Tin Man(23)

My penis looks wistful, but it may be the light. In fact, I’m sure it was bigger once. But I was skinny and skinny men always look as if their cocks are big. It’s all just proportion really, and I’ve seen enough to know. Anyway, it’s been bigger and that’s because I’m teetering on the abyss of impotence and that ache, that throbbing – whatever you want to call it – well, it’s gone. And that’s OK. I like reflexology now because it helps me sleep.

Enough for today. The medication alarm has gone off and I need to check on him. I call him G because he never liked his name. He’s not my boyfriend any more. He’s twenty-six and alone.

It’s late. I’ve made vegetable broth. G’s sleeping and his temperature is 99.5. He’s burning up but he’s got no sweats as yet. I’m not panicking because we’ve been here before. He’s all bone, a T-cell count of zero. What keeps him alive, God only knows, the memory of living, I suppose. Every victory over infection we’ve celebrated, only to be dumped by a wave of despair a week or so later, as the mercury rose again. I know if he goes into hospital he won’t come out, but we said our goodbyes long ago. The morphine drips and I whisper sweet everythings to him. I watch the digital clock flick over. At 21.47 all is calm.

Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.

I used to write for a living. Maybe that’s why I have an aversion to it now. I was a journalist. Started with local press, then freelance. Eventually, I turned to publishing and became an editor. Fiction mainly. I was suited to this because I was good at altering the story. Well, that’s what someone said to me once. At the time, I’m not so sure it was a compliment.

I’ve stopped working for money. I have money. I’m not rich but I’ve enough for my needs. I get a carer’s allowance and buy things that bring pleasure – flowers, a decent-quality steak, that sort of thing. I make sure we eat well, or did, I should’ve said because G’s back on the liquid stuff. Ensure, it’s called – silly name. I mix it with ice cream, and used to get the good stuff. Organic with natural vanilla. I don’t do that now because he doesn’t keep it down.

I can’t do deadlines when everyone is dying. I actually wrote that on my resignation letter. How grand was I? I thought it captured the mood of the day, a mix of the political, the desperate, the personal. Eventually, I put down the wine glass and redrafted. Said something simple like, Time to move on and maybe write? and my publishers understood without asking me more. I worked out my notice and slipped away with a box of books I’d helped to get on to the shelves. Not one was my story, though.

G was an artist when we met. Five years ago now, not long after Mabel’s death. I was sheltering in the National Gallery one rainy afternoon when I noticed him in the crowd, his resemblance to Ellis staggering – kind eyes, that hair, beard waiting to break out – and I followed him for two hours across an eclectic journey of Titian, Vermeer and Cézanne, until we ended up in front of a painting that had come to embody an important part of my childhood. I stood behind him, and in my most sonorous voice, said: He painted it in Arles in 1888, you know. As an act of gratitude. Friendship. And hope.

He laughed. You’re creepy, he said and walked on. He was right. I’m not a natural cruiser. Have been told that many times before.

I followed him down to the bookshop and picked up books I had no intention of reading and looked at postcards I wasn’t going to buy. Come on, he said as he passed me at the door, and we went to a café just off St Martin’s Lane, and after two double espressos and a slab of chocolate torte the embarrassing age-gap between us diminished and I’d persuaded myself it was almost respectable. He asked me where I lived and I said, Soho, not far. Let’s go, he said. Really? I said. But I’m not having sex with you, he said. You’re not the first to say that, I said. I’ve got jet lag, he said. So we can have tea, I said.

We didn’t have sex but we did have tea. He slept and I watched him. And then I slept and woke up alone. A postcard of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on my pillow, a phone number scrawled on the back. I called him that evening, left a message from Vincent on his answer-machine, something about a lost ear. Four days later I was on a train.

He lived in a barn out in Suffolk, rented it off a couple of queens who spent most of their days in France. Friday nights, he’d ride with another bike by his side and meet me at Woodbridge station and we’d cycle the short distance back to his studio barn, where I’d unpack my rucksack and lay out the spoils of our weekend on the rough oak floor – the wine, the food, a video maybe, and the latest manuscript I was working on.

His body was a landscape of angles and valleys, a line of dark hair from his navel exploding around his penis, a light dusting of fuzz across his chest and buttocks. He made me feel who I’d been all those years ago with Ellis – who am I kidding? He reminded me of Ellis and not just in looks but how intense he was, how hidden, and I became the boy I’d once been, living out the fantasy of a long-gone youth.

I could watch for hours as he ground chunks of solid paint pigment and mixed it with oil before scooping it into open-bottomed tubes. He made me calm. Made me learn the names of paints, and I told him that Scarlet Lake and Rose Madder would be our drag queen names, should circumstance ever force us on to the stage.