A Fairy's Tale

Hi kids. I’m back.

I had once thought that this would be my last entry. One final chapter to neatly wrap up my story of loveless questing for Mr Right, a happily-ever-after ending to validate all the drunken fumblings, public nudity and revealing the depths of my homosexual depravity to my immediate family. Uncle Robert, if you’re out there, this one’s for you.

No, there will be no fairytale endings in this blog. Prince Charming will not be galloping out of the sunset in a lacy shirt astride his bucking stallion, because quite frankly that is fucking dull. Unless it’s “Prince Charming Rides His Bucking Stallion III” in HD surround sound, which is anything by dull.

Instead I proffer a tale of a budding young romance set amidst the delicate blossoms of a London spring, a romance flush with hope for a new world of candlelit dinners and joint bank accounts, a romance that I fucked up by thinking “ooooh, if I can just make this work out it would make a brilliant ending to my blog.”

It all started one fine March morning as I stood in the Salad Man’s queue, waiting for my usual bucket of health for lunch. For £2.70 the Salad Man will give you a tub of olives, couscous, carrots, feta, sun-dried tomatoes and chickpeas so big it has developed sentient life. To put that in perspective, £2.70 in London will usually buy you a postcard of Lady Di and a punch in the face, so the Salad Man was always busy.

On this particular occasion none of my work colleagues had come with me so I was whiling away the queue time with my favourite hobby; Perving On The Unsuspecting. Pickings were slim that Friday, and after the horrorshow of mentally undressing a man who turned out to be seventy I settled for admiring the tailored coat of the man two ahead of me.

What a lovely subtle pattern. Such a clever collar trim. Selfridges? No, Liberty’s surely. A great cut. Fits perfectly over those broad shoulders. Excellent tailoring in the body too; the shape emphasises that toned, muscular chest and waist. Oh, he’s turning his head into profile, and I say! that ain’t bad either. Hmmmm, forget the salad; break off a chunk of the Coat Contents for daddy.

Such was the depth of my anorak admiration that I wasn’t even put off when he opened his mouth and addressed one of the Salad Girls in the dulcet tones of America. Rather, I waited until it was my turn to be served and – under the pretext of confirming that yes, I was having the same salad I have had every single day since 2006 – I nipped ahead and planted myself beside Coat Contents. I took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the best opening line since "if I could rearrange the alphabet I would put U and I together."

HW: “My god, are you having the LARGE salad box? That’s an epic eat. Respect.” Yes, I actually said ‘respect’. I am Tony Blair circa 2004.

Coat Contents: “Yep, I get it most days. I love this salad bar.” Amazingly, speaking back.

HW: “Me too, although I sometimes find it a bit repetitive so I like to spice mine up with some smoked haddock back at the office.” Oh yes, take notes dating underlings. There’s nothing like imagining someone with a smelly, oily North Sea fish stuffed into their gob to crank up the sexual frisson.

And so it continued. Coat Contents took his salad and waited for me to get mine, and then we stood around awkwardly while he established that yes, I worked locally and yes, I also ate salmon, skate, cod, trout, barramundi and perch. Strangely he seemed unwilling to end this most educational of marine conversations. I weighed this against an estimation of the damage his clenched homophobic fist could do to my pretty-boy face, steadied myself on the vat of potato salad and asked for his phone number.

Coat Content’s face broadened into a fantastic grin. He reached into his wallet and pullet out his business card. I did the same and we exchanged like some dreadful 20th century cliché. If only we’d done this 200 years earlier, we’d have had servants in wigs to carry our monogrammed cards to each other on silver trays and lend the moment an air of majesty. As it was I discretely wiped the humus off mine and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Relief at having my teeth intact mingled with a sudden sense of achievement. I had just successfully hit on a cute man in a well-lit public place, without the assistance of alcohol, Straight Best Friend or Kylie! Truly I was a dating god.

A couple of risqué dates later and I had myself a bone fide boyfriend, and what a corker he was. While I nodded liked a labrador he’d describe Virginia Wolfe’s critical essays. While I gazed adoringly at his porno ‘tash he’d sketch arguments outlining Mozart’s compositional superiority. And while he read The Economist over breakfast I’d sit and think “when we get married this is what our breakfasts will be like every single day for the next seventy years until finally we die like Romeo and Juliet but horribly wasted and decrepit clutching each other in an embrace of enduring love.”

Sure there were difficulties. Sleeping together on those warm spring evenings, I’d lie awake and think “OK HW, just breath, it’s OK, don’t stress about this… It’s OK if he wants to sleep underneath a sub-arctic doona while the windows are closed in this heat. It’s OK that he has a fan running all night on high, it’s electric motor powered by coal-fired stations that are pumping out CO2 while the planet burns. No no, it’s OK because he LIKES THE SOOTHING WHIRR it makes. Breathe. Breathe the refreshing cooling air.”

But whatever issues I had with Coat Contents I always forgave him because knock me sideways to Christmas if the boy couldn’t actually kiss. Over the past seven years of having British men fondle my tonsils, plunge my tongue and suck out my oesophagus I’d forgotten how a real kiss is undertaken. Not with the express aim of eating your head, but with gentleness, passion and a tic tac.

Sadly, the good times were doomed not to last. After three months Coat Contents decided that things weren’t working out for him, and threw my heart into the trash alongside the articles on climate change I’d discretely cut out and left on his pillow. Yes, that’s right, imagine the horror; he couldn’t even be bothered to recycle. My heart went straight to landfill. That’s Americans for you.

Still, there are some pearls of wisdom in this cautionary tale. Number one, I learnt that years of internet dating, set-ups, one-night-stands, drunken touch-ups and dirty eye contacting had so reduced my self-respect that I could now happily hit on strangers in the glare of the noonday sun. Brilliant. Number two, I learnt that not all men who frequent salad bars are tofu-munching homosexuals, but if you’re lucky they might be. And thirdly I learnt that happily ever afters are the remit of dwarves, men in tights and stepmothers in drag, and thus have no place in any self-respecting gay man’s life.

Until the next time of course.