Lost in Manchester - 19. Schooldays. March 2010. Daniel

Daniel walked through to the lounge, threw his heavy bag of marking down and slumped onto the sofa.

Ali put down the magazine she was glancing through at the table.

“Good day stud?”

“Ugh.”

“Wow, that good?”

“I’ve had better. How about you? Anything exciting?”

Ali raised her eyebrows. “Well, you could say…”

She spilled out the story of the missing flatmate that Adam told her over lunch. Daniel watched her eyes blaze brightly as she explained that Paul wasn’t even a lawyer and that his whole life story was a concoction. She was radiating righteous mistrust. It couldn’t have been more obvious what she was thinking if she’d got an all-male ballet troupe to parade around the room with I fucking told you so tattooed across their torsos.

“Poor Adam” Daniel concluded.

“What?” she said, like he had reached entirely the wrong conclusion from the story.

Daniel loved his flatmate for many reasons, but her inability to sidestep an opportunity for self-congratulation was not foremost amongst them.

“Well, he’s going to have all of that debt land on his shoulders right?”

She looked at him and blinked a couple of times, before her face seemed to absorb that perspective.

“Yeah, I guess so. Paul really screwed him over.”

 

Daniel stared past her into space for a few moments. He was thinking back to the many evenings he had spent chatting with Paul on Gayzer. It had been an odd secretive friendship, talking endlessly online but never mentioning it to anyone else, or even acknowledging it on that one day that they met face to face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell this story, but given the circumstances it probably needed outing. He took a big breath.

“I knew him a little bit you know.”

Ali looked at him, surprised.

“What, like, you knew him?”

“No, not like that.”

She raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“Ok, well, kind of like that. I never slept with him though.”

“So how did you know him?”

“Online”

“What, Gayzer?”

“Yeah. We chatted quite a bit actually. He was into…certain things.”

“Oh” she said, her eyes wide with understanding.

“Shut up” Daniel replied, shaking his head.

“One of your bdsm kind of boys?”

“Well, that kind of thing, yeah.”

“Shit, I can’t believe you never told me this.”

Daniel paused. This had been a lot of information to take in. It was true that he had never done anything with Paul, but they had spent hours and hours chatting. In that semi-anonymous online place, they had shared intimate things with one another and he felt uneasy breaking that bond.

So maybe in normal life the guy was a liar and maybe he did invent a job and a background, but that didn’t mean that those other parts of his life that he shared with Daniel had been lies.

“Come on, details” Ali pushed.

Daniel relented.

“Ok. Well, one of the reasons I never tried to meet with him was that some of the stuff he was into was more…extreme…than I would go for. He talked about all kinds of stuff. Rubber masks, breath control and auto-erotic stuff, electro stimulation, dungeon play”. He paused. “Some of that stuff scares me, and especially the way he talked about it sometimes.”

“Wow.”

“I’d figured out he must be the lawyer flatmate before Adam’s party, so I was a bit nervous about going – especially with Carl coming too. I just hoped he wouldn’t say anything. Then in the event he brought along his new boyfriend and acted like he didn’t even recognise me.”

Ali shook her head. “What a dick.”

“Mm” Daniel said half-heartedly. The thought of that day at the Loom Inn triggered another memory.

“There was something else that I thought was strange that day actually.”

Ali looked across at him.

“He didn’t seem to acknowledge James either.”

Ali looked confused. “Should he have?”

“Yeah, well, I think so. I’d never met Paul before, but I had seen him once, out in town. It was a few months back, soon after we started chatting and I thought I recognised him sitting in a coffee shop window. I stopped for a little while, sitting on a bench in the square, at first trying to see if it was actually him, then watching him. You know, just to see what he seemed like. What his mannerisms were like.”

“Ok” Ali said uncertainly.

He waved a hand. “Whatever. You already know I’m crazy.”

Ali smiled.

“Well anyway, he was sitting with another guy when I saw him. And that day when I saw James at the Loom Inn, I thought I recognised him, but it didn’t click with me until a couple of days later. He was the guy who had been sitting with Paul”.

“That’s weird.”

“I know. I’m sure of it though. I never forget a handsome face”.

“Well why would Paul have met with Adam’s workmate for coffee?”

“That’s what I thought. It’s probably nothing.”

“Yeah” Ali said, distractedly, “probably”.

Daniel glanced up at the clock.

“Shit, I’m already late for getting to Carl’s”. He jumped to his feet and started grabbing the stuff he needed from around the room.

 

On the way across, the thoughts of Paul and of the difficult day he’d had at work were swirling. He was looking forward to a quiet evening and falling asleep on Carl’s chest.

When he reached Carl’s flat, he let himself in, and could hear straightaway a conversation and laughter in the lounge. His heart sank at the sound of Nate’s voice.

Breathing in, he lifted himself up tall and walked through. Nate was sitting at one end of the battered old red sofa, and Carl entered the room from the kitchen, which curved off to the right through an arch at the far end of the room. He had two bottles of beer in his hand, one of which he handed to Nate before coming across to kiss Daniel on the cheek, then taking a seat on the single armchair.

“Is there one for me?” Daniel asked, trying not to sound annoyed at being overlooked.

Carl looked up. “Yeah babe, there’s loads in the fridge”.

Daniel dropped his bag by the side of the table and continued to give Carl a stare that even he would surely recognise as dissatisfaction.

Carl eventually caught the look.

“Alright” he said reluctantly, and raised his eyebrows to Nate’s amusement. “Maybe I could go get you one.”

Carl disappeared through to the kitchen and Daniel turned to see Nate, patting the seat on the sofa next to him. He had managed to avoid Nate since the evening on Canal Street, and still felt awkward about it. Nate seemed entirely unembarrassed. His legs were spread shamelessly macho-wide as he eyed Daniel up and down, clearly appreciatively.

Daniel took a seat at the far end of the sofa from Nate, and Carl returned with his beer.

“So how was your day babe?” Carl asked.

He didn’t want to have this conversation with Nate there, but he needed to unload what was on his mind.

“It was pretty shit actually. I’m worried about that kid, Jay, again.”

“The gay kid? The one you didn’t want to tell me about?”

Daniel decided to ignore the swipe.

“Yeah. Some kids were giving him some shit in art class today. The thing is he tries to stick up for himself but there’s a group of them in this little hitler gang, and I’m sure they’re saying stuff and threatening him, but I can’t pin anything down”.

“Sounds tough babe. Can’t you give ‘em some shit back?”

“I don’t know…it’s like… they know exactly how to avoid crossing the line on school grounds, you know, so I can’t do anything…”

Carl was nodding and making vacant mm and yeah noises.

“…it’s like, they just know exactly where the line is drawn, and you know, they know how to walk right up to the edge of it…”

He glanced again at Nate who was lifting the sleeve of his t-shirt and stroking his bicep as he looked across, disinterested.

Daniel gulped without meaning to. Carl was still looking supportively at him, waiting to let him finish, but he was distracted by Nate’s arms.

“…and they, like, know they can chuck, like, stuff over the line. When I’m not looking. And then, like, when I turn around again, they’re still right there…behind the line still…”

Daniel glanced over and saw Nate adjusting his crotch and smirking.

“You know what I mean?” he said, shifting his gaze back across to Carl.

Carl nodded without any degree of conviction. “Totally babe. It’s tough. You’ll work it out though, you’re the smart one”. He stood up and headed through to the bathroom. “Back in five minutes guys.”

Daniel rolled his eyes at this lack of subtlety.

“You know this kid is probably getting off on it don’t you” Nate said, as soon as he heard the bathroom door close. “Gay boys at school always go home and jerk off about the bullies”.

Daniel took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to rise to this.

“You know it’s true. I bet you were the same. Jacking off thinking about the football team stripping down after the match, all those sweaty chests everywhere. Even though they called you gayboy and pushed you around in the corridor”.

If this was a theoretical conversation, he could ignore it. But this was an actual 16-year old kid they were talking about. This was a good looking, mixed race guy. A guy who always had a warm grin on his face; who played tennis for the school; who had great academic potential, even if he tried to hide it. In fact, it didn’t matter about any of that. This was a good guy and he didn’t deserve this.

Daniel stood up. He needed to get away. He hated what Nate was saying, and he hated the reasons he was saying it. And worst of all, he hated how much he wanted Nate to jump on him and rip his clothes off.

The smirk was all over Nate’s face. That supervillain grin curling up his cheekbones as he baited a reaction.

“Bet you’re getting hard thinking back to those days eh?”

Daniel gritted his teeth and without warning swung round, pivoting on his left ankle, as he arced his right leg rapidly through the air towards Nate’s shin. He desperately wanted to cause pain. Words were useless against Nate.

Nate was too quick though. He saw the movement early and reached quickly forward, grabbing Daniel’s leg at the ankle and holding onto it, leaving him balancing on his other leg.

Somehow the smirk reached even higher up his cheeks.

“You’re such a fucking dick you know” Daniel said, almost spitting out the words.

Nate laughed, glanced down at his crotch and then back up to catch Daniel’s eye.

“I know you can’t say no to a good dick though” he said, and released Daniel’s leg with a push so that he fell backwards a few steps.

Daniel breathed deeply again and walked directly through towards the bedroom, just as Carl was returning from the bathroom.

“Hey, where you going babe?”

Daniel tried to control his voice.

“I’m gonna leave you guys to it.”

Carl sighed. “Babe, can’t you at least try to get on with my mates?”

Daniel desperately didn’t want a fight, but this was too much.

“He’s a total twat Carl, I don’t want to get on with him”.

Carl’s face turned as sour as a drill sergeant.

“You know what, Nate’s right, you’re so fucking precious.”

Carl stormed through to the other room, pushing the door heavily closed.

 

Daniel shut the bedroom door behind him and lay down on the bed. The duvet was soft and fresh and smelled of Carl. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but he didn’t have the energy for anything but to lie back and envelop himself in it.

The most painful, flesh creeping part of it was that Nate wasn’t all wrong. Daniel was the shy, quiet, gay kid at school. He could still remember lying in bed at night thinking about Jordan McKenzie and the way he looked in his football kit.

His overriding memories of that period though were not the sexual feelings. Not that they weren’t strong. They were. But they came and went. The memories that really stood out were the hours of his life spent worrying and wishing he wasn’t…this. One night at home in his bedroom, he could still picture himself sitting on that blue swivel chair by his desk, next to the Friends poster, looking out from the lamplit room to the sky, and trying to make a bargain with whatever god might be up there. He wasn’t even slightly religious, but that was what he would become. He whispered the words, barely audibly, offering to go to church every weekend, to kneel and pray every night, if only he was given the power to stop feeling the way he did. To be normal. To be like everybody else.

But it never came.

He had no role models, no cool gay aunt that ever told him that being gay, or even being different, was ok. There were no teacher he felt able to speak to. He faced it all alone. Day after month after year of teenage anxiety, fear and self-hatred. He was so scared of being rejected by the people who said they loved him; so afraid of being the freak, of being lonely. It took so many years to begin to unpick the emotions of those years, and he still wasn’t there yet. Not nearly.

Now Nate was the cocky athletic kid come again, and Daniel was the 12-year old boy retreating back to the incarceration of the bedroom. Nate was the thing he hated and adored. He closed his eyes and wished he was anywhere else.

He fell into a deep sleep that night, not even waking up when Carl came through to join him.

 

The next day at school, after fourth period, Daniel was heading across to the staff room for afternoon break, when he saw Jay up ahead emerge from one of the maths rooms, some time after the rest of the class had dispersed. Jay looked up at him and gave a half smile, but even from a little distance Daniel could see something looked wrong. His body seemed hunched and he didn’t turn fully to face Daniel, as if he was trying to hide something.

The boy turned to walk away but Daniel called him back. As he got closer, he saw the grazed skin and bruise on Jay’s right cheekbone, just below the eye.

“Jay, what happened to you? Is this to do with that stuff in art class yesterday?”

Jay dropped his head and said nothing.

“Come into the classroom a second” Daniel said, opening the door to one of the maths rooms, and quickly checking it was free. He gestured for Jay to sit on one of the tables and he perched on the edge of the one opposite.

“Who did this?”

Jay lifted his head up. “I walked into a door” he said simply. He said it as a euphemism rather than a genuine attempt to pass off the lie.

“I’m really asking Jay. I want to know. I want to help.”

“Fine Sir. Some guys started on me, calling me a fucking queer twat or some shit like that, so it led to a…disagreement.”

Daniel’s face was grave.

“Have they called you that before?”

He was reluctant to go down this route because Jay was only 16. Daniel knew he was at an age where he might be questioning his sexuality but he probably didn’t know yet whether he was gay or not. If he was, he probably hadn’t come to terms with it. But if this was a homophobic attack, then he needed to know, and he would have to react to that.

Jay shrugged.

“Well, obviously, I am gay. But I’m not having someone call me a twat”.

Daniel stopped dead in his tracks.

Jay smiled mischievously.

“Come on Sir, you must’ve realised? The way I’m always checking out your arse in those tight trousers you wear?”

Daniel was definitely going to ignore that comment. And buy some looser trousers.

“Jay, look, I went through something similar when I was at school and I know what it’s like…”

“I knew you were gay Sir” Jay said, a little triumphantly. He raised his eyebrows. “Man it’d be hot if you and me should…”

“DON’T even say it…” Daniel said, quickly raising a warning finger.

Jay smiled to himself.

Daniel had lost track of his thoughts, but tried to regain his composure.

“Listen, what I was saying is, I know it’s a tough time coming to terms with who you are, and thinking about who you can talk to about it. I know how stressful it is, and how lonely it can be…”

Jay was smiling, and Daniel lost the thread of the sentence again.

“What’s funny?”

“Sir, it’s not the 1980s. Gays have been round quite a while you know”.

Daniel was adrift. Maybe he should give up. This kid didn’t seem to need his antiquated advice. Had things changed that much?

He looked again at the bruise on Jay’s face.

“This is still happening though” he said, pointing to the mark.

Jay was quiet.

“Look, I know you can stand up for yourself, but punching your way out of this isn’t the best way.”

Jay twiddled his thumbs, but didn’t look up.

“The school can help…”

“Bullshit” Jay said, suddenly looking up. “The school does nothing. Every kid here knows that. The kids here say what they want about queers, and the teachers do shit about it.”

“The teachers are on your side. If you tell me who did this, we can get them suspended.”

“Right, my word against theirs. And what if you do? They’ll come back, and get me harder next time” Jay said. “Nah, fuck that. I’m not gonna show them I’m scared.”

Daniel was trying to hold down the knot in his stomach.

“Jay, let me help.”

“No man” Jay said, a tear in the corner of his eye. “I’m grateful Sir, serious, but these kids are brutal. They’d end up getting you too if you got involved. Then what am I gonna look at in art class?” the grin shone through his sad face.

There was a tear on Jay’s cheek, and Daniel stood up and moved to reassure him. The boy stood and wrapped his arms around Daniel crying into his shoulder.

Out of the corner of his eye Daniel saw a figure pass the doorway then do a double take on seeing who was in the room. He looked across, but didn’t catch who it was before they moved on.

Jay eventually pulled away and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“It’s Rhys Nashton and his boys” Jay muttered. “But don’t do anything, please. I got him pretty hard back. I don’t think he’ll try anything again”.

Daniel nodded. “Listen, tell me if anything else happens. I’m always here to support you, ok?”

Jay nodded with a half-smile and gathered his things. As he walked past he glanced down at Daniel’s tight trousers again and then up to catch Daniel’s eye, smiling wider as he disappeared on his way.

 

By the time Daniel got away from staff meetings and back to the flat it was after 6pm. He was dying to talk everything through with Ali, but found a note on the kitchen worktop saying she was out all evening. Not being able to think clearly in the silent flat, he grabbed his coat and headed out for some air.

He walked a fair way eastwards along the dusky canal route. The paths were narrow, and the vegetation all along the edges was overgrown. Behind the thick bushes at various stretches stood old disused Victorian factory and warehouse buildings. There were few people around, and little movement at all except for occasional families of ducks sailing nonchalantly past.

He knew why Jay didn’t want any interference. He remembered feeling the same at that age. That fear that outside meddling would make it worse. And maybe it would. He couldn’t be sure that he could stop Rhys. He was pretty intimidated by Rhys and the guys he hung around with himself, so for a 16-year old, it must be terrifying. But he had to do something.

And then there was Jay flirting with him. Was there a mutual attraction? No. That was a mental wall that had to stay up. But was it interfering with his judgement on the bullying thing? If Rhys Nashton came up to him with a bruised face, would he treat it the same?

Thinking made him tired, and lately whenever he was tired his mind wandered to Nate. As much as he tried to resist it, the sound of Nate’s deep powerful voice in his head stalked like a tarantula. He pictured himself standing there in the back yard of the pub. Nate was coming out of the door with a glass full of beer and calmly walking across to him. As he approached, he started to lift the pint into the air, and Daniel knew what was coming but didn’t move. That grin was all over Nate’s face as he tipped the glass and poured every drop right over Daniel’s head. The first splash landed hard on the crown of his head, before the liquid soaked his limp hair, then ran down turning his clothes to sodden rags. And all the while there was that smirk on his face and echoes of cruel laughter all around.

The memory of a conversation with Paul gate-crashed his brain.

I’d love to see how it feels to choke a sub guy within an inch of his life while I’m fucking him. Then to let go just as I orgasm, like my pleasure is what let him live.

Daniel tried to shake his head clear. He had walked out of town for about half an hour, and decided it was time to turn and start back towards the flat. Darkness had fully descended and although there were lights along the canal, they were spread far apart, so it was darker than he’d expected. It had gotten cold, and he wanted to get home. He picked up his pace.

Up ahead he saw a group of people approaching, maybe 200 metres away. As they got closer he saw it was four figures, all in hoodies. By their size and gait he guessed they were all male.

His stomach churned. It could be Rhys and his gang. He couldn’t forget the fear he saw in Jay’s eyes this afternoon. Then he thought of the figure that passed by the door as he was hugging Jay. Maybe word had got back to Rhys. Maybe they were after him.

He slowed his pace and looked about him for alternative routes. The path was so narrow, he’d have to walk right alongside the group if he carried on. He scanned the long derelict building to his side, but it was impenetrable. There was no other direction; it was straight on or a full about turn.

The four were getting closer and he could hear deep voices talking and laughing at something. His heart was beating fast. If it was them, they weren’t just going to let him pass. God knows what they’d try. Maybe they’d carry knives. What the hell was he thinking walking by a dark canal-side in the middle of winter? He tried to walk tall and look as tough as he could, so they might pass by and not start anything.

They were only 50 metres away now. He squinted to try to see their faces as they passed under a light. He couldn’t make out much, but they looked young. It was too late to turn back.

The group was quickly upon him. Once they were within ten metres he saw their faces. They were complete strangers, university students by the look of them. The one nearest to him smiled and nodded as they passed. He shook his head and walked on. How could he be so scared of nothing? He was 24 years old. It was about time he got a grip on himself.