snotface
October 23rd, 2018, 10:56
I've mentioned previously that I was a driver at a London minicab office in the 1990s. I always worked the night shift (less traffic), which I found tended to attract assorted loners and misfits of society, those of us without a welcoming family hearth to return to. I struck up a friendship of sorts with Jim, a silver-haired driver in his mid-sixties with a manly, still-handsome, if roughened, face, which made you think he might have been a boxer in younger days (he never was). For the most part he had a quiet, gentlemanly manner; his stately, gliding walk always amused me. But he was prickly and could be vindictive if crossed; some of the drivers were distinctly wary of him. If the subject of race came up his face would contort in fury. He was what in those days would have been called a National Front supporter. He had a visceral hatred of blacks or anyone else who threatened his rose-tinted image of ye olde merry England.
I don't remember actually telling him I was gay; perhaps he just worked it out for himself. He would say with an amused curl to his lip that I looked like the sort of person who should be working in the haberdashery department of a large store. I liked his dry wit, even when I was the butt of it. On one occasion I returned to the office to announce dramatically that my customer had just done a runner (ie left the cab at speed without paying). Jim turned slowly to face me and said, 'Why did he run, he could have walked?'
He smoked heavily and liked his whisky; in the end it all caught up with him and he had to have a triple bypass operation. In the aftermath of that hellish experience, now retired, he would come round to visit me every Wednesday afternoon. We'd sit on garden chairs on my back lawn, sipping tea and chatting about this and that. He was a lonely man, living in a bedsit, and seemed to welcome the company, even though he'd occasionally shoot a mildly disdainful look in my direction, as if he were thinking, 'So it's come to this'. We kept off politics as much as possible, knowing that there would be no meeting of minds there. More to my liking, he would reminisce about running over the Epsom Downs as a young boy, watching spitfires and hurricanes dogfighting with German planes in the skies above. He talked about fighting communist insurgents in the jungles of postwar Malaya and about his days of heavy drinking and wild living with the likes of the actor Oliver Reed. He once showed me a photo of himself as an extraordinarily handsome, masculine young man and I had no problem believing him when he pointed out matter-of-factly that he had lived with a succession of besotted female admirers who usually supported him financially, such that he hardly ever needed to work. He admitted ruefully that he had treated them all badly, which accounted for his present much reduced living circumstances.
He knew of my yearly trips to Thailand to have sex with boys, but never raised the subject and neither did I. One afternoon (I can't remember what prompted it) he mentioned that one of his benefactresses when he was in his twenties persuaded him to try on some women's clothing one day. She got a kick out of it and he admitted that he did too – that delightful, soft, silky feel of the material against his skin. It made him feel so free and relaxed. In middle age, recalling the pleasure of it, he started to build up a collection of dresses of his own and liked to sit in his bedsit all togged up. He made contact with like-minded individuals and they had get-togethers, about which, intriguingly, he gave no details. He was emphatic that there was no gay element to them. I congratulated him on doing his own thing, but in truth he had boggled my mind. All these revelations suddenly from normally such a private man. I could hardly take seriously the mental image of that tough old geezer sitting in his bedsit in his frilly knickers and finery.
When he came round the following Wednesday he had an embarrassed look on his face and told me to forget all about what he'd said, it was all made up. I knew it wasn't, but didn't want to prolong the discomfort which had obviously been building up in the intervening week. The topic was dropped, never to be mentioned again. The afternoon meetings continued, back on the old, safe topics amid periods of silence.
When I moved out to Thailand to live in 2005 I would phone Jim from time to time. Asked how he was, he would reply in that deep, mournful drawl of his, 'No change' (ie everything as bad as ever). He was possibly the unhappiest man I've ever known. His health was deteriorating, he mentioned leukemia, and it became a struggle to think of anything to say which might give him any cheer. Eventually my calls fizzled out. When I returned to England for a visit after three years I couldn't bring myself to try to contact him. I never heard any news of him. And so ended our strange, evasive, treading-on-eggshells friendship. I've long assumed that he must now be dead.
I don't remember actually telling him I was gay; perhaps he just worked it out for himself. He would say with an amused curl to his lip that I looked like the sort of person who should be working in the haberdashery department of a large store. I liked his dry wit, even when I was the butt of it. On one occasion I returned to the office to announce dramatically that my customer had just done a runner (ie left the cab at speed without paying). Jim turned slowly to face me and said, 'Why did he run, he could have walked?'
He smoked heavily and liked his whisky; in the end it all caught up with him and he had to have a triple bypass operation. In the aftermath of that hellish experience, now retired, he would come round to visit me every Wednesday afternoon. We'd sit on garden chairs on my back lawn, sipping tea and chatting about this and that. He was a lonely man, living in a bedsit, and seemed to welcome the company, even though he'd occasionally shoot a mildly disdainful look in my direction, as if he were thinking, 'So it's come to this'. We kept off politics as much as possible, knowing that there would be no meeting of minds there. More to my liking, he would reminisce about running over the Epsom Downs as a young boy, watching spitfires and hurricanes dogfighting with German planes in the skies above. He talked about fighting communist insurgents in the jungles of postwar Malaya and about his days of heavy drinking and wild living with the likes of the actor Oliver Reed. He once showed me a photo of himself as an extraordinarily handsome, masculine young man and I had no problem believing him when he pointed out matter-of-factly that he had lived with a succession of besotted female admirers who usually supported him financially, such that he hardly ever needed to work. He admitted ruefully that he had treated them all badly, which accounted for his present much reduced living circumstances.
He knew of my yearly trips to Thailand to have sex with boys, but never raised the subject and neither did I. One afternoon (I can't remember what prompted it) he mentioned that one of his benefactresses when he was in his twenties persuaded him to try on some women's clothing one day. She got a kick out of it and he admitted that he did too – that delightful, soft, silky feel of the material against his skin. It made him feel so free and relaxed. In middle age, recalling the pleasure of it, he started to build up a collection of dresses of his own and liked to sit in his bedsit all togged up. He made contact with like-minded individuals and they had get-togethers, about which, intriguingly, he gave no details. He was emphatic that there was no gay element to them. I congratulated him on doing his own thing, but in truth he had boggled my mind. All these revelations suddenly from normally such a private man. I could hardly take seriously the mental image of that tough old geezer sitting in his bedsit in his frilly knickers and finery.
When he came round the following Wednesday he had an embarrassed look on his face and told me to forget all about what he'd said, it was all made up. I knew it wasn't, but didn't want to prolong the discomfort which had obviously been building up in the intervening week. The topic was dropped, never to be mentioned again. The afternoon meetings continued, back on the old, safe topics amid periods of silence.
When I moved out to Thailand to live in 2005 I would phone Jim from time to time. Asked how he was, he would reply in that deep, mournful drawl of his, 'No change' (ie everything as bad as ever). He was possibly the unhappiest man I've ever known. His health was deteriorating, he mentioned leukemia, and it became a struggle to think of anything to say which might give him any cheer. Eventually my calls fizzled out. When I returned to England for a visit after three years I couldn't bring myself to try to contact him. I never heard any news of him. And so ended our strange, evasive, treading-on-eggshells friendship. I've long assumed that he must now be dead.