Les Bohèmes

david

Earlier in the week, I e-mailed a few chums with my social diary for the next few days with the question Do you think that I can keep this up? To a man, they all answered Yes. Well, you were wrong, guys. I'm sitting here at home with a streaming snotty cold. It's like my head is spawning green lava flows. So, my system is obviously telling me to slow down at some level.

What's been going on?

Well, Thursday night brought my first meeting with Michael. We had a couple of drinks, ate at Ask, an Italian place on Warren Street, went on to ULU GaySoc and ended the evening at The Edge. Actually the evening really ended for me in a drunken huddle on Fred's sofa bed thus incurring his somewhat stoical displeasure. Honest, I really didn't think I was that drunk when I rang him but, as soon as I hit the cold air when I started walking over to his place, the old whirling pits started up. Anyway, I won't make that mistake again.

Back to Michael, who is a delight - mid-ish 20s, by turns serious and gigglesome, quixotically scatty and then very focussed. An interesting life history and exotic home life but, since that's his story rather than mine, I'll say no more. Like me, he's interested in opera (actually you'll see that that's been a leitmotif of the past few days) and he's loaned me his tapes of the current Royal Opera Don Carlos which I'll be seeing shortly.

The crowd at ULU GaySoc were a jolly bunch - only one I took a dislike to and that mainly because he grabbed the lighter that Fred gave me and start talking about having had one like it and how it would be nice to put an engraving on the front. I told him the engraving was on the side and retrieved it.

Michael and I have chatted by e-mail since and seem certain to meet again.

Friday night and I meet up with Sean and Craig and James II and we go for a couple of drinks at 89CXR. James, unfortunately, is in one of his priapic moods and I'm afraid that the novelty of this has worn off. It's difficult to keep a decent conversation going when one of the party is constantly diverting the thread to focus on yet another delight. So, I'm afraid that I didn't really get much of a chance to know Craig at all.

Sean, however, is another matter. I'd sensed a kinship from the e-mails that had passed between us and, in the flesh, the chemistry was certainly there as well. We made an excuse and headed off to Gaby's for coffee and cake. Much conversation about life, the universe and opera (I told you that this was going to crop up a number of times). Well, it got to that stage of the evening when logistics became a necessary part of the discussion - like what was going to happen about the travel arrangements. It was a short discussion and Sean came back to Walthamstow where I discovered that he'd packed his contact lens case on the off chance.

Interestingly, Sean reminds me of a number of people I've known. Perhaps there's a definite thread of attraction to a particular type as I discovered, in a different way, with Andy. In Sean's case there's a resemblance to former lovers such as Norman and Steve and former friends like Stuart. And, most fetchingly, he has the same wicked glint of mischief in his eyes that Peter in San Francisco had.

One of Sean's things is body art. He has a very attractive tattoo in the form of a Celtic woven bracelet round his left ankle and a number of body piercings - to whit left ear (multiple), nose, tongue, nipples and, piece de resistance, not just a Prince Albert but a reverse Prince Albert too. I'm astonished at how quickly one can get used to things one is not familiar with.

A very pleasant night was spent - and morning too. James II rang just at the right moment - after we'd finished. Actually, Sean was less experienced than I'd guessed he would be. He knocked one point off his purity score, however, and I'm looking forward to exploring a few more. In S&M terms, he's a natural bottom and I'm a natural top. Should be fun. *Blush*

I just about made it into town in time to meet up with Vincent to see La Bohème. Those of you who have been keeping up with the plot will now be saying to yourselves Just a minute. Wasn't he supposed to be going to the opera with Darren? And the answer is Yes but, for various reasons, we've had to re-schedule. Actually, I was supposed to be sorting this out at Anna's party tonight but I'm so cadaverous at the moment that I'm going to give that a miss.

Vincent, I know through work and, again, we had a very pleasant time together and it's likely that he will become part of the wider social picture.

The operatic performance was pretty good also. As usual, I couldn't contain my tears when Mimi died but I was positively lacrimose at the end of Act II when Marcello and Musetta get back together again after a split-up - which, I think, says a lot about my frame of mind at the moment.

By Saturday night, I was starting to feel more and more out of it so I passed on G.A.Y with Fred and one of his friends - though I gather that Fred had a great time and learnt that gay life is a small village when he met up with Tim (someone he'd met in passing at Ballen's but had not had the bottle to request a telephone number from - anyway, he's got his number now *Smiles*).

And today is payback time.