Twentysix Read Online Free

tells him that his grandfather is dying, that he has been awake all night at the hospital. His voice is soft and lethargic, revealing no emotion or energy. Bored; his voice is bored. In the same uncertain monotone, he starts to talk about his favourite novels, which are all about serial killers. In one of them, a serial killer called the Birdman puts a live bird in thehollowed-out ribcage of his victims. He recounts a short story he is writing, about a female serial killer who cuts the fingers off a man she has just killed and masturbates with one of them.
    Seventeen and thirty-seven. There seems, to the older man, a curious symmetry to their ages. He begins to recall what he was like at seventeen, not listening much to the boy’s quiet mumble, but letting memories arise from the dark still waters he polices more and more these days. Some numerologist might unearth patterns in these two numbers, some cosmic link, some cabbalistic augury or message. But not me.
    ‘My teacher really liked the story,’ the boy mutters, ‘but she said she wouldn’t like to pay my psychiatric bills.’ His eyes are a clear, clean, glassy blue, fringed with long dark lashes. Surrounded by books most of which he has read, the older man can think of nothing to say.
    The silence that has fallen between them is fragile enough to be broken by the move of a hand. A simple gesture, such as the younger man sliding his hand across the older man’s thigh and letting it rest there. The older man responds by standing up and pulling the curtains closed, blocking out the late afternoon light. He sits back down and the hand returns to his thigh, sliding up to cup his stiffening crotch. Awkwardly, their mouths now meet; the older man is shocked by the softness of the boy’s face, and an image unfolds of the last time he kissed a woman. All of his life seems to scurry for cover under the tenderness of that beardless kiss. As their clothes are removed, the boy grows more animated.His lethargy, or shyness, diminishes as his nakedness increases. His lips are now circled with red from the older man’s stubble, his face open and radiant with need. The face unnerves me: I have seen it before, in a dream or a past life, or a memory since erased.
    If there is an exchange of knowledge here, in amongst the kissing and the licking and the sucking, it eludes them both, and after the deed is done they part none the wiser – or perhaps I am being unfair; perhaps there is something that each one takes away, like a prize, something to be kept and occasionally viewed as a reminder of what was achieved on that winter afternoon when their lives didn’t change, even though, in truth, they never expected them to.
    If desire is repressed it is because every position of desire, no matter how small, is capable of calling into question the established order of society. 

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    I nto the depths of the shrubbery in Finsbury Park, on a warm, orangey-blue-skied summer night, I followed you. The greenblack trees seemed to part as you led me to a derelict scout hut, its outside walls pebbledashed with chips of moonlight, its windows paneless, filled with yellow veils of candlelight and the uncertain sway of shadows. The sound of voices reached us from inside. You moved closer and leaned in the window, and I did too, to notice that the floor was scattered with a forest of nightlights, radiating enough light to show us a group of four or five men sitting and drinking and smoking and talking amongst a debris of newspapers and cans, rubbers and fag-ends. You waved at one of them and he called out a hello.
    ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in!’ hissed a young boy in a white top, hood up, huddled over a beer can. ‘Is that your trade, love? Bring him here, let’s ’ave a proper look.’
    You hopped with ease into the room, a graceful movement perfected on other nights like this, and I clambered through for the first time, apprehensive and thrilled.
    ‘How many cocks you ’ad