On the way to the parachute jump

On the way to the parachute jump?.

It was on the way to the parachute jump that I began to have second
thoughts.

"Bud," I said, "how high does this thing go?"

Bud glanced over at me. He was driving and sucked in his lips. "Oh
pretty high, you know?"

Bud is American and says things like this. Everything is pretty much
one thing or another; or like something else. There is an indefinite
quality in everything he says. It was one of the things that attracted
me to him.

I met Bud in the top bar of G-A-Y. He was the kind of big bold
American my mum had warned me about when we lived on the outskirts of
Guantanamo Bay.

"Porkie," she would say. This is what she used to call me. "You watch
out for those friggin' Americans and if they offer you tights, tell 'em
to go hang."

Actually she didn't say this. That was just in my head but if you had
my mother you would make stuff up too. I'm telling you.

The day I met Bud I had just split up from Tim. It was like I was
deliberately chasing men with only three letters in their names.

"Just think of how much you'll save on ink over the years," said
Kevin. "When you write greetings cards I mean."

Kevin says things like this. And anyway who is he to talk? His
boyfriend's name is Da. I mean, Da. What is that? It's not even on the
music scale is it? Not according to Julie Andrews and she knows.

Kevin and I go way back. We were at school together. We used to sit at
the back of music class and draw pictures of boys arses. We got caught
once and had to go to the front of the class.

"What's this?" said Miss Jones holding up our page.

"It's a double cleft miss," said Kevin straight off. I thought that
was quite good for him.

I feel quite bad when I think about it now. I mean because of what
happened between me and Da.

It was last Christmas. Kevin had gone back to our home town to do the
Christmas thing with his mum and dad. Our home town is Colchester by
the way, not Guantanamo Bay just in case you think I've been leading
you astray. And me and Da were left in London by ourselves.

Well not quite by ourselves. Da's uncle had let Da have the run of his
house. The uncle had gone back to Egypt. Or it might have been Lativa.
I forget now. And we thought it would be a great idea to have a
party.
We invited everyone we knew, gave out the address and everything and
then we get to this house on the night of the party and we find out
it's the wrong bloody address. I get upset and call Da a goddam nappy
head. I shouldn't have said that and he went running off and of course
I have to go after him through the streets of London like some kind of
leftovers from the marathon.

Somehow or other and I really don't know how we end up at Joseph's.
Joseph is an ex of mine. He's famous for having the biggest cock in
Ayrshire. No, it's true. There's this guy up there who's a Julian Clary
impersonator. He has a Fanny the Wonderdog and everything. Or he did
until Julian found out and contacted his lawyers. Anyway, this Julian
Clary impersonator, actually he called himself, Jalian Clury was doing
this show he took round the clubs, kind of like that Sticky Moments -
his was called Stocky Miments (he used to say it in a French accent and
it sounded cool) and one of the games was that he would get five guys
up on the stage, get them to put their knobs through these wood
cut-outs and measure them. It wasn't subtle but it drew in the
crowds.

Well needless to say, and I've already kind of let the cat out of the
bag, Joseph was the winner. But that isn't the end of the story. One of
the other contestants complained. He said that Joseph had used the
services of a fluffer and therefore his win wasn't valid. It all got
quite out of hand and Joseph had to move down to London pretty
sharpish.

I met him in the Spud-U-Like on Brixton High Road bag clutched between
his knees; actually it was a kind of rucksacky thing. No sense of
fashion, I thought.

It was a Sunday morning, six am, and I was off my head having just
come out of The Fridge. The whole night had been a disaster. I had been
going out with Dek at that time. He had given me the whole, 'I love
you, I want to stay with you, I'm going to be faithful' routine and
then that same evening pulled on his pink velvet hotpants and said did
I fancy going clubbing?

I found him circa 3am in the upstairs loos of The Fridge, hotpants in
his teeth, clutching the outer edge of a state of the art sink being
mounted by a South London policeman who claimed that he was merely
curious. 'Curious'. I'll say he was. I left them both there and went
straight to the bar and ordered 17 vodka jellies.

So later that morning when I bumped into Joseph in the Spud-U-Like
looking like something that fashion had forget I thought this is the
man for me. I'm going to settle down. From now on I'm going to lead a
nice little boring life. No more galvanting about, rebounding from one
man to another.

Anyway, what was I talking about?..?