“We’ll get it somewhere else,” Willem consoles.
“You’re in England now, luvvie dear. You can’t just wander down to the corner coffee shop and ask to see the menu. Anyway, I don’t care about the weed.” Clive makes an expansive gesture ceilingward. “It’s the attitude of this place I loathe.”
“The flat?” Willem looks around in alarm. He selected their new home, and particularly likes the pink and yellow tiles on the ceiling, though he wondered at the wisdom of bringing the purple sofa.
“No, no… London. Filthy place, innit? Always somebody ready to rip you off, from the drug dealer on the street to the poshest restaurant in the city.” He looks up at Willem. “Don’t you think so?”
They have visited London twice in their three years together, and Willem has been coming here on his own since his teens. He loves the grand spaces and vistas, the whirl of traffic, the diversity and dazzle. “No. I find it glamourous.”
Clive smirks. “Wait ’till you’ve lived here a while.”
Willem finishes his rice, sops up the last of the lamb vindaloo with half a chapati, and begins to clear away the containers. “Shall we do some unpacking tonight,” he asks, “or are you too tired?”
“I think I’m too tired for unpacking.”
Willem stops on his way to the kitchenette and looks at Clive. Clive is still smirking, but in a wholly different way.
“Only for unpacking?” Willem inquires.
“Well, the bed’s already unpacked, innit?”
The first sex in a new home is unique, preserved somehow in the watching walls that have already seen so much. It marks the space as your own, and you are conscious of this during the act. It also awakens things in the space that may have lain dormant for years – currents, if you will, or points of energy, or electromagnetic impulses. Or ghosts.
Clive and Willem don’t know anyone has been murdered here. Clive has heard of Joe Orton and his famous death, though he would be hazy on the details if asked. Willem has seen two of Orton’s plays produced in Rotterdam, but knows little of the author’s life in London. He found the plays very clever, had admired their facile wit. Now here he is, all unknowing, sucking his lover’s cock on the spot where that wit met its end.
Admittedly, it is the obvious place for a bed, against one of the longer walls under the big window. Thirty years’ worth of paint, the latest coat a semenesque oyster-white, covers the bloodstains and nightmare collages. Clive lies sprawled on the bed, his back arched, his fingers tangled in Willem’s hair. Willem’s mouth is hot and smooth on his cock, tongue teasing the head, lips slipping down the shaft. The soreness and tension of moving day begin to drain away, and Clive lets himself relax into a stupor of equal parts bliss and exhaustion.
What the FUCK…
This is Joe’s first thought, and he suspects that it is not particularly original. But the feeling is too much to describe: the memory of the hammer blows, the sensation of leaving his body slowly, so slowly, trying to wrench himself free of the mangled meat like an animal chewing off its paw in a trap. Kenneth nearby, but maddeningly cold and dead, having taken the easy way out. Having got the last word. Kenneth was not bound to this place; he could have died anywhere.
After that, nothing. It might have been a second or a century since the first blow fell. There was no heaven, no hell, absolutely nothing at all. Just as Joe had always expected. Until now. Until he finds himself not only sentient, but in the middle of an orgasm.
“Willem!” he hears himself gasping. The name is unknown to him, but the sensations are deliciously familiar.
The young man who has just finished sucking his cock looks up, smiling. His face is square, honest, and beautiful, his eyes china-blue, his full lips still glistening with traces of come.
“Please, will you fuck me now?” he says.
“Well – well, all right.”
“You’re not too tired?” Willem has a charming little accent, German or Dutch; could be Hottentot, for all Joe cares.
“Absolutely not.” As he gets up onto his knees, he takes stock of this blessed body he has found himself in. Its build is much like his own, smallish but solid. It has a big uncircumcised cock already swelling back to half-mast as Willem kisses his mouth, strokes his chest, bites his nipples. It feels young, healthy, glorious.
He turns Willem around and rubs his cock between the younger man’s ass-cheeks. The crack of Willem’s ass is lightly furred with gold. He groans as Willem pushes back against him. Willem passes him a tube of lubricant and a condom. Joe applies the lube to his erect cock and Willem’s pretty ass, gently sliding a finger in, then two. He tosses the condom away, having no idea what else he is supposed to do with it.
Willem feels Clive entering him unsheathed, which is strange but not entirely without precedent; each of them has tested negative three times, and since the third time they’ve gone condomless once or twice. It feels so good that he doesn’t protest now. Clive’s naked cock slides way up inside him, faster and harder than Clive usually puts it in. Clive’s hands are clamped on Willem’s hips, pulling Willem onto him. Clive has always been a wonderful fuck, but Willem cannot remember the last time he felt so thoroughly penetrated.
It seems to go on for hours. Just when he’s sure Clive is going to come, must come, Clive stops and catches his breath and kisses the back of Willem’s neck for a bit, then starts fucking him again. At one point he pulls out, flips Willem over with no apparent effort, pushes Willem’s legs up to his chest, and re-enters him. They settle into a slow, deep rhythm. Clive is nuzzling at Willem’s mouth, not just kissing him but inhaling his breath, sucking hungrily at his lips and tongue. Hungrily. That’s how Clive is making love to him, like a man starved for it.
At last Clive whispers, “I’m going to come now.” His cock seems to go deeper yet, and Willem feels it pulsing inside. Then Clive is holding him ever so tightly, pushing his face into Willem’s neck and (Willem could almost swear) sobbing. His sperm sears Willem’s insides, hot and effervescent, melting into Willem’s tissues and suffusing them with something Willem has never felt before. It is a little like an acid trip, if all the hectic colour and strange splendour of an acid trip could be folded into the space of two sweating, shuddering bodies.
“Thank you,” says Clive, kissing him. Willem sees that Clive is crying, and when he kisses back, the tears taste of salt and copper on his tongue.
Clive knows something happened while Willem was sucking his cock, but he can’t say just what. It was the sex of his life (both his cock and Willem’s ass are satisfyingly sore for days), but there was something detached about it, almost as if he’d been watching himself fuck Willem instead of actually doing it.
Never mind, he tells himself. They were both exhausted from moving; that’s why it was a bit odd. Not bad, though. He wouldn’t actually mind if it happened again.
Within days of their arrival, Clive’s entire Amsterdam portfolio is taken on by a posh London gallery for a handsome commission. He won’t be doing any portrait work for a while. On the way home to give Willem the good news, Clive buys a Polaroid camera.
When he enters the flat, he is surprised to see Willem banging away on his old electric typewriter. As far as Clive knows, Willem hasn’t done a lick of writing since the move. But now a sheaf of pages has accumulated on the desk beside him.
“I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular,” Willem explains, “and then suddenly I had an idea for a play.”
“A play?”
“Yes, I’ve never written one before. Never even liked the idea.” Willem shrugged. “I don’t know what’s got into me, but I hope it stays.”