Lost in Manchester - 1. The Dinner Party Dance. September 2009. Adam.

Fuck, it felt so good to be free.

A cheery middle-aged waitress brought across an ice-cold lager and put it down on the table. Adam took a gulp and sat back in the metal seat, looking out across Piccadilly Gardens.

For the last few months in that prison of a house in the middle of nowhere, the dream of Manchester had seemed so far away. He had whiled away hours thinking of it.

When he lived in Manchester he was going to start shopping in those fancy menswear shops in the creative part of town. He would have drinks in rooftop bars and watch the sun set over the city. He would dance in sweaty nightclubs with muscular topless guys, and after they were done dancing, maybe take them home. Maybe take more than one of them home.

Adam took another gulp of the beer and smiled. Life was good. His new flat was going to be amazing. His new flat was already amazing. And his kooky new lawyer flatmate was going to introduce him to all the smart, funny, rich gay guys in the city. And…wow…

What was that woman wearing? She looked at least ten years too old to wear something that tight. She was having to walk like a penguin just to move at all…

This felt like an amazing place to be right now though. What feeling could be better than starting over? Especially after spending six months in a waning relationship in the tiny town of Odderton. Just stepping off that train this morning was special.

The train had been cram-full of people, but when he disembarked, he had taken two steps off and then stopped dead. Other passengers had flowed around him irritably, like he was an obstacle in the river bed, but he was oblivious. It was a moment, and sometimes you had to just stop and feel these things.

Man. What did that guy have in his joggers? It was like it went down to his knee. Kind of hypnotic actually, watching as he walked past…

Adam downed the remainder of his pint and picked up his bag. It was moving in time.

He slowly zig-zagged his way through the creative Northern Quarter of the city. The grid of streets were narrow and largely traffic-free, and the buildings were steep and decorous, making him feel invisible as he took it all in.

A side alley with a neon sign exposing the entrance to a men only sauna, a giant graffiti mural of a Blue Tit covering the full side of an old industrial building, then a bar with a grand piano in the window, every inch if it covered like a mirror ball. There were pavement slabs with poetry carved into them, and music seeped out from the glow of a dimly lit jazz bar.

Round the next corner a group of guys in full football kit were heading his way. You never wanted to glance too obviously, but even from here it was hard not to be distracted. The biceps on the guy in the black vest top, and the thighs on the guy in the very short white shorts.

He stopped to glance into a men’s clothing shop where a nicely shaped leather jacket caught his eye. That could totally work. I’m totally interested in this item, not just stopping so I can better check out the footballers.

He glanced quickly back at the ensuing group. Those tight, tight shorts, and those obvious bulges. God, it was like someone had taught straight guys about cruising.

They passed by and he watched their close-up reflections in the window as they went, before pulling himself away and onwards.

He turned a final corner and reached his new home, entering the cool air-conditioned reception of Cotton Tower. He glanced up at the grey-haired concierge, who gave a smile of acknowledgement, recognising him from various visits to drop things off over the last few days. Adam walked past and took the shiny lift up to floor twelve.

Cotton Tower was one of the newest blocks in the city and had been built in an old industrial area. The flats were all fully furnished and the building had a gym on the top floor. Adam spent a few minutes walking around his new flat, enjoying how light it was, stretching out on the large L-shaped sofa, checking through the gleaming kitchen cupboards, and gazing out at the balcony view across the city.

After a few minutes he heard a flush, then the sound of a door opening from the hallway, and Paul appeared in the lounge.

“Hey flatmate, how’s it going? I didn’t know you were in.”

“Hiii” the lawyer trilled back. “Well, you know me, quiet as a mouse” he said smiling, “unless I’m pissed and walking into stuff like a moron”.

Adam smiled and went in for a hug, which he immediately regretted.

Some people were just not born to hug, and Paul was one of them. His long arms gangled over Adam’s shoulders like octopus tentacles and the centres of their chests seemed to magnetically repel one another. Adam quickly broke free of the excruciating embrace and they each gathered themselves together again.

“Fuck, it’s nice to be back on British soil” Paul said, moving swiftly on.

“You’ve been away?”

“Yeah, over in our New York office this last week trying to sort out a case they’ve been royally fucking up over there. Only got back yesterday evening, then I had to get all these boxes moved across here.”

Paul gave a comedic roll of the eyes before leaning in, as if letting Adam in on a secret.

“Then I have to be back in the fucking office again this afternoon.”

Adam laughed politely. “Sounds rubbish. Did you get the case sorted though?”

Paul rolled his eyes.

“Honestly, it was such a nightmare. They had a team of six American lawyers working on it out there, and had completely fucked the whole thing up. So I had to go in and talk some sense into them. They don’t seem to get that if a deal is made in the UK, then it’s subject to UK law.”

Adam nodded vaguely.

Paul laughed, thinking back. “There was this one guy, who is apparently their expert on British law, and was trying to tell me about UK patent rules, and I’m like I got a first in law from Bristol. You don’t even know where fucking Bristol is.

“Anyway” Paul said, seeming to register Adam’s less than fascinated look, “how’s everything with you? Move gone ok?”

Adam’s face lit up again.

“I’m so glad to have arrived”.

He glanced out to the corridor where an eruption of belongings, badly packed into suitcases, overflowing cardboard boxes and Ikea bags was spilling out through the doorway to his room.

“I mean, I have a little bit of unpacking to do. How amazing is this flat though?”

Paul laughed. “I know. Every queer in the city will be begging to come home with us at the end of the night.”

Paul made a small sound like he had just remembered something, and darted through to his room. He re-emerged with a photocopy of a law journal article about the case he had been working on.

“You’ve got to see this” he said, proudly presenting it.

Adam skim read the article. It was something to do with patent rights over a tobacco blend that Paul’s company had created. There was a photo of Paul in the top corner and his name was mentioned several times in the article. It was hard not to be impressed.

“Hey” Adam said smiling. “You’re a law celebrity!”

“Glass of Colombard?” Paul asked.

“Hell yes! I think we deserve a celebratory glass”

“Exactly. Just a little glass. Or two” Paul said, his expression playing it as an innocent suggestion.

Adam laughed. “Exactly. Just one or three glasses.”

Within an hour they had finished the bottle, and Adam had found out a bit more about his new flatmate. Paul had clearly had a very different kind of upbringing to him. He was from a well-off family, his parents both high paid professionals, and they had a house with three acres of land in a leafy part of Shropshire. It wasn’t all inherited success though. It sounds like he’d worked hard. He won some young lawyer of the year prize at University and came top of his year, and he’d made some smart career moves to get where he was.

The back story was sort of daunting, but he was still such an approachable, easy to talk to and kind of normal gay guy. It felt quite good that a very openly gay guy could be so successful so quickly in his career these days.

Once they were done with the wine, Paul declared he had to get back to the office, but invited Adam to join him and a few of his Tory friends for dinner that evening. He was going to cook when he got back from the office. A dinner party sounded like the perfect end to his first day in the big city.

Once Adam had the flat to himself he fished a beer out of the fridge, flicked through to Cher on his iPod, turned up the volume and delved into the first box.

He made good progress for the first hour or so, but by two hours in, was starting to despair at the undiminishing pile of boxes splattered across his room. Every time he took a box of belongings and found a home for its contents, another seemed to fill its place, like a lizard’s tail growing back again.

He threw down a poorly rolled sleeping bag onto the floor in frustration, having tried and failed to fit it into three different cupboards. Today’s urban architects apparently had no interest in storage space. The string holding it together came undone and he watched it slowly roll out into the corridor.

Paul returned and started preparing food in the kitchen, giving Adam an extra urgency to at least get all the boxes in the hall cleared up before guests arrived.

He was close to finished when the bell rang for the first guest, and he heard Paul welcome somebody in and show them through to the lounge. He gave them a couple of minutes before heading through to find Paul stirring a pan of sauce on the cooker, and a stranger sitting on the sofa, glugging a large glass of white wine. Paul introduced Adam to his fuck buddy, Steve, and after an awkward pause as neither of them seemed to have expected that introduction, they made small talk as Paul focused on the dinner.

Steve looked younger than his 24 years. His face looked naïve, almost simple, but when he spoke it was with a matter-of-fact intelligence. It wasn’t the greatest surprise to discover he was a website designer. His short ginger hair was boyish and he was wearing a shirt that was slightly too big and slightly too formal.

Chatting with Steve wasn’t easy. Adam tried asking with a wry smile whether he had worked on any porn websites, and got a five minute critique on the poor layout and colour contrasts of most of those sites, the alarming frequency with which you couldn’t properly read the text, or make sense of it, the disregard paid to spelling, and the need in summary to start again from a blank sheet. He hadn’t worked on any though, no.

It was a relief when a knock came at the front door, and Paul skipped down the corridor to answer it.

“Helloooo dahlings” Paul’s voice exclaimed, ringing through the flat.

There was a lot of quick conversation exchanged and various whoops. Then one of the guests let out an almighty squealing laugh.

They entered the lounge and Paul gleefully gave introductions. “Guys, this is Adam, the new flatmate, and Steve, who you’ve heard about. Adam, Steve, this is Simon, and this is Mr Mark Hyman”, he paused for effect, “AKA, the hyena”.

Mark rolled back his head and squealed with laughter again.

Adam nodded a hello. “So why do they call you the hyena?”

The group settled around the large sofa and Paul filled glasses of wine for everybody.

“So, this new place is gorgeous” Simon said, looking around the room. “And that view from the balcony is fabulous”.

Simon was a pleasant surprise. Adam had not held out high hopes for Paul’s Tory friends, but Simon was tall, dark and apparently in decent shape under that tight-fitting t-shirt. He seemed a little camp when excitable but you could live with a little camp. His jeans were pretty snug too, and by the look of things, he didn’t need to be shy. Adam was trying to stop his eyes being drawn downward whenever Simon was talking.

“You should see the gym on the top floor” Steve added eagerly. “The views are even better”.

Paul looked at him. “Alright Steve, it’s not your flat is it?”

Steve didn’t respond but his cheeks showed a little red. Adam caught his eye and gave a sympathetic smile, but Steve seemed to misread it as mockery and scowled back. There was an awkward silence, before Paul declared that dinner was ready and everybody moved across to the dining table.

Paul brought across an impressive lasagne, and started to dish up.

“It looks faaabulous” Mark exclaimed.

“Well...i’m not exactly the world’s best chef, but I went on this exclusive cookery course with Gary Rhodes, and this was one of his specialities, so it should be good...”

He paused again for effect, and looked over his glasses to the two Tories.

“...or else i’m gonna find Gary fucking Rhodes and cut off his bollocks” he concluded.

The two Tory boys giggled away.

Everybody tucked in and rapidly moved onto their second glasses of wine.

“So Simon” Paul asked, “Have you told that new guy of yours that you’re a Tory yet?”

“Fuck no. We haven’t even shagged yet.”

Adam laughed. “Does it really put guys off?”

“Would it put you off?”

Adam paused too long.

“Exactly. Coming out as a Tory is way harder than coming out as gay”.

“Especially in fucking Labour stronghold Manchester” Paul added.

Mark giggled away at a thought that had just come to him. “Talking of local politics, girls” he said, “Did you hear the rumour that the local Lib Dems are about to shoot themselves in the bollocks again by going against their own party and backing the airport extension”.

Simon leaned forward “Nooooo! Where did you hear that?”

“Apparently Gordon whatshisface had private talks with the airport owners”

“Jeeesus, it’s not like they have many fucking policies” Paul said. “You’d think they might actually remember the few they have got”

Simon shook his head. “They’re such a joke”

“It doesn’t matter either way though” Paul said, sitting back and taking a sip of his wine. “The airport extension is happening. I know the owners. They’ve already got the Labour councillors in their pockets. It’s a dead cert.”

“So when are you organising the next Tory cottage weekend?” Mark asked Simon, after a pause.

“We Tories do love a bit of cottaging” Paul chipped in, and Mark’s hyena laugh resonated around the room again.

“Well, hopefully sometime in the New Year. But, we’ve got to make sure you don’t get too drunk again, after last time...”

“Oh god, last time...” Mark said, giggling to himself.

“So what do you get up to at these weekends?” Adam asked.

“Honey, you do not want to know” Mark retorted and squealed away.

“Well” Paul announced, and paused for a second to get everybody’s attention. “Basically, we have a nice walk in the country in the day, then we go back to the cottage, drink fuckloads of gin and whisky and generally end up having a big orgy”.

Adam smiled uncomfortably. He didn’t really want to imagine these guys doing that. Well, Simon maybe. Definitely not the other two.

“It’s not that bad” Simon added. “I mean, it has been a bit debaucherous at times, but I wouldn’t say orgy”

“So long as you don’t start doing your impression again” Mark said to Paul.

The smile on Simon’s face dropped. “More wine everyone?” he interrupted. He stood and grabbed the bottle from the kitchen worktop, before anybody could speak.

“So, what do you do for work Adam?” Simon asked, unscrewing the bottle as he walked back over.

“What’s your impression?” Steve asked, the only one not willing to let this pass.

They all went quiet.

Paul gulped some more wine down. “Well, Stevie” he said. “Basically, I get some shoe polish out, rub it over my face and walk around talking like a negro”.

Mark squealed away.

“What the fuck?” Adam said, pushing his chair back from the table.

“You know your political careers will be completely screwed if there are photos like that around” Simon said.

Paul and Mark exchanged glances like reprimanded teenagers, seeming to revel in the moment.

Adam stood up. “Look, I think I’m going to leave you guys to it.”

“Stay Adam” Simon said, standing up. “It only happened once and he was properly drunk. It was just a dumb joke”.

Adam felt light headed. He looked at the others, then back at Simon, distracted again by the outline of the monster below.

Paul smirked, looking fairly tipsy. “It’s true. It was only once. No offence intended”. He sat up purposefully. “It’s dessert time anyway.”

Adam reluctantly started to collect the plates away then returned to the table.

“Talking of afters” Paul said to the others, i’ve got a little something for us to make tonight go with a bang”. He pulled a small clear plastic bag out of his pocket and gave it a little shake.

“Well, that sounds good” Simon replied, seeming to immediately forget their disagreement.

“You know I can’t take any of that stuff” Steve said, “with my heart condition”.

“What’s your condition?” Adam asked.

He looked at Adam like the question was an annoyance. “Basically if there are any sudden shocks to my body, and to my heart rate, I can totally blackout. It happens to me quite a lot actually. Even during sex sometimes.”

“In other words he’s a weak little fuck” Paul said, and sat back giggling away to himself.

They moved onto a dessert of crème caramel. Everyone was onto the third or fourth glass of wine of the evening, and conversation had moved past the awkward earlier moments.

“Now, Mark” Paul said, “if you’re coming out tonight, make sure that you ask to see the ID of a guy before you shag him ok?”

“Oh, fuck off” Mark shouted back, almost cackling now. He glanced round eagerly at the others, and particularly Paul, seeming to revel in the fraternal teasing.

Adam looked at the other faces for an explanation.

“A few weeks ago, little miss naughty here went and accidentally slept with a 15 year old” Simon explained.

“Pfffff” Paul said as he swallowed down more wine. “Accident my arse”.

“It definitely wasn’t your arse honey” Mark squawked, and the three Tories collapsed in giggles.

Adam looked around at the drunken sniggering faces. He thought back to university and the crazy nights they used to have on the town, and the banter the next morning. It was kind of like this he reflected. Just not quite so intensely camp.

“I know what we need” Paul said suddenly and skipped over to his iPod, shuffling through with a determined look.

And that was when Billy Joel started.

By now the room was lit only by candles and the lights of the city flowing in through the big balcony windows. This youthful, high-flying, bespectacled lawyer was standing in the middle of the room and started to sway to the opening bars of Piano Man. On hearing it, the two other Tories jumped to their feet, whooped like children and formed a line with Paul, swaying to the music, merry and awkward in equal measures.

Adam looked across to Steve, who returned his confused look.

At the chorus, sing us a song, you’re the piano man...their voices crescendoed and their glasses clinked together.

Adam watched in wonder. At first it was like three boy scouts singing round a campfire. Sort of cute, in a geeky way, all brotherhood and high spirits. Or maybe like karaoke nights in the student union. Everyone cramming round a single microphone to be part of the song.

The more it went on though, the less it felt like that. They were all singing, but not necessarily all together. They weren’t actually really swaying together either. When he looked from face to face, they each seemed to be in their own personal world.

Paul beckoned to the two of them still seated to join the line. Adam looked again at Steve who seemed to be wavering.

Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness. But it’s better than drinking alone.

The lyrics stuck in Adam’s head. Is that what this was?

Steve glanced across at Adam once more, clearly deciding this was not the side of the group he wanted to be on, and reluctantly joined the line. Adam felt strangely betrayed.

He disappeared to bed shortly afterwards, claiming tiredness and leaving the other four to carry on their night.

For a while he sat looking at the piles of boxes still left to be unpacked and saw how much junk he had. Ornaments that had lain round his old house, but which he had never had much affection for. He pictured them resting on the mantelpiece on that afternoon, almost three months ago.

He would never forget that moment, sitting on the sofa, in his old house, in his old life. After weeks of bickering over trivial things it had finally come to a head. He could remember the very seconds that ticked past as his brain tried to formulate the words he needed to vocalise the terrible looming question. The four words that would change everything. Should we split up?

The silence between them screamed out the obvious but impossible answer. After that, financial realities had kept him trapped in Odderton for three more months, until their rent contract expired. During that time Adam planned for and dreamed about this move to a big new city and a whole new life. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the time finally came.

He looked again at the tiny room he was sitting alone in, surrounded by clutter and listening to the sounds of the group in the lounge, presumably inhaling whatever powder was in that packet.

Here he was. This was the dream.