The Fishwhacker Swindle?

You know the feeling you have when you’re at an international arms fair and you bump into your old university sociology professor, the one who was the first to step forward and place a flower down the rifle of the head riot policeman? I don’t, never having had any truck with all that tree-bothering pacifist nonsense, but I imagine it would be similar to the feeling I experienced when I found myself in a gay situation recently with one of my oldest friends.

Mike was over from South Africa and staying at mine for a few days. We were at high school together and later at university. I went into corpses and he into gynaecology, so I suppose we shared an interest in exploring orifices. One morning I had problems with a blocked drain in the kitchen. Mike offered to sort it out, saying it was just like doing a dilatation and curettage. Being a person of obsessive tidiness I went into the spare room where he slept in order to straighten it out (he being a person of obsessive slovenliness).

And then I saw it.

Nestling in his overnight bag, its little head peeping from between the unzipped flaps, was something so shocking I’m clenching my buttocks even now, writing about it. I’d seen its ilk before, of course, in specialist shops and increasingly in family supermarkets. Vampirella herself has a few. All sorts of rationalisations forced their way into my confused head: he’s bought it for his girlfriend, it’s a gift for his mother… but I knew the truth even as I struggled to deny it. I picked it out of the bag and carried it delicately between thumb and forefinger, holding it at arm’s length as if to avoid contamination. Downstairs he was crouched under the sink wiping bits of gunge on his trousers. He twisted his head round as I came in, and was about to say something smug about having cleared the tubes when he saw what I was carrying.

“I can explain, Foot,” he whispered.

Perhaps I should explain. South African culture, especially back in the eighties when we were at university, was unrelentingly macho. Homosexuality was in a lead-lined vault welded shut and dumped in the ocean. You held your heterosexuality aloft as if it were a rampant phallus. If you knew what was good for you, you liked rugby, served your compulsory two years in the Army with pride, and ate raw meat. The very idea of a man applying grooming products to his tanned leathery skin was beyond the pale. We had both sworn that we’d never in our lives, on pain of dismemberment, use moisturiser.

“It’s just that when you get to a certain age, you need something to give your skin a little lift - ”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to hear it.

“It’s got anti-oxidants in it, to neutralise free radicals which damage the dermis as well as the epidermis.”

I looked at the tube properly for the first time. L’Oreal Ultra-VitaLift Plus. A smiling smooth-skinned woman was on the front.

I looked at Mike again. He’d been an athletic type back in the old days but as soon as he’d stepped off the plane I’d noticed a softness, almost a chubbiness to his features, making him resemble Brian the Snail from The Magic Roundabout. Now, I noticed the twin swellings in the front of his T-shirt (with two unpleasant dots of moistness which I didn’t want to think about), the gentle flare of his hips and the peculiar highness in his voice.

“This stuff contains oestrogens, Mike,” I said quietly.

There was a shift in his demeanour then, a sudden hardness. “Don’t push me, Foot,” he said icily. And then I knew: he held the trump card. As if reading my mind he pushed past me and went upstairs. I felt too weak to stop him, following instead. In the bathroom he opened the cabinet and rummaged in the back before turning in triumph, a small tube of Nivea Wrinkle De-crease formula in his small hand.

We spent many hours talking after that, the air cleared between us. I promised not to tell anyone if he made the same pledge. And I persuaded him to switch to a product for men, even though he claimed the women’s creams were more effective (and yes, he was looking remarkably smooth).

I’m telling you this in confidence so please don’t go spreading it around. I hope you understand what tremendous courage it took for me to bare my soul like this.