Lee

Showing me the ropes.

“Too young to strip, at 18? He’s seen what I can do. And he thinks I undersell myself. He focuses in tight. And as he watches me so I watch him. The sharp suit. The glass that could be vodka but is actually water. Whispers of a voice note he leaves for himself on his phone. The shuffling of cufflinks and the straightening of the tie. In a northern club characterised, at this time of night, by the reeling baying hordes, the gay crowd acting as a pack as they howl for the last silver sequin to drop and my cock to flop out onto tongues that can never quite stretch far enough, he is stillness and calm.

“He’s the handsome man that tips a life-changing proposition and not a note or even a bundle. The handsome man that drives a Jag, and steals me away into the night as soon as my second show is over. He sits beside me in intimate gloom, two sober gay men at 2am on a Saturday morning, sliding through the darkness until the city is far behind and a new life plan is just over the horizon. Up close he smells expensive. Is it this that gets me hard in the seat? Or the eroticism inherent in new ambition?”