Alan Hollinghurst - The Sparsholt Affair

He thought he knew the way through the dense crowd that had taken over the bar and made intimate shouting colonies in every bay and niche of the underground space. There it was, for a long minute, the feared and lurking strain of loneliness – high as a lark and with no one to hold or even to talk to. It was like an ache in his arms. He waited and bought himself water, at the bar, no sign now of Graham. At the edge of the dance floor again he was moving with the music, peering casually round at people showing in flashes and shadows, as if in flowing water, barely noticing him. He couldn’t see Graham or Mark at all, just overlapping bald-headed men who in the recurrent split seconds of light proved not to be them. Now a dark-haired young man was pressed against him, saying something in his ear, and they moved hand in hand into the dancing crowd, the young man stepping back to protect a space for them and make a cute little act of dancing with Johnny – he thought for a moment he was teasing him. He was lean and large-eyed, with a long nose, and a smile which only faded as he lost himself in his trance, then came back as he looked at Johnny, and hugged up close with him as they danced. The music wasn’t so fast now, and around them other couples rubbed and bobbed, smiled out like nodding dogs at each other and their neighbours, all bathed in the same absurd ongoing surge of feeling. ‘What’s your name?’ his friend said – Johnny told him and saw it slide past him like a pulse of the lights. He came back to him, hesitated as before some difficult question, and said in his ear what sounded like, ‘I’m Zay,’ nodding at the fact and at the music as he stepped back, holding both Johnny’s hands. ‘Zay . . .’ said Johnny, grinning at his warmth and his grip. The boy came in close again, to clarify, paused, and said exactly what he’d said before – now he pulled Johnny’s forearm out straight and wrote with his finger ‘Z’, trailing back down his arm till they were holding hands again. ‘Z!’ One or two of the people around them seemed to know Z, and made remarks to him he laughed at if he heard them or not, or they merely squeezed his arm or neck with an outreached hand and told Johnny their names and squeezed and kissed him too. ‘What’s your name?’ – Johnny told them and saw Z listen to make sure. When they danced up close Johnny took unthinking possession of his body, in its damp black tank top, arms loose round the boy’s waist, fingertips tucked in the waistband of his jeans. It was beautiful in the thick of the dance floor to feel the silky hairs in the warm cleft of his arse, and of course though Z had a phone in one front pocket and a plastic bottle in the other he felt his half-excited sideways bulge rubbing and bumping against him, though nothing sexy was said or any suggestion even made that Z was aware of his own excitement; while Johnny was too full of E and perhaps, could it be?, too old to answer him so instinctually. He wanted to kiss Z but felt even here a delicacy, a decorum, in the crowds of people he didn’t know and Z did. Now the strong hand on his neck was Mark’s, with Arnold, still smart in his shirt, behind him, smiling slyly and raising an eyebrow – they were still here, it was all going on, this was how they did things, there wasn’t any question of anyone leaving. Johnny pulled Z to him, he didn’t want to lose him, and they all said hello, Mark moving the whole time, heavy and handsome, as he drew them in close to him and dabbed a little finger in a sachet he had, and stuck it in Johnny’s smiling mouth – he was only faintly concerned to ask what it was, so bitter that he screwed up his face and Z laughed and administered water. Arnold leaned in to Johnny and said, ‘Well, you’re all right then!’ and rocked back and carried on his minimal slightly parody dancing as Mark grinned and made up and down gestures with both hands as if fanning himself – he plucked at the bottom of Johnny’s T-shirt and twitched it up over his belly, while Johnny stared at him, wriggled and resisted and found in a moment he was bare-chested, arms up, hair tugged back, and then tucking his shirt with Z’s help into the belt of his jeans. The air of the fan wafting over him and the nudging oneness with all the other half-naked men was entrancing, a rebirth, he saw one or two glances drop over him curiously and peeped down at himself, not sure what he’d see, while Mark laid a strong absolving palm on his stomach. Still, Z wanted him more to himself, he didn’t care so much for these new friends who were much older friends than he was – Johnny made a comic mime of being yanked away, looked back over his shoulder, and it wasn’t goodbye, everyone was happy.

They were going somewhere, Z leading him off through an arch into an area he hadn’t seen before . . . was this another dance floor? . . . different music, different crowd . . . he was completely at sea among the bargers and blockers, Z’s hot strong hand threaded tight with his own, and squeezing tighter, a spasm of protection, he wasn’t letting him go. In this room there were structures like beds laid out and though there wasn’t a space Z got them in there, against the wall, where they half sat, half lay with their arms round each other. Z was saying, ‘You been here before, right?’ and Johnny shook his head. ‘So where are you from?’ he said. ‘Me? Brazil!’ said Z, and looked round, ‘All these guys from Brazil!’ ‘Ah, yes . . .’ said Johnny; it was great to have gone underground into another country, a Little Brazil . . . ‘You been in Brazil?’ Johnny shook his head again, shifted and interlocked with him more closely: ‘Never been to South America.’ ‘You come,’ said Z, ‘you come with me.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Johnny, and laughed, which perhaps offended Z – he looked serious. ‘I think this guy know you,’ he said, and it took Johnny a minute to understand Graham was there – ‘I’m off!’ he said, kneeling and leaning in to kiss him and saying in his ear, ‘You’re all right then!’ and grasping Z’s right hand with his left. Johnny had a little twinge, even so: was Graham all right? – the old trouper going already – there was a hint that he’d lost his friend to Z, but a much stronger hint that this was exactly what he wanted. Johnny felt the bearable embarrassment of someone who’s been benignly looked after, his need acknowledged in being met. He watched Graham take the hand of a tall black man and melt with him into the shadow of the shuffling parade, and happy after all that his friend had made out Johnny curled up sideways, with Z’s right leg between his own. He was having a heavenly night, and only now thought of the things that had been stopping him, and in the twinge of last year’s grief, more a reflex or echo here than the thing itself, he snuggled in closer with Z and smiled into his foreign face in the inexplicable knowledge that he was his.

Z had his hand on Johnny’s neck, stared almost painfully: ‘ I love your hair. ’ ‘Oh, thank you . . .’ said Johnny, still allowing for teasing. He didn’t know Z at all, or what he thought was funny. Z pushed his hands through it, gently but greedily – ‘I love grey hair.’ He marvelled at it, he asked with his lips to his ear: ‘Is it natural?’ Johnny promised him it was. He closed his eyes as they kissed, holding each other tight, lips working together with a passion that he knew in another cool but painless moment he’d rarely known the like of with Pat (the rapturous possession of the lover’s mouth which the blind tongue described to the seeing mind) – perhaps he never had. When he dropped back and looked up he saw the other men round them, some watching with the tranced but unintrusive stares of the drugged at something private which flourished unexpectedly in this public place with complete security. He had his hand round Z under his little tank top and the feel of his warm skin was exquisite but still somehow not sexual. He felt he might stay in this heaven of perpetual foreplay, when Z lifted Johnny’s hand and pressed it instead between his legs. ‘You want to go in the toilets?’