Boy Parts(47)

I am still highly sceptical when I put the shoot into my diary, and I spend the entirety of my yoga class feeling weirdly pissed off. Granted, this could have been triggered by the skinny bint with white-girl dreads leading the class. Not our usual teacher, she smells of dirty hair, and keeps talking about how Mercury is in retrograde and chakras and other shit. She tries to correct my form while I’m in a perfectly acceptable bow pose, and I ‘accidentally’ let go of my ankle and boot her in the stomach. Mercury is blamed, and I am left to my own devices for the rest of the class.

I’ve barely closed my front door when the bell rings. Eddie from Tesco is distorted in the peephole, clutching a bouquet. I open the door; the flowers aren’t even from Tesco. He tells me straight away that they’ve been teasing him all day at work for having flowers, saying they were probably for his mam. I ask him what he thinks he’s doing. He says that he can’t stop thinking about me. He doesn’t understand why I’d sleep with him but he’s really grateful that I have. He wanted to give me the flowers as a thank you.

‘For… fucking you?’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘It sounds weird when you put it like that.’

‘It is weird,’ I tell him.

‘Can I come in?’

‘What for?’ He just wants to see me. Chat. Maybe watch a film. ‘We didn’t watch a film last time though, did we?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘But… we could?’

I let him in. We don’t watch a film. I haven’t even had a chance to change out of my ‘active wear’, so I tell him I’m taking a shower, and leave a trail of Lycra behind me as I ascend the stairs. I shower with the bathroom door open, assuming he’ll take a hint and get in with me, but he doesn’t. He stands in the doorway, and watches.

‘How are you real?’ he asks.

‘Dunno.’ I look over to him, wiping water from my eyes. He is smiling at me. His neck is rimmed with bruises, a print of my hands wrought on his light brown skin in purples, reds and blues. ‘Your neck looks fucked up,’ I say.

‘Yeah. I’ve been telling people I got into a bar fight.’ He snorts. ‘You should see the other bloke! And stuff. I told my best friend? So he could vouch for me. Like, yeah this mental charva grabbed him at ’Spoons.’

‘Are you embarrassed of me, or something?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t really want people to know I’ve… like… been doing, um…’ He clears his throat. ‘Kinky stuff. Plus, I just don’t think anyone would believe me if I, like, told them, and they looked you up on Facebook, or Insta or something. The friend I told called me a liar when I showed him you – he said you were probably catfishing me, and I’d done the bruises myself in a wanking accident.’ He laughs, awkwardly. ‘I followed you on Instagram by the way – hope that’s okay.’

‘Fifty thousand other people do,’ I say. I shampoo my hair. ‘I don’t give a shit.’

‘Cool…’ He clears his throat. ‘Cool, cool, cool. Do you have anything to drink? Not wine? If that’s okay?’

‘I have a little fridge in the garage. There’s some old Moretti in there. Bring me a bottle, if you’re going.’

He comes back with two very old bottles of beer, which I lean around the shower curtain to grab. He sits on the toilet and drinks his beer.

‘Who’s Frank Steel?’ he asks.

‘Who?’

‘F… Frank Steel? You posted a picture the other day from ages ago. It’s you in your underwear and the caption said Frank Steel took it? And I just… I saw a box in your garage labelled Frank, which made me remember. He’s a photographer, then?’

‘Oh. Frank. Yeah. Frank was like a guest academic at CSM. I modelled for them once or twice, no big deal. Sort of an ex. We had a brief thing. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Okay… Pronoun dodge…’ he says, with a knowing smirk. I purse my lips. When I’m done finger-combing in my leave-in conditioner, I poke my head out of the shower, and scowl at him.

‘I didn’t pronoun dodge,’ I snap. He’s still smirking. ‘Fuck off.’ I see him pull his phone from his pocket. ‘Don’t you fucking dare google it.’

‘Too late,’ he says. I catch a palm full of water, and fling it at him, like a chimp flinging shit. ‘Irina! So she’s a woman, who cares? It’s fine. It’s cool, I’m not like… I’m not… homophobic. Biphobic. Whatever. Like, if anything, I think this is great.’ I’m still scowling. I sit down in the bath and start shaving my legs, waiting for my conditioner to sink in. Eddie from Tesco rambles, and rambles. ‘Oh God, not in a gross way, I mean. I really don’t care like… I’m not one of these men who’s really into lesbian porn stuff? I’m like… I mean I’ve done stuff with men before, it’s just so not a big deal.’ I perk up at that, give him an expectant oh aye? from the floor of the bath. He colours and chugs half his bottle of beer. ‘Yeah. I mean. Whatever, you know?’ He snorts, makes a show of shrugging even though he’s about as red as I’ve ever seen him. ‘Whatever.’

‘Tell me about it, then, if it’s not a big deal, all these blokes you’ve—’