Alfredo was a friend of my girlfriend's and I used to bump into him at parties. It was well known that he was gay, and the family were fine with that, as was I. After all, what does it really matter? I wasn't gay, as far as they knew; but in fact, like most men, I had occasional urges in that direction, but I had kept it under wraps, just to make life easier.
Alfredo was Spanish and had lived in east Sussex for ten years, so he spoke good English. They say all women would like to have a gay male friend, for reasons I'm not qualified to speculate about, and I have to say that when Ginny was with Alfredo, I felt confident that she was okay.
He was educated, you might say sophisticated, and dressed well. Long black hair in a style I had worn many years earlier but which many Hispanic men seem to still favour. And he had body hair; hairy arms. hairy chest, hairy legs, as I had seen in the summer when he wore shorts in spite of the unreliable British weather. I'm not wild about body hair on men. It seems to me to be a throwback to our primitive ancestors that we should have grown out of by now. However, that was my feeling during what you might call my "official" life.
One Christmas at Ginny's house, when I was waiting for someone to fetch me a drink, Alfredo had passed me his glass of red wine, which he had already drunk half of. Maybe it's just me, but I saw that as flirtatious act. The wine would contain minute traces of his saliva. This was before Covid, so it wasn't regarded as irresponsible, but there was something about the way he engineered the exchange that struck me as challenging. He was daring me to either drink it and imbibe a tiny bit of him or refuse and show myself as a bit of a pansy. So I had taken a large slurp and smiled as I gave it back to him.
In such ways are messages passed between people. I didn't think much more about it, but a couple of months later I met him on the train to London. He was going for a job interview and I was going to buy a guitar, but had decided to stay overnight and look up some old friends.
Alfredo was going to be getting the first train back once he was finished, but we arranged to meet for a drink after his interview. It was his idea.
So we met up in a pub next to my hotel and were soon deep in conversation. We had never chatted on our own before, but I found him good company. After the third glass of wine we were quite matey and suddenly he said,
"You know what, I think I'll stay over too. Is the hotel busy?" I said it seemed fairly quiet, and we left it at that and went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. By the time we got to the hotel it was 10 o'clock, and lo and behold there were no rooms left.
"I've got a double with two beds," I said gallantly. "We can share if you don't mind."
"I wouldn't mind at all," he said, and gave me a little look.
We had another couple of drinks in the bar and finally went upstairs around 11.
I showed Alfredo my new guitar, an Epiphone acoustic that sounded almost as good as it looked, and he asked me to play him something, so I did. He wanted to hear Sacrifice by Elton John, and it was in my repertoire, albeit way down the list. I got through it okay and when I had finished he was looking at me steadily, looking into my eyes. If something had been in the back of my mind, at that moment it barged its way to the front. Alfredo went to the bathroom and after pissing and making a bit of a splash in the sink, I could hear him brushing his teeth. Either he just happened to have a toothbrush with him or he had used mine. So we might be sharing saliva again. I found the thought oddly exciting.
When he came out, I went in and had a quick shower. When I got to the toothbrush, sure enough it was damp.
I hadn't taken pajamas with me because I hadn't expected to have company, so I went back in the room with a towel wrapped around my waist.
