Thin Ice

“Right, so, a grand if I make it once round the car park while I’m alight?”

“Yes”

“Double for twice.”

“That’s not very likely, Liam”

Last year I was the number one cock in the shop, the ‘breathe and they write it down and try to be me’ copy writer; smooth threads bowl in the walk, talk in the talk, and now? Now I’m standing in a car park about to let a stranger throw lighter fluid over me and then set me alight - for kicks, his, not mine.

It was all Liam’s idea.

“Been a long time, Steve, you in a bit of a sticky?”

“Yup.” I took a gulp from the pint that Liam had just bought me and sat back on the soft old leather sofa. I like this pub; it’s an East London classic, cheap and easy, still heavy with tobacco smoke stains and propped up by the sort of men who earn their place at the high wooden bar just by sheer longevity of attendance and only speak to you when the World Cup is on.

I’m broke. A statistic of the blow them up them pop them at the top financial wave, wasn’t my fault, credit card, yeah! I’ll pay it off, I did, I was, it was all fine. And then it wasn’t. The magic carpet which had flown me up over the city was gone, and my hair, uncut for months, and unshaven face, were just a tip of the bloody great big iceberg of worry bubbling under my life. But Liam, he was always all right, which is why I was sitting here with him, wondering, hoping, desperately wishing he might have the answer. And that it won't get me arrested.

We’ve been mates a long time, I met him when I first arrived in London. He ‘saved me’ from a drag queen called Diana who was trying to sell me drugs in a late night bar in Soho.

“Leave off Di, he’s a newbie,” Liam had wrapped his arms around both of us and shoved himself in the small space between us, smiling widely. I wanted to tell this interloper that I wasn’t really that much of a newbie, and 'thanks mate, but I have met a bloke in a dress before'. But soon Liam was getting a round in, Diana was applying more lippy and I had found my first new friend in London. It was light when we left, and Diana and I were propping each other up as we stumbled out into the rubbish and puke-stained Soho streets. “We’ll drop Di off and go and grab some breakfast mate, you up for that?” As we turned a corner into Soho square Liam flicked open a shiny silver sports car, Di collapsed onto the back seat, legs splayed and shoes off, and we drove off.

 “I have no idea what to do, I am going to lose everything,” I put my hands over my face and rested my elbows on the beer stained table.

Liam smiled, his wide jaw draws out his grin in a perfect frame to his level white teeth. I relaxed, letting the cool beer flood out and into my body, the alcohol pushing into tributaries under my skin and helping me to breath in a moment of pause.

 “There is a way you can make serious money.” Liam looked down as he spoke, fiddling with some papers and licking his lips, ready to roll a tab. I looked at those teeth again. How did they stay so white? Liam had told me a story years ago about his dad being a black, and that being why he had such white teeth. I’d always dismissed it as his street talk bullshit, but as the afternoon light invaded the pub and curved over his nose, creating a dark shadow on his pale skin, I saw something. Saw how he might have looked with deep, dark, blue black skin. And it fit. Maybe his mum wasn’t lying after all.

“What would I have to do?” I always assumed Liam made money in dodgy ways; he never seemed to actually have a ‘job’ but was always cashed up.

“It’s legit mate, you just need to find the right sort of people,” Liam’s tongue was gently skimming the thin line of tacky paper to sink the glue against the opposite end of the paper and encase the tobacco pipe. ”Special people, special … needs.” Liam laughed and flicked the paper together as he giggled and then placed the rolled tab on the table. “Bruv, stop looking so worried!” I knew without asking that when Liam was referring to special needs he wasn’t referring to a disability. Least not the sort you’d go down the social over. 

“It’s nearly always blokes, who have ‘special needs’, and well...”

“What? I’m not putting anything in my mouth or anywhere else.”

“Nah mate, no need for that.” Liam ordered another round.  It was Saturday afternoon; the pub was quiet.

“This is the deal,” Liam drew his lips together, sucking on an invisible cigarette and smiling.

“About five years ago I was out clubbing, stayed out all night and met loads of new people, like you do. '

'Well you do.'

"...well yeah, and you used to to!'

"Not anymore, mate..."

'Oh come on, anyway this bloke kept on asking if he could give me a lift home. So I told him, "Sorry mate, I’m into birds," but he said he just wanted to give me a lift, and nothing else. Well I was totally fucked it was six in the morning, so he wore me down. He wasn’t a big bloke, so if he got weird I could handle him.'

“Did he try it on?” I looked at Liam’s wide chest and caveman arms and couldn’t imagine anyone easily overpowering him.

“Well I thought I’d got away with it as we got to the end of my road and I told him to drop me there. He’d been mumbling about money, but I was so knackered I just wanted to go home, but I didn’t want him knowing where I lived, like, you get me.”

“Yeah, yeah, course,” I agreed, “So he lost his nerve?”

“Nah nah, well s’pose so, but while I was gathering all my stuff up and getting ready to get out of the car he grabbed one of my boots and wouldn’t let go.”

“Shit,” I laughed. “Did you have to smack him?”

“Nah, it was just a bit odd, he wanted to say something, so I just said look, what ever it is come out with it mate.”

Liam leant in and licked his lips; his habitual moistening of his quick dark pink mouth was a constant itch to his facial appearance.

Liam lowered his voice and leaned into me. The old regulars at the bar were not happy about this close masculine contact and shuffled on their stools as they flexed copies of the Racing Post around and murmured in deep throated tones, but Liam didn’t care.

“Boots.” Liam jabbed the air with a single slim finger.

“What? He wanted your boots?” I sighed.

“Nah!' 

"What then? He nicked your boots? Wanted you to give him your boots? wanted you to lick his boots?"

Liam drained his pint and turned to face me.

"Special needs my little lacking in a very creative imagination friend, s-p-e-c-i-a-l, do you geddit now?"

"No, tell me. TELL ME."

"Calm down, jeez,. I thought you were a 'man of the world'. Well he was really nervous this bloke, and  I was getting a bit teed off, my pill was wearing off, you know and I just wanted me bed. Finally he stopped mumbling and told me what he wanted.'"

"Stand on me."

"You what?"

"I need you to stand on my head."

"Oh, OK, right, shall I take me boots off then?"

"NO!"

"You what?"

"I need them to stay on." 

"He was a dead funny bloke, not funny like Peter Kay or Alan Carr, or a comedienne, but you know, 'funny', bit odd. But nice enough."

"Nice?" I was trying not to laugh. 

"So he just  lay on the front seat, like, and I thought bloody hell how am I gonna do this, he had his head on the driving seat, so I just climbed over the roof and ever so gently pushed my boots down on his cheeks, kind of squishy them. He seemed to like it."

"HARDER." 

"He wanted me to go harder, so I started pushing up and down, the car started rocking and I started to think 'blimey I'm going to break his face!"

"But you didn't?"

"Nah, and he gave me £200 notes."

“You’re kidding me.” I sat back and looked at my grinning friend.

“Nope, straight up, he just got me to bounce up and down a bit - to be honest I was more worried about one of my neighbours coming past and asking what I was doing than what he was doing.”

“What was he doing?”

“What do you think?” Liam laughed and walked off to the bar to leave me to digest the information.

“So it’s not about sex?”

“Well.... for them it is, any way after this one, he came round every week and we'd drive off somewhere and I'd do my thing, climb over the roof, bounce bounce bounce, 200 quid, cheers mate. then I got to thinking, there must be others out there that want this 'service', so I was chatting to a  lesbian mate of mine who works on this gay porn mag. Ram? You know it?'

"Funnily enough, no.”

"Anyway, she said there was loads of these sort of punters about and they all advertised in the classifieds section of her magazine, or I could put an ad in and they could contact me, so that's what I did."

"And there was me thinking you were a drug dealer."

"Are you mad? There's no way I'd be stupid enough to do that, remember what happened to Di?" Yes I did remember what had happened to Di.  She was now in men's prison somewhere in South west France after getting busted coming in from Algeria with enough smack stuffed in her suitcase to fuel a real-life remake of trainspotting in one hit. 

“Hmm, OK, that sounds doable. Do you think I could do it?”

“Course! Why don’t I set you up a punter and see how you go?”

So, that’s why I’m here at 4 o’clock in the morning in an empty Tesco car park in the middle of Hackney, Liam reckons it’s safe. And to be honest I was more worried about the group of teenagers hovering under the nearby bridge, their hoods squaring out their young heads in boxy silhouettes.

“Course it’s weird, but he’s a good punter, I’ve done it three times now, but I’d like some time off so the hair on my arms can grow back!”

“He isn’t going to touch me?”

“Nah, he’s going to have his hands full if you catch my drift. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”