only half an hour earlier had asked me if I’d like to do a line of coke and give him a quick hand-job in the ladies’ toilets. I politely declined both. He was a charmless farmer from Devon called Roger, devoid of all charisma, but who had been the least offensive of the fools shut away in a house for the winter. Roger won seventy grand and a couple of months’ worth of notoriety, but the car-crash kind. He was loved and hated simultaneously by the same people. His aftershave was so strong, he actually smelt like desperation.
So it had been a depressing day. When we finished at about seven thirty the sun was not long down, and the dark was still light. Somebody suggested noodles so we all ploughed down to Busaba Eathai on Wardour, and crowded around a table. Some of the guys were high already, but I was off everything but the booze, trying to clear up my act and my head. Ben had started leaving me disapproving notes about the little clingfilm bags he was finding in my jeans when he did the washing, and although the coke was rarely mine – I just always seemed to end up with the bag because I’ve never been a snorter, just a dabber on my gums, and you only need the bag for that – I didn’t want another argument. I didn’t want another spotlight thrown on the distance between us, and the different directions we were moving in.
We made our way through five or six or ten bottles of South African wine – the cheap good stuff. We crammed noodles into our mouths and felt early spring warmth in the chilled night air. I started to think about wearing open-toed shoes. I sat with the assistant producer, a tiny girl with dark hair and eyes who was up for anything as long as it involved laughter, and the public schoolboy A&R, obviously trying too hard to be ‘street’ in oversized jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, but fun nonetheless. He referred to everything and everybody as adding value or not adding value. Thankfully I was informed that I added value, and I was almost tragically grateful.
Three German tourists sat on the corner of our table, laughing loudly at their own jokes – they too added value! It’s a strange phenomenon, this sharing of tables. It’s peculiarly un-London, to throw open your space and your conversation to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has money to pay and noodles to eat. It’s become remarkably popular, I think, because of its possibilities. Lunch is more fun when the opportunity to meet the love of your life is tossed into the pot as well.
The Germans had strong noses and red cheeks that looked like they’d blister in the sun. They were having a wonderful time too. We tried to engage them in conversation, but if their English was broken our German was destroyed – the public schoolboy could ask ‘How fast is your woman?’ but that was the extent of our European union. They left eventually, to be replaced by two Italian homosexuals who kissed in the corner. They were both very dark and fragile and beautiful and the assistant producer and I were hypnotised as they gently brushed each other’s lips. It was the easiest kiss I’d ever seen a man give, and it was to another man. In the end they asked me to stop staring at them. I tried to explain it was because I thought them beautiful, but they didn’t care for the reason.
We drank lots and ate little, and the night started to melt away. Then somebody mumbled, ‘Gerry’s?’
We stumbled across Soho to the bottom of Dean Street, and through the familiar little doorway. It was dark in there, it always is. You lose everybody you know as soon as you get in, they all drift away to talk to strangers. Perhaps that’s the appeal of the place – the promise of anonymity. I ordered something large and red and the man leaning next to me at the bar offered to pay for it. I said,
‘Uh oh, that’s trouble. I shouldn’t be accepting drinks from strange men.’
‘Then why have you?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m poor and drunk,’ I replied. ‘But then you already knew that.’
‘I guessed the drunk bit, I would never have known about the poor.’
‘How charming.’ My eyes focused. ‘You’re incredibly handsome,’ I said.
‘I’m an actor.’ He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, as if appraising a painting in the Portrait Gallery, or a piece of broken china in a boot sale.
‘That makes sense. You may as well play to your strengths.’
‘Are you a model?’ he asked.
‘I am quite clearly five foot five. We both know that I am not a model.’
‘You could be a different kind of model, it doesn’t have to be catwalk.’
‘If you are asking me if I am a hand model, I find that offensive.’
‘Not at all. You could be a model of the more glamorous variety.’ He reached out and moved a strand of hair away from my eyes. I blinked him away.
‘You’re hoping I take my top off for a living?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint, but these puppies stay caged most days. I’m Make-up.’
‘Why don’t I ever get a Make-up like you? All mine are married with three kids.’
‘Your wife probably hires them,’ I said, without a smile.
‘I’m not married. Are you?’
‘Not yet. I have a “Ben”.’
‘And where is your “Ben” this evening?’
‘Playing Championship Manager with a warehouse assistant from Ealing Dixons.’
‘He sounds like fun.’
‘Yeah, well, you don’t know him. He has other qualities.’
‘Like what?’
‘You don’t care, so I’m not going to answer. Thanks for the drink.’
I walked off, proud of myself. The guy was on the make, I was obviously too drunk, and it showed but I still resisted. I didn’t want to meet anybody that night. It had become too frequent, too easy lately. A peck on the lips before home-time turning into a full-blown kiss, and I didn’t know who I was kissing and if I would ever see them again. It made me feel wretched. The first time that I kissed somebody else I didn’t realise it was happening until my lips were merged with his, and once I’d started, like eating a chocolate digestive at eleven a.m. on the first day of a new diet, it seemed pointless to stop. I’d start my fidelity again tomorrow. And the ‘being unfaithful’ part, in itself, was so unexceptional and run of the mill and ordinary that it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. He was an ad exec and we were drunk at eight p.m. on a shoot for the Carphone Warehouse, and we had stumbled into the wardrobe cupboard to find funny hats to wear. As I said, we were drunk. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and the passion felt so unfamiliar it was akin to riding the rapids at Center Parcs, or jumping up and down on a bouncy castle – it didn’t seem bad, because I didn’t love him or care about him. It just seemed like a fun thing to do at the time, and nothing at all to do with Ben. It was three hours later that I experienced delayed shock, like whiplash, and I burst violently into tears.
That was it, I had cheated. I had spent all this time terrified that Ben would be unfaithful, and I had just let a cocky guy from Kent called Dave cop a feel of me through my blouse, and tell me that he loved it when I scratched my nails across his stomach under his shirt. It felt awful then, and awful the next time, four months later at three a.m. in the corner of a bar called Push on Dean Street, with a stuntman I’d met half an hour earlier. He had deliberately set himself alight only two hours previously.
That was just a kiss. Eight months later I went home with a guy called Jonathan who was the post-production supervisor on a short film I’d been working on. I consoled myself that at least I’d known him for three days when it happened. I’d called Ben the next day and told him I’d crashed at my brother’s because it was closer, and he hadn’t seemed bothered, he certainly hadn’t questioned me as I would have questioned him if he had stayed out all night. In a way I wish he had, and I’d been forced to admit it there and then. The lack of suitable grilling the next day just compounded the reasoning in my head for doing it: Ben didn’t care.
That