Through a glass, darkly

OK, time for some honesty.

In my previous entries I may have given the impression that all I am looking for in Mr Right is intellectual synchronicity, spiritual alignment and a planetary conjunction of humour. Or at the very least a whopping fat chequebook. While all these things are true, we need to flesh out this list because like all gay men I am, at heart, a dirty great pervert.

The difference with me lies in the manifestation of this vice. While most of my brethren have no qualms taking happy snaps of sweaty toned torsos as they writhe in serpentine ecstasy on the dancefloor (oh yes ladies, get thee to a gay club), the very sight of a toned ankle leaves me feeling faint. And dirty. HW is a dirty dirty boy.

Fortunately I work in a temptation-free environment. It’s a discreet product design company hidden behind mirrored windows in a back alley of Farringdon. You can find it if you search amongst the garbage bins and discarded electric cars that clutter up the rear entrance to the Guardian Newspaper; our loving neighbour who blocks out all our natural light. In such a location we get very few Dangerous Hotties passing by, and I can hide in the loo if any Fit Engineering Suppliers come to visit. What a tragic oxymoron.

So it is that you find me a few weeks past, working on some fascinating computer modelling of a bevelled-gear drive system, and generally being very non-purvey. There’d been a close shave that morning where I’d nearly looked at the Coffee Boy’s tight buns as he leaned down to get the milk (hey, I’ve always drunk lattes) but I’d made up for it by putting on my hairshirt once I got to the office.

Imagine my surprise then, when in the midst of a very tricky bit of structural analysis, I get some divine intervention. The Big Man In The Sky leans down and suddenly booms in my ear:

“Yo! HW! Enough with the hairshirt already! Chestnut is NOT your colour, and goat’s hair is sooooo last season. Give yourself a break, cash in some of your points from the Karma Bank, and induuuuulge your filthiness!” At which point He leans down and trips the Guardian’s fire alarm.

Right on queue a veritable mince of beautiful young things wafts from the Guardian’s doors. They congregate loosely in the alley; Swarthy Intellectuals here, Rugged Polemists there, Dashing Copyists sprinkled in between. Breathless I stagger to the window for a better look, my face pressed in wild abandon against those wonderful tinted and yes, one-way windows. I am in Perverts Paradise.

As these Lovely Lefties chatter innocently about who ate the last freetrade-soy-curd-vegan-nut-delight biscuit, my gaze lingers desperately on every pair of black spectacles and each typewriter-toned forearm. I am in a heady state of euphoric freedom, released from guilt by the knowledge that they have no idea that I am watching. I also realise there is nothing sexier than a man in a fitted floral shirt passionately espousing the combined evils of global warming and rampant capitalist consumption. Well, apart from the same man minus the floral shirt. Tied to a bedhead. With gaffa tape over his mouth.

But I digress.

Far too soon the all-clear is given and the crowd returns inside. However, I am not unchanged by the experience. I am left feeling strangely liberated, and at peace with my inner pervert (his name is Hornblower Jackson by the way). He and I ponder the fire drill procedure at the neighbouring art college, and I express a certain concern for the employment criteria at the Guardian. Surely the UK’s anti-discrimination laws require a certain percentage of mingers and freaks to be employed? But Hornblower has the answer; they must have been left inside to burn. How very right wing.