“Thanks,” I said again. “For listening. You won’t tell anyone, will you? The other guys?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “This is our secret, mate. If you like.”
We were walking along a part of the canal now that was even darker; I think a couple of the lamps had stopped working. It was deathly quiet.
You know those moments in life that seem to happen so smoothly it feels like they’ve been scripted in advance? This was like that. I don’t remember any conscious decision to move toward him. But the next thing I knew, I was kissing him. It was definitely me that made the first move, I know that—even if it was like my body moved before my brain had worked out what it was going to do.
I’d kissed plenty of people. Girls, I mean. Only ever girls. At house parties, or drunk after a formal, a college ball. Fooled around. And it wasn’t unpleasant. But it had never felt any more intimate or exciting than, I don’t know, a handshake. It didn’t disgust me, exactly, but the whole time it was happening I’d found myself thinking about the logistical things—like whether I was using my fingers and tongue right, feeling a little queasy about how much saliva was being passed back and forth between us. It felt like a sport I was practicing, maybe trying to get better at. It never felt like something exciting, something that made my pulse quicken.
But this—this was different. It was as innate as breathing. It was strange how firm his mouth seemed after the softness of the girls’ I’d kissed—I wouldn’t have thought there would be a difference. And it seemed so right, somehow. Like it was the thing I had been waiting for, the thing that made sense.
I took hold of the chain around his neck, the one I had watched so many times appear and disappear beneath the line of his shirt, the one with the little figure of the saint hanging from it. I gave it a little tug, pulled him closer to me.
And then we were moving backward into the darkness—I was pushing him into some secret corner, falling to my knees in front of him, again every movement so fluid, like it had all been written out in advance, like it was meant to be. Unzipping his fly and taking him in my mouth, the warmth and hardness, the secret scent of his skin. My knees stung where I knelt on the rough cobblestones. And even though I had never allowed myself to think about this, I must have thought about it, somewhere in my subconscious, somewhere in my deepest thoughts hidden even from myself, because I knew exactly what I was doing.
He smiled, afterward. A sleepy, lazy, stoned smile.
But for me, after that rush of euphoria, there was an immediate descent. I’ve never had a comedown like it. My knees hurt, my jeans were damp from something I’d knelt in.
“Fuck. Fuck—I don’t know what happened there. Shit. I’m just . . . I’m so wasted.” Which was a lie. I had been stoned, yes. But I’d never felt more clear-headed in my life. I’d never felt more alive, either—electric, wired—so many different things.
“Mate,” he said, with a smile. “It’s nothing to be worried about. We were a bit pissed, a lot stoned.” He gestured around us, shrugged. “And it’s not like anyone saw.”
I couldn’t believe how relaxed he was about it. But maybe at the back of my mind I’d known this about him; this side of him. I’d once heard someone at Cambridge describe him as an “omnivore”; wondered what that meant.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I told him. I was light-headed with fear, suddenly. “Look, you don’t understand. This—it has to stay just between us. If it somehow got back . . . look, my dad, he wouldn’t get it.” The thought of him finding out was like a punch to the gut, it winded me just thinking about it. I could see his face, hear his voice. Could still remember what he’d said when I told him I didn’t want that birthday gift, what was in that room: What’s wrong with you, son? Are you a faggot? The disgust in his voice.
He actually might kill me, I thought. If he suspected. He’d probably prefer that to having a son like me. At the very least, he’d disinherit me. And while I didn’t know how I felt about taking his money, I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.
After Amsterdam I decided I never wanted to see Benjamin Daniels again. We drifted apart. I had a string of girlfriends. I left for the States for nearly a decade, didn’t look back. Yeah, there were a couple of guys there: the freedom of thousands of miles of land and water—even if I still always seemed to hear my father’s voice in my head. But nothing serious.