Red-Headed League

The randomness of when desire raises its selfish head can be jarring. You immerse yourself with the ephemera of life; jobs, family, and even in this little ice age, weather: Accept sanguinely the dog days of January. You board a train, content that it will bring you from A to B almost on time, you are receptive to the embrace of the Sunday papers.

In retrospect the first fifteen minutes in the same carriage passes unremarkably. It's as if the body inevitably has to get used to new surroundings and takes its pretty time to shed its January torpor. Lust initially materialises in a linear and streamlined fashion. First off wryly recognising the irony of being attracted to a younger version of yourself: The incarnation that had no concept of his possible attraction to others. You're also though slightly irked by his slight similarity to a gentlemen of your acquaintance that you've never had much time for, and whom you've never consciously been attracted to.

You ease your way in by admiring, in a catholic sense, his young fogey, sartorial elegance. He evinces a high forehead crowned by a thick red halo of hair: Does he realise that he will shortly be balding. You try to reassure him telepathically that fretting would be a waste of energy. After all many men ( for it must be men ) will only see it as a boon.

You're being drawn in quite inexorably now. But you're also cut some slack. He digests Time Magazine and then a Neil Gaiman novel. Whilst reading he removes his large unfashionable glasses. Possibly still awkward about using them and vouchsafes that short-sightedness is no issue when reading a novel. So presenting the opportunity to drink him in without being discovered. Its a delicious opportunity to let the eyes rove and to disturb the erotic side that didn't expect to be wakened on a cold winter Monday. His legs are almost impossibly long and thin, yet he manages to fold one upon the other dexterously. Not that you divert much from the visage, unsullied, unbroken and poutingly beautiful.

You are now thoroughly distracted and rattled, sweating internally, butterflies firmly lodged around the heart. You register that you've got to your late 30's without feeling like this about a total stranger. Reading is now completely impossible. The tale of seismic political events in the broadsheets utterly prosaic.You feel the need to text a fellow homosexual to relate your plight. For the want of something to do and to take a needed break from stabbing desire you walk the carriage to the toilet. Actually you do also need to relieve yourself. The stressful pressure on the bladder has become oppressive. On the way back back you enjoy the fact that the junting locomotive makes that you brush against him. God he might have thought you did it deliberately.

For at this stage there is some level of recognition between two strangers on a train. Some eye contact. For sure it could be masked as only the introductory type that can't be necessarily separated from 'the looking straight ahead on a train and taking in what you see' type. But he may have begun to be suspicious of you. A few initial glances from a man, as opposed to a member of the opposite sex mightn't quickly be decoded. Of course his eyesight might also be better than what you have gambled upon. But the point of no return has certainly been reached. You maintain eye contact firmly,and his deprogramming glasses can't fail to get the message that it is unusual if not necessarily sexual.

You remember when you were younger. When you had no sexual confidence. Then a series of covetous glances could never be explained as just that. Now you're older you know there is someone for everyone. So when you see the eyes of this young beauty dart away from your gaze you know it usually means one thing. Your feelings are not wholly unrequited.

Thankfully the train service lives down to its reputation. You will arrive half an hour late leaving plenty of time for lazy longing. You suddenly see yourself as a witness to events in a refuge where you are also a participant. You make out a now familiar tangle of auburn furze above a naked torso: With your own doppelganger assiduously putting his tongue up the young man's arse.

All good things must eventually be moved on and we have to leave our cocoon. You marvel at his thin frame as he takes off his smoking jacket to reinstall a purple sweater. You envy a maroon school bag that he attaches primly to his back. There is an agonising moment where he stands over you as he queues to alight from the train. Once you let him-fox like- get a head start you follow. You move at a quixotic pace according to the vagaries of the crowd and his movements. Anxious not to get too close and yet not wanting to be detached. For a panicky moment at the entrance to the terminal you lose sight of him, but thankfully he stands out from the crowd and re-emerges. But there isn't to be a piquant ending. The respective final destinations means that you end up on the opposite side of the train tracks from your quarry. You prepare yourself manfully and with diligence for the parting, busying by purchasing your ticket. A final eye-contact is made across the great divide. He looks rather forlorn and lost out of your charge. The die is cast and Aidan Fitzgerald gets on his tram first and disappears across King's Bridge stealthily. Modern technology has decreed that his name was emblazoned above him and his seat on the train. Perhaps our paths can cross again.