The Green Door at the End

Poets, like lovers, should be bold and dare,
They Spoil their Business with an Over-care:
And he who servilely creeps after Sence,
Is safe, but ne're will reach an Excellence. ....... Dryden

If attracted to young men, it is sensible to acknowledge the arrival of that point in life when it is no longer realistic to suppose they are at all likely to reciprocate. Sexually that is, because if sex were the only object in view it would be an unworthy and dull proceedings. If not bright-minded and a good laugh, a return visit is far from likely. Also, a personal idiosyncrasy, posh accents are insurmountable, and "public schoolboy" in a Gay Times advert, would have a severe negative impact.

Most of these adverts carry "noms de plume" to safeguard family harmony. Some even have more than one "nom" and this for obvious practical reasons, depending on different activities. Thus a boy will know, when a caller asks for Jan, exactly what is expected of him, and, if not in the mood, may tell a white lie that Jan is away visiting a sick aunt, or alternatively, on holiday in Ibiza.

The advent of the mobile phone was to cause early delight. A golden evening in high summer, Todd and I had walked down to the Palace Pier for some fish and chips, for which the boy had a particular liking, the exertions of a pleasant afternoon having afforded us both an appetite. Wending our way through a throng of Mums and Dads the boy's phone drew attention to itself with a snatch of Grieg (if I ever get one I shall set it to Alberich's Curse).

Its owner, likewise, set about drawing attention to ourselves –"Ullo? …. Yes, I've got short dark hair, and seven inches …." (always a modest youth) " … yes I can wear black underpants … " (demonstrating an admirable degree of personal hygiene since the ones he was wearing at the time were of a pleasant blue pattern).

Then there is Andrew, or Cindy to be precise. Andrew was refreshing for two reasons. He had been raised without any contact whatever with either religion or politics, and in consequence possessed an entirely free mind – and a canny one at that. Second, there stood nothing between it and his mouth.

An unfamiliar New York clapper boy mistakenly booked us into a highly pretentious restaurant ("Lafeyette" [is it Lafayette”?]instead of "Jean Lafitte"). Now without raising it in the slightest, the boy's voice, like John Lennon's, carried to the far corners of any room he was in. Sweetbreads were on the menu and "Oh, my Nan's dog eats that." caused a splendid flurry in the mink and diamonds. You could always rely on Cindy.

Peter Sellars, counting on an unsophisticated response, always sought the boy's reaction to his opera productions. The general [space] probe of a protracted and uncongenial piece by Olivier Messiaen finally drew to a close. "The trouble is, Peter, you're into hard-core opera."
As we were seated immediately behind Yvonne Loriod, the composer's widow, I just hoped her English was not good.If Andrew was not good at opera, I am not good at Art Galleries. But he made every visit to one a delight, whether standing open-mouthed in front of his first Heironymous Bosch, or thinking that Giotto was like an Indian painting – lots of gold, two dimensional, and bright colours.

During the shooting of USED PEOPLE there was a birthday party for Marcello Mastroianni, and Andrew spent most of the evening dancing with Shirley MacLaine. The next morning, I put my head in Hair and Make-up as usual, and was called over by Shirley, "Wendy - on the dance floor, your boy's straight."She and Biban (our director) went on to discuss how, because they're not interested, gay lads grab hold of all sorts of places that nice straight boys will never go anywhere near.

There was one agency calling itself "Olympus Lads" that used to despatch the luckless Ganymede bearing a VHS tape of all new arrivals, which I always thought a bit rude to the boy, implying a yearning for somebody else next time, which was not the case by any means. However the tapes themselves, comprising a variety of diffident attempts to look alluring, were often so hilarious as to be alone worth the day's outlay.Cuthbert had become an Olympus lad (short term) on discovering dry rot in his attic. He had recently spent an evening in Sir Christopher Wrenn's house on Bankside across the river from St Pauls. The house now belonged to a respectable post-Snowdon suitor of Princess Margaret. Cuthbert, though no princess, hopefully afforded him a calmer time of it, despite getting slightly pissed and knocking over a bathroom ornament.

Sean and Miro, among the happiest, life-enhancing couples I have ever known, met each other the day Sean got fired from his first agency on account of a pert remark to a Brigadier. While waiting with a nice cup of coffee, for his interview with another agency, he was co-opted by one of their clients to make up a three-some. The gentleman, having decided to confine his own participation to that of a spectator, the boys got themselves undressed, delighted at the prospect of getting paid for enjoying each other's company. At the point of penetration one of them realised that the niceties had not been observed,
"By the way, my name's Miro.""Oh sorry, mine's Sean, nice to meet you."

Sean, like myself unscathed by a Catholic upbringing, gives a gleeful account in his own memoirs of an "overnight" in North Wales –

(verbatim)

ABERWHERE?

Another beautiful sleepy morning. Well it had been until my phone decided that this lying around in bed nonsense was just that, and it was time for some action. And just as well really. I mean, for all the sun glinting from behind the curtain and us two lying blissfully together in bed is a lovely scene, it's not the kind of thing you want to be reading about for too long is it?"I wish you'd change that fucking ring tone" groaned Miro with his face still in the pillow, while I scrambled around the room trying to find the bloody thing. In Miro's opinion, he really couldn't imagine a worse way of being woken up.
I eventually found my phone, answered it and gave the time honoured "punter speech" (it's hard to sound friendly to the person who's just woken you up, but I was doing my best).
"Yes, I'm available today, an out-call? Yeah, that's no problem, whereabouts are you? Aberwhere? Well where's that? WALES?!?!

I finished my phone-call, by which time Miro had almost managed to sit himself up in bed.
"Come on then – astound me." "Well, I catch the 11.55 from Euston to Wolverhampton, which gets me there in time to catch the 15.15 to Aberystwyth, where he'll meet me and whisk me away to sunny Aberaeron, where I'll be staying the night. He says he'll phone me a taxi in the morning, which'll take me back to Aberystwyth where I'll get to do the whole thing in reverse. Whadyathink?"
"How much?"
"£350 plus travel."
"Fab. You'd better get going then."
"Yeah, what day is it today anyway?"
"Saturday."
"Shite!"

It was always the way. Why did nobody ever want my company of an evening through the week when there weren't too many places I could go and get well and truly cabbaged with my mates. Despite my disappointment, Miro was quietly glad. It meant of course that I would probably go and blow the lot on clothes and cosmetics come Sunday, but Miro would much rather I did that than go out and get up to God knows what in a whole range of dodgy nightclubs. In the meantime I addressed the wall –
"Where are you off to this evening? Heaven! Oh, lovely. What about you? Trade! Better yet! And you Sean? Well, I'm off to spend the evening fighting off some old critter who lives up the back arse of nowhere! Aren't I the luckiest little thing!"
"Just shoosh, and pack your bag."

I reluctantly agreed. It was alright for him, I thought to myself, just because he has the social life of a celibate hermit crab, he sees no harm in being deprived of a Saturday night. He thinks it's a perfectly acceptable way to spend the evening playing chess by yourself (yes, you did hear that correctly) with nothing but a packet of mange-touts and a tub of low-fat houmous for company. I then ran around the flat and somehow managed to get myself ready in pretty good time. After giving Miro a copy of the address and the phone number followed by a soft, slow kiss, I was on my way.

Now I don't know about you, but I had always thought Wales would be a lot like Scotland or Ireland, you know, not like England exactly, but without being extremely different. And apparently the English-speaking parts of Wales are just like that. But I was on my way to Aberaeron, in deepest Welsh-speaking country and wasn't I in for a surprise.
Well the train to Wolverhampton was nice enough and it was what you'd expect if you're travelling nationally i.e. nice big comfortable train. And I was expecting it to be more or less the same on the second leg of my journey; but this was where things started to go a bit, well not wrong exactly, only different from what I'd expected.
Wolverhampton station is a bit grim; it is also one where you can see the lines in both directions for a fair distance. The downside of this is that it encourages you to sit there like a turnip, staring down the line in hopes of seeing your train trundling gently towards you, instead of doing something sensible like reading a book. Forty five minutes after it was due I was still doing exactly that, when in the distance a very small slow-moving object came into view. On its closer approach it appeared problematical just how the masses gathered on the platform were all going to fit in. Nevertheless it was managed and I found myself sitting next to a very pleasant looking girl who, like everyone around her, seemed quite familiar with the situation.

The driver then did his little bing-bong bit, when they tell you where the train is stopping. This would seem unexceptional, apart from everybody in the carriage starting to giggle and make gestures to the effect that "this is going to be good". I soon found out why. The driver, God love him, was English, and this train was going through lots of places with too many consonants in the wrong order, plus an all round lack of vowels. He tried his best with the lot he'd been dealt, and at least made his passengers happy.

Aberystwyth was the last stop on the line, and a nice enough little place it looked. It was a lovely evening, and despite the journey, I was feeling grand. The multitude from the train made their way toward the exit, while I hung about on the platform because that was where I had agreed to meet Tom, my client for the evening. After a few minutes there was just myself and a priest on the platform. My man should be along any minute, I was thinking to myself, when I observed that the priest was smiling at me.

Now lots of priests smile at people. It's a very priestly thing to do, along with referring to complete strangers as your son. So I just smiled back and didn't think much of it. Now I'm one of these people who doesn't really cope very well when I know that someone's looking at me – I can't help but look back. I'm a troublemaker's dream. And glancing at this priest I noticed something strange about his smile. It wasn't really a smile at all. It was more of a leer.

And the penny dropped. It is not of common occurrence (as you may have noticed), but I was speechless. Despite being made slightly more worldly by all my escapades; if you've been brought up a Catholic in Glasgow, the fact that you haven't been to Mass since you were fourteen doesn't really matter, a priest is just as much a priest now as he was then. And when I was little, a lot of priests (not all of them, mind) were simply the church's version of the Gestapo. Dressed from head to toe in black, they crept up behind you, clobbering you round the back of the head, and enquiring menacingly, "And where were you on Sunday, Fitzpatrick?" I'd be thinking to myself "I'm ever so sorry, Father, but I had better things to be doing with my pocket money than give it to a group of five men who already live in a house that could accommodate most of the city's homeless." But I never voiced my grievance, the bastard would only have got me back come confession time.
Having obviously worked out that I was to be the evening's entertainment he made his way towards me. What did he look like? Well he looked like a priest, like a punter except with a dog collar.

"Hallo there. Are you Michael?" It quite threw me when he started to speak with an incredible Welsh accent, my brain having been programmed, by association, that when someone was dressed like that they sounded Irish.

"And you must be Father Tom." said I, extending my hand, again unable to help myself with the Father bit. "Oh don't bother with calling me Father. I'm just Tom. It's not as if you've come all this way for confession is it?" he boomed heartily.That's as maybe, I was thinking, but is there a need to broadcast the fact? You're not in the bloody pulpit now. How embarrassing! After turning twelve shades of scarlet and glancing round to check no one had heard, I agreed with a nervous little laugh. I was also a bit relieved as the prospect of, at a later stage having to groan "Oh yeah, that's so good, Father." receded. I know my limits.

So, off we trotted towards his car for the journey to Aberaeron, about 20 miles down the coast, he told me. Lovely, I thought to myself, a wee scenic drive. That'll do me nicely.As we drove away from the station, he told me he'd explained to some of the nosier sheep in his flock that a young lad who'd be spending the night in the presbytery was in fact his nephew. Fine by me. I'd been all kinds of relations to all kinds of people in my time, and at least it accounted for the public proclamation on the arrival platform.

The scenery in that part of Wales is breathtaking, and I was just beginning to enjoy it when it became clear that looking at beautiful surroundings was not on the menu.
"You're not 'alf gorgeous, Michael." he said in the so Welsh accent, and slipped his hand onto my knee after a gear-change; grinning the while like a deranged garden gnome.
I supposed I didn't have a problem with that – a touch pre-emptive perhaps, but it was what I was getting paid for after all. I wasn't too surprised, either, when it started to creep up my leg. Subtlety was clearly not one of this man's fortes, in that it took all of fifteen seconds from knee to crotch, where he was having himself a right ole' feel. Had we been on the M25 I might not have objected, since there's not much else to do. But I was busy trying to look at Wales, and that was a bit difficult with him clawing at me.

Then my body, of all things, betrayed me. How you ask? Let me explain. Like a lot of young gay men, I'm very highly sexed. Always have been. It isn't something I normally complain of, but on this occasion it let me down badly. Up until now I hadn't actually begun to fear for my life, but this was to change. Tom seemed no longer bothered about silly details like steering the car, "You're a horny little devil, aren't you, Michael?"

No, Gladys I'm not, I thought to myself, betraying a smile while I was thinking it, which was a foolish error on my part.
"How do you like that then?"I have to admit I'd been too pre-occupied trying to prevent us from somersaulting into the Irish Sea, to notice he had somehow managed to undo his trousers. I mean, I know it's wrong to lie, but how else was I supposed to answer that one. Either way was going to land me in it. Had I said: "On seeing all your nauseating attributes, Gladys, I think I can say I would rather perform oral sex on Ann Widdecome than go anywhere near that excuse for a penis of yours", I should have been walking back towards Aberystwyth. So I took the option where I was at least going to get paid for my troubles, and said, "Oh yeah, I can't wait to sit on that".
After convincing him that it would be unwise to stop in a lay-by and do exactly that, what with him being a local figurehead and all (he liked that idea), we finally arrived at Aberaeron. It was beginning to get dark, so I couldn't see much of the place, but it looked like a typical, pretty little village. Square in the middle, church with a steeple, a pub that calls itself a hotel etc. Nice if you like that sort of thing. And I do. For the first 20 seconds, that is.Anyway.

"Now then, Michael. I told a friend of mine that we'd stop and
say hello before we went over to my house. Is that OK?"
In theory I had no problem with this, other than that I have an awful habit of putting my foot in it.
"Is that very wise? I mean what if they ask about members of "our" family or something?"
You may have thought nothing could surprise me at this point,
"Oh no, no. He's a priest as well you see. Well, he's retired
now, but still … "

"Doesn't that make it even more unwise? What if he twigs what
we're up to? A week later you'll be transferred to Fiji, while I'm
inviting "Hello" Magazine into my beautifully decorated West
London home."

He seemed genuinely confused at this.
"No, no, no. Please understand, he and I had a debate as to whether or not any of the boys in Gay Times would be willing to come all the way out here. He said nobody in their right mind would do that. So I said if I managed to find someone, I'd bring him round to let him see."

You couldn't help but agree with the retired one, could you? I even think they'd had a bet on it. But never mind that, with all this stuff about priests discussing rent boys I was heartbroken I'd not be able to phone my mother afterwards, singing "I told you so." Father Dole seemed very pleased to see us when he opened the door. I was worried that the pair of them would sit there and gibber about me in Welsh, but it transpired that
Father Dole was English. He was also very posh, but not in a nasty way. He showed us into his sitting room and went off to fetch some tea. I started looking round the room at Father Dole's odds and ends, when suddenly Father Tom made a lunge at my crotch, only this time he had obviously decided not to bother touching my leg first. With social graces like these it was clear to see why he had joined the priesthood - chances are he'd be in prison by now if he hadn't.

Father Dole returned (finally) with a tray of tea and biscuits, and after setting it and himself down, and pouring some tea, chatted about how my journey had been, and how big a change this must be for me. The difference between Fr Dole and Fr Tom was that I could tell that Fr Dole wasn't just dispensing a polite formality before getting my kit off. He seemed to be a very nice man who was genuinely interested in what I had to say, and I was rapidly becoming keener on him than the slimy little letch sat next to me.
Fr Dole asked about the ring on my wedding finger. I explained that my boyfriend had given it to me and that I had given him one.

"And how long have you been living together?"
"Well, it'll be two years in March."
"And are you both happy?"
"Well, I hope he's as happy as I am."
A smile as big as a house spread itself all over Fr Dole's face when I told him this.
"Your generation are very lucky, you know, Michael. You are
now able to do whatever it is that brings you joy in your life."
Despite the fact that this was said in "priest-speak" I thought that it was a lovely sentiment. It was also very sad because Fr Dole hadn't been able to have much joy in his life, even though he was a lovely man who deserved it. He confirmed this by saying that the priesthood was the only route there was that would prevent his having to get married at some stage in his life. I was actually desperate for Fr Tom to bugger off for a minute, to see if I could persuade Fr Dole to let me spend the night with him instead, but Fr Tom must have sensed this and stuck to me like glue the entire time we were there.
Which wasn't much longer. About twenty minutes after we'd arrived, Fr Tom made his excuses and said we ought to be getting back to his house.

The presbytery. It obviously shouldn't have come as a surprise that I'd be spending the night there. But it did. And when he opened the front door there was no mistaking it. This was a priest's house. How am I such an expert? Well I was an altar boy for the best part of my childhood, and we were sometimes sent to pick up whatever it was he'd forgotten this week. For those of you who never had this pleasure (although I'm sure most will have seen "Father Ted" at least once) let me describe for a moment. They always reminded me of pensioner's houses, with the main difference that nothing was particularly old, just old-fashioned. Most of the furniture would be wooden, and there was never anything at all fancy on display. Except, of course for the pictures of The Sacred Heart, and crucifixes on every wall.

I never understood this, even as a child. When I was little, I always wanted to be a doctor. And whenever I went to the priest's house, I would think to myself : "If I did become a doctor, I still wouldn't want to cover my home with diagrams of the digestive system or illustrations of the functioning of the spleen." I mean, priests are only human (I can assure you of that) and if they've been peddling God all day surely the last thing they'd want would be to come home and be surrounded.
Anyway.

He let us in, and showed me through to a sittingroom identical to what I have just described – granny-esque furniture and religious imagery all over the place. And those holographic ones! Aren't they awful? My Gran's house was covered in those things, which always made me think that God must have deplorable taste.

I had already sat myself down on the couch (wooden armrests of course) waiting for Tom to launch himself once more, so was agreeably surprised when he came in and said,
"Can I get you something to eat, Michael? You must be hungry
after that journey."
Hungry to get shot of you, I thought - but in fact I was pleased by this little attempt at hospitality, and being quite peckish anyway, I accepted.
"Well then, come through to the kitchen and get yourself
sat down at the table."

--------------------------------------------------

Sadly at this point the manuscript comes to an end, but Sean has provided a verbal account of what followed. There is little to add. The bedroom had kept abreast of the décor elsewhere, thanks in great measure to a particularly gaudy oleograph of the Holy Virgin surveying her surroundings from over the bed-head.
After a long, eventful day and an adequate supper, the hardiest youth might be supposed ready for bed; and though only a partial description of Sean's feelings at this point, he dutifully "got his kit off". Fr Tom, well ahead, was already lying on his back and demanding our hero to impale himself on his erect penis. The boy engaged autopilot, which did well not to go straight into failure as he found himself bouncing up and down being stared at by a bland woman two feet in front of his face. Hail Mary - literally!

Miro was unsurprised by Sean's account, remembering, from when he was at the agency, a regular Monday customer who invariably paid up with a bagful of £1 coins from the previous day's collection – a perfectly legitimate diversion of church finds, if the benefit to choirboys saved a lot of annoyance is taken into account. What is more, this considerate cleric always took the trouble to make the sign of the cross over the head of the unholy communicant kneeling before him, granting absolution for the sin of fellatio the youth was committing at the time. Redemption doesn't come any quicker.
My life would be vastly impoverished had I never encountered a rent boy. By the time this gets to print, the boy who wished to be a doctor will (with most of his fellow students) have abandoned a nursing degree after the first year, in disgust at what they were being taught – everything except caring for ill people. He now flies for British Airways and confines his nursing to looking after me. And Miro will have a degree in AI (artificial intelligence). They are my closest and most valued friends.

Escorting equips the young to cope with life to their own and society's benefit, as well, in fact better, than what my mother used to term the Vah-sities. Yet it never appears on CVs.
It happens occasionally I get asked for advice by people setting out on a career in films, and always, if they can find time to come down to Brighton, I willingly find it to give them lunch and hopefully some encouragement. One of these, happening to be young and nice-looking (somewhat unusual with film students) found himself deposited at the Mews entrance with a knowing nod from the taxi-driver,
"It’s the green door at the end." He arrived considerably more surprised at the helpfulness of Brighton's taxi drivers than I was.

Naturally, when abroad, social visiting arrangements sometimes got reversed. Trips to Amsterdam for example, on commercials for Dutch production companies, there was usually time to board the train from the Central Station for Muiderpoort (rather like Victoria to Clapham Jcn) and pay a call on Alex and His Friends, whom I had come across in Spartacus International (a sort of Michelin Guide without the rosettes). Alex was an unprepossessing German character, and his "friends" a floating population comprising three or four lads of varying nationalities, Dutch, Belgian, German (though never French for some reason). 1989 heralded a welcome influx from Poland and Czechoslovakia, though it caused a temporary problem shortly afterwards. A rueful Alex had been raided by the police, not from any narrow scruples on their part, but because the local union had expressed concern that the livelihood of the indigenous workforce was under threat.

One climbed the stairs (the frequent siting at the top of buildings without lifts must have been to get heart attacks in elderly clients out of the way without upsetting the staff) to a homely apartment, excellent coffee, and leisure to reflect on whom to become better acquainted with. The absence of French-speaking (my only other fluent language) meant that conversation was normally restricted to such topics as the weather, and "Do Your parents know you're gay?" But once there was a young English boy. I asked him what Alex was like. "He's the rudest person I've ever met."

This was true. It was nothing for Alex to shout out "Was the boy all right?" as you came out of the bedroom, to which I was sorely tempted to answer "No" simply to see what would happen.

My new acquaintance turned out to have a wide interest in literature and Thomas Hardy in particular. So we sat and chatted for well over an hour. Things at Muiderpoort may have been nice and relaxed, but there were obvious limits and I was beginning to get enquiring glances from the proprietor, so I said to the boy that we'd better shelve mens sana for a bit and attend to corpore sano in the next room. ……suddenly he said,
"Have you read 'The Mayor of Casterbridge?"
It's a pity I didn't think to ask if for his part he'd read the first chapter of "Tristram Shandy." He was charming, but the next time I was in Muiderpoort and asked for him I was told he'd been carted off by a rich American