A Vocation (forty-nine scenarios for gay men)

A Vocation

(forty-nine scenarios for gay men)

By Joshua Val Martin

For

Ian ‘Addyctive Desyres’ Coombes

(195? – 2016)

A direct quote taken from the last email and contact I had with Ian:

“…I get so angry about the facts of the 67 act and abuse which followed for

years. I’m trying to grow old gracefully but I struggle…”

10th July 2016

Directions.

I wrote this directly in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting in which 49

were shot dead, the 49th advent of the partial decriminalistion of homosexuality

between men in the United Kingdom, and the sudden death of my friend Ian.

It should be performed by one performer, forty-nine performers, or three

performers (each assuming the role of either of A Boy, A Man or A

Gentleman). The forty-nine scenarios can be repeated any number of times in

its complete form, with any combination of the aforementioned casting

choices.

The numbers (Bold) do not necessarily need to be read aloud, but they should

at least be ‘felt’ as punctuation.

The scenarios (Italics) may be read aloud as written, but I’m open to the sense

of the scenarios being imaginatively conveyed or dramatised in an alternative

fashion.

One

There’s A Boy sat alone in the school cafeteria because A Boy doesn’t know

what’s so funny about a Spice Girls lunch box.

Two

Two gentlemen wake up in one another’s arms, exactly how they’d fallen to

sleep – they’d been just friends since anyone could remember.

Three

In a candlelit pub, A Man concedes to an induction game of colleagues ranking

colleagues, according to her fuckability, whilst sipping his cosmopolitan.

Four

A Gentleman attends a communion of sex, flesh and blood, and though he no

longer gets it up, he smiles to his partner and enjoys the view from the corner.

Five

A Man stumbling home hopefully downloads Grindr once more only for Torsos

to tell him: no femmes, no trans, no Asians, no old, no men with AIDS.

Six

A Boy can’t sleep because he still doesn’t understand why Woody would love a

Cowgirl when he could have had a Spaceman.

Seven

A Man directs his cum onto the toe of a stranger’s boot and immediately

refrains from asking where they were bought from.

Eight

A Boy raises his hand as he’s taught of periods, erections and vaginal

penetration, though when it’s A Boy’s turn to talk, he was just stretching, sir.

Nine

A Gentleman reflects that he might be a pervert after all, before returning to

the video of hairless Arab boys fingering one another on a beach.

Ten

On the drive back from church, A Boy is offered fatherly advice: fuck loads of

girls whilst you still can, son.

Eleven

After shite pizza and expensive wine, A Man wonders which one is the man and

should take the bill, and, is it even okay anymore to fuck after a first date?

Twelve

A Gentleman wished that he was more upset about the very bad news his

partner had just received but the experience was an all too familiar one.

Thirteen

Licking his date’s arsehole, fucking it, having his used cock sucked- A Man-

not for the first time in his life- considers how grim gay sex is.

Fourteen

Showing off in the showers, the thicker lads after practice mock A Boy’s

narrow accidental erection, rechristening A Boy as: gay boy.

Fifteen

Coming out’s hard, sometimes empowering, often boring but when A Man

comes out to colleagues who say he doesn’t act gay: coming out’s satisfying.

Sixteen

A Gentleman reads on a tabloid’s tenth page of a young Arab boy lashed to

death on a beach, before turning onto the letters page.

Seventeen

A Boy waits up late, logs onto his Dad’s laptop, and scrolls through anal,

bondage, clits, dildos, ebony, fisting and finally there, his favourite fetish: gay.

Eighteen

A Gentleman goes to see his partner in hospital, but he was only a ‘good-

friend’, and it’s family visitations only at the moment, I’m afraid.

Nineteen

A Boy’s heart races as he’s left alone in a room with a friend at an after-prom

party- A Boy says he needs the toilet- but he finds the garden and cries.

Twenty

There is nothing A Gentleman can do to help his partner who is in desperate need of blood.

Twenty-One

As A Man turns to face his fiancé walking up the aisle, he notices that his uncle

doesn’t seem to have made it- there must have been traffic.

Twenty-Two

A Gentleman forgot the Gods, since the God’s had forgotten him too – but

having read that God’s modernizing, he falls to his knees and prays for his

partner’s life.

Twenty-Three

A Man sulks because whilst he is on his honeymoon, on top of the Eiffel tower,

with the sun setting in the distance, the husband doesn’t approve of P.D.A.

Twenty-Four

A Boy’s first gasp of sweat, poppers and Paco Rabanne fuels a dozen men

which solidifies A Boy’s rebrand as: slag

Twenty-Five.

A Man, though happily married, obliges when a straight colleague asks A Man

to cum on his chest.

Twenty-Six

A Boy cums inside a friend for the first time, before immediately starting over -

it feels so good, because it feels wrong.

Twenty-Seven

The partner dies suddenly and there’s no will, which is a bit of a bugger for A Gentleman.

Twenty-Eight

A Boy silently waits, shaking, believing that he now probably has AIDS.

Twenty-Nine

A Gentleman sits by a statue of Alan Turing eating homemade sandwiches for

over five hours.

Thirty

The husband scrolls through A Man’s unlocked phone, each new penis picture

a dagger that he trades that night for punches.

Thirty-One

A Gentleman twists a webcam to face his sad penis, fishing for naked boys like

Pokémon – it’s something to pass the time- but he can’t connect.

Thirty-Two

Whilst the husband has gone on sex strike, A Man knows that tonight, make no

mistake: they’ll fuck.

Thirty-Three

In the car back to University the Dad asks A Boy where his love bite came

from, and if she had big tits.

Thirty-Four

A Man can feel stress pulling his hair out since the divorce and so a colleague

asks him if A Man could do with some retail therapy.

Thirty-Five

The night’s pull is mugged and so A Boy now alone makes the rest of the

journey home by taxi.

Thirty-Six

Staring into the mirror naked A Gentleman decides that he probably needs to

lose weight before thinking of joining a dating app.

Thirty-Seven

A Boy tells his boyfriend that they can’t be together because of Uni work

because that’s easier to say than ‘you’re too gay to introduce to my family’.

Thirty-Eight

It’s ten to the hour, and A Gentleman waits impatiently for the pub doors to

open.

Thirty-Nine

Setting fire to the flat, quitting his job, fucking life’s cunts ‘til they bleed- A

Man sits alone with a glass of wine and fantasises the things he’d like to do.

Forty

A Gentleman wants to go to gay pride, but this late in life, he can’t afford to get

in.

Forty-One

A Man rings his ex-husband and invites him out for coffee, even though he

knows neither of them will be able to love in the same way again.

Forty-Two

They’re an eighth of their profile picture yet A Boy still drops soggy to his

knees and eats.

Forty-Three

In a moment of rare happiness, A Man deletes the Grindr application from his

phone, because there’s no need for it- today?: we’re all the same.

Forty-Four

A Boy is trying to wash blood from his bedroom wall before his Dad returns from work.

Forty-Five

A Gentleman slurs to the bar lady how life might’ve been different if when

growing up, he’d been taught it’s alright to love whoever, however.

Forty-Six

A Man goes to a gay nightclub, because he got through it all, and he wants to

celebrate that fact.

Forty-Seven

A Gentleman decides to go out dancing- one last time- for old time’s sake.

Forty-Eight

A gay nightclub stops to stare at A Boy dancing like he’s wrestling God.

Forty-Nine

In a gay nightclub, a gay man is shot.