Strait Laced (Excerpt)

Part 1

Strobe lights flashed from the ceiling, slicing through the billowing smoke pouring from a corner beside the bar. Green and red beams illuminated the room, the thumping music pounding a beat so loud it rattled against my ribs. Somebody jostled my arm, his friends' braying laughter setting my teeth on edge as I pulled the lapels of my jacket closer across my chest. Everyone else in the bar was wearing jeans, but here I was in my £300 suit, looking like the proverbial fish out of water.

Clutching my vodka and tonic, I eased through the throngs queuing for the bar, holding my breath against the overpowering scent of a dozen liberally applied colognes. No class. Nobody in this godforsaken city had an ounce of class. I darted towards a table beside the bar's plate glass windows and settled in to watch the world go by.

It was raining. Grimy pools collected between the cobbles and ran down the window in dirty streaks, catching and reflecting the flashing lights behind me. Dull yellow glowed from the streetlamp pointed at the Do Not Enter sign at the end of the road, and brilliant white fairy lights strung between the branches of the trees twinkled in the canal.

Every time I came to Manchester, it rained. I assumed it was the city's natural state, given none of the multitudes of people outside paid it any heed. On the train that morning, the rain had begun to pitter-patter against the window just past Milton Keynes, and it hadn't let up since.

Swirling the dregs of vodka around my glass, I contemplated another. I didn't want to face the crowds at the bar, and I certainly couldn't afford to get drunk when I had to be on the other side of the city at 9:00 a.m., but that was twelve hours away yet, and the only thing worse than the crush of ignorant, obnoxious people was the deafening silence of my hotel room.

I lost my table the moment I stood, so I eased into a nook with my new glass and made myself as inconspicuous as possible. I sipped slowly, determined to make this one last. It was always the same: I'd promise myself I wouldn't come here but I always broke that promise. There was a reason I stayed in the same hotel, the one five minutes from the train station and forty-five from when I worked. The station was near Canal Street, and Canal Street—the gay village—as dirty and sleazy as it was, pulled me into its sweaty arms every single time.

Figuratively speaking, of course. I'd never actually fallen into somebody's sweaty arms at a nightclub, and I doubted very much I ever would. I wasn't cut out for this. I wasn't the sort of man who could shake the week off and let it all hang out the way the people here did. The very idea of getting blind drunk and waking up with a total stranger was horrifying on an intensely personal level. Not to mention, I'd spent years working to get where I was, but the moment the company suspected I was screwing around on their time—in a hotel room they'd paid for—I'd be out the door faster than I could blink.

Maybe it was a north/south thing; maybe that was why everyone in the village seemed so different from me. I was London born and bred, originally from Hackney although you'd never tell from my accent. My stepdad came on the scene when I was two, and after my twin sisters were born a couple of years later, we moved to Surrey. I still sounded like a southerner in this harsh northern town but at least I didn't have the broad estuary vowels of my grandparents.

Then again, there were plenty of gay clubs and bars in London, and they weren't all frequented by tourists. No, the truth was I was the odd duck, and always had been. I didn't even like clubs, yet here I was, Pavlov's bloody dog, unable to tear myself away.

Everyone looked like they were having so much fun. From the straight couple in the corner to the twenty-somethings on the dance floor to the kid getting served at the bar who was no way in hell eighteen. They all had smiles on their faces and a sashay in their step. Part of me longed to know if standing in their shoes was as comfortable as it looked.