Unbuttoned. This Stephen, growing less strange by the moment. Bringing him lemon tea and a small bottle of chilled aromas.
Bringing knowing.
Their tryst would not be disturbed.
Done. This deed.
He was good, this miner’s son.
It was the kind of good that only ‘things that truly fit’ could know. His intricate key a perfect match, turning in the intricate lock like uncut Heroin, the connection, once made, fixed and indelible, addictive. Frank floored, sore and palpitating, yielding and yielding until his needing to yield so fucking much abated.
Low tide.
            Another addict asserting his addiction.
                                                        The fantasy sail flaccid.
Frank waking inside an erotic photograph. The immaculate Stephen showering under a blue sky. The waste water blackening the slate to a high gloss. The music so un-English. And the art edgy. Fresh Cuban coffee bubbling out of shot. And, in a flash, Frank knows, truly knows, that this sexual expression means everything.

As might have been expected, Frank’s blunt confession blighted the engagement.
Lindsay made him wait six wintry months.
Giving bitch.
Giving him only Cheltenham head- no more than a kiss on the tip of his pecker. An immediate moist one pressed against her mouth, it’s slight antibacterial action instantly allaying the worst of her fears. Frank constantly protesting- ‘But I’m a rectal virgin. I told you. Stephen and me, we don’t do that.’
Lindsay incredulous, totally unmoved- ‘You’re fucking half gay, Frank. In my book, all men who trim their pubic hair have to be extremely happy bunnies in the bottom department.’
Frank lobotomised- ‘Fuck!’

Two months later they were married.
A shades of white wedding in a grey Registry Office. A Giorgio Of Beverly Hills marquee on the in-laws’ velvet lawn. Broad lemon and white brush strokes cast against manicured shades of green.
Pimms.
The works. The gay half only half buried.
And they knew, they truly knew, when the fruit cake was cut, that it meant not very much. Not really. Portions of poison.
Bugger!
            Bugger!

Stephen’s dick.
Stephen’s perfect, uncut penis.

Sunshine speckles Stephen’s skin, encourages the freckled child in him to sing. High valley summers spent naked in chill streams, his sex shrivelled, his grin broad. A jam jar full of gasping minnows.
The innocence brief.
He’d had to leave Wales. He’d have been gang-plundered, tarred and feathered.
Outrage and claustrophobia.
Straight men seldom do it more than once. Frank remembered.
But, two fags.
Two filterless Woodbines in the woodshed flicking through Men Only and you’re hooked, cottaged. Addicted. A hostage to secrecy for the rest of your life.

Auburn pubes.
Celtic.
The kind that shone like spun gold in the corner of your eye. A cock like a short sword, broad, sharp. That would prick you Frankie! That would make you fucking bleed!
A swimmer’s arms, like a cloak of blue.
He healed things, Stephen. This Stephen made the madness go away.

Now Frank. Now.
Urgent now. A cricketer’s nightmare- there, in a blue sky, rain clouds scudding ‘cross the sun.
The tantric moment came and went. Frustration.
The moment coming again and finally going. Frustration revisiting.
It is as if he’d slept through the end of his own movie. Cheated, he lights a cigarette, the one he’d never meant to light.
This house grows emptier, he mouths. The house grows childless. Like a nest in winter. Why stay and watch this life’s dust kiss yesterday’s dolls?
And then