Backed into a corner by my London ways

I pulled on the walk home this morning. Odd.

I normally take a short cut from the clubs through a car park, but the fence is being repaired.

This was unfortunate, as the car park is also a cruising ground. Not a sexy-Latvuanian-new-to-town-grinning-like-sailors cruising ground, but a forlorn cruising ground patrolled by the broken biscuits of gaydom.

It all brings back nostalgic memories for summer strolls home from SoHo to Euston, through Bloomsbury square, those long warm evenings sat hopefully on the grass trying to catch the eye of That Gay From The DIY Show. Ah.

Instead of which, this is a cruising ground that tells you: "Well, you may have had a shit evening, but at least you're not that bald, that fat, or that ugly just yet. And you've not spent two hours trying to look sexy in the rain. Go home. Have a fag. Read a book. It's all good."

Except that this Saturday night, they'd mended the gap in the car park wall. Turning a short cut into a game reserve. For once in my life, I found myself "backs to the wall", confronted by a shumbling hoarde of... well, gay zombies.

Anyway, I headed out of the Car Park Of Crushed Dreams, and walked round the long way.

Here's where the point of this diversion comes. Now, there's a very nice guy I see out, with big arms, on his own, drinking water. He seems lovely, but I never quite catch his eye.

But there he was, walking down the road as I was walking up it. As we passed, we checked each other out, walked on a bit, turned to see if the other was still looking, realised we both were, panicked and hurried on.

He vanished round the corner. I stopped. And waited. How exciting.

He came back round the corner and back up to my flat.

***

Now, at this point, Barbara Cartland would draw a veil and all would be well.

Sadly, this is me. Back at the flat, he turned out to be... and I turned out to be... Well, let's just say I misread the situation. And forgot that all gays, even those with big arms, carry two things in their heart: baggage and romantic hopes.

Suffice to say, things went very well out on my balcony, *really* well on the sofa, not too shabby on the carpet, and then suddenly not so well in the bedroom. We
ended up hugging on the sofa, while he told me in a small quiet voice about how he'd just split up with his boyfriend and how it was all... you know...a bit sudden... and how he'd only ever slept with two people before, and well... obviously I wasn't like that at all what with my London ways.

It was only after he'd left that I suspected that "London ways" probably meant "fat slut".

PS: Life's always more complicated than it first appears. The next day I found his gaydar profile: "SINGLE AND WILLING: COME RIDE ME NOW". Oh.