The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

Prettiness - a State of Mind

GLASGOW - 1992

"Oh wow. You're so pretty."

Kippy wasn't sure he liked a man touching his face, but Danny had reached out a hand and swept two fingers slowly from the temple to his jaw.

"I adore freckles."

There was another thing Kippy wasn't sure about: campness. Danny was as camp as Christmas, as the saying went. The party hadn't been his idea, but Lillian insisted. She'd kind of taken him under her wing when he first arrived in Glasgow. She was very posh, but then he and posh girls got along if Daisy had been anything to go by.

Kippy was older than everyone else at art school, apart from Lillian whose parents had been wealthy enough to finance her through not just one, but two gap years. She swooped on him on their first day.

"Ooh! What's your name, precious?"

He was monosyllabic, partly through nerves and because he didn't want to get into yet another Daisy situation where a woman fell for him.

She shook her head when he said 'Kippy'. "I'm not calling you that. What's your real name?"

"Alan Kirkpatrick." He was still mumbling, hoping this pushy blonde would push off.

"Hmm," she wrinkled her nose. "Terrible, too. Kippy it is, then."

She threaded an arm through his. "We need to stick together. Everyone else here is so young and so inexperienced. I hate teenagers, don't you?" Said with all the bloated confidence of one just a year out of her teens.

Kippy's worries about a repeat of the Daisy situation came to nothing. Lillian knew he was gay, she announced grandly. She had a sense for these things. As someone only just coming to terms with life beyond the closet, her revelation made him prickly.

He remembered the teasing he'd put up with while he was doing his college course some years ago. Davy, Ewan and those other apprentices, the ones skilled in wrinkling out differences in their peers, zoning in on anything they suspected wasn't just so. Had he not covered it up as well as he thought?

Kippy hadn't actually known what he was hiding for a long time. Instinct had warned him to keep quiet about how different he felt from everyone around him anyway, though. He hid behind Daisy for some months until...The Thing happened. And then his life changed, mostly for the better but the start of his new life had been unbelievably hard and painful.

Lillian was like no-one else he'd ever met. She insisted that in the 90s, it was de riguer for a la mode women such as herself to have a GBF. When he looked mystified, she sighed. "A gay best friend, precious."

She cocked her head to one side. "You're from the sticks too. I don't suppose you had much opportunity to explore your sexuality."

Honestly, sometimes it was a bit like having a conversation about sex with your mum. He squirmed.

"Auntie Lillian can help!"

She was unbelievably nosey too. She asked questions all the time, almost as if she was researching him. He half expected her to write everything down. So, tell me about Kirkcudbright? What about your mum and dad? When did you realise you were gay? Have you ever kissed a man?

When he finally admitted that no, he'd never so much as given a guy a hug, she clapped her hands together.

"That's awful. First thing, then. I must introduce you to some friends of mine."

Hence, the party.

These being Lillian's friends, the party was taking place in a flat in the west end, just off the Great Western Road. These flats were so posh, they had two floors.

Lillian had insisted on picking out his outfit for him. Kippy had been going through a phase of velvet blazers, but she turned up her nose at them. "Too obvious!" She held up a plain white tee shirt and his old, worn Levi's.

"Be the man in the laundrette," she said, referring to the old advert where Nick Kamen stripped off, put his jeans in a washing machine and sat in his boxers waiting for them to dry.

As a fourteen-year-old, Kippy had watched the advert a lot. Even now, if Marvin Gaye's Heard It Through the Grapevine came on the radio, he felt his body quiver in excitement.

The outfit seemed to have done the trick. The party-goers were sixty-forty men to women. Lillian and Kippy were fashionably late arriving, and the attention that greeted them was flattering.

The party's host made his way towards them, his eyes fixed on Kippy.

"Lillian! You beautiful thing, you. Who's this?"

Danny wasn't his 'type' anyway. Until very recently, Kippy couldn't have told you what his type was. A picture swam before his eyes, a half-naked man wearing turned-down overalls and a lazy grin. He blinked several times, hoping he wouldn't cry.

Lillian leant forward and whispered something to Danny.

"I'll get you both a drink," Danny said. "And then mingle, do! We're all good friends of Dorothy here."

He winked, the eyes flashing Kippy a lustful look.

"Are you okay, Alan?" Lillian asked. She was the only person under thirty who ever called him that, but he thought he maybe liked it. She said, 'Alan', when she was being serious, or asking difficult questions.

"Aye," he nodded slowly. He'd be better once he had a drink in him. Then, "Who's Dorothy?"