Excerpt: Straight Roads [aka Queer Camp]

This whole thing started last Saturday, back at home in Battersea; which by my standards was just another perfectly normal Saturday night. After our nice family dinner I told my parents that I was going to my room for the rest of the evening to prepare for the Bible Study Class I teach every Sunday morning. Just between you and me, this is a total lie and it has been every single Saturday night I've gone out for the past six months, which means it has been a total lie every single Saturday night for the past six months. The Sunday Bible Study Class itself is bona fide, but for the past six months I haven't been teaching it. I've been turning up and giving my students "the opportunity to practice delivering the word of our Lord God"; which is my particularly euphemistic way of saying I get the students to teach each other while I sit at the back of the room nursing a hangover, catching up on my missed sleep from Saturday night, or reliving the excitement of said Saturday night; depending on the exact activities of the previous evening.

My parents are the very trusting type - mostly because I've never been caught doing anything wrong (which, as anyone who was ever sixteen will testify to, is very, very different from actually doing anything wrong) - and anyway as far as they're concerned I'll get my punishment for any potential wrongdoings from The Big Man upstairs, so there's really no need for them to enforce arbitrary rules. Still, it doesn't stop me from sneaking around behind their backs; I know they wouldn't mind if I told them I was going out providing it was somewhere Christian enough for their liking, and yes, I could lie and invent some sort of Church funded Saturday night youth club in Shepherd's Bush or some equally non-threatening London suburb, but they're parents and I'm a sixteen year old boy. Sneaking out is hardcoded into my DNA, half the fun of the evening is knowing that I'm doing something I shouldn't, somewhere I shouldn't. You all know exactly what I mean, don’t you?

The something I shouldn't be doing is drinking sugary neon coloured alcopops and arbitrarily snogging boys; the somewhere is Pizzazz which is like the only gay club that doesn't ID. Seriously they'll let anyone in there; I don't even look sixteen and get waved though every week. Although, truth be told, the bouncer's blind eye might have something to do with that night I wanked him off in the toilet, but that's another story and completely unrelated to the events which are about to unfold.

Pizzazz is quite cool, and I use the word "cool" quite wrongly. It's a complete dive, but as I said it lets absolutely anyone in, so by default it's become my local - and only - haunt. It's the kind of club that you don't want to still be in at three in the morning when the lights come up, because no one could possibly want to see the place under the glare of fluorescent tube lighting. After all, it's bad enough seeing the dark, smoke from a smoke machine filled, strobe lighting dive through alcopop monocles (that's the underage homo equivalent of beer goggles, in case you didn't know). Everything's in Pizzazz is sticky - the floor, the bar top, the glasses - and the whole place smells slightly stale like my grandma’s old folks home, but it plays thumping, cheesy dance remixes of all your top of the poptastic pop tunes, the drink is cheap, the boys are - for the most part - cute and, in case I haven't already pointed it out they don't ID anyone ever. What more could a young fag want?

So I'm in Pizzazz, "cherry" flavoured alcopop in hand (yeah, the closest that's ever come to anything remotely fruity is guys drinking it), doing my thing which is standing looking cute and naïve by the jukebox (Yeah, so I’m a tease, so what? I say if you’ve got it flaunt it, baby). I’m deliberately trying to not try to catch someone's eye so that they’ll buy me a drink. If he’s cute and / or young I'll take that drink – make it a double - and then at least try and start a conversation - and by start a conversation I do, of course, mean drunkenly snog him on the dance floor then accidentally wander off in a drunken haze and spend the rest of the night trying to find him again. If he’s one of the geriatrics who prop up the bar gazing paedophilically at us young 'uns, I'll take the drink then make my excuses and scarper for the night bus before I get his hopes up, or he gets his hands down.

So I'm standing at the jukebox - which doesn't actually play any music, that's what the transvestite DJ in booth is for, the jukebox is just for a spot of atmosphere, which is posh talk for a slightly less sticky place than anywhere else, to balance your drink on while you're snogging boys - listening to yet another remix of yet another generic Britney Spears "classic" and avoiding eye contact with the geriatric at the bar. It's a hard call, I don't have enough money to buy another drink, but the man staring at me - who I could probably convince into buying me my own tropical island and a speed boat to get me there on nothing more concrete than the promise of a blow job - is notorious for his lecherous ways. Just as I've made up my mind that another Cherry Delight is exactly what I want right now (they must put heroin or something in them, because they are add-ic-tive. Oh, right, alcohol. That'd be it. Shut up me.) this voice shouts right in my ear, "Don't go there boy, you're too cute for him, plus, haven't you heard?" and the owner of the voice waves his pinkie finger in front of my face in the universally accepted gesture for 'he's got a tiny cock'.

The warm fuzzy alcohol has given my more confidence than usual and as I turn around to face him "Oh really, and pray tell" (Oh! My! God! this boy is h.o.t.) "How did you come across such a piece of information?"
"I didn't cum across anything, since you ask. He's not really my type, I much prefer guys who aren't old enough to be my grandad".

Oh, this boy is hot. Hot and funny. Hot and funny and charming. Hot and funny and charming and where is that hand of his going? Hot and funny and charming and into me?

"I'm Kris with a K, you?"
"Noah, and Kris with a K, just so you're aware..." I'm still brimming with confidence, "...if your hand goes any further south the very least you can do is buy me a drink." His hand comfortably slides further south, before disappearing completely with the rest of Kris with a K's body to the bar to acquire those desired drinks.

When I said he was hot, may I wasn't clear just how hot he actually is. Let's be honest he's out of my league, way out of my league, way way way out of my league. He's just so very cool, he's the most fashionable person in this skanky bar - all blond hair, retro cool clothes and an aura of awesome - and he doesn't even know it...which is more than can be said for the twinkie poseurs behind the bar. I know, I know I'm supposed to be this good Christian who never says a bad word about anyone, but really, sometimes you've just got to call a spade a spade, or rather a twinkie poseur a twinkie poseur, or a total hottie a total hottie. A total hottie who seems to actually like me; me! The lanky great God lover! Thank you Jebus.

Not for the first time, I'm glad it's so dankly dark in the jukebox corner; no one can see just quite how red my cheeks are blushing. Still, thank heavens for small mercies, with all the blood rushing to my cheeks it's not embarrassing me by engorging other appendages. Now that would've been so much more embarrassing than flirting with the geriatrics, I'm sure you'll agree.

Kris with a K returns surprisingly quickly from the bar, far too quickly, no one could possibly get served in that short a time. Pizzazz's bar staff have a great number of virtues - their hair, their tight jeans, their lackadaisical attitude towards the legal drinking age - but swift service is not one of them. Before you can even order your drink you've got to get their attention, which is a feat worthy of Hercules in itself as it involves distracting them from their own reflection in the bar's mirrored splash back. Vanity, thy name is cute-but-they-know-it homos. He hands me a bottle of lager and I look at him with the universal glare for "what the hell is this?"

"Would you prefer the crème de menthe?" he offers me the glass of lurid green liquid, then follows it up - unprompted - with a logical albeit strange explanation. "You know it takes forever to get served in here?" I nod, because as we've covered, it does, "and you more often than not don't get what you order because those awfully cute boys behind the bar get distracted mid-order by shoes or something equally shiny?" I nod again, because that's precisely what it's like, it's alcoholic roulette in here most nights, "So I skipped the asking for random drinks and the paying for said drinks I didn't want in the first place and appropriated these two instead. Let's face it, no one's going to miss their crème de menthe, I can't see an eighty year old great aunt in here, can you?" I shake my head, "and as we all know that eight year old great aunts are the only people who drink crème de menthe then, obviously no one's going to miss it, so why should we let it go to waste?" He has a point, and odd and slightly laboured point, but I point nonetheless.

"Fine," I say, "but you're having the crème de menthe".

After our stolen – nay, let’s call them re-homed - drinks and the welcome return of Kris with a K's wandering hands we venture out from our dark and dank jukebox corner and onto the equally sticky dance floor to shake our thangs to yet another remix of a yet another Britney Spears' "classic". Maybe it was the same Britney remix, I couldn't tell and I couldn't care less; the trannie DJ clearly adores Ms Spears and as I said, I couldn't care less what (s)he was playing; with Kris with a K's wandering hands and wandering tongue the trannie could have been playing Beethoven's Fifth and I wouldn't have even noticed.

Oh and for the record, boys who drink crème de menthe taste quite delicious. Minty fresh!