A Walk Along the Promenade - 2. Scene One, A Seaside Promenade in Summer, Part 2

Even as an adult there was no escape from Nathan’s shadow. Repeatedly his mother would compare him negatively to Nathan. Whenever she was annoyed with him, she complained that he was never as good as Nathan. It was worse at work, whenever she lost her temper with him she would attack him for not being as good as Nathan. The worst had been when he’d just turned thirty, the company had received its third complaint about a carer Shaun had employed, the third complaint coming with a threat to remove a lucrative contract. In front of the whole office, she’d screamed at him, “Nathan holds down an important job for an airplane builder without screwing up! You could only get this job because I run the company and you still screw-up! You are just a waste of space!”

Shaun had been sat there at his desk, staring down at his keyboard, as his mother shouted at him and then stormed out of the office. Behind her the office had fallen into an unusual silence. Shaun hadn’t looked up from his desk, the humiliation was nothing new, but he didn’t want to see the expression on their faces, expressions only telling him his mother was right.

It was Marni, her mother’s long-standing office manager, who had placed her hand on Shaun’s shoulder and quietly said:

“Ignore your mother’s bullshit, you keep this company going.”

He’d looked up to see her gently smiling at him.

“She’s hired dozens of carers we’ve since had to sack. You hire one of them and she rips you out in front of everyone. This company wouldn’t be doing as well without you,” Marni added, as she gently squeezed his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he’d quietly replied.

Marni’s words had given him a burst of self-confidence. More and more he saw the mistakes his mother made at work and how it was him that picked up on them and stopped them causing any further harm. It was him who would defuse his mother’s anger before she could let it rip on one of her employees in their big open-plan office. It was him that was the barrier between the company’s army of carers and his mother.

When six months later his mother said that she said she was buying a luxury mansion house on a new out-of-town estate, Shaun had told her he wouldn’t be moving with her. He knew he had been living with her for far too long, now that he had finally finished his part-time degree he knew he needed to live on his own and find a life for himself.

“What am I supposed to do in a house that size on my own?” His mother had barked back at him

“You’ll cope,” he’d replied, though he’d wanted to tell her to get a dog or a boyfriend.

He’d found a flat not far from the company’s office, a five-minute car drive away. The flat was small, an open-plan kitchen and lounge, and bedroom with the bathroom off it, but it was all his. He didn’t have to worry about his mother barging in on him unexpectedly. If she turned up unexpectedly, she would have to negotiate the flat’s intercom system.

The first thing he’d done, once he’d settled into his new home, was to start to watch gay porn. No one would disturb him, once he was home on his own, so he could finally enjoy it. At first, he’d bought himself a handful of DVDs, off a website. He’d strip down to his underwear, put a porn DVD into his DVD player, sit back and enjoy it, and himself. But soon he knew those DVDs backwards, knew every stroke and gasp of them. It was then that he discovered there was a whole world of gay porn out there on the internet, and most of it was free to watch, and Shaun watched it. He explored the gamut of gay porn, watched all the different things naked men could do sexually together. Some of it he’d enjoyed, some of it excited him beyond anything he could image, and some of it had left him cold or even repulsed.

At first watching all this different porn had been exciting and thrilling, but soon it had a repetitive feel to it. Visually it was still stimulating but physically it was only his own hand, and there were just so many different ways his hand could bring him to sexual relief, in reality there were only a few different ways.

Shortly after his thirty-second birthday he decided that he had to do something about his sexuality. It could no longer be just be a spectator activity for him.

Shaun stretched out his left leg again, only to be greeted by a sharp pain rushing up his leg and almost punching him the groin. He gasped through his teeth, swearing under his breath. He wished this pain would just ease, would just ease up enough so he could walk back to his hotel. He bit down on the pain, and slowly pulled his left leg up until it bent at ninety degrees again.

He glanced out at the beach again, the strip of white sand that the incoming tide had not reached. Two large, white seagulls were down there on the sand, fighting over a battered piece of fish. Both seagulls were viciously pecking at the battered fish and squawking and pecking at each other. None of the seagulls he’d seen in Scarborough appeared under feed, all of them seemed well nourished, yet they would seem to readily fight over any piece of food they could find. Was this why they all seemed well nourished?

He lived in a small South Yorkshire market town, called Long March, and the place had no discernible gay life, if you ignored a notorious gent’s public toilet by the train station and Shaun certainly did. If he wanted any kind of gay life he’d have to travel to Leeds or even Manchester, and how would he explain that to his mother? Though he now lived on his own she still insisted that he came to her house every weekend for Sunday dinner, and he didn’t know how he would explain weekends spend in Leeds or Manchester to her.

The answer had come with the use of his phone. He’d had a Smartphone for a long time, and he had a lot of different apps on it. Then he realised he could download gay dating apps onto it (He’d heard some of the women at work discussing dating apps, and wondered if there any gay ones. A simple Google search proved there were). Another simple bit of online searching and he’d a selection of free apps to download and he did, making sure he didn’t copy any of their icons onto the home screen of his phone. He didn’t want his mother seeing any of them and asking awkward questions.

It had taken him awhile to understand how to connect with other men on those apps. He quickly picked-up how to navigate his way around the apps, computers were his thing, but how to talk to men on the apps was something new to him, and there was no one there to help him. He’d had to learn it himself, he’d had to learn through trial and error, and several Google searches for advice. Eventually he learnt the language of those apps and began to meet men.

The first man he had sex with was called Paul. Shaun had messaged him through one of his apps for a week before they met. They’d had a drink together in one of the town’s several pubs, just a quiet drink, and over their pints they had clicked. Paul was handsome, with neatly styled dark black hair and bright blue eyes, and friendly, and Shaun was very quickly taken by him.

After a couple of pints together, they had returned to Shaun’s flat. There, on Shaun’s sofa, he’d lost his virginity, well part of it. They had kissed, Shaun had been surprised and pleased to find the contrast between Paul’s smooth lips and the sandpaper rough stubble of his checks, they had removed each other’s clothes, Shaun had been too excited to savour this, he was in such a hurry to experience Paul’s naked body, and then Paul’s mouth had closed over Shaun’s erect cock. Shaun had thrown his head back, the pleasure had been sudden, unexpected and deeply exciting. This was far more excitement and pleasure than his own hand could ever generate, and Shaun had loved it, even though he had orgasmed quickly, his semen spraying over Paul’s chest. In his turn, after a moment of catching his own breath, Shaun had placed Paul’s cock into his own mouth. He’d felt no repulsion as he did so, only an excitement that he was actually having sex now. Paul’s cock had tasted tart on his tongue, soon to be replaced by a sweet and salty taste, as pre-cum covered Paul’s cockhead. He’d not been able to deep throat Paul’s cock, barely getting it to the middle of his mouth before he gagged but he was able to push Paul’s cock inside of his check, causing Paul to groan out loud. He’d felt so excited, with a deep ripple of pride, that the first time he had sucked a cock he had given the man such pleasure. He could do it, could enjoy sex and give pleasure to another man.

Paul had shouted: “I’m coming,” and the next moment his cock had erupted with semen, white after white shots of semen shooting out of the end of his cock and landing across Shaun’s check, his neck, his shoulder. It was hot against his skin and surprisingly runny, tiny rivers of it quickly running down Shaun’s skin.

After they had both cum, they cleaned themselves with one of Shaun’s hand towels, and then awkwardly dressed again. Once their passion was over Shaun realised, he knew so little about Paul and now he found it difficult to make small-talk. Was it always like this awkward after sex? He silently asked himself. Then Paul had lightly and drily kissed him on the lips and said:

“Call me, this was fun.”

And then Paul was gone, letting himself out of the flat’s front door and gone into the night.

Shaun had sat himself back down on his sofa, his feet bare and his shirt untucked. The room smelt strongly of the sex they just had, he could see clear drops of their semen casually cast onto the carpet, and yet it felt suddenly very quiet. Did everyone feel this disappointed after sex, was it always a let-down like this? He asked himself.

Paul never contacted him again. Shaun sent him several text messages, two or three a day over the next week but none of them were answered. He called Paul several times over that week but always his calls went straight to voicemail, and none of them were returned. At the end of the week he tried to contact Paul via the dating app, none of his texts and calls having been returned, only to find he couldn’t message Paul. Paul had blocked him on the app. It was then that he finally realised what he was being told, Paul didn’t want to see him again. Paul’s parting comment had been a lie.

(Over a month later he saw Paul, out in the town centre, as Shaun was rushing to buy his lunch of sandwich and fruit. Paul and another man, a man just was attractive as Paul but with thick, brown loose hair, and they were looking into an estate agent’s window together. Their bodies were close, their shoulders almost touching, their heads leaning towards each other’s. Shaun had rushed past them and purposefully not looked back at them.)