On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory Read Online Free

fills me with surprise might be slightly overstating it but it does give me a little jolt, or frisson. I shouldn’t even say since the start of human life. I only have to go back a couple of hundred years to find it all equally astonishing, the fact that people shared the same experiences as me—that other men for example all through the ages have enjoyed orgasms roughly the same as mine. Is that now getting arrogant enough?”
    â€œNo you’re still an absolute beginner. Just paltry unambitious stuff.”
    â€œI think I can do better then.”
    â€œIndeed I should hope so.”
    â€œI used to believe that I was special—”
    â€œYou’re intensely special.”
    â€œNo Brad I mean like Jesus. When I was a boy part of me really thought I was designed to be another saviour; not to die on the cross, nothing uncomfortable like that; but put here on earth to be a fine example to all you sad and ordinary folk. How’m I doing?”
    â€œNone too well. That’s just sweet and childlike and completely normal. You no doubt believed at least half the time that you were utterly despicable and quite beyond the pale. Much less deserving than any of us poor sad and ordinary folk.”
    â€œI did! I did! How can you know these things? How can you be so very wise?”
    â€œI guess because I was designed to be extremely special—oh far more special than yourself. You fake and fraud and upstart!”
    â€œI reckon I must love you then … you very wise extremely special man.”
    â€œI reckon I must love you too … you false and jumped-up boy.”
    I smiled—then was suddenly surprised to find that in the throes of reminiscence I’d passed unnoticing the place at which seven hours earlier we’d turned into the main road. Brad had been concentrating on all those potentially dangerous ruts; we had hardly spoken until we’d driven to about this point, when I’d lazily mentioned the irony of needing to be up so early on this particular Sunday. “Still. Always best to leave while you’re having a good time,” he’d said.
    And very soon I got to that vaulted section which had reminded me of smugglers but where there was no longer any grassy bank and I was forced for the sake of my soles to tread more carefully. When I reached the other end and came to the spot where we had pulled over and then gone to stand beside the lake, arm around shoulder, arm around waist, I experienced even now a sudden sharp twist of nostalgia—and thought, “My God how good we had it and how much of it I simply took for granted.”
    Experienced it even now despite my knowing our reunion couldn’t be that far off. It struck me forcibly how very blest I was. Under any other circumstances, with Brad gone, I’d have had to avoid this lake altogether, perhaps this whole stretch of road, certainly for the time being. To revisit … would have been much more than I could manage. Could I even have borne to go back into the house, although obviously I should have had to? But how did others cope in such a situation? To my shame I knew I’d never given it much thought. Maybe the closest I’d ever come was crying in front of some old movie dealing with bereavement. In my own life only one grandmother had died; and she had been someone to mimic rather than to mourn.
    Back in the car. By now we had been talking of Suzanne.
    Suzanne…! No doubt at this moment she was somewhere high above the Channel looking forward with a mixture of pleasurable anticipation and suppressed nervousness to a week of holiday spent with her father and his boyfriend. How would she react when no one came to meet her? When no one answered her increasingly panicked calls? Suppose for some reason she couldn’t get in touch with her mum back in Paris—and in any case what could Hélène reasonably advise? Suzanne was only twenty-two; she was going to feel so