S2E5 - Outrage

Previously on two foreskins walking to a bar, I looked at Blake and wiped the piss off my knees with some toilet paper. I know what type of guy you are, Chris, I said. I think you're probably right. Two foreskins walk into a bar. Written and performed by Chris Thompson season two episode five outrage that night the storm came for five days, and for six nights the island was pummeled with wind and rain. On the second day, I began to feel unwell and tested positive for Covid. On the third day, the power went out and I was feverish. In a tropical storm with no air conditioning, I lay on my daybed in the dark, watching the tiny lizards run across my floor and up the walls. I was told to kill them as I would any bug, but I couldnt. But they also terrified me. When I saw one in my bedroom, I decamped permanently into the living room. When I slept, I put my speedos over my face like a mask to ensure a lizard didnt dart into my mouth or eat my eyes whilst I was asleep. Those few days are now a blur. I remember I lay immobile, contorting with sickness, coughing my lungs up, barely able to eat. By the second day I was delirious but strangely calm, and I sunk into fitful bursts of semi consciousness. For five days and six nights I lived in that space between awake and sleep, stirring and squirming in my sweat drenched bed. On several occasions, I'd wake with no breath in my lungs to see figures standing at the edge of my bed. And sometimes it was you, the men I have loved. And other times it was doctors and nurses huddled at the end of my bed, whispering to each other, looking at charts. Not with concern on their faces, no with anger. I blinked them away, but they'd persist, and soon I was too scared to close my eyes, convinced in my hunger and delirium that death had finally come to take me. This fevered calenture pinned me to my bed, and in this liminal space I straddled two worlds. The doctors and nurses crowded round me, poking me, prodding me. Until now. I was there again on the day after Christmas, or boxing day, as we call it back home. Two days after my surgery, my pain medication stopped working and no one believed me. I screamed and writhed in agony, but the nurses said it was all in my head. They looked at the fentanyl drip and the small computer which measured its dosage. The bag was emptying and the screen showed everything to be normal, so the problem wasnt real and the pain was imagined. I begged the nurses to investigate further. When the surgeon came on his ward round, I was crying out with pain, and he told me if I couldnt pull myself together and speak properly, I'd have to wait till tomorrow. By now there were only two of us in the ward, me and Arthur, that frail older gentleman with no one to look after him. At Christmas, I prayed to a God I didn't believe in that the same nurse who removed my catheter the night before would be on shift that night. He was the only person that seemed to care. By midnight, I was in so much pain I fouled myself, but didn't realize. It was when I went to the nurse station to beg that they investigate my fentanyl drip that I realized I was leaving a trail of piss and shit along the floor. The nurses were furious with me, and I was sent back to my bed at 02:00 a.m. i was drifting in and out of consciousness and the pain was indescribable. All I can say is that I'd had twelve inches of my small intestine removed and then sewn back together again. The alarm on my fentanyl drip beeped, and a nurse who I didnt recognize came to change it. She took one look at me and I knew something was up. She traced the drip to my arm and her face changed, and then she went into crisis mode. For some reason, the drip hadnt pierced my vein or it had come loose. I didnt fully understand, but when we looked at my arm, there was a huge, bulbous collection of fluid under my skin, which, it turns out, was the fentanyl that had been collecting there rather than going into my bloodstream. The nurse re administered the drip, and as soon as the fentanyl hit me, I felt like I'd been dipped into a soothing, warm bath, and I slept. I don't know how long I was asleep for, but I was woken up by Arthur, my neighbor, who was shaking me. He had a panicked, anguished look on his face. It was dark outside. Our windows looked out onto the London eye, and the capsules, now empty and outlined in a deep blue light, had stopped their daily rotation. Arthur whispered, get up, you silly boy. Get up. He shook me hard. Youre covered in piss. Are you ok? I asked. He said, dont mess me around, William. Its not safe here and you know it. Arthur. Im not William. What? Im not William. Oh. Arthur were in St. Thomas Hospital. Do you remember? I walked Arthur back to his bed and tucked him in. You look like him, he said the following afternoon, wed been fed, and Arthur was sitting in his chair beside the bed. He needed to change his stoma, but no one was coming when he rang the bell to. I walked out to the nurses station, but they were dealing with a man in cardiac arrest. Arthur said, I can do it. I just need someone to pass me things. I closed the curtains and helped Arthur change his stoma. Theyd left his wound open, but sewn mine up. He remarked. Whos William? I asked. Oh, William. He was my ex husband. We were never married. We were before all that. Its just what I called him, you know, he was 18 years younger than me. But it wasnt a scandal. We met at an outrage meeting the gay activist group. You might have heard of them. Well, William didnt so much as insert himself into the group than barge in and hold it hostage. He turned up one night, totally out of nowhere. He made a speech, and that was it. In his blue jeans and leather jacket, two sizes too big. My life hitherto was rather peaceful. Dull, even. And William shattered that. He was an Oxford graduate, which meant he liked to disagree with you, whether he disagreed with you or not. Pugnacious is what I'd call him. He came to London as soon as he graduated, fully primed for a fight, manifesto in hand. I say that, but he didn't have a manifesto. He was his manifesto. His sexuality, his personality, his politics. His whole life was a list of demands. That first night he came into the meeting, William took one look at me and said, I'm coming home with you. And he did. And we stayed like that for five years. We shared a bed all that time that we never really had sex. Wed spoon every night. Sometimes id feel his penis press hard against me in the mornings. But hed roll over or swipe my hand away and say, not now, Mary. If I ever tried to get fresh. Once he did let me fuck him. But he looked so bored, like he was sat in the doctors waiting room. He said, pull my nightie down when youre done, dear. I stopped making a move after that and settled for his erection against the small of my back. Once in a blue moon. I wasnt so foolish as to try to ask for anything more than that. Not from a guy like him and so young. No, I was grateful for what I was given when I was given it. He was a thug, mind you. Not to me, not in the physical sense. But he took over that group and bullied himself into a position of power. And he loved to cruise and cottage. He refused to assimilate. Fucking in the bushes wasnt a shameful necessity. To him. It was society, id say, but arent we fighting so we dont have to fuck in the bushes anymore? He said, oh, Mary, youll be wanting to get married next. He called himself queer, not gay, which smarted, I must admit. I knew I frustrated him. I was simple. Everything he was fighting against in the gay community, I embodied. I knew that. But still, he'd come home every night to me. I'd have the kettle on. You have to understand, from my perspective, Chris, he blew my world wide open. It was exhilarating. The laws were so silly back then. Gay men could be arrested for giving our phone numbers or winking at each other if it was to solicit sex. And all this against a backdrop of violence against us. William started a splinter group. Queers bashed back, and I begged him not to do it. But try as we might, we couldn't get the police on board. They couldn't get it into their heads that we should be treated as victims of crime, not the perpetrators of it. William was on the tv all the time in those early years. He was in the papers too. I was happy to be in the background with the kettle on. I found some of what he would say distasteful. One night, I refused to type up his notes for the meeting. In all conscience, I couldnt write one more thing about why we should have the right to have sex in public toilets. He seemed to relish it. Whats the word? The deviancy? I said. Why aren't we focusing on employment rights, the age of consent? Why are you fixated on the right to have sex in public? It's a fetish. William said, people like you want to paint today's gay man as fine and upstanding, but he's not. He's a slut. Just be honest and say what you really think. The reluctance of gay men to zip up their trousers and take their full and wholesome place in society is, in your view, disgusting. I exploded. If you want to go and have sex in some toilet and then have the shit kicked out of you on the way home whilst you seroconvert, go ahead. But some of us are done kissing in the shadows. I knew I would grow to regret those words as soon as I said them. He didn't come home for a week. I knew he would eventually. William always came home eventually. Id hear the front door latch and then hed slide into the bed next to me, stinking of sex and mud and the toilet cubicle. Im not even certain I loved him. If the proof of my love was the pain and soreness at his absence then. Yes, im sure we could say I loved him. He told me he loved me every day. Love you, Mary, hed say. But somehow when he said it, it felt like he was pulling my pants down. One night he went cruising on Hampstead Heath and then some public toilets in Hyde park. Some drunk straight men knew what the toilets were being used for. And when the pubs kicked out, they went on a gay bashing spree. I don't know if William made a move on them, but they beat him to death. I only found out a couple of days later in the papers and they never did get who killed him. He was found lying in a puddle of urine the following morning. All that being said, even if he was alive today, I dont think hed be here now. He certainly wouldnt be able to cope with me like this. I suspect id still have ended up alone, so in many ways its inconsequential. I can see him sometimes. Still, when I close my eyes, hes furiously writing a speech in his notebook. Hes on the phone ranting at a journalist. Hes washing the mud off his knees. And I would look at him and think, im a good person. I am a good person and I cannot help this man. And I was right. Arthurs Stoma gurgled. The London Eye was motionless still. I asked, Arthur, do you not have any family who can look after you? Arthur replied, no, not really, Chris. But I dont need it. Once I can master this, Stoma ill be grand. I sing in a gay choir. I have friends there who feel like family. I have a satisfactory life by now. Wed finished our task. We looked at it, his open wound now covered, and then at each other, pleased with ourselves. I said, Arthur, theyre not taking very good care of us here, are they? I think theyre going to kill me. Yes, youre fighting for your life, I can see that, he said, but when arent we? Then he said, what are you doing tonight at 08:00 p.m. try to stay awake. I have a surprise for you. I got back into bed and closed my eyes. It was hard not to compare myself to Arthur. A generation, perhaps two apart, but both of us alone in this deserted hospital ward on Boxing Day. Abandoned, I thought, although I could immediately refute, that I'd zoomed my family yesterday, although I could only manage 30 seconds on the call. My phone was full of messages, but I was too weak to answer them. Well, maybe not abandoned then, but stranded at 08:00 p.m. arthur called me to the window. It was dark now. His medical gown had come loose at the back, and I could see the entirety of his pallid, naked body, framed by the window and lit by the deep blue of the London eye. I tied his gown up for him. He just so you know, thats the best bum on the gay beach in Gran Canaria. And it always will be. There they are. Who? I asked. On the street below was a group of about eight, maybe ten men huddled together in their coats and scarves, shuffling from 1ft to the other in the cold, bright, shining, smiling, and waving at us. And they were singing. I woke up with a start. There was white noise coming from my tv, and the air conditioner had just come back on. The power must have been restored. I felt better, as if someone had just turned off the sickness with a switch. I plugged in my phone. Five full days had passed, and it beeped with message after message. There was a message from Blake in my fever. ID messaged him to say that ID had Covid so he should get tested and let the Atlanta ladies know. Two days ago, he replied. Look at your porch. I got out of my daybed and walked stiffly to my front door. On the chair just beneath the american flag was a cooler bag full of provisions and medicine. I ate a banana and then some cookies and glugged down the cool iced tea in one go. On my knees in front of that chair, I gorged myself on the contents of the cooler bag. The workmen had returned, and I could hear their friendly indistinct chatter from behind the bushes. The sky was blue again and the sun was burning off a thin layer of cloud. A tiny lizard ran out my front door, sprinted brazenly across the porch into the greenery, a thrilling dash for freedom back into the natural world. Next time on two foreskins walk into a bar on my birthday. He climbed up the outside of the building three stories high, broke in through a window just to call me a cunt. Two, four skins walk into a bar is written and narrated by Chris Thompson. Directed by Andrew Falaise edited and post production by Christopher Huthe.