The Cemetery Date

“Surprise me,” he said.

And so I did.

I waited outside Mile End Station, chuckling to myself.

The Man with the Hair arrived.

He has an enviable fro of curly hair (—tied back tonight). We crossed paths when my students curated his artwork. I clocked him at the opening event, but stayed away; the lavishing of attention on attractive people annoys me, so I deliberately ignore them. However, we exchanged words and details when he collected his work the following week. I proceeded to invite him to an Anti-Valentines Action Dinner at Performance Space, to which he came and held his own. There ensued sporadic virtual communication, until I secured tonight’s date.

To the rattling of wine bottles in my shiny pink backpack, we walked to Tower Hamlets Cemetery.

“What are we doing here?”

“I’m luring you into a raping,” I said. “There’s a knife in my boot.”

He laughed, to which I replied, “You obviously trust me. Following me into the dark forest like this. You don’t know me. I could be capable of something terrible. Anything could happen.”

“That’s true…”

We stopped at a tomb (the tomb of Ann) and clambered (I clambered) to sit on it. I insisted on a moment of silence in respect of Ann before breaking out the wine.

“You can have summer red or White Zinfandel.”

“I quite fancy the white.”

I took several generous swigs of the summer red before hitting him with some poetry.

“This is a poem about staring into darkness: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”

On and on, I rambled over The Raven’s rippling rhymes while he listened (My, what a lengthy poem it is). I also presented him with a bag of pink marshmallows and a pumice stone (“For sloughing dead skin. Fancy a bit of exfoliation at my place?”).

Poems later, we chatted. I asked him to tell me something pathetic about himself, to which he revealed financial impotence, self-consciousness and 39 years of age.

In exchange, I explained that I can be a bitter and jealous person, subject to social anxiety and occasionally reluctant to leave the flat for days. However, “My New Year’s resolution is to be a better friend and I am succeeding in that capacity.”

Other topics of conversation included my desire to be a rap superstar, self-proclaimed writing ability, and my imaginary penis. I had, by this point, downed a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. I suggested we relocate to a “more ominous” part of the graveyard in order to “commence the raping.” Stumbling, we worked our way through nettle trappings to settle into a remote and concealed grave. In the background, we heard the shrieking of the yobs. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’m all over this,” I insisted.

We both had to pee. I think I might have fallen over in my attempt. And I remember thinking, “Ah, yes, I’ll take out my bloody tampon in case he fingers me. A small tribute for the grave I’m pissing on.” I suspect the alcohol flooded my head at this point because I hardly remember thereafter. I seem to recall a rather abrupt end to the date by his volition, and feeling (and concealing) annoyance, but I can’t remember leaving the graveyard.

I arrived home, pissed as ever, to my wife and houseguests and the realisation that I’d lost the mobile phone I’d recently paid £240 to reconnect. Gutted, I proceeded to throw a tantrum—literally, I lobbed the contents of the lounge into the kitchen. I could hardly listen or string a sentence, and ended up face down and fully dressed in bed with the trash bin.

I woke with a start (still mildly drunk and/or hungover) at the crack of dawn. Must. Find. Phone. So I set off with my trusty hound, back to the cemetery in the rising sun and spitting rain. I quickly found my way to Ann’s tomb, decorated in wrinkled sheets of poetry (which I decided to leave for Ann), but alas, no mobile phone.

I’d retained no defining characteristics about the second grave we’d visited and the cemetery appeared wide and winding in the daylight. How could I possibly retrace my drunken steps to find that deliberately hard-to-reach location?

I wracked my brain, but conjured only darkness. “C’mon Lucky, sniff out my urine and bloody tampon. You can do it, hound dog.” An hour passed and nothing. I felt increasingly hopeless. All the graves and trees looked the same. Needle in a haystack. My phone lost somewhere in a graveyard (Oh Ann, you’ve failed me).

I’d recently surmounted a fortnight of phonelessness and £240 reconnection fee, only to lose my fucking phone at the soonest occasion. I was kicking myself for being a lightweight, a lush and a lunatic lothario—stupid piss-taking cemetery date—when I caught a glint of glass (only the neck of a wine bottle!) in the corner of my eye. There. I scrambled through brambles to the very spot I’d graced hours before. I found a couple of empty wine bottles (one intact; one smashed to pieces) and the gift of pink marshmallow peeking atop a wet and leafy grave belonging to a one Mister Clark.

I kicked up the leaves and—unbelievable! —there lay my mobile phone (backlit by a photo of Lucky eating an ice cream cone) in working condition no less! I’d found my motherfucking mobile phone (Clark, I could kiss you!) and dutifully cleared the glass from the grave.

Disbelieving, delirious and dehydrated, I dragged my dog through the still morning and towards home, grasping the soggy handset in my pocket.

I’ve heard nothing of the Man with the Hair. But I’ve been creasing with laughter all day.

Professor Lawngkok

It was the start of 2003 and I’d just returned from the Navy. A crate had arrived containing all of my belongings. It occupied the entire floor of my bedroom.

I’d returned to find my mother shacked up with our neighbour. She’d divorced my stepfather and dated his best friend out of desperation (this is how I perceived it, anyway: she’d lost her job in Miami and taken one in Boca—like two hours away—someone had to pick up the kids from school).

She’d moved out of my childhood home in Kendall (with the pool and rocky waterfall, encased by a protective screen) and he’d moved out of his (two doors down), and together they moved into the most beautiful house I’d lived in.

Strangely enough, he was the father of my childhood best friend. I can’t remember why she and I stopped being friends. Funny how these things, once so important, are erased totally from memory. It must’ve been so important to me back then. But now… now, I can’t remember at all.

The house had two floors and a laundry chute from which dirty clothes (ropa sucia) could be dropped from upstairs into the laundry room. My room was on the ground floor, facing out, with large bay windows—the best room in the house. Still, I remember so little about that house; I had other things on my mind (I’d just left the Navy, heavily traumatised).

One night, I was on AOL (in pre-Facebook days when AOL monopolised the World Wide Web and dial-up made screeching sounds) in a chat room and stumbled across my next boyfriend.

His name was Rob and he was studying to be a dentist. We actually had mutual friends (the Alcantaras), among other desirable characteristics like Cuban heritage. The first time we met, on the sidewalk near his house, he walked towards me—sweaty and hairy, shirt tucked tight over his immutable belly—and I was nervous, giving him the power men so held over me.

We didn’t like each other at first. We ended up at the beach. Sitting side-by-side, motionless, staring at the moon reflected on still water and disappointed that it were fruitless. Suddenly (in a tale we often recounted), the tide changed and we tangled in a sweaty embrace, sand flying, belts buckling… the rest is history.

Rob was the hairiest man I’ve ever known. A carpet of hair ran up his neck and coated his butt. Hair everywhere—on the pillows and sheets—black corkscrew hairs. We dated for a couple of years and, ashamed of having met online, never deviated from the made-up story of our introduction (through Vivian). Though native to Miami, he was enrolled in Dental School in Boston. I visited several times (once gaining a free flight by fishing promotional stickers off hundreds of used cups from a bin behind Wendy’s Drive Thru) and watched him conduct his earliest dental procedures on desperate volunteers.

One Valentines Day, we stayed in all day and duly made a sex tape (a mutual and happy first) starring Professor Lawngkok and star pupil. From what I remember, it was pretty good. I’d developed an interest in BDSM, but lacked the vocabulary to express it. It was throughout my relationship with Rob that I began to research and instigate my fetishes.

Unfortunately, his mother was absolutely insane. A feng shui maddict that lived to meddle, even so far as spiking his orange juice with mystery pills and pinning dollar bills to the walls. She lived in a sort of tacky palace with a fleet of imaginary angels and a white yorkie named Sasha—nibbling the bread off chicken nuggets before feeding them to her daughter.

Funny, how these are the things I remember.

We went to Sarasota once, to the beaches. Young Rob and I, horny as ever, spent the entire trip angling for a moment alone (without avail). We went for "a walk" along the beach at night, but were devoured by mosquitos before our clothes came off. We locked Sasha in the motel bathroom, but her mother—miles away on the beach—heard the familiar sound of relentless and high-pitched yapping and flew to the bedside before our pants reached our ankles.

Finally, during the long drive home—his parents in the front seat, Rob to my right, grandmother snoozing to my left, the moon full and bright—I laid my head on his lap and covered it with my hoodie. Soundlessly, I unzipped his tight jeans, extracted his chubby cock, and licked it with darting tongue and craning neck. As it grew, his elbows dug into my back and his grandmother wheezed alongside.

I remember their home being unbearable—simply out of the question—filled with dread and dominance and gold leaf decor. I could never end up in that family. We split up shortly after his graduation from Dental School. He married his next girlfriend.