crankyHis pal, we'll call him Jim, is taller and darker and slower. They are a classic male pairing and remind me of squaddy boys I used to know (biblically) back in Camulodunum, with the smaller, sharper one always taking the lead and bossing the other around. Unlike Jack, Jim has no self-confidence whatsoever. He doesn't even know he has velvet brown eyes, cheekbones you could slice brie on, and a weak sulky mouth. His skin is exquisite - flawless and luminescent as an Ingres nude. Almost perfectly proportioned, he has that endearing clumsy, coltish quality that most lovely boys lose all too soon and some lovely men keep till their dotage. One of the sassier girls in the class and I both happened to be looking at him, when he paused to peel off a jumper and inadvertently made his teeshirt beneath ride up, exposing his smoothly beautiful abdomen. She and I exchanged grins of febrile female lechery - the kind that has been striking fear into men's hearts since the Stone Age - and rightly so. I may have to put the two of them together for some group work after half term - it would do him the power of good if she jumped on him. She'd have to jump on him, he wouldn't notice anything subtler - that little duckling is a long way off realising what a swan he is.
I played a little trick on Jack when I became aware he was watching me writing this. I nudged one of my papers onto the floor, then leant down to pick it up ensuring as I did that I displayed my cleavage to best effect , then looked up suddenly directly into his eyes and shot him a coldy disapproving "I know what you were thinking" look. He blushed so hard his cheeks were still pink ten minutes later....
Then I went and had lunch with Married Man. We had to have an emergency meeting as Mrs Married Man had rung me the night before to ask if she could meet me to talk about him. I'm getting increasingly peeved with the situation. I don't want a lover who is so rigorously decent and honest - I want one who would walk over burning broken glass to fuck my brains out. I also get the impression he expects to be congratulated for having such delicate emotions. This is New Manhood gone mad and I will have no truck with it.
I was also struck again by the feeling that he is older than me, though he is five years my junior. He is very handsome, but in a rather executive way, well on his way to looking distinguished. All the men I've really loved, QRL chief among them of course, have had a certain boyish quality. Even my 53 yr old business Professor (he was Irish too) had a certain graceful clumsiness, a tendency to a sudden delightedness in simple things that was resoundingly youthful. Married Man does not not have this quality - this notion struck me with chilling force, seeing him so soon after idly watching my boys.
And then we talked again about going to Paris for the weekend. And he told me that he preferred Sacre-Coeur to Notre-Dame. Oh dear. Beacuse it's "much nicer". That's on a par with discovering some Celine Dion in his record collection. Then our farewell snog (which I was thinking would probably be our last and should therefore have been imbued with a certain poignant, Brief-Encouterish feel) was interrupted by some toffee-nosed loudmouth blathering about the Festival of Britain into his mobile - a toffee-nosed loudmouth who turned out to be Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowelmovement of TV interior design makeover programme fame. I yearn for the bluebird of happiness, but I am shat on relentlessly by the parrot of absurdity...
