13

October 2016

Alex, Robert

It was a meeting at which Robert spoke more than usual. It was as if he was gathering all their discussions into one.
“One of the most difficult aspects of raising children is attention,” said Robert. “The attention that our parents didn’t give us enough of.”
“He said ‘us’,” noted Alex. “It wasn’t a wonderful childhood that led him to be a psychiatrist.”
“And then, in adult life, we compensate for that lack of attention that we got from our parents,” he said. “We compensate for it with deliberate brutishness, the horrifyingly loud exhaust pipe on a motorcycle, we do that the whole time.” He left a pause, looked at Alex, and added: “We say loudly: ‘We’re in this world. Here I am!”
Alex very clearly imagined the picture that the doctor was painting for him.
“How else can we explain that people take part in television shows where they turn their sexual relations inside out for everyone to see?” continued Robert. “Or they stand there like figures on a chessboard in front of people who’ve been hyped up on television or on YouTube, so that the latter can work out their age and specialization? How else can we explain their humiliating consent, an insane wish even, to take part in their own humiliation?!?”
“Difficult to argue with that,” said Alex.
“Did you ever try to speak frankly with your mother? Later, when you’d already grown up?” asked Robert, unexpectedly changing the subject.
Alex waved him off.
“It’s no use,” said Alex. “She never admitted to her mistakes. At best she called me an ungrateful son,” Alex smirked angrily. “When she would beat me when I was a kid, she’d tell my Dad that she just gave me a few slaps, can you believe that? That I was inventing stuff when I said she’d hit me in the face. She made me stand in the cold rain so that the redness would pass faster. Poor Dad. He knew she was lying. He’d try and talk me into being more obedient. And he’d look away. It was very humiliating.”
Alex stopped his account in order to get his breath back.
“But I can remember the first time, when I’d already grown up, that I grabbed her arm and squeezed it so tight that I almost crushed it through to the bone. She was frightened,” Alex said viciously. “She thought that I would start beating her. She got on her knees and begged for forgiveness.”
“And what did you do?” asked Robert.
“I pushed her away from me and started getting my stuff together and I moved in with Grandma for good,” answered Alex. He closed his eyes and shook his head in different directions. “She lay down in front of the door and begged me to talk to her. She said that in order to leave I’d have to step over my own mother.”
“What did you do?” asked the doctor.
“I turned the key in the door, then kicked the door open over her, and left the apartment,” Alex answered.
They were both silent for a while. Then Alex looked at Robert, a question in his eyes, as if he wanted to ask something. He didn’t ask anything, however, and continued:
“Half a year ago we buried my father. He’d been sick for a year and a half before he died, prostate cancer. He left it too late before he went to the hospital, and because of his age and because he was overweight the doctors refused to operate on him. Chemicals and radiation helped for a bit, but the end came. He died a slow, painful death. I hired a nurse to be with him, and I often went to see him way out in Ilford, to help, although it was difficult for me to be anywhere near her.”
Robert nodded with understanding.
“Mother, although she was only fifty-six, had already turned into a wretched old woman, she had diabetes and Parkinson’s. Fate likes to have a joke – it rewarded her, a former prima ballerina, with the shakes from Parkinson’s. She’d get annoyed when I appeared in their home, but she didn’t really say anything to me, maybe because she was focusing on the inadequacy of the latest nurse, trying to terrorize her into the grave.”
Alex drank some water from his glass.
“A leopard never changes its spots,” Alex said, again angry. “She broke down at the burial. She drove me away from my own father’s burial – can you imagine? She shouted at me, her whole body shaking, her voice becoming high-pitched, telling me that I was a worthless ‘queer’ and that I shouldn’t dare to approach my father’s coffin, and that I’d driven him into the grave with my horrific behavior. And I left … And, you know, in a way she was right.”
“In what way do you think she was right?” asked Robert, looking at Alex in surprise.
“In that, perhaps, I’m homosexual. Or bisexual.” For the first time in his life, Alex expressed this idea out loud, an idea that had been with him for so many years. His voice quivered, and he immediately tried to turn it into a joke: “At the least, I really like the idea of marrying a man, because that wedding would definitely kill her off.”

14

April 2018

Greg, Maxim

An inconspicuous grey Hyundai from a car rental firm was standing on “the Cally” – Caledonian Road, in the north of London. People walking by the car may have noticed two friends sitting inside, smoking cigarettes and chatting about something. In fact, Greg and Max were keeping an eye on the chemist’s, which they’d chosen as their first target for a robbery. It was a very convenient spot. The tube station was a few hundred feet away. There were shops around, courtyards, a lot of different kinds of people. Getting away from the scene of the crime should have been easy.
Greg took his cigarette out of his mouth and stared at it.
“It really is a cool plan,” he said. “It’s almost perfect. But it all depends on how we work it all out.”
“Of course,” Max said quietly, “although you can never predict everything.”
Greg nodded in agreement.
“How did Leon and Alex do when they were on a job?” asked Greg.
“They did well,” answered Max. “Especially Alex. He gets straight into his act.”
“Is he on drugs?” asked Greg.
“He has a smoke now and again,” answered Max.
Greg finished his cigarette and threw it out the window.
“He seems to be a bit of a shirker,” said Greg.
“Not really,” answered Max. “He used to wrestle.” Then he thought for a while, before adding: “On our robberies he’d change right before your eyes, sometimes it even seemed like the devil had got into him.”
“That’s not bad – it’s what we need,” said Greg, grinning evilly. “And Leon?”
“Leon’s a bit of a coward, of course, but I’ll deal with him. He shouldn’t let us down,” said Max.
“What about the girl?” asked Greg.
“What about her?” asked Max. “She’s got the easiest role. I’ve known her for a long time. Everything will be fine with her – that’s a certainty. Vickey only got involved because of Alex. She’d kill for him if she had to,” said Max. “She really would just go and kill someone for him.”
“Great chick,” Greg said quietly.
“Cut it out,” Max said all of a sudden, sharply. “Don’t even look in her direction.”
“What did I say, bro?!?” asked Greg, smiling.
“I heard what you said,” Max answered quickly.
“What? You want to keep her for yourself?” smirked Greg.
Max turned round sharply to Greg.
“Greg!” Max snapped. “We’ve got history. We trust one another. We’ve been through enough shit together. But Alex is my childhood friend. Got it?!?”
“Ok,” Greg offered amicably. “I was just kidding.”
They were silent for a while.
“And just think about it,” Max said, calmer now. “Why complicate things? We do the job, we take the bank, and any chick in the city you want will be in your bed.”
“And not just the city, bro,” laughed Greg. “Any chick on this wonderful island!”
Max wasn’t sure that he’d convinced Greg to behave himself around Vickey. He decided to keep an eye on the situation, but not to say anything to Alex in order not to frighten him. The main thing for him, after all, was the robbery itself. What was really important, was that Alex, who he thought he knew well, shouldn’t go and do something stupid because of jealousy for Vickey – something stupid that might put the job in danger.
Max took out a pack of Marlboro and lit another cigarette.
“Is Leon really a hotshot, like you say?” asked Greg.
“You can’t even imagine what level this guy is at,” answered Max. “For a joke, he once hacked into London’s traffic light system.”
“Wow,” said Greg, and whistled.
“He got out of the system quickly, though,” said Max. “He was worried that the cops would get on to him.”
“He won’t shit himself in the middle of the play?” asked Greg.
“There’s always a chance, but I’ll be close by, and he’s always held it together well so far,” answered Max.
“He’s never tried knocking a bank over, though,” said Greg.
“That’s true too,” said Max. “But we don’t have any choice. Firstly, we have to work on the camera system. Secondly, we have to work out how they block the doors, if they’ve got that kind of system. There are some other technical issues. And only Leon can work all that out. As I said, it all depends on the state he’s in when we start to work. You know how it is – it’s stressful as hell, and some can’t take it.”
“That’s obvious,” said Greg. “But don’t get too worked up about that stuff. So that they don’t freak out too early.”
“All right,” said Max. “Anyway, we’ll find out on the training jobs.”
Greg raised his eyebrows and smiled cynically.
“And if we don’t find out?” he asked.
Max reached for the cigarette packet. He took one out and lit it.
“I’d be calmer about the whole thing if it was you or me taking out the guard, rather than Alex,” Max said after a few moments’ silence.
“I’d be calmer too,” said Greg. “But I have to take the girls at the cash desks out first, and you have to take out the bank’s boss.”
“Yes,” said Max.
“Your Alex is going to have to handle it,” said Greg.
Max looked at Greg.
“You know what we’ll have to do if Alex can’t handle the guard?” asked Greg, and looked at Max.
“Yes,” Max answered dryly.
Several girls on bicycles rode by. Greg and Max followed their svelte figures with hungry eyes.
“How old are we, Max?” asked Greg.
His question didn’t require an answer.
“The fact that we’re not in the slammer is pure luck,” said Greg.
Max remained silent. He knew that Greg was right.
“Hoods a hundred times sharper than us have already done two or three stretches,” continued Greg. “Some chance bullshit can crop up on a job and nobody has the time to see it coming.”
Max again nodded in silence.
“And I know a lot of those hoods personally,” said Greg. “I learned our difficult trade from some of them.”
“Yes. Can’t argue with that,” Max said quietly.
“How much longer are we going to be lucky for?” asked Greg. “A year, two? How many?”
Max listened to his friend closely.
“Then what?” asked Greg. “Spend the rest of our lives driving a shitty cab for a grand a month? Slave away for the Man? For someone who’s leased the cab and rents it out for a hundred quid a day?”
Max looked off somewhere into the distance in silence.
“Or work as a security guard for twelve hundred a month?” continued Greg. “Aching your ass off from standing around all day?”
“That’s not an option,” Max said quietly.
“So, we haven’t got any choice, Max,” said Greg. “We have to look after one another. Right?”
“And the guys have to understand before we do the big job, that for this kind of money they’re going to have to give a thousand percent,” said Greg in a kind of hollow tone.
Greg stared off to some fixed point in the distance and concluded:
“And if we have to shoot, then we have to shoot.”
Max didn’t say anything in reply. He realized that Greg was right. That this could be his and Greg’s last chance to live a normal life. To live like a person who wouldn’t have to suck up to the boss of some security guard company or the head of some taxi park. To do whatever you wanted to do. To eat delicious food, drink delicious drinks, buy food at the upmarket shops like Waitrose, and not in some dive like Iceland. To sleep in a good bed, and not on a foldout sofa bought for peanuts on a secondhand website. And, of course, women. They wanted, as Greg put it, beautiful, long-legged, stacked chicks.
Max also wanted vengeance for the life that he’d lived since his very birth. For all that dirt, for having to pretend, for having to suck up to the bosses, for that continual fear, for being seen as a second-class person. For all of that, he wanted revenge. And without money, Max couldn’t imagine how he could achieve that.
Max remembered how he’d worked as a security guard on the door of a sumptuous restaurant in Mayfair, where you could even see Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt or Tom Hardy, where a glass of fine wine could cost you in the region of a hundred pounds, a place where beautifully dressed, well-groomed people who never even noticed him walked in and out. They would come in their Merсs and BMWs, or maybe even Bentleys and Maseratis. They would only notice the cloakroom attendant when he was handing them their expensive coat, or the doorman when he was opening the door for them. They’d walk past the guard as if he was a piece of furniture. That was life.
It’s like that all over the world. The poor serve the rich. And those people from the rich neighborhoods, Chelsea, Kensington, Hampstead, or the elite houses in central London were never rude, they wouldn’t push you aside, they’d always give you a good tip, a twenty note for the waitress when they were eating a hundred-pound breakfast for two, or a tenner for having opened the door, or another tenner to the guy taking their coat, but in their eyes, you could see their attitude towards you. Or, rather, the blank in their eyes told you they didn’t have any regard for you at all.
“Have you worked out how much money we’ll need for the first jobs?”
Greg’s question brought Max back to reality.
“I’ve already made a list of what we’ve got to buy,” answered Max. “I’ll give it to you, so we can get a fresh set of eyes on it.”
“Where’re we going to get the money to start this thing up?” asked Greg. “I’m broke right now.”
“Alex put a grand in the pot,” answered Max. “He’s the richest of us. That should be enough to get started, and then we can earn some more on the prep jobs.”
“It should be a really easy job,” said Greg. “In and out.”
“We did well with the chemists,” said Max. “Almost no risk there at all. The main thing is that the getaway routes should be easy.”
“Yes,” Greg answered, pensive. “Dive into the tube, and you’re gone. Disappeared. But now there’s a security camera poking out of every hole.”
“The times are changing,” said Max.
“And petrol stations in the center of the city?” asked Greg. “On Edgware Road, say. And getting away is easy.”
“No way,” said Max. “Firstly, the cops could roll up by chance. Secondly, most people pay with cards at gas stations. Not much in the way of greens.”
“Fucking progress!” laughed Greg. “Bank cards. I remember the days when a guy would pull out a billfold of cash as thick as a book.”
“Yes,” laughed Max, “those were the days.”
They were silent for a while.
“So, a chemist’s, then?” asked Greg.
“Yes,” answered Max, “we could do two or three before the cops work out we’re knocking them over.”
“Then we’ll have to test Leon’s pyrotechnical capabilities on some lonely ATM down some back alley,” added Greg.
Max nodded with understanding.
“And Alex getting into action, nothing too hard, maybe even at the drugstore. We have to get him training a gun on a girl at a drugstore at least once, to see how he handles it.”
“Yes, there are options,” said Max. “The main thing is that we need Alex to slowly get a feel for it. A lot depends on him.”
“Yes, and that cutie pie will see what a superhero Alex is when he’s doing something for real,” said Greg.
Max turned round sharply to Greg. His fingers clamped onto Greg’s wrist hard.
“Greg!” Max snapped. “I’m not kidding!”
“Come off it.” Greg tried to free his hand, but couldn’t manage it.
“You said it yourself – he’s our only chance!” said Max, looking him in the eye. “I’m not going to let you shit on him over the girl.”
Greg looked at Max and listened.
“So strap your cock to your thigh,” Max said angrily. “You decide, left or right. Just fucking stick to doing the job. The job, and nothing else.”
Max looked at Greg angrily.
“You let me down and I’ll get you from beyond the grave,” continued Max, “I’ve still got some pals down at the cop shop.”
“All right, bro,” Greg said quietly, freeing his hand. “All right. I got it.”
Max let Greg’s wrist go, but continued looking at him angrily.
“All right,” said Greg. “No more jokes.”
They were quiet for a while.
“You think I don’t like Vickey too?!?” Max asked angrily.
Greg was silent. He didn’t want to make things any worse with Max.
“She’s an absolute star,” Max said with a sigh. “I’ve never seen a better-looking chick in my life.”
Greg nodded in agreement.
“But she’s his girl, bro,” Max said, sighing and then taking a deep breath. “Or something like that.”
“All right, all right,” Greg said angrily. “Just as long as your guys don’t let us down. I don’t want Fatty, say, spraining his leg at the wrong time. Shit happens…” Greg gave Max a look that could have turned his soul inside out. Max understood what Greg was talking about.
Max very precisely noted the sensation he was experiencing. He understood, after all, that, if he had to, Greg would shoot Leon. Without even thinking about it. If Leon, the fat clunker, as Greg called him, sprained his leg or something like that and couldn’t run away from the crime scene, then Greg would put a bullet in his dome so that Leon wouldn’t be able to talk and rat Greg out. Max had never had any illusions about Greg. They’d never spoken about it, but in his soul Max believed that Greg had already stepped over the line, that he’d already shot people. A feeling of revulsion and disgust overcame Max. That disgust had him grinding his teeth for another couple of hours. It was as if he’d sold Leon down the river. As if he’d driven a rusty steamroller right over the guy who was almost like a brother to him. Left him to be torn to pieces by wolves like Greg, all for the illusive dream of wreaking vengeance on this life. To get what he’d been barred from getting since birth. Max remembered that moment. And quietly swore to himself that if he got out of all of this alive, he’d never go down this slippery path again. He’d split up with Greg for good and would never put Leon at risk ever again. Leon really did mean that much to him.

15

October 2016

Alex. Diary

“A lot of people are looking for some kind of Absolute. Truth. A paradigm. Something that will lead you through life. A lot of people find that paradigm in their family. As a rule, from their fathers. And even if those models for behavior are mistaken, even if they lead people to disappointment, to pain, then even then people don’t want to let their convictions go – convictions that have been in their families for generations. They’ll find a host of reasons to whitewash the foundations that they stand on, that their fathers stood on, and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them. To the very end they’ll be stripping the old, dried out paint from the old foundations, but the paint just won’t come off.
I don’t know why that happens.
But only loneliness is absolute. Everything else is an illusion. Parents, friends, girlfriends. You think that there’s a circle of security around you. But you’re only deluding yourself. You start to work that out when Uncle Dennis suddenly dies, and Mom starts crying, and Dad smokes a little more than usual, standing at the window in the cramped kitchen. Or when you’re going through hard times and it turns out that half your friends aren’t friends at all. Or when you see your girlfriend kissing your friend.
Sometimes you meet interesting people and there are thrilling moments. But if something good does crop up, it doesn’t last long. Everything always ends in loneliness. The trick to life is that sometimes it feels like you’re not alone. But you have to remember that it’s just a trick.
I remember experiencing a moving sadness at the words of Alain Delon. “Even when I lived with a woman and loved her I experienced loneliness. I’ve always had that feeling. The roots of that eternal loneliness undoubtedly lie in my childhood. I was only four years old when I realized that you can be abandoned by those you love the most.”
Yes. At some point in your existence, you find that you just want to reject everything. But you mustn’t do that. Better to see it through to the end.
You ask yourself, who is to blame? Who or what is to blame for my view of life? Who is responsible for my pain? For my lack of belief?
My parents? The world? Or poor old Uncle Dennis, who the cemetery worms are already sampling?
And then you begin experiencing an emptiness. A pleasant emptiness. Has an emptiness within you ever caused you any pain?
You listen carefully to that new feeling within yourself. Like a pregnant woman placing her hand on her stomach to feel the movements of her child, or placing her husband’s hand, if she has one.
At first you think that that emptiness is temporary, that it will pass, that the world will be in color again, and not in black and white like it is now. But then you suddenly sense a physical pain. As if from a burn. It’s as if you’re little again, and you’re crying, and everything is burning within you.”

16

October 2017

Alex

Alex went to the gay club BoyS in Soho on a Friday at just past midnight. He hadn’t planned on coming here. The big party at the advertiser’s off Oxford Street, which he, as editor of his publication, couldn’t miss, hadn’t been far away from the club.
At events like this there were rivers of the champagne that he needed to keep a smile on his face. Alex did all the handshaking and hugging and shoulder-patting needed and then, at the first opportunity, slipped away unnoticed from the mob of inebriated colleagues and customers who were singing karaoke, taking off their black blue jackets, pressing their sweaty, salty faces up against one another.
Alex found himself out in the street breathing in fresh air. He wasn’t stone cold sober, but he wasn’t drunk. He didn’t have any plans for the weekend, and nobody was waiting for him. He went to BoyS on that day because it was close by, and because he had nowhere else to go. But also because going to a gay club was out of the ordinary, special. The mere idea of stepping into a gay club roused his consciousness. Doing something out of the ordinary. He wasn’t going to the gay club because he was gay, he was going because the mere act of doing so shook himself up on the inside. Or that’s what he told himself, at least.
Despite it being prime time on a Friday night, there weren’t many people in the bar. There were several guys on their own at the long bar. They sipped their drinks and looked at the dancers on the stage. There were tables in the corner of the large room. Couples were sitting at them. At one of the tables, Alex noticed a guy sitting on his own. Alex sat at the bar and ordered a Chivas. He was in an unfamiliar environment, and he liked that.
Having sat there for five minutes and realized that the guy that he was looking at was on his own, Alex got up and headed over to him.
“Can I sit here?” asked Alex, coming up to the guy.
The guy looked at Alex and then nodded in the direction of an empty chair.
“Yes, of course,” he replied simply, and carried on sipping his cocktail in silence.
Alex sat in the chair next to him.
He felt a little stupid. What should he do now? Get up and go? Or sit for a while and exchange a few pleasantries? He risked it:
“I’m Alex, this is my first time here,” he said, and then found himself at something of a loss.
“Bob,” the guy answered melancholically. “First time?”
“Yes,” nodded Alex.
“Then you should check out the dark rooms,” said Bob, either wanting to get rid of this uninvited guest, or not meaning anything by it at all.
“What’re they?” asked Alex.
“There,” said the guy, pointing at a door a few yards away from them. “It’s a dark space where guys can get some privacy.”
“Thanks, but I’m not gay,” Alex said for some reason.
“Take a look anyway,” the guy answered calmly. “Entry’s free.”
Alex drained his Chivas in one gulp, got up, went to the door, opened it, and went in. As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, he found himself in total darkness. At first it was even scary. Intuitively, he started to move forward with small steps, reaching out with his hands to try to find some support. He could faintly hear some unfamiliar sounds.
About half a minute must have passed like that. His eyes started getting accustomed to the darkness. He noticed that some little violet lamps were glimmering on the ceiling. Alex’s fingers touched a wall and he tried to feel his way along it. A few steps on he thought he must be going in a circle, but then he worked out that he was moving through a labyrinth. Touching the wall, he took about another fifteen steps and then heard a quiet groan.
It was a man groaning. His first instinct was to make a run for it, but he immediately stopped himself. The black darkness shackled his movements. Over the quiet groaning of the man, Alex began to make out the sound of breathing. And then, already getting used to the darkness, and with the aid of the glimmering violet lamps, his eyes made out two men copulating.
They were right in front of Alex. Alex took a step back in shock, his hand still touching the invisible wall. He couldn’t make out their faces, but he could clearly see two male figures in front of him.
One of the men stood with his face to the wall. The second stood behind, slowly pushing in and out of him. Alex couldn’t tell if they could see him or not. And if they could, was he allowed to be there?
The man standing behind continued slowly moving in and out of his partner. Alex’s heart was throbbing at a furious pace. He stood there, unable to take his eyes off what he was seeing. He surprised himself by taking a step forward. And now he saw the eyes of the guy standing up against the wall.
The guy looked at Alex. He looked, but didn’t say anything, slowly moving to the rhythm of his partner.
Alex stood next to him, almost right up against him.
Maintaining the rhythm, without missing a beat, the second guy pushed in and out of his partner. And then Alex felt the hand of the first guy on his penis. Alex’s erection, which up until that point had been strong, reached an unimaginable intensity. The guy at the wall moved in his partner’s rhythm, groaning and caressing Alex’s cock through his trousers.
Suddenly, Alex sensed fear. How would the second guy react? What were the rules here? What was allowed, and what wasn’t? He was suddenly afraid of the situation that he’d forced himself into. Specifically forced himself into. After all, he wasn’t sexually attracted to men. He’d created this situation almost artificially, if he could put it that way. What was happening to him? And the erection. He could feel how excited he was.
Thoughts whirled through Alex’s head, providing no answers, no colors, just a grey dust that whirled and whirled, making everything evermore incomprehensible.
Arousal and fear merged in his head. It was what he wanted. This is what he’d come for. For new experiences. So why did he want to run away so badly?
Just as unexpectedly as he’d touched him, the man pulled his hand away.
Alex quietly took a step back. He thought he could make out the guy’s eyes, and see that they were entirely empty, expressing nothing. Neither regret that Alex had moved back, nor a request that he remain.
Alex heard a question in his mind: “What kind of game is this?” He freed himself of his whirling thoughts when he realized that he was retreating back through the labyrinth in the direction of the door, towards the light, to the way out of the dark room, and then out of the bar.