It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature. I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations. The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighed heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life. Knives frightened me, nooses horrified me and guns alarmed me, but I knew that I was not a strong swimmer. Were I to head out to Howth, for example, and throw myself into the sea, the current would quickly pull me under and there would be nothing I could do to save myself. It was an option that was always at the back of my mind.
I had few friends and even when I considered my relationship with Julian I had to admit that our bond was built on little more than my obsessive and undeclared love. I had guarded and nurtured that alliance jealously over the years, ignoring the fact that were it not for my determination to stay in touch he might have moved on years ago. I had no family to speak of, no siblings, no cousins, no idea as to the identities of my birth parents. I had very little money and had grown to hate the flat on Chatham Street, for Albert Thatcher had acquired a serious girlfriend and when she stayed over the sound of their lovemaking was as ghastly as it was arousing. I longed for a place of my own, a door with only one key.
In desperation I turned to Charles, asking for a loan of one hundred pounds so that I could set myself up in a better situation. I had seen a flat above a shop on Nassau Street with a view over the lawns of Trinity College but I could never have afforded it on the pitiful salary that I earned. The loan, I told him, would allow me to live there for two years while I saved money and tried to build a better life for myself. We were sitting in the yacht club at Dun Laoghaire when I broached the idea, eating lobster and drinking Mo?t and Chandon, but he refused me instantly, declaring that he didn’t loan money to friends, as such acts of philanthropy always ended badly.
“But we’re more than friends, surely,” I said, throwing myself on his mercy. “You’re my adoptive father, after all.”
“Oh come along, Cyril,” he replied, laughing as if I was making a joke. “You’re twenty-five years old now—”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one then. Naturally, I care about you, we’ve known each other a long time, but you’re not—”
“I know,” I said, holding up a hand before he could finish that sentence. “It doesn’t matter.”
Of most concern to me, however, was my overwhelming, insatiable and uncontrollable lust, a yearning that was as intense as my need for food and water but that, unlike those other basic human needs, was always countered by the fear of discovery. There were nighttime excursions to the banks of the Grand Canal or the clustered forests at the heart of the Phoenix Park, furtive explorations of the narrow laneways off Baggot Street and the hidden passages that zigzagged from the Ha’penny Bridge toward Christ Church Cathedral. The darkness concealed my crimes but convinced me that I was a degenerate, a pervert, a Mr. Hyde who left my benevolent Dr. Jekyll skin behind on Chatham Street as soon as the sun went down and the clouds passed slowly to cover the moon.
Satisfying my lust was not the problem. In the city center, it wasn’t difficult to find a young man with similar predilections and a simple exchange of looks could create an instant contract as we made our way wordlessly to a hiding place with little chance of discovery, fumbling behind bushes, careful not to look into each other’s eyes as our hands pulled and caressed while our lips moved hungrily as we stood with our backs against trees, lay together on the grass or knelt before each other in attitudes of supplication. We would paw at each other’s bodies until one of us could take no more, then gush forth into the earth beneath our feet, and although the urge was always to leave as quickly as possible afterward, good etiquette meant that you could not go until the other boy had reached his climax too. A quick thank you would be followed by our turning in opposite directions and walking quickly away, making for home with a silent prayer that the Gardaí were not following us as we swore in our heads that this was the last time, that we would never do such a thing again, that we were done with it forever, but then the hours would pass, the urges would return and by the following night our curtains would be twitching as we looked outside to see what the weather was like.
I didn’t like going to the parks because they were usually populated by older men with cars looking for someone young to fuck in the backseat, the stench of their Guinness and sweat enough to sublimate any desire that I might feel. But I went when I was desperate, fearing for the day when I too might find myself driving past áras an Uachtaráin in search of young skin. I stopped going when the old men began to offer me money. They would pull up next to me and if I refused them would say that there was a pound note in it for me if I did what I was asked. And once or twice, when times were hard, I accepted their pound but sex without desire was not something that turned me on. I could not commit the act for money. I needed to want it.
Only once did I dare to bring someone home to Chatham Street and that was because I was drunk, dizzy with lust, and the boy I had met, a few years older than me at twenty-three or twenty-four, put me so much in mind of Julian that I thought I could spend a night with him and imagine that my friend had somehow succumbed to my desires. The boy’s name was Ciarán, or at least that was the name he gave me, and we met in a downstairs bar off Harcourt Street, a place whose blacked-out windows encouraged its clientele to feel that they, like the Beatles, had to hide their love away. I went there occasionally, for it was a good place to meet someone as shy and anxious as me under cover of simply stopping in for a pint. I saw him as he returned from the bathroom and we exchanged a look of mutual appreciation. A few minutes later, he came over to ask whether he could join me.
“Of course,” I said, nodding toward the empty chair. “I’m on my own.”
“Sure we’re all on our own,” he replied with a wry smile. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Julian,” I said, the name out of my mouth before I could even consider the wisdom of the choice. “And you?”