Lost in Manchester - 13. Triggers. December 2009. Daniel.

Before they even arrived at the pub, this had felt like a bad idea.

Adam had said his flatmate, Paul, would be coming. Paul, the lawyer. Paul, who Daniel had been chatting to on Gayzer for two months now. And who just last night was talking about tying Daniel to the bedposts, stuffing sports socks in his mouth and inviting friends over to play with his restrained body.

He had still never met Paul, not even passed him in the lobby. He had spotted him one time, sitting by the window in a café in town with some other guy, but nothing closer than that.

Until today their whole relationship had been online messages and occasional times speaking on web cam. His head told him he should be worried that something might slip out, with Carl sitting right there next to him, yet somehow, he couldn’t bring himself entirely to care about that eventuality. The bigger thing, much bigger, was the anticipation of meeting Paul.

Ali hated him, of course, but she disliked all of his boyfriends, especially the more controlling ones. Not that Paul was his boyfriend of course. Not yet at least.

Then, as it turned out, their first meeting went worse than any of the possible outcomes he had considered. Paul turned up at the same time as Adam, but with a new boyfriend in tow. If he recognised Daniel at all, he definitely didn’t show it. Over the course of the first half an hour Daniel found himself trying to catch Paul’s eye, desperate for some acknowledgement or flicker of recognition, but Paul looked straight through him.

After Paul left, things hardly got better. Ali raised the issue with the kid at school, and he was going to get grief from Carl about that later. He hadn’t talked to Carl about it before because he didn’t know how he felt about it himself. It was a weird situation. Jay was a Year 11, about 16, but was mature for his age. Pretty confident too. He was one of those kids that Daniel would have definitely fallen for if he’d been in that year at school, or even the year or two above. Even now, they were only eight years apart. But he tried not to think like that. He was good at separating out feelings from responsibilities. You had to be as a teacher.

Despite Jay’s confidence though, the others kids seemed to have decided that he was gay. Daniel could never understand how that worked. The kid himself probably didn’t know, so how could other kids? It had been different for Daniel. He had been so obviously gay at school there had been no point trying to hide it, and kids had made that hell for him. He really wanted to do something to spare Jay from that, regardless of the kid’s actual sexuality. He just didn’t know what.

When the sound of the window smashing came, Daniel was sitting at the table with Carl and James. The other two were talking about some film or other, but Daniel was watching as Ali cautiously approached the window.

As she stood there, looking out for just a couple of seconds, everything seemed to happen in a rush. It was like his senses were working independently but didn’t have time to piece together what was happening. Several people screamed at the sound of the smashing glass. Daniel saw Ali throw her hands up instinctively to cover her face and dive down backwards onto her side. Around the room drinkers jumped to their feet. From across the table, James gave a terrified yelp and backed away to the far wall behind them.

In that moment James suddenly looked very familiar. Amidst the chaos, he could picture James, so crisply, sitting there in that café with Paul, sipping coffee nervously. That same sheep in the headlights look.

‘Let’s get the beers in’ someone outside shouted, and the front doors started to shake violently.

It felt like those two drinks had gone straight to his head. The taste of stale beer was ripe on his tongue. He could smell the second-hand cigarette smoke in his face.

He was 16, and illicitly drinking at the same pub that everyone in his year went to. The only place that would serve them. He was heading back to the main bar, along a dingy corridor from the toilets when two guys from his year grabbed him and pulled him through a fire escape into the yard at the back. They pushed him forward so he was standing before a group of five or six guys.

Apparently he had been trying to check them out in the toilets, so came the accusation. It was probably true, but of course, he tried to deny it. Jordan McKenzie stepped forward. Jordan was so charismatic and maybe the hottest guy in the year. Definitely the hottest guy. He had never spoken to Daniel before, or even acknowledged his existence, although he’d been a recurring character in Daniel’s dreams. Jordan instructed him to say sorry to the two guys that had grabbed him, like he was the judge in this case and his verdict was final. Daniel had no choice but to comply with the sentence.

Carl put an arm around his waist and Daniel glanced across to see Carl’s gaze trained on the door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that James had dropped to the floor and curled himself into a ball. The doors rattled again and a couple of shoulders thudded against it.

He just wanted to get out of there. He felt humiliated at having to apologise, but it could have been so much worse. They seemed to go quiet, so he started to turn and edge back to the fire doors and back into the safety of the pub. A couple of steps from the door, he heard a movement behind him, and felt a sudden weight of fluid empty over his head, running through his hair, down his neck and over his top. He turned to see the smirking face of the guy who first grabbed him, holding a now-empty glass of beer aloft like a trophy.

“Keep your eyes to yourself next time, queer” he said, and cold laughter from all around echoed through the yard.

Daniel’s body was tensed, ready for the next wave of attack from outside. He looked around as the room seemed frozen in anticipation. It finally struck him that there was no broken glass across the floor.

The rattling at the door stopped and the noise gradually faded from its frenzied peak. A few seconds ticked on, and nothing happened. The room breathed and time seemed to catch back up.

Ali uncurled herself and looked around confused. Daniel raced over, and Adam quickly joined him by her side.

“What happened?” she said, “I thought the window smashed.”

“I thought so too” Daniel said, looking up at the still fully intact bay window.

Adam smiled. “It must have been bottles shattering when they hit the outside.”

“Oh man” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Nice dive though” Daniel said. “Very Bourne”. She grinned up at him.

Suddenly the doors started rattling again, more violently than the first time. They could hear shouting from outside.

Cameron was over there in a flash this time.

“Touch my fucking door one more time you little bastard and I’ll have your throat out for a cock-ring”.

The noise died again almost instantly. A minute of silence passed, then Daniel and the others returned to the table.

They all sat in shell shocked silence and watched as Cameron sent a message through on the radio to update the other listeners. Next, he came round each of the tables to check that everybody was ok. Daniel sat close in to Carl, with his boyfriend’s arm still around him. James sat on the far side of the table, leaning back against the high seat. He looked pale and his eyes were puffed up.

Cameron finally made it across to their table and touched Ali on the shoulder.

“You ok?”

“Course I am. I’ve started football training, playing in goal. I was just practicing back there, you know.”

Cameron smiled and nodded.

Fifteen minutes later, after they were sure the trouble had passed, Cameron opened up the doors again and the room quickly emptied into the still night. They said farewell to Cameron, and Daniel led them out, one hand holding Carl’s, and the other Ali’s. None of them said a word on the way back to the flat.

Daniel thought of Jay, the kid from school. Right now, that threat of physical attack must be his every day experience.