Read Online The Pink and the Grey by Anthony Camber - Free Book Online Page B

— at least, counting those that frequented Bar Humbug. There were many others who never dared venture out of St Paul’s or whichever lesser college they attended, and there were rufty-tufty towny types who preferred to take their alcohol from a much straighter glass and drank with the dirty heterosexuals. Consequently you could stride into the bar and know almost everyone there. Not know know, necessarily — not biblical knowledge, though one or two theologists worshipped there occasionally — but anything from basic facial recognition to flighty acquaintance to drinking buddy to closest chums of all sorts. And then there were the sainted Others , the strangers. I’m not referring to the weirdos — like my good self — with caps and hypno-eyes, but the gentlemen recognised by no-one. The fresh meat , one might say.
    My grand pinball tour of the bar was never explicitly designed to identify these types, but it was a pleasing side-effect. On a busy Friday evening thumping with multicoloured young persons’ music there were usually one or two strays to be found loitering. Sometimes these were naïve, unaccompanied straight boys, smelling of something advertised on television, who never stayed long unless a few umbrella specials revealed they were secretly neither naïve nor straight. Occasionally we were visited by hetero couples, the male inevitably clinging tightly to the other to assert his sexuality, and anxiously avoiding eye contact: these Pussies of the Jungle were always worth a slow, deliberately accidental touch or two to make them all skittish and jittery, eyes wide — and there’s me thinking that we were the friends of Dorothy.  
    And then, as this night, we might see some obvious college gentlemen testing the waters, polar bear cubs perhaps out on the ice for the very first time. Usually a small, tight group, rarely alone. This time, three: a confusing number, as any two might be paired already and it was not always evident which. What was always evident was the unofficial queue of regulars trying their luck. A succession of doomed redshirts.
    I liked to think this was modernity’s homage to the centuries-old tradition of presenting débutantes to the sovereign at court — which was, of course, merely a device to insert marriageable young ladies into the eyelines of eligible stallions. Our miniature establishment had even evolved an order of precedence, of sorts. Your Otherly Majesty, might I present the Usual Suspects, beginning with Count Hypno-Eyes of Bucharest .
    I did not consider myself unduly predatory. I was a mere amateur, a part-timer in the lower leagues who occasionally enjoyed a rewarding run in the cup. Lack of success did not prick my drunken ego: I didn’t consider myself a miserable failure if I staggered home alone after Eddie or one of his boys sluiced us onto the streets. Where an opportunity presented itself, I indulged. It is true that the more I had imbibed, the more indulgent I became. Upon the calling of Time and the raising of the minger lights I could be less than fussy. A cavalier in search of a roundhead for hand-to-hand combat and heavy petting.
    Of the trio of Others comprising that evening’s little group, body language and instinct indicated two were coupled: a hand on the small of the back, sustained eye contact, whispered nothings. The third stood fractionally apart, still engaged with the twosome but with one toe dipped into the frothing ’mocean of the wider bar.
    On my promenade through the room I tackled another regular about who they were — who the singleton was. He shrugged. Ah well, I thought: carpe diem , before any other bugger does. Set phasers on stunning .
    He seemed to grow taller as I approached, or perhaps I shrank at his beauty: olive, mediterranean, sultry, knee-weakening. He smelled of late Spring, of a garden at full thrust. Sober me would wilt and shrivel, his burning glance scorching into my heart, his black surfboard fringe dashing my