ADDICTED



AN EROTIC SHORT STORY




Fifty two and on his large lonesome, he is bath pink and bath naked.
He has some forty minutes.
He could easily spank the living daylights out of his ageing monkey.
The deceitful shit- Frank. Husband. Father. Stephen’s lover.
He’s sunk into a welcome wedge of spare time as if the seconds were, in themselves, something to be bathed in. Let him wallow there at length.
Frank is forever rushing baths.
There are, the far too rapid bathtimes squeezed between his many secret journeys, and there are, the swift baths snatched between his two distinct lives, all too hurried. Now though, here to hand, like an ominous miracle, is some quality time, time enough to dwell upon the soil and trouble of the two lives threatening to bemuse, muddle or commingle.
Less than forty minutes.
Time out Frank, for quality mind cleansing- the therapeutic mudpacks, the psycho enemas et al.
    Sort it.

At home, for once.
In his befuddlement, in this life with wife, the frontline life, the frontline jumble of his suburban home, Frank finds neutral space. No-one’s in. It is strangely silent, even soothing. He has rich seams of family stuff going on here. And their rare collective quiet seduces him, collars the raging wuss in him, inducing in his awkward demeanour a certain poisonous notion of safety.
Warm. Wet.
He relaxes, certain that danger stalks elsewhere.
And, never far from some gay antidote, he begins day dreaming of the other home, his other place- the backline with Stephen, visualising its loud lack of clutter, its cool urbaneness with its pale minks and dusty greens, its punctuating blacks, the striking fashionable accents.
The gayness.
        The Magenta.
                The Ginger Sand.
There are Spartan shelves there. There are glass bricks and stainless steel there, all of it spotless, thick with understated camp. The wide wall-spaces sprout new art..there.
Real art.
        Art drawn from life.
                Life drawn from the dole queue.

Eighteen.
Six foot two.
Hair blonde.
Eyes blue.
ACTDF. [A cock to die for.]
ALAWP. [All letters answered with photograph.]

Too much, he thinks. You can have too much openness. You can easily become overstimulated. Denuded.

Here, and now, and laid bare in the first place, there really is no more room, he decides. There is simply no more space to place another single thing. It is a hetero hell of shells and beach combings.
In the smallest room in the larger of the two houses there is no room to manoeuvre. Restriction. It bodes badly. Mum. Dad. Daughter. We three, he concludes to himself, are completely stuffed. Filled to phobic.

Changing thoughts. Changing rooms.

There, through open doors, the immense double bed appears to be a blighted acre, its fresh but unironed whiteness free of everything but haphazard hairline creases.
Heterosexual cracklure.
Out of the bath, and barely dry, he falls upon it with a sense of falling in lust, his eyes shut, the jumble fading, his touch ravenous, the cool cotton threatening to envelope him, its great flat fingers already at his buttocks, feeling, sucking at the moisture that he’s missed or forgotten. Marriage. His hetero marriage.
A threadbare farrago.
Fucked.
He’s still damp in parts. Like an unrubbed child.
Forgetful.
That’s what he is. Always was.
Rushed like some rash kid, too hurried in his head. Rushed and careless of the folds of skin,