Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

hair, but I'm not. Coal black, my hair is, like soot. So black it shines blue in the light and everyone thinks I must have dyed it. Guys fall over themselves to tell me they love it– black hair, blue eyes, skin pale as marble. Like a Disney prince, they say. They think I'm lucky: I'm not. I live in fear of going grey– at twenty-five, a possibility that gets more likely by the day– because I know when I do I'll look like a fucking badger, and then I'll have to dye it.
    I quite like my eyes though, blue-green like the sea on a hot summer day. I just wish my lashes weren't so damn long, like a girl's, so thick you'd swear I was wearing mascara and kohl. To compensate I keep my stubble rough, not so long I look like one of the great unwashed but just a few mil, the second-shortest setting on my electric razor. I like it when guys stroke it, the soft scratchy sound it makes sliding over their palms. I like to rub my cheek across their chests, watch their nipples tighten.
    A stranger's body holds so many novelties; men react in so many different ways to being touched. I'm a pretty tactile person in bed; I love nothing more than pinning a guy down and finding out exactly what he likes. Nothing beats the feeling you get hearing a new lover's breath hitch when something you've done surprised them in the best possible way. Not that most of the guys I've been with appreciate that. I suppose when you've left the bar at two and you're in work at nine, time for playing is limited. Wham, bam, thank you man; you can't stay I've got to be up early . Club sex is about scratching an itch, that's all. Shame it took me almost ten years to realise that.
    I was a precocious adolescent. Sometimes I sit and look at the old pictures from that time and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing. I suppose everyone thinks like that when confronted with memories of their fifteen year old self. At least I never kept a diary: imagine the melodrama that would have gone into that ! It's funny, but all through that period, fifteen to eighteen, as Paul and I discovered the truth about ourselves, each other, sex and men in general, I never looked at him that way. Never.
    He was just Paulie, my best friend, the guy I'd known since pre-school. In my eyes he'd never changed from the kid I can still remember playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or crying because he'd fallen and hurt his knee. He was a constant in my life, the one thing I could always count on to be there.
    The kids at school called us queer long before any of us knew what it meant, or how it really applied to us. Teachers knew better than to try and split us up, and our parents were pretty tolerant too, I guess. I remember the occasional conversation, mum asking me if I had any other friends, or if I wanted them, but I never did. Paul was enough.
    "Hey slowcoach, what's up?"
    My best friend's slightly concerned expression startles me from my reveries and I realise that I've stopped jogging. I'm fucking freezing. Rubbing numb, reddened hands together, I blow on my fingers for warmth, the air leaving my body in smoky plumes, snatched away by the bitingly cold February wind.
    "Had enough?" Paul asks, bright eyes inquisitive. If I ever hear anyone say again that brown eyes are dull I think I'll knock them out. Paul's eyes aren't brown, they're bronze. Deep, shimmering, evanescent bronze.
    "Jackie? You okay?"
    I blink rapidly. Shit! "Fine, fine. Just tired." I shiver as a trickle of sweat runs down my clammy back like ice in these low temperatures.
    "Heavy night last night?" He asks, hooking an arm around my neck and leading me towards the park gates. I shake him off before I cave to the almost overwhelming urge to bury myself in his armpit and never let go. Not cool, Jack.
    "Don't call me Jackie," I grumble, giving him my best 'I'm mad at you' scowl. He grins back, eyes crinkling at the corners, perfect little white teeth standing neatly in a row. God, am I so far gone I think his dental work is sexy now? I don't even think there's a fetish for that.
    "Whatever, Jackie ." He reaches out and taps my bicep playfully with a closed fist, branding my skin.
    He's called me Jackie since forever. Jackie and Paulie, that was us. If anyone else dared to try I'd kill them, but Paul's different. As much as I protest I hate it, I don't and he knows. I probably tell him five times a day to stop calling me that, but if he ever did I think I'd shrivel up and die.
    Curtis hates it. He's Paul's