Please note that my partner and I always use condoms with others but I never include them or describe the act of putting them on in my true stories. Play safe guys.
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So we lived in France for 6 years or so and then moved back to the UK, and rather than head to London where we had been immediately before France, we came back to the city where I grew up. We had been away for over 20 years and were lucky, indeed spoilt, with the improvements that had been made, the jobs available and the apartments in the city centre. The only slight disappointment was the gay scene, now every place is 'gay friendly ' which means it was once gay and is now overrun with hen parties and the like, and it seems compulsory to be 'trans inclusive' meaning going out for a drink, cruising a little and getting some cock is an obstacle course a gay guy or gay couple is unlikely to finish.
So I was in the Food Hall at Marks and Spencer. This guy about my age kept staring at me. He was a bit nerdy yet reasonably good looking, but I didn't think I was being cruised and was really just wanting to pick up something for dinner rather than pick up somebody. I carried on searching the shelves for inspiration and noticed that the guy was with a girl of, I'm guessing, 20. She was attractive and so I guessed I had mis-read the situation until I heard her call him "dad".
I finally settled on some salad things and a sauce to make for pasta I had in the cupboard back home and headed for the checkouts. The guy came up behind me in the queue, the daughter had disappeared and what do you know, he announced himself to me; Glenn. I looked rather blank.
"Benton Park Grammar."
I smiled which then gave away that the penny had dropped. He wasn't cruising me, just working out if we had actually gone to school together almost 30 years ago. And yes, we had. I shook his hand and chatted until it was my turn to go pay, we had both chosen the self scan, and once I'd finished, I waited for him and we continued a very quick catch up. He too was in a hurry and with his daughter who had returned and so I gave him my card with my number on, having sworn I would never do such a thing as I had left the school, indeed left the city, and never regretted it. I had chosen to move back but had no interest in what had happened to school colleagues I hadn't been in touch with in the intervening years.
I went home, thinking nothing more of it and cooked dinner. I told Dave that I had bumped in to Glenn and recounted he had been in two of the four science subjects we had taken from the age of 16 to 18 and so I became friends with him, then he left to go to University and that was almost the last I saw of him. Almost. I visited him once in Preston and stayed overnight in his room at the Halls of Residence. Well I was preparing dinner and remembering sixth form science classes, how we called him Glenneth or Glenbo, never just Glenn, as well as the play the school leavers put on each year taking the piss out of the teachers and his starring part as the headmaster... and then, long forgotten perhaps due to the shock and surprise of it or my closeted sexuality at the time, I remembered my trip to visit him at University.
We had gotten drunk in the Student's Union on cheap beer, gone back to his room and once I got in to bed, wearing underwear as we had never seen each other naked that I recall (even in Physical Education classes or changing for them) I remember we ended up naked, rolling around on the bed and sort of- and not very excitingly- making out. To be fair, it was a bit of a clumsy effort and we were both drunk, and that, from memory, was the last I had seen of him when I bade an embarrassed farewell the next morning.
During dinner all I could think about was Glenn, how he looked now and how he looked all those years ago, strangely enough not that different, how we had been good (and strictly platonic) friends for a few years at school... and how we had ended up in one of my first clumsy same sex experiences which was, at the time, either embarrassingly forgettable or perhaps slightly regrettable. I wondered if he remembered it too and if it had been a one off as he had at least one daughter and therefore possibly a wife or ex-wife somewhere along the way. I told Dave we had messed about the once and how hazy my recollection of it was and really that was the end of it. Until the next morning when he sent me a text asking if I fancied meeting sometime for a coffee.
I replied back suggesting he come round to the apartment for a pizza one night if he was free and said he could bring a guest (or wife) if he wanted as my partner would be there, thinking if the adolescent fumble wasn't mentioned, it might be fun to reminisce. He texted back later with a couple of dates and said he would come alone.