The Sun and The Finger
I‘ve never taken my top off in public before. I have always felt too self-conscious and you can’t blame me.
I was sprawled across the grass, daffodils stroked shadows across my face as I looked up at the expanse of sunny sky. St James park. People never look at each other more than they do when in the sun and in a park like this. The gays put on their displays like butchers opening up shop; pounds of muscle (somehow already tanned) stretching out – proudly captured in the day’s spotlight, having been a winter’s worth of toil and money and steroids. The men checked each other out with surreptitious glances and the odd exchange of eye contact and then in some cases (like myself, I will admit) with a small twinge of envy. This was true with some of the women too…
I was waiting for my friend Dan, I had found a good spot to people-watch and maybe perv. This blissful scene was only interrupted when I gave cautious looks upward at the formations of pigeons lined along the branches of trees that bordered the road. Then I noticed a fellow casually walking up and walking down, in circular laps, around me. I didn’t think anything of it at first but decided to move as his friend (a topless homeless man) kept looking at me – when I had moved further down the slope in the shade of a pigeon-less tree I looked round to scrutinise the men’s shenanigans. The one that had been lapping the park was now carefully dotting crumbs of bread around a snoozing sunbather, much to the delight of his friend, then hundreds of pigeons swarmed down and pecked and fluttered. I felt a small bubble of fear then, in the pit of my stomach. There’s something about being the subject of someone’s interest, whether it’s good attention or bad, that makes me so self conscious – so I wonder in that case how is it that I am an exhibitionist? Ha.
Perhaps its the variety on offer that’s the issue? Today I sat with my friend Klas in Soho Square. Men didn’t lay and sunbathe here. No, they scanned their eyes over every texture, cataloguing every man and mentally awarding points to the most fanciable against their assessments of how much energy they thought it’d take to pull them. But I didn’t want to be on display, I didn’t want to be pulled (there’s a time and a place.) I appreciate any attention but I don’t want to be compared.
It may have been quiet in the park but if every communicative glance were a sound, it would have been deafening. Therefore it surprised me, with everyone surveying everyone else, that the couple in front of me decided to frisk each other despite their son being right there next to them! First the man had put his hand down his partner’s bra. I thought, ok that’s quite cheeky – but I’ll allow that. Then she moved her jacket over the crotch of her jeans. I couldn’t believe it. He ran his hand down from her breast and into her jeans. For the next hour I watched the sun trickle thin threads of light through the leaves above me, sensed that primal heat burning as the gays bunched into tight groups and listened to the woman moan softly as her fella fingered her in the middle of the park.
Ah, the summer.
