Shore

1

July.

I exited the bushes and zipped up my fly. After being in the shadows for so long, still in a post-sex haze, and now in front of the beating sun, I needed a moment to catch myself. Where am I, what am I doing? As though he heard me, a man crawled out from beside my feet. Ah yes, him. After weeks of arranging and cancelling, we’d finally settled on that day, in those woods. Seeing me in the light, out from the shade of the spindly trees, did he see how I’d settled for him? If so, I wondered if he felt embarrassed, I licked my lips, does he feel lucky? We shared brief eye contact and a pained smile, a way to acknowledge who we were and the way we had just come together. He adjusted his cap and trotted off, his eyes down, keeping his concentration on the vague path ahead of him. I went in the opposite direction, it was hot and I was starving, I had little time to eat something before meeting my friends.

At the height of July’s hot weather, I walked along the Thames, nibbling on something flaky I’d picked up from a greasy stand, and found my two friends waiting for me, dinghy already inflated. We greeted each other warmly, they asked why I was late, and when I told them the reason they rolled their eyes, lifted and let their arms fall in a deflated, ´oh, same-old-same-old´ way. Stepping over pebbles we jointly pushed the dinghy out, slowly wading out with it as the water gently rose past our shorts and cooled our legs. I splashed some water onto the hot, plastic sides of the dinghy, and once we were in, two of us pushed with the oars while one rested, interchanging on sudden whims.

Halfway between Teddington and Kingston we stopped and I took the opportunity to throw myself in, keeping my mouth firmly shut. I paddled around for a little while, and turned on my back. I enjoyed how the cold water circulated around my stomach, how the sun hit my sternum through the choppy water. I wondered if I were more likely to catch something nasty from the man I’d just slept with or the Thames waters.

At dusk, we returned to where we had started and separated, the night’s chill was starting to encroach. The dinghy took forever to deflate and in the end we couldn’t be bothered to wait for it. We made a vague plan to meet the following week and repeat what we’d just done, if the heat wave was still there of course.

My friends went in the opposite direction as me, they were practically neighbours and were probably going to one of theirs as they usually did when the three of us met. I found my bike still chained up where I’d left it, and cycled home. As I cycled what little orange had been in the sky was gradually being blotted out by a falling, pastel blue. Shadows and greys transformed into greens and browns as I pedalled from Kingston, through Ham, and to the back door of my house.

One moment I was at dinner, the next I was in bed, time seemed to move like that. I was sweating and unable to sleep in the heat. Restless, I opened one of my apps. I’d managed to evade staying off it for a good few hours but whenever I was bored, or unable to distract myself, I always found myself back on one. I texted a sixty-year-old who had been trying to meet me for months. I didn’t arrange a meeting with him, but I did allow him to send me a photo of his cock, to which I replied with a picture of my arse. He saw my arse and raised me with a video of him getting fucked by someone. When the chat turned too icky for my liking, I blocked him. I went downstairs to rifle through the cupboards, to devour the leftovers from dinner, stuff my face with the naughty chocolate bars my mum thought he had hidden and wash it down with a tall glass of milk. As I got back into bed, I returned to the app and found a message five minutes earlier from a blank profile called S19.

Hey, five minutes ago.

I didn’t respond and instead switched off my phone and buried my face into my pillow. But from underneath my pillow I felt my phone vibrate. I peeled my arm from my armpit and picked it up. S19 had nudged me along with, I’m at a party near yours xx.

I looked at his profile and yes, he was around 400 metres away. I raised my head and opened my window but couldn’t hear any partying, but then, they were probably trying to keep the volume down, parties weren’t really allowed that summer.

How is it, I finally responded.

Really really dead.

We continued to text, until the conversation mellowed at around one. He was quick to clarify he was seventeen, but not how long he’d had the app for. I assumed for at least a year as the app required you to be eighteen. I was unsure where to steer the conversation to after we’d covered basic things like our day, how the summer had been, pictures of our faces. He was pretty, I’d given up on sleep and I wanted to keep his attention, so I texted, jokingly, we should meet.

I was caught off guard when I read, Ok what’s your address?

Really.

Yeah why not. I’ve been waiting for you to ask.

I sent him my address but then thought better of it.

Actually I’ll come to you.

He sent me his location, and I told him I’d be there in half an hour.

I wore a jumper a year later on a bus into town Shay told me he thought was garish the first time he saw it, shorts and trainers. I stepped out of my room and crept downstairs, taking extra care over the steps I had memorised that creak. I thought my mum was asleep, but I wasn’t sure, I don’t know how they could. Every time a heat wave cycled back round, we would ponder the idea of buying a fan, tired from the lack of sleep due to said heat wave, but just as we geared up to buy one, the heat wave would die, we could tackle sleep again and the fan idea was put aside, and every heat wave we regretted it and the cycle continued.

I slithered through the back door and shut it quickly. I stepped over the cracked tiles and to my bike resting against the wall. I was lit up by the moon, and by the opportunity to do something with my night. I looked ahead, my mum’s room above me, and beside my her plant pots I pushed off.

I wheeled my bike out, though it might have been Sam’s, we both had the same model save for one feature that was supposed to help me tell them apart, one of our mudguards was silver and one was black, but I could never remember whose was which. Regardless, I always took whichever had the toughest tires.

The night was black, with a muddy blue silver on the roads, and on the outline of all the houses and dull edges of things. With no people or cars about, it must’ve been verging on two in the morning. I took a shortcut through a typical suburban park, a large green square surrounded by a cracked pavement lined with trees and benches. Dried out leaves and twigs crackled under my wheels.

Down the silvery rivers, occasionally stopping to check I was going the right way, I eventually found the semi-detached house. Outside it, I leant my bike against the low brick wall, and listened. There were still no signs of a party. I honed my ears and squinted my eyes and eventually heard muffled voices and clinking bottles in the air, and through the thin blinds of the front room, I saw shifting, grey forms.

I’m here, I sent.

What are we even going to do? We can’t go back to mine. What are we going to talk about? I hope he isn’t thinking this is a booty call or something, I’m not in the mood.

Hey!

I jumped and turned around. You came, He stated.

He hadn’t said how tall he was. With a boy-ish face, and fantastic lashes, he had a child’s face that sat on a grown body. Yes, online he’d been cute, but the instant I saw his face with my own eyes, even under the minimal light of the night I was intimidated by how beautiful he was.

Yeah, I barked a laugh and ran my hands through my hair self-consciously.

I took him in. Tall, his hair longer and richer than in the pictures he’d sent me, and the evidence of a beard that hadn’t been in them either, or I just hadn’t noticed, sparsely lined the edges of his jaw and top lip.

Didn’t mean to scare you, we’d been in the garden, I came round the side, He said.

Ok, I said, and caught the living room curtains twitching and what I thought were his friends behind them, watching.

Let’s go, I said, Wait.

What?

What’s your name?

It’s Shay.

He didn’t ask me mine, I thought it had been because he’d already seen it on my profile but he later told me it had been because he didn’t know how to pronounce it.

I stayed seated on my bike and moved myself along with my feet slowly, leaving Shay’s ‘party’ behind us. His long legs casually followed alongside me.

Where are we going? He asked.

He put me in charge of what to do, telling me he’d never been on a date before, but assuming I had. I’d never dated before him, I’d only ever rutted.

I’m not sure, I replied, I’ll take you around the area, we can find a green to sit on. Do you come here much?

Not really. I don’t really know the guy’s house I was just at, He gestured behind us with a lazy thumb over his shoulder.

How many people were there?

Like, twelve.

Who were they?

Well, my friends.

Right. You know, He said, I used to look at the houses around here online, I used to want to live here.

Really?

Ham wasn’t much, bless it, so it bewildered me why Shay would want to live there. I hated it in the colder months, when everything was grey and the houses faded away, nature was either dead or sodden, and all you could do to clear your mind from your mundane surroundings was venture into Richmond park where everything was slick with mud, dead animals and litter. So, no wonder all I did was wait for Summer. I didn’t like Easter either, too windy. Summer was the only time worth doing anything. I waited for everything to brighten, because although everything was the same, the green spaces, and all the pockmarked roads, the quiet save for when the wind would blow in a particular way and carry the hum of the A316, it all became so much more when you could feel the sun and see the sky

I hadn’t been concentrating on what Shay was saying and only caught the last bit.

… But I love London.

Yeah, I agree. I love London, I muttered.

I definitely want to stay here forever, He continued, Even in Spring, how deserted everywhere was, it was fun.

Did you enjoy it? I asked, I was torn over the subject.

Kind of, yes. Was it ok, getting here? He asked.

Yeah, it wasn’t bad, I don’t think my mum heard me.

I snuck out too, He replied.

My sneaking hadn’t been strictly necessary. My dad only really came into my life a couple of years ago. It’d more or less just been my mum and sisters. My mum had always encouraged me to have fun and be happy more than anything, and her ‘strictness’ and ‘rules’ often didn’t fall in the same parameters as my friends’ parents, though me being notoriously bad at reading people, even my own mother, I often got blindsided by what they chose to be strict and try to control me over. So that night it felt safer to be quiet and tiptoe rather than risk a screaming match.

Thanks for coming. Kind of random, He said.

Unable to stop myself I said, Thanks for messaging me.

He side eyed me inquisitively, humorously.

Save for a police van, we trundled down an empty road together. Our conversation moved on from tidy and neat topics, onto more scintillating things. Both being from South-West, it was inevitable we’d have the same mutual acquaintances, and we swapped who we knew and asked who the other might. He had met a boy that summer I had had a thing with the summer before and had ended through rather shitty means. We spoke of school, how lockdown had been, our favourite pop stars. Really, what else were two gay boys, who in reality didn’t know a thing about each other, who found themselves not in the groundings teenagers typically used to connect and bond over, to talk about? Shay chatted away, I got a sense of the confident bravado I would come to readily be acquainted with. His mysteriousness on the app had been alluring but I found the confidence I was witnessing in person much more appealing.

We ambled around the silent roads, cutting through dry mud and scorched grass. Eventually, we reached Cranbury Gardens. The park was silent, and we sat at a bench, my bike beside us, the wheels still spinning.

Can I kiss you?

Looking back, I always feared I had come across as too passive, as too cautious, the person I was but preferred not to present as, my interpretation of ‘fake it till you make it’, that if I came across and acted in this nonchalant, carefree spirit, or enough people told me I was it, then I would become it.

However, later, perhaps on that very bus a year later after he told me what he thought of the shorts I wore, when for the umpteenth time we analysed this July night, adding to each other’s perceptions in a new way we hadn’t before heard from the other, I asked him what he thought about me asking to kiss him. Shay said it’d been, Hot, And, Gentlemenary, And, Not shy at all.

Yeah, He replied. We connected, we were a bit clumsy and I slobbered him a bit, but I’d like to think in a tender way. I felt him in my stomach and in my crouch, I closed my eyes and hoped he felt as good as I did.

Back then, to me, love at first sight did not exist. Fuck at first sight, kiss at first sight, but not love. Love couldn’t be felt through a glance. You could feel a connection, a stirring, and this stirring could be developed into love by say, a kiss or sex, or prolonged interaction. However, a glance couldn’t conceive love, it’s grown, and things like a kiss are the water we use to bloom that feeling, to materialise it. A kiss can be the beginning of a great many things, as was the case for us. Shay was the first person I kissed who I truly loved, and that love was only established a month, maybe two months later. Love, a feeling I’d never felt before, one which would so often frighten me as with that very love I felt so many other things like anxiety, excitement, fatigue, love being the roots and trunk and its branches all the other thousands of emotions. Maybe love isn’t a singular, specific feeling, but the umbrella term for all the emotions and thoughts and feelings which come from loving someone and being loved. What is it, really? I used to constantly wonder, before and sometimes with Shay, the huge thing I never related to but always wondered if I would recognise if it ever came to me.

It was early in the morning, near four, the geese were up, and the odd vehicle journeyed around us. He laid against me, we were silent. On the bench, it didn’t feel weird to keep one hand on his head, lightly twirling his curls in between my fingers. I loved his thick unruly dark hair, the first attribute I ever envied him for, the viscosity and unruliness I would drive my nose into when we shared a bed. Back then when I looked at his hair, I wondered, did you style it to such untidiness or was that naturally how it was? I would never ask, of course, just keep it inside my head, along with all the other 45895349 things rambling around.

The lighter it got, the more uncomfortable I grew, what if someone saw? I had a deep fear of being affectionate with a man in public, which is ironic as all the men I’d been with had been in public spots.

I stood up. Let’s move, I declared. He groaned, Where? I chained my bike up, and following me, we went south. The ground beneath us churned from grass to road, and then to gravel and dust when we reached a wide path that cut between two fields, fields that were a vibrant, almost neon green when the sky was blue. Then, however, the sky was a bland, pastel blue. A new day was slowly beginning, the old one was being shredded. Through the fields we eventually came to a playground, our surroundings gradually became clearer. As we made our way past the playthings, I noticed this little tick he had. He would quietly utter a sort of exclamation at random points, a little ‘agh’, a little chirp. Did I ask him about it that night? I can’t remember, but he never did it again after. I asked him about it some weeks later, though, and he told me it’d just been a phase.

While we climbed on the monkey bars and the slide, he asked me what my biggest insecurities were. I said, Only my back acne. But really I meant my back, and my voice, and my hands, my stretch marks, my legs, all parts of myself I wanted to draw zero attention to. He said his nose, his lack of body hair, his frame, all his truths, all concerns I saw no need for

We eventually rested in one of those shallow swings. I took a sly picture of him, not really trying to hide it. I showed it to him and he professed his ugliness but that I saw as beautiful. It wasn’t beautiful specifically because of him (he was covering his face with both his hands), but because of the new sky in the background and because I knew this moment was special and I wanted to capture it, proof that it had happened.

Do you like watching films? I asked, my favourite pastime.

He said, I cringe at most films, and books. I think more books because I can’t see it and it feels even less real. It’s something with the way they talk, trying to be realistic, or if even if it’s not that realistic, just anything trying to be like real life, or trying to be quirky, or pointlessly dramatic, or relatable, I just hate it and find it really cringe. It’s why I like documentaries, or reality tv, or really, really low budget films where they use real people off the street instead of proper actors, but then, they can be really shit too.

I stood to attention as Shay went on with his wacky opinion. I loved anyone with strong opinions.

What do you think about sex? I asked.

Um, I like it.

Sex makes me uncomfortable sometimes, I said, then added, So it might take me a bit.

This was somewhat true. While I’d been hooking up and around, it’d more often than not been the thrill of the build-up, rather than the actual sex that I got off on, the actual sex tended to be quite shit. As well, in the aftermath, the sticky feelings and worrying over STDs could also be too anxiety inducing to never want to do it again, but as I saw it they were a ritualistic part of the experience. And although I didn’t enjoy these sticky and anxious feelings, I always got out unscathed and could never hold myself back from the next opportunity and repeating it all over again. When I was younger, particularly at that age, I much preferred to just do, and think later.

Would you have sex with me? He asked.

I opened my mouth, but he cut in just before I could answer, You don’t have to say, and we don’t have to, but I’d like to see you again, whatever we do.

It was then that I made the decision to take a chance on Shay, to pursue things romantically with him. I’d loosely entertained the thought of having a boyfriend for a while, and as Shay was the first guy who’d ever offered something other than sex, or not sex at all, but simply company, it felt right that he should be the one to explore my vague musings with. Right? Therefore, as I had been taught by my friends, films, and Tv, sex had to be put on hold in order to gauge Shay’s interest in me. I half believed these thoughts, and yet it was easier to lie, whilst not completely unintentionally presenting myself with that very subtle undertone of innocence that might appeal to him (that I don’t think he really saw in me anyway). I took the line, It’ll take me a bit, from a show I had recently watched about a shy, innocent cheerleader after the topic of sex had been broached with her boyfriend. It was easier to use other people’s words than construct any real ones of my own. It was easier to do this than be honest and say I feared having sex with Shay, specifically. How it would feel to expose myself to someone like Shay, someone so lithe and beautiful and actually interested in me. I imagined sex with him would feel new, and new was very scary to me.

I’d like to, too.

Nice, He kissed my check, and I tried not to cringe at the act.

He sat up, It’s probably time to go.

Yeah.

When’s the next train?

Ok, we can make that.

We made it to the nearest station, and I waited with him on the bench, his head against me as we rested our eyes. A man walked past us, suit on and briefcase in hand, and for the briefest of seconds, warning signals rippled across my chest but it passed.

It’s coming.

We stood and hugged, good and proper.

When will I see you next? We weren’t sure, we’d message each other, Maybe Monday? This was fun. Yes, it was. Goodbye. Bye. The man who walked past us boarded the train, starting his new day but carrying on with his same life, the same routine in that new dawn. As the past refreshed itself and the day opened before us, so did we, our life, and our routine was never the same.