the backs of his knees, the backs of his ears, his concave belly button, his hairy groin. He then remembers how he would smell boy damp, how this might then evolve into something less inviting for his relatives- something fusty, just as if he’d taken on an adult taint.
His mother’s smile would wane.
Cleanliness, so her dictum went, was next to Godliness. Coal tar soap was the poison in her armoury.
Cold water rinsing away the tarry suds.
                                           Rough terry towelling. Yum.

Frank props himself against the ample pillows, sinking. Sinking then re-propping. He opens his brown eyes. Sighs. Privately squeezes himself. Privates on alert.

Lilac, he idly notices. Lilac blush.
It was her choice. The lilac and the lilac-white, a calm scheme from some mainstream magazine. Mothers in their mumsie hell, tortured by the concept of vivid careers. Mums worried by the new wealth of thinly qualified counsellors. Mums tempted by dream kitchens and interior makeovers.
Drinking mums.
Lilac crush.
He raises himself again. Half erect.

Lavender, he decides it is.
It is lavender as near as makes no difference. Lavender, a colour loved by sexual politicians. Lavender selected by her uncanny subconscious.
She would have been on something, doubtless.
Sober enough to grasp the basic guidelines- lavender walls and ceiling, lavender-white woodwork.
Hitting the hard stuff after the afternoon school-run. Neighbourly.
Happy to be out of touch but still in vogue.
Nauseating.
And there, flounced in Victorian lace, the deep sill of their bedroom window is filled with an imposing Asparagus Fern, its green fronds behaving like great gills filtering the flood of afternoon light. The uncanny effect shaping him with subtle shade, dappling his hide as if he were a wild child and in dire need of camouflage. Even the smallest movement changing him, making him fluid.
A shape-shifter. A shirt lifter.
He is changing.
Frank, stirring, stiffening, putting his well-beloved skiff out upon the open sea.

Gosh! The wife. She has such womanly things here.
Pink stuff.
All the stuff and all the womanly nonsense.
Lipsticks. Compacts.
Powder puffs.
                    Old ribbons. Ballet shoes.
                                       Pictures of children.
                                                            Things with wings.

And then,
           right then,
                    his very last pick-up comes fully to mind.
Not so much a thinker but an out and out doer, he’d thought Frank rather manly, overwhelming almost, almost to the point of overpowering. Thick-set. Hairy. Frank, the scrum stalwart. Well endowed. Bingo!
I have been a naughty boy.
I have.
Oh! Sweet Jesus, hurt me.
He was pale, as it happens, Frank’s antithesis, slender, post adolescent. Traces of juvenile skin imperfections marking his brittle neck and characterless chin. The designer stubble almost downy. His doe eyes hungry and already worn.
They were in a tired park, coupled after dark, away from the abused urinals, hard in each other’s hands, fake father and son, the act hidden by gathered Elms and a slab of dense blackness thrown by a derelict football stand.

Just sex.
Momentary release.

Frank recalls the lad’s keynote smell, a mix of jeans’ sweat and spearmint gum. And something else besides, sharp, poignant. Something lost. The trace of Wild Garlic, heavy in the warm moonlight.

Now. Inside his mind forever.