Day One

A lot of the time, I can’t help but rue the day that I staggered out of my first, last and only girlfriend’s bedroom with a limp penis and the epiphany that it wasn’t going to get any harder because of anyone with ovaries.

Being gay isn’t as much fun as some people would like to think, if only because of the paranoia. In the last six months, for example, I’ve received rejection letters for three jobs and been mugged once. There’s a small but confident voice in my head telling me that’s pretty much par for the course if you’re like me and have no experience, few qualifications and a lack of common sense whilst walking home at night. However, there’s also a loud, anxious voice telling me that I somehow get the short end of the stick from life because of a flashing sign reading QUEER over my head that everyone can see except me (and my parents, who despite evidence to the contrary believe that someday I’ll meet a nice girl and settle down). Regarding my inability to be employed, one of my friends pointed out that most companies will by now have published a shiny set of directives for equality of sexuality. This means that they’re falling over each other to employ gay people lest they try suing for discrimination. And in turn, that means I couldn’t possibly go wrong if I included ‘fudge-packing’ (her words) in Hobbies And Interests rather than Previous Employment.

Intriguing though this idea was, I felt it counted as subterfuge and avoided it. Eventually, though, I received a letter from my credit card provider that politely informed me that, since my overdraft could support a small Third World country, some large gentlemen in suits wished to make an appointment to visit my flat and relieve me of my kneecaps. So, in a final act of desperation, I filled out my next job application and, as an answer to the question ‘How do you most enjoy spending your spare time and why?’ (as questions go, it was a gift from God if ever there was one), I wrote:

I enjoy socialising at the local pub, The Rose & Lion, because it allows me to meet and relax with like-minded people in a peaceful atmosphere.

Anyone who’s lived in my hometown for more than a week knows perfectly well that The Rose & Lion is a gay pub – rather, the gay pub – to the extent that even the people living in the surrounding area have started lisping. I couldn’t have made it any more obvious without saying that I enjoyed spending my time in bathroom stalls with waist-height holes in the walls (this was another point made by the aforementioned friend, Sarah, who nodded her approval at the answer I did write and commended me on my clarity of expression).

So, not without hesitation, I sent it off and waited no more than two days to be called back for an interview, a week after which I found myself in the employ of WHSmith Travel. Smith’s is a well-known chain of newsagents/booksellers/stationers who, on top of their paper trade, also sell drinks and confectionery at shamelessly prohibitive prices. They do business at train stations and airports, the former of which I found myself in early one cold Monday morning.

I’m not kidding when I say ‘early’ or ‘cold’. Signing up for the 6am shift as I so foolishly had meant that I had to crawl out of bed at half past four and start walking at ten past five to arrive at quarter to six, shivering in the mid-January darkness and chill of Platform Six. A middle-aged blonde woman bundled in a bright red Virgin Trains trenchcoat smiles sympathetically at me, foolishly dressed as I am without so much as a scarf. I smile back and resist the urge to tell her that the trenchcoat, peculiarly military in style, makes her look like some sort of neo-Stalinist officer.

I wait until twenty past six outside a locked door for my supervisor, who has impressively bouffant hair in an unattractive platinum shade and a state of constant semi-confusion that one would normally chalk up to years of drug abuse. Her name is Margaret (“Call me Madge,” which I don’t and never will because it sounds vaguely obscene) and it takes her three attempts to shut off the alarm once we get in. The shop, sadly, is no warmer than the platform and she explains without apology that the heaters are broken. The shop floor is littered with tied-up stacks of newspapers which, she explains unnecessarily, need untying and distributing to the two other stalls in the station.

Before that, though, she thrusts a wad of unpleasantly coloured material in my face. “S’your uniform,” she tells me belligerently. “Go’n get changed while I make a cuppa, will yuh?”

With canine obedience, I weave my way into the poorly lit, dank toilet cubicle behind the storeroom and don my robes of office.

It is at this point I start wishing I was straight. Or female. Or just not human. No gay man should have to abide by wearing a purple shirt covered in orange stripes.

My humiliation is not quite complete. When I find Margaret in the staffroom, leisurely drinking from a cup of tea as the wall clock reads 6.32 (I will later learn her shift is supposed to start at half past five and she will diligently write up the payslips as such), she holds out a small rectangular badge in my direction.

“S’yuh nametag,” she informs me through a mouthful of Earl Grey. This is already largely obvious, but in the fullness of time I will acknowledge that she never says anything that isn’t clear by observation. Nonetheless I take the nametag and inspect it.

Hello, my name is MICHAEL

“This is wrong,” I hazard. “My name’s Jonathan.”

“I know what yuh name is,” she says contrarily. “But Head Office like yuh t’have a nametag and they don’t much care if it’s yuh actual name what’s on it. Michael...left us,” she adds in an ambiguous tone which could mean anything between Michael having been fired to Michael having dived under a passing train.

My eyes wander briefly to the appellation Hello, my name is MARGARET on her expansive left breast and wonder if that’s really her name or if she merely adopted it over time. “I’ll get a proper one eventually, won’t I?”

“’Ventually,” she agrees.

With a sigh, I pin my newfound alter ego to my pocket and venture into the working world.

---

Anyone who’s ever worked in retail – especially the boring sort of retail where one doesn’t even have the opportunity to earn commission in vicious competition with one’s colleagues – will tell you that the day sets into a sort of dull, rhythmic pattern very quickly. You divide your time between stacking shelves, exchanging goods for money, and doing everything else. This miscellaneous third category includes (but is not limited to) repelling shoplifters, arguing over the authenticity of IDs owned by kids who are patently too young to buy cigarettes, and dealing with customers.

The last of these requisites is different from the actual selling process. During lengthy transactions – for example, somewhere in the world two species become extinct in the time it takes to verify a credit card – there comes an awkward silence which one feels should be filled by conversation. Working as I do in a large shed with a roof and its own mini-climate, that old British staple is lost and I can’t make idle comments on the weather. However, by the very nature of my location, I learn very quickly that there is a rich seam of Shopkeeper’s Talk to be mined.

“So, where are you headed?”

Between the hours of seven and ten on a Monday morning, this seam doesn’t turn out to be so rich after all; as one might expect, I earn a grunt of ‘work’ and a slightly suspicious look, as if by asking I expect them to be going anywhere else. Naturally, I lose such wild expectations very quickly, but I persist in asking and this, at the very least, makes me seem marginally like I give a damn. There are some exceptions; one benevolently crazy young man in a blue cagoule tells me he’s going to have lunch with the Queen, with the eventual goal of kidnapping her and holding her to ransom. During a lull in business, I entertain this idea for several minutes during which he misses his train and doesn’t care at all.

“Wankers,” Katy says of the rest, with weighty disapproval. Katy showed up at eight. She is seventeen, has unkempt brown hair and wears a thick tile of pastel makeup that (I assume) has to be removed with an industrial sander at night. Within an hour and a half of her company, I learn that she started studying AS-level Food Technology at college but left after three days, complaining that the kitchens smelt of blood and sick. She also determines my sexuality from twenty paces (I swear I can reach up above my hairline and feel the warm glow of the flashing QUEER sign) and, deciding I’m an honorary girlfriend of some sort, confides in me that she’s a month pregnant but is uncertain of the father’s identity. I offer her my sympathy as best I can and in return, she teaches me how to use the till in a somewhat more orderly fashion that Margaret managed.

‘Surprising’ customers are very easy to deal with. A drag queen (at least, I’m hoping a drag queen – if not, a transsexual who should have really given himself a good long look in the mirror before making any drastic decisions) passes through to buy a Twix and, I suspect, was slightly offended by the fact I didn’t bat an eyelid and give him/her the opportunity to be outraged. The fact is that once the pattern of service is established, it’s very difficult to break. I was halfway through the process before I noticed the square jaw and broad shoulders and by then, looking surprised only betrays the fact that I wasn’t paying due attention in the first place. He totters off in a huff and Katy starts degrading his taste in lipstick the moment the door closes behind him.

---

My newly developed habit of complete apathy towards any and all customers means that my first conversation with who I later learn to be the World’s Sexiest Man (capitalised for much-needed emphasis) is largely spent with my attention completely elsewhere. When he – the sharp charcoal-coloured suit, shiny black shoes and faint scent of spicy cologne – makes his debut in the shop, I'm actually on my hands and knees behind the counter, wiping up some tea that Margaret spilt earlier due to almost suspiciously bad hand-eye coordination. While this is a position I like to assume at some point fairly early in my relationships, it's not the sort of pose I actually want to start them in.

“Excuse me...?”

“Oh! Sorry. Hang on.” I straighten up far too fast, whack the side of my head against a shelf of cigarettes and go straight back down again whilst swearing like a sailor. By the time the white haze around my peripheral vision has faded and I can even consider getting up, Margaret has already shoved past me to get to the till. Momentarily, my head is mashed between a stack of Marlboro 20s and an enormous purple-clad arse and I can’t help wondering what deity I’ve angered to make my morning so utterly shite.

“Uh. Sorry. You alright down there?” He has an Irish accent; it’s nice. He sounds like the one in a boy band that all the girls fancy because he looks like a bit of rough.

“Fine. M’fine...” I grab the side of the counter and haul myself up. Margaret is throwing his stuff into a plastic bag. I’ve been trying to amuse myself by trying to divine things about my customers’ personalities from the things they buy, which turns out to be neither interesting nor even diverting once you realise that almost everyone buys roughly the same thing. For example, the World’s Sexiest Man has bought Diet Coke, a cheese and onion pasty, and a copy of The Financial Times. Not exactly informative – you’d be better off reading tea-leaves.

By the time it occurs to me to look at his face, he’s already taken his change and his bag and turned around. I see a sharp jawline dark with stubble, then the soft fall of black hair, and then he’s out the door and heading for the Pendolino that’s slowing to a stop on the platform.

Katy closes the door behind him. “Fit,” she judges.

“Didn’t see.”

“Left his handbag thing behind,” Margaret says abruptly, nodding at a leather attaché case leaning against the counter. “Silly bugger.”

The buzzer over the door goes as it opens, but I don’t see what’s going on because I’m too busy circling the counter, reaching out for the handle of the case, and –

We successfully fulfil all the relevant clichés: his fingers weave suddenly between mine, we both look up in alarm and our foreheads bang together. Apparently, concussion is the order of the day for me. I let go of the case and reel back, but even once I’ve stopped I realise we’re still standing very close together.

He has really, really blue eyes.

“Uh,” I say hopelessly. “You forgot your case.”

“Yeah,” he says, hefting it. “Cheers. See you.” And off he goes again.

“Fit?” Katy repeats.

“Yes. Fit.”

So now I know the World’s Sexiest Man. Just like that.

And he shall be mine.

tbc