“Leave it, Tommy,” said his friend, and I took the opportunity to walk on, faster now, and to my relief they didn’t follow me. Crossing over the Ha’penny Bridge, I aimed for one of the hidden corridors off Abbey Street where I had enjoyed a few clandestine encounters in the past and sure enough there was someone waiting there, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against a lamp post, and he signaled, tipping a finger to his cap as he saw me. When I got closer, however, I could see that he was old enough to be my grandfather and turned on my heel, cursing my luck. I began to resign myself to the idea of returning home unsatisfied when I remembered the public toilets toward the north end of O’Connell Street, the same place in which Julian had been propositioned some seven years earlier.
I had only ever had sex in a public toilet twice before, the first by accident—if one can have sex by accident—when I was seventeen and had been caught short walking past Trinity College and ran inside to the second-floor bathroom of the arts block for a piss. Standing at a urinal while one of the students washed his hands nearby, I grew conscious of the fact that he was staring at me. I looked around nervously but when he smiled I got an instant erection, the urine splashing off the wall and back against the crotch of my trousers. He laughed, then nodded in the direction of one of the cubicles, and I had followed him inside for my official deflowering. The second time was on a night as disappointing as this one, when I had been forced into a public convenience on Baggot Street for a deeply unsatisfying session with a boy my own age who burst forth like Vesuvius into my palm the moment I touched him. The seedy nature of these places meant that I preferred to stay away from them but I was desperate and so walked in the direction of Nelson’s Pillar, wanting nothing more than to get the act over with so I could go home to bed.
Again, I had the distinct impression that I was being followed so I stopped, looking around anxiously, but could see no one behind me, save for a few drunks settling themselves against the walls of the GPO with blankets and cardboard boxes. Still, I kept my wits about me as I got closer to the toilet and saw the gate leading from the street lying open, its seductive light beckoning me inside.
I made my way down the steps and as I turned the corner into the black-and-white tiled room, I glanced around, disappointed to find there was no one there. I sighed and shook my head, ready to admit defeat, and was about to leave when a lock turned cautiously in one of the cubicles and a door opened to reveal a frightened-looking lad of around eighteen, wearing spectacles and a hat pulled down over his forehead. He peeped out like a nervous puppy growing accustomed to new surroundings and I looked back at him, waiting for some signal that we were there for the same reason. It was possible, of course, that he had simply been using the facilities and was about to wash his hands and leave. To say anything and be proven wrong could lead to disaster.
I gave him about thirty seconds and he didn’t move at all, just stared at me, but when I saw his eyes move up and down my body I knew there was nothing to worry about.
“I don’t have much time,” I said, and to my surprise, after all I’d been through tonight, I found that I was no longer in the mood. I was standing in an underground cellar, surrounded by the stench of piss and shit, and condemned to finding some desperate form of affection with a complete stranger. My shoulders slumped in defeat and I pressed my thumb and forefingers to the corners of my eyes. “It’s not fair, is it?” I said quietly after a moment, uncertain whether I was saying it to him, to myself or to the universe.
“I’m frightened,” said the boy, and I pulled myself together, feeling pity for him. He was trembling; it was obvious that he was new at this.
“Do you ever just want to kill yourself?” I asked, looking him directly in the eyes.
“What?” he said, looking confused.
“There are times,” I told him, “when I feel like taking a bread knife and just driving it into my heart.”
He said nothing, looking around in bewilderment, before finally turning back to me and nodding.
“I tried it last year,” he said. “Not a bread knife. It was a different way. Tablets. But it didn’t work. I had to have my stomach pumped.”
“Let’s just go home,” I said.
“I can’t go home,” he told me. “They threw me out.”
“Who did?”
“My parents.”
“Why?” I asked.
He looked down at the ground, embarrassed. “They found something,” he said. “A magazine. I had it sent over from England.”
“Then let’s just go for a walk,” I said. “We can walk and talk. Do you fancy that? Do you want to just go somewhere and have a chat?”
“All right,” he said, smiling at me, and I felt an immediate affection for him, not desire, not lust, just affection.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He thought about it. Peter was what he came up with.
“I’m James,” I said, reaching out a hand, and he took it and smiled again. It was at this moment that I realized that in all the encounters that I had ever had with strangers I had never looked into anyone’s eyes before. I could remember some faces, some haircuts, some shoes, but the color of their eyes?
And that was the moment when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I turned around, my hand still holding his, as a uniformed member of An Garda Síochána appeared before me, the self-congratulatory smile on his fat, smug face mixing with the contempt that he felt for me and my kind.
“Well, what do we have here?” he asked. “A couple of Nancy-boys, is it?”
“Garda,” I said, releasing the boy’s hand. “This isn’t what it looks like. We were just talking, that’s all.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that line, you dirty queer?” he asked, spitting on the floor at my feet. “Now turn around there till I put the cuffs on you and don’t try anything or I’ll beat the living shit out of you and there’s not a soul in the land who would blame me for it.”
Before I could move I heard more footsteps and then, to my horror, a familiar face appeared in the doorway and I knew that I hadn’t been wrong when I left Chatham Street. Someone had been following me all the way here. Someone who knew that I wasn’t being completely honest with her.
“Mary-Margaret,” I said, staring at her as she put her hands to her mouth, looking from one of us to the other in disbelief.
“This is the Gents’ toilets,” said Peter, rather pointlessly considering the situation. “There shouldn’t be any women in here.”
“I’m not a woman,” she snapped, raising her voice as she turned on him with a fury that I had never seen before. “I’m his fiancée!”
“You know this fella, do you?” asked the Garda, turning to her now, and the boy saw his opportunity and ran forward, pushing the older man aside and almost knocking Mary-Margaret off her feet as he made a break for it. He was up the stairs and gone before any of us could move.
“Come back here, you!” called the Garda, looking up the stairs, but he knew it was pointless to follow. He was well over fifty and in bad shape; the boy would be halfway down O’Connell Street by now and gone forever.
“Well, I’ve got one of you anyway,” said the Garda, turning back to me. “Are you ready for three years inside, son? Because that’s what your type gets.”