
Nine
10
Ten
11
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright

01

Jonathan was supposed to meet me at nine o’clock this morning, but he turns up at eleven with some story about how he went out with his yoga teacher last night and they ended up getting drunk in Soho and going back to the yoga teacher’s house, where Jonathan spent the night, and now of course he is being quite coy about what if anything actually happened. I’ve said all along that the only reason he got into yoga is so he can keep his legs in the air for extended periods of time.

By the time Jonathan actually turns up I’ve started loading the van myself. I’m going up and down in the lift completely knackering myself, although on the third or fourth trip I realise that it’s actually like an extra session at the gym and is working my quads, glutes, calves and hip flexors quite hard, not to mention burning a lot of calories, which is no bad thing because I had pizza last night. And even though I only really ate the cheese and pepperoni and mushrooms off the top, and threw the base into the bin, I’m sure that I accidentally had some bread, which means I broke the most important rule of all: no carbs after five p.m. So I start using the stairs instead of the lift, and it’s taking ages longer than it’s meant to, not least because I’m doing it on my own, but when I’ve done about ten trips I take a photo of my abs on my phone and they are looking really defined, so in fact when Jonathan arrives I’m not cross with him at all but in quite a good mood.

Jonathan isn’t much help anyway, not being as he puts it ‘the lifting type’, but we manage to get everything into the van; it’s mostly clothes in black bin bags, a few books, the television, boxes of kitchen stuff including food, my weights, a couple of rugs and cushions and some bedding. The only furniture is the Eames chair, the Philippe Starck coffee table, the computer desk and the ergonomic chair thing that is giving me back problems. Everything else belongs to the landlord. Jonathan says that the Eames chair and the Philippe Starck coffee table might as well go in the recycling, because they are really old-fashioned, and I should get new ones like the ones he saw in Elle Decoration. I tell him he doesn’t realise how much it costs to buy a flat, and that I can’t afford to start throwing away perfectly good furniture. Not throwing away, says Jonathan, recycling, he would never throw anything away, it’s unethical, but he still thinks I need new furniture and that I should start with an empty shell. I say this is just because he wants to come shopping with me and buy stuff that he can’t afford, and he says that’s not true, he can buy anything he wants, and I say yes but it’s all on credit which you never pay off, and so by the time we finally set off in the van we aren’t speaking to each other. This is not unusual. In all the years that we’ve been best friends, Jonathan and I have fallen out so many times that we’ve got the routine down to a tee.

When we get to the new flat Jonathan has to start speaking to me again so that he can tell me everything that’s wrong with it. The building is facing the wrong way, so the Feng Shui is all out of alignment, apparently, although I thought he gave all that up when he stopped going out with that Feng Shui astrologer last year, and he started referring to it as ‘Feng Shit’. When we park the van and take the first load of stuff up the stairs, he complains that there isn’t a lift, so I tell him that this is a postwar block and that they didn’t put in lifts in those days, people didn’t mind walking up a few flights of stairs and it’s only on the third floor. He doesn’t like the red brick, and he doesn’t like the external landings that run along the front of the building, and when he catches sight of some plant pots and window boxes on the second floor with primroses and crocuses and geraniums in, I think he’s going to faint with disgust. When I get the key in the door, he walks in first and starts looking around as if he owns the place, while I’m still struggling with boxes and bags, and he makes helpful remarks like ‘not much storage space’ and ‘very little light in this room’. I console myself with the knowledge that Jonathan will never own his own home, that he is living in a Housing Association flat that could be taken away at any moment when they find out that he got it under false pretences, claiming that he was a victim of homophobic harassment in his last place. In fact, this never amounted to much more than the old lady downstairs ‘looking at him funny’ but he made such a song and dance that they re-housed him just to shut him up, which I can totally understand.

We get the rest of the stuff into the flat in about ten more trips, and I can’t work out exactly what Jonathan was doing because I seem to recognise all the things that are now stacked up in the middle of the living room as being things that I carried. Jonathan says he sees himself in more of an advisory capacity and that he is going to be my home stylist, which if it’s anything like his personal shopping service when we go out looking for clothes means that the flat will very soon resemble a knocking shop.

By the time I’ve taken the van back and we’ve managed to make a cup of tea and sit down it’s nearly six o’clock, and Jonathan is getting fidgety about Star Search which starts at seven. Jonathan will not go out on a Saturday night any more; he says it’s because town is full of naffs at the weekends, but I know that it’s really because he wants to stay in and watch Star Search. If I phone him when it’s on he doesn’t answer, and there are only two reasons why Jonathan doesn’t answer his phone, and the other one is sex.

He’s ready to leave at half past six which would just about get him home in time, when I tell him that I’ve got a bottle of champagne in a cold bag and I was planning to share it with him as a kind of house-warming. So he looks at me for a while as if he’s doing a few calculations, and then he says okay, he’ll stay for a drink if I can get the TV hooked up as well. So I put the TV on top of a packing case and I pop the cork just as Star Search starts, and Jonathan glares at me and tells me to shush, because he can’t concentrate on two things at once. So we drink the champagne in silence watching Star Search, and Jonathan is completely obsessed by this boy, Lukas, who he thinks is gorgeous and talented and the sort of boyfriend he’d like to live with, basically because he would match Jonathan’s current colour scheme which is chocolate brown and olive green. Lukas has dark brown curly hair and olive skin and he is cute in a retarded-child sort of way. Lukas does a really bad rendition of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and something horrible by Stephen Sondheim, and Jonathan keeps telling me to shut up when I make remarks. I actually catch him crying when Lukas gets a bad score off the judges, and then he asks me if he can use my phone and he votes for Lukas about ten times which considering it costs £1 per call is quite a lot of money.

I tell Jonathan that he is wasting his time obsessing over people on television when he should be going out and meeting a real boyfriend, and then he comes over all enigmatic and says he has plenty of irons in the fire, and besides what would I know about real boyfriends, I haven’t had one since before Christmas. Which is true, but seeing as it’s only March I don’t think that’s so bad, and I tell Jonathan that I’m quite enjoying being single for a while, at which point he looks at me like he’s about to phone for an ambulance.

When Star Search is over we are allowed to have another drink, and Jonathan says that I’ve got a bottle of vodka in a box somewhere, although how he worked that out I really don’t know, seeing as he never went near any boxes when they needed moving. I haven’t got any mixers so he says he’ll put some music on if I’ll go down to the corner shop and get tonic and lemons, and we can have a party. I leave him fiddling around with his iPod which has about 20,000 club tracks on it which all sound exactly the same, although Jonathan spends hours making different playlists and insisting that he would actually be a really good DJ.

I’m glad to get out of the flat for a while, even though I’ve only just moved in, and there is a shop literally across the road OPEN 24 HOURS which is good news. I might as well make myself known, as I will be going in there every day for the rest of my life. Planning meals has never been my strong point, and as long as they sell microwaveable rice, a bit of salad and some herbal tea I can make up the rest of my diet with protein shakes.

When I get to the bottom of the stairs an ambulance really is pulling up with its blue light flashing, which seems like a bad omen on my first night, and I wonder for a moment if Jonathan’s made another bogus emergency call like he did that time he fancied a fireman, and thought that if he dialled 999 he might come round and ‘rescue’ him. But there are two paramedics going to a flat on the second floor.

Jonathan is looking very pleased with himself when I get back, and he says he’s bought me a flat-warming present, and can I guess what it is? He wasn’t carrying anything when he turned up, and I really, seriously hope that it’s not another of his joke presents like the subscription to The Watchtower which I was never able to cancel and will probably keep turning up at my old address for the rest of time. I say thank you, because I believe in good manners even with people like Jonathan, and I ask him what is it? He says I have to guess, and so after I’ve mentioned a few things that I would actually like, like a juicer, and an Xbox, he says, ‘Close your eyes and hold out your hands.’ Jonathan is the sort of person who is quite capable of placing something disgusting in your hands under these circumstances, like for instance parts of his own anatomy, but on this occasion it is something small and cold and square. ‘Now open them!’ he says, and it turns out be a hand mirror with four enormous lines of cocaine chopped out on it. ‘I used your credit card, I hope you don’t mind,’ he says, and then I remember that he cut up all his cards last week when he decided that consumerism was blocking his path to enlightenment, and anyway they were all maxed out.

The cocaine mixes very nicely with the champagne, and I’m feeling quite cheerful when we hear a siren whooping from downstairs. We run to the window and lean out and we can see the paramedics loading a stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One of the paramedics is really good looking, with a shaved head and an earring, and when I mention this to Jonathan he wolf-whistles and shouts out, ‘Oi, mate, my friend fancies you!’ The paramedic looks up and scowls which is quite sexy and I smile and wave, thinking that this might defuse the situation, but he just shakes his head. This is when I notice that the person on the stretcher actually has the blanket pulled up over the face and is therefore almost certainly dead. I pull my head in quickly and pull Jonathan in after me, just as he is drawing breath and opening his mouth to say something ‘funny’. Jonathan’s funny remarks, which he tends to say very loud when he’s had a drink and a line, quite often cause fights, and I have no desire to get into this kind of trouble on my first night in my new home.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ says Jonathan, and I say that I don’t want him saying anything stupid. And he says, ‘Like what? You think I’m going to shout out, “You’ve got a big stiff one there, mate!”’ then he looks a bit sheepish, because obviously that’s exactly what he was planning to say.

Then Jonathan gets upset because he says he’s never seen a dead body before, which isn’t strictly true because there was that time we saw someone being loaded into an ambulance at the back of Fire, and everyone said he was dead as well, but Jonathan was so out of it that night that he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone details like this. He starts crying and saying that if he died nobody would find him for weeks, and so to cheer him up I say we can share the last line. He cuts it into two, one rather bigger than the other, and no prizes for guessing which one goes up his nose, but at least he stops talking about death and starts talking about Madonna instead. He spends the next twenty minutes telling me a long and involved story about how he managed to get six tickets for her shows in Holland which he is now selling for a vast profit on eBay. I know that the coke has really kicked in when he tells me that the lyrics to ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ are very spiritual and that he’s thinking of going over to Kabbalah and changing his name to Habakkuk.

Jonathan says he needs to go online to check the status of his auction, and that he will make us some more drinks if I get my laptop up and running, which fortunately doesn’t take very long because I have mobile wireless broadband, which I only ever seem to use when Jonathan comes around, because most of the rest of the time I use the internet at work. But he persuaded me that I had to have it at home, which is convenient as he no longer has internet access at home, what with the chopping up of the credit cards and other ‘cashflow problems’, all of which will be remedied if he manages to make the expected profit on the Madonna tickets. As soon as I have the computer unpacked and plugged in and connected to the outside world, Jonathan starts happily surfing away, checking his emails, his Gaydar profile and various other profiles that I have never even heard of, chuckling away to himself as he writes replies. When I try to see what he’s writing he shields the screen with his hand, which is a bit much seeing as it’s my computer he’s using, but I say nothing and have my drink quietly on the landing. I presume that these are the ‘irons in the fire’ he was talking about.