“That would be so Eloise, though, wouldn’t it?” Paul interrupts Mark, which Mark considers pointing out, but doesn’t; he likes to let Paul believe that he controls some of their conversations. “Inviting her gay half brother to her bachelorette party? She’s absolutely the sort of person who’d do that. Like, one of those women who thinks it’s cute and novel, as opposed to totally homophobic and demeaning, to invite you over for a ‘girls’ night.’ It’s like, no, bitch, that’s not how it works. Just because we both like cock doesn’t mean you get to treat me like some paper doll with a dick.” Paul snatches the water from Mark, takes a swig, and continues, “Frankly, though, I’m sort of shocked that she didn’t ask me to be in the bridal party. Never mind the fact that we’ve hardly spoken in two years. I guarantee you that she’d be willing to look past that minor detail in order to get some bougie diversity points for having some faggot—or, this faggot, specifically—up there holding an overpriced bouquet.”
Mark smiles. He lives for moments like this one. Moments when Paul loses himself on one of his rants. He finds them adorable, particularly when they’re directed at him. He can’t quite articulate why. He likens it to how he feels when he successfully convinces Paul to wear his unwashed shin-guards from college soccer when they have sex, or when he thinks of what it might be like to watch other men fuck him: it turns him on.
He uncrosses his legs and catches Paul’s eye. He winks and glances down at his crotch, where his half-hard cock is pressing against his jeans.
“Knock it off,” Paul says, and looks out the window. Quickly, he turns back to Mark. “You’re sure this is all right with Alcott? Us crashing at his place for a week and a half?”
“He’s got a spare room. He’s excited to finally see us.”
“But, I mean, a week and a half. That’s a long time. You’re sure?”
Mark nods and adjusts his jeans.
*
Men in London wear better pants, Mark thinks. He’s watching a pair of twenty-something finance types order coffee from a kiosk stationed at the entrance of Somerset House. They’ve both got their hands shoved in their pockets, and the blue and gray fabric of their trousers stretches tightly over their thighs. He stares for a moment or two longer, and then qualifies his initial observation: Maybe it’s not the pants so much as what the pants do to their asses. It’s got something to do with how the wool accentuates their natural athleticism, he figures. At least based on what he’s seen during the past hour, a pair of everyday British slacks has the potential to turn a Londoner’s butt into something Mark can imagine eating for days. American men could never pull these pants off—this fact he’s sure of. Their legs are too bulky, too hyperinflated with clownish musculature. He thinks of Crosby, back in Philadelphia, wearing a pair of Paul Smith slacks: a pair of hot dogs shoved into two empty Pixy Stix.
The two men finish their coffees and exit onto the Strand, where they’re consumed by the ebb and flow of midweek London. Mark frowns. He misses them, instantly.
“And you said what again?” he hears Alcott say to Paul, his voice lilting.
“I, uh, I didn’t say anything, really,” Paul stammers. “I just … I threw the baby mannequin at him.”
Alcott howls. “And it hit him in the bloody face.”
“Yeah … that’s right.”
“That’s brilliant.”
Mark turns from them and rolls his eyes. He’s pleased that Alcott’s enjoying Paul—that’s a good sign—but privately he fears how many times he’ll have to endure the melodrama of How Paul Lost His Job. He wonders how other people do it, how they’re able to suffer through their lovers’ retelling the same tired stories without reaching for a noose.
From the little table where they’re sitting drinking lukewarm bottles of Perrier, he lets his gaze wander across the vast court of Somerset House. Children splash in the twenty or so tiny geysers of the fountain at the center of the square. Above them loom ancient stone bricks, ashy columns, and, finally, the House’s green copper dome. Along the outskirts of the fountain tourists wander around, taking pictures with their phones—of the dome, of the children, of the gray sky, of handwritten signs hawking juice and wine and coffee and beer. They’re fat, mostly. Fat and pink, their feet crammed into shoes with sturdy soles and cushioned supports. It had been Paul’s idea to come here. This morning, over breakfast, when they were tossing around options of how they might spend the day, Alcott suggested that they visit an out-of-the-way pub he knew somewhere in East London. Paul, though, had practically begged for them to visit Somerset House instead. He said that he’d been there once before, nearly a decade ago when he came to London with his mother to visit Eloise, and that he remembered Somerset being “gorgeous” and “heartbreaking,” but that, looking back, he suspected he had been too hungover from the night prior to properly appreciate it.
Mark had scoffed at the notion, and had felt a stinging parental chagrin over Paul’s lack of taste. “For Christ’s sake,” he’d said. “Somerset House. Why don’t we just take a ride on the London Eye while we’re at it.”
Paul excused himself and said that he was going for a walk; Mark finished his bowl of muesli and asked Alcott for a fresh towel so he could shower.
And then what had happened? Alcott had entered the bathroom, right as Mark was beginning to work conditioner through his hair. Over the steady splash of water-against-skin-against-tile, he’d heard the door creak open, and then the confident baritone of Alcott’s voice: “Mind if I brush my teeth while you’re in there?” Remembering the scene for the hundredth time, Mark chuckles: It had been a polite and marvelous question, but a silly one, too. Because of course Mark didn’t mind. Earlier he’d practically extended Alcott a formal invitation to join him: disrobing down to his boxer shorts, then passing through the kitchen to linger while Alcott tidied up, absently stroking the line that ran from his chest to his belly button (should he have trimmed the hair on his stomach?) as he drank a glass of water. Still, despite his sureness, Mark was gripped with uncertainty as he waited for Alcott to make his move. And as each second passed, as the bubbles found new ways to coat his slick skin, this uncertainty grew in unfathomable ways. Grew so much, in fact, that when he did indeed hear the door open, when his predictions were confirmed, he experienced a rush of ecstasy at the sheer prospect that he had been so right—a sensation that manifested itself as an electric tingle, buzzing at the end of his prick.
“Sure,” Mark had called out from the shower. “Come on in.”
He listened while Alcott turned on the sink, and while he brushed his teeth. And when he reached to open the shower’s curtain, Mark was there, rinsed of soap and half hard, ready to face him.
“So I was thinking,” Alcott started. A smudge of toothpaste marred his lower lip. Mark would have to lick it off for him.
“Yes?”
Alcott’s eyes fell to Mark’s stomach, and then to his cock—which, God be good, was still half hard, maintaining the girth that it lacked in its bored and flaccid state. Mark willed more blood to rush to his groin—he wanted Alcott to watch it grow—but for some confounding reason, his body refused to cooperate. His dick just stood there, dangling at half-mast.
“We should go to Somerset House.”
“Excuse me?”
Alcott reached up and wiped the toothpaste from his mouth. “It’s not that bad, Mark. It’s not like Paul’s asked to go to Buckingham Palace. If he wants to go to Somerset House, we should go. We have all the time in the world to get drunk in pubs.”
Mark felt himself shrinking. He wanted to close the curtain.