What Love Looks Like: Sometimes love turns up where you least expect it

By Jarlath Gregory

When Ireland voted to let gay people get married, my stepdad hugged me and said,
'Your turn next, Ben! Get yourself a boyfriend. Make us proud.'
So I decided to try.
Ben is 17, gay, and happy most of the time. He's finished school and is on track to a great career – all that's missing is falling in love. Romantic but a little naïve, Ben meets Peter online. But the guy of his dreams is still in the closet, his pal Soda is suddenly more interested in nights in than nights out, and his old school bully seems determined to ruin his life. Then, on top of everything else, his best friend, Chelsea, goes AWOL – just when he needs her most.
Everything is changing and Ben's not sure what to do. But change brings all kinds of possibilities. You just have to be ready to see them.
Can Ben navigate the pitfalls of modern gay dating, with all its highly sexualised expectations, and be true to himself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The O'Brien Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788492676

Jarlath Gregory

Jarlath Gregory is from Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, and currently lives in Stoneybatter, Dublin. He is the author of Snapshots (2001), G.A.A.Y One Hundred Ways to Love a Beautiful Loser (2005), and The Organised Criminal (2015). He has also worked as a bookseller in Chapters Bookstore, and written for Attitude, Esquire and GCN magazines. He recently completed the M.Phil in Creative Writing in Trinity College Dublin and currently works as a freelance copywriter.

Book preview

This book is dedicated to

Colin Crummy, with fond

memories of our teenage selves

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

01:The Big Date

02:Boys and Boxers

03:Shed

04:Homework Club

05:Drag

06:The Big Fight

07:Pills

08:Violent Girls

09:Bear-Hug

10:Meanwhile, Back In the Closet

11:The Meaning of Family

12:The Complaint

13:Technology Can Make You Feel So Alone

14:Being Different

15:The Meaning of Love

Author’s Note

About the Author

Copyright

01.

The Big Date

When Ireland voted to let gay people get married, my stepdad hugged me and said, ‘Your turn next, Ben! Get yourself a boyfriend. Make us proud.’ So, I decided to try, because the time felt right. I was seventeen. I’d skipped Transition Year, flown through my Leaving Cert and was taking a year out to do work experience in the local primary school, before going on to do teacher training. And now, I was ready to start dating. I had a smartphone, I had some money and I wasn’t too ugly. What more did you need?

It was three weeks later, Friday night, and I’d started looking. I was walking home in the lashing rain, and I didn’t even care. I’d just been on the best date ever. The fact that we hadn’t even kissed, never mind slept together, only made it more romantic. The lampposts dripped with rain. Cars sped past. Dublin buses swayed gently from side to side. People scurried by with their collars turned up, under umbrellas, as the rain bounced off the pavement and splashed up their legs. I always keep my head shaved and my collar buttoned up, and even though my toes were squelching in my trainers, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I’d decided to walk home instead of getting the bus because, like the sappy heroine of some crappy old book you’re forced to read in English class, even the weather couldn’t get me down. Someone’s granny peered at me suspiciously, as if I must be mad to be smiling through the torrential downpour, but she hadn’t been out drinking with a sexy Northern Irish lad called Peter, so I forgave her.

Peter and I met online, as you do. Before I tried it, I had the idea that online dating was slutty, but what’s the alternative? Even though I love going out and dancing all night in gay bars, how many guys met their future husband when they were both dancing off their heads to Lady Gaga? Anyway, I guess online dating is only as slutty as the person doing it. Flashing your mickey all over the internet will probably get you noticed, but you’re not really advertising yourself as boyfriend material, are you?

I’d explained this theory to my best gay pal, Soda, one night in the pub. He thought I was nuts.

‘Girl,’ Soda said (he calls everyone girl, mickeys or not), ‘first of all, there’s no such thing as a slut. Slut is just a horrible word that men use to put women down. You’re either sexually liberated or practically a virgin, and you,’ he continued, picking up my bottle of beer and pausing long enough to suck on it suggestively, ‘are living a life of self-appointed celibacy. Seriously. How many boyfriends have you had, Ben?’

‘Um,’ I said.

‘Can’t hear you,’ Soda said, wiping my beer off his glossy lips.

‘None,’ I said. Was that normal? I’d been with a few guys, sure, but I’d been waiting for the right time to date seriously. People like Soda seemed born ready.

‘And I’ve had six, even though we’re practically the same age! I mean, what are you waiting for? A dowry? Come on, you’re seventeen already.’

‘But you’re a little bit older –’

‘Shush,’ Soda said, putting a nail-polished finger to my lips. ‘You’re legal. Get out there and get some action while you’re still horny enough to lower your standards. Just think, once you’re at college, you’ll be looking for a husband. By the time you graduate, you’ll be working on your career. Then you’ll be stuck in a dreary teaching job, and your only fun in life will be an unrequited crush on one of the dads. Next thing you know, you’ll be thirty. Gay death.’

I took a deep breath and tried to think of a polite way to explain that not everyone was horny all the time, and besides, thirty was a lifetime away.

‘But Soda, aren’t you almost –?’

‘Stop talking! I’m a perfectly respectable twenty-four years old, with years of wisdom and experience to pass on to the younger generation.’

‘Even though your Grindr profile says twenty-two?’ I said.

‘You have to update it manually,’ Soda said with dignity, ‘and I’ve been busy. Look, once you hit thirty, you’ll be sexually invisible for your remaining time on this planet. Fact of life. You might be cute, but it’s not going to last, so start looking now, before it’s too late. It’s different for me. I’m half Japanese, so I only age at half the rate of you poor white boys. Remember, no guy’ll marry you if you’re rubbish in bed, so put yourself out there, take some portraits without pants, and worry about the lovey-dovey stuff later.’

Sometimes, it wasn’t worth arguing with Soda.

‘So, I just have to pretend to be over eighteen and try to filter out the dirty old men?’

‘Exactly. You’ll take the photos for him, Chelsea, won’t you?’

Chelsea was my best friend, the same age as me but still at school. Luckily, Soda had taught us how to confidently walk into bars like we were eighteen already.

‘Suck my dick, Soda,’ Chelsea said. ‘Whose round is it?’

‘Ladylike as ever. I learned all my drag moves from you, girl.’

‘Never mind sucking dick,’ I said gloomily, ‘I’d settle for a bag of chips and a snog on the way home.’ I heaved myself up to get another round in. It helps that I’ve been shaving since I was fifteen, and Soda’s cousin is good for fake IDs.

Well, back on the night of the big date, I didn’t get a bag of chips or a snog on the way home, but I did get to hang out for a couple of hours with the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I’d never really thought men could be beautiful, but this one definitely was. I was nervous as hell because you never know if someone’s photos on their profile will match their face in real life, or whether Instagram filters have done all the hard work. There I was, sitting on my own, nervously texting Soda, saying how maybe I’d turned up too early, or got the wrong bar because all straight pubs kind of look the same, when Peter – the same Peter as his profile pics – appeared at my table, thrusting a big manly hand in my face.

I half stood up, nearly knocked over my beer, dropped my phone, half sat down, then thrust my hand out and grabbed his, shaking it in what I hoped was a masculine sort of way, and not like the sweaty, awkward mess I was turning into.

‘Ben?’

‘Hi, Peter. Yep. I’m always this clumsy. Sorry.’

‘Better get your phone.’ Peter winked at me as he shrugged off his leather jacket. ‘Your girlfriend will be wondering where you’ve got to.’

‘He’s not my – huh?’

It was one of those pubs full of locals, where the men and women sit in silence with the telly blaring. A dog yawned at the bar. Its owner tossed it half a bacon sandwich. Peter was tall and pale, with dark hair, a little bit of scruffy stubble, chiselled features and bright blue eyes. His voice had that north of the border twang, like he wanted to whisper something dirty in my ear.

We talked about ordinary stuff, like the estate I grew up in, how long he’d been in Dublin, his day job versus his career, the work experience I was doing now and my plans for college. When we left the bar – ‘I really want to see you again, yeah?’ – he punched my arm and smiled before he walked off, even though I wanted him to kiss me. I knew he wouldn’t, not outside a pub with an old man in a flat cap sucking on a smelly pipe, not while someone was murdering Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ at the amateur karaoke night, not when a gaggle of drunk women were laughing as one of their gang puked into the gutter. The whole time we were talking, the ugly look of the pub had melted away. It was only in small moments – when I saw the young Polish barman look us up and down with a bit of a sneer, or the way a smartly dressed woman smirked when she whispered something about us behind her hand to a friend, or when Peter leaned in to laugh at something and I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him on the lips – that I’d remembered how in lots of places, two boys still couldn’t kiss each other and not ask for trouble.

Still, he’d been clear about what he wanted – a discreet meet, to see if we liked each other. One pint, just to say hi. Two pints if we got on, but he’d have to go home after that even if we liked each other, because he had work in the morning, and besides, I don’t do anonymous, you know?

I did know, and I liked how we agreed about it. We’d had two pints, and that was a good sign. I watched Peter’s back disappear into the crowd of people waiting to cross at the traffic lights and broke into a grin. I could barely remember what we’d talked about, but I did remember the way his eyes lit up when he laughed, and how he ran his fingers through his hair when he was thinking about something, and the way his short-sleeved checked shirt bit into his biceps. I resisted the urge to text him straight away. That was the kind of thing irritating girls did on TV, and it always got them dumped before a potential romance blossomed. I wondered if it would be safe to text him the next day. I’d have to ask Soda. He’d been born with an innate knowledge of the Rules of Dating (and How to Wear Make-up).

Walking home, I passed three girls shivering outside Centra, clutching fivers and tugging on their tiny skirts, trying to cover the bits between their knee-high boots and their underwear. They looked about fifteen, and were trying to persuade grown-ups to go inside and buy booze for them. The tallest was sucking on a cigarette, her eyes ringed with mascara like a raccoon. I looked older than I really was, so I kept my head down. They were too young for getting drunk outdoors on their own.

‘Will you buy us a pack of Smirnoff Ice, mister?’

‘You’ve got a piece of tobacco stuck in your braces,’ I said, and walked on.

‘Faggot!’ she shouted after me.

See, here’s the thing about the word faggot. First time someone calls you a faggot, you get upset because you feel like you did something wrong. After that, you learn to start hiding all the things about yourself that make you a faggot. And it’s only later, when you find out that your real friends don’t care how gay you are and that your family still loves you, that someone shouting ‘faggot’ at you in the street doesn’t hurt as much, and you can walk away with your head held high. It still stings, though, no matter how many times you hear it. I wondered if she’d seen me leave the pub with Peter, and what he would say if he knew that kids could tell I was gay.

‘I’m not really into, you know …’ he’d said in the pub, in a quiet voice. I’d leaned in closer, liking the way his stubble sort of framed his lips.

‘The gay scene.’

‘Oh, right. Cool.’

‘It’s all a bit …’

He’d waved his hand around, and I was reminded of Soda after three bottles of beer, but nodded anyway because I knew what he meant.

‘Camp?’

‘It’s not really me, that’s all.’

‘Fair enough.’ I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but his forearms were muscular and hairy, and my hand and my heart were already aching from his grasp, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Hey, what do you think’s going to happen on Game of Thrones?’

Halfway home, the first few drops of rain fell on my face, cold and sharp. I shook off the feeling of being annoyed with the girl outside Centra. I looked up at the sky, all cloudy and grey, and knew it was going to spill. I stuck my hands in my pockets and rearranged my hard-on so I could walk properly in my skinny jeans, but that just made me grin some more. The rain splished and splashed and then began to bucket, but I didn’t have a jacket, or a cap, or the money for a taxi, so I just kept on walking.

So there I was, on a bit of a beer buzz, horny and happy and wondering what it would feel like to be wrapped in Peter’s arms, his breath on my neck, his legs around mine as we tussled on the bed, that cheeky accent in my ear as he whispered –

Sploosh!

A car sped around the corner and drenched my legs even more than they already were. I didn’t care. I was nearly home. I picked up my pace, jogging through the shallow puddles on the pavement and kicking an old tin can, just because I could. It landed with a plop in a yellow plastic bucket that one of the kids on the estate had left outside.

Goal!

I felt invincible.

I stopped, yawned and stretched in the rain. I looked up at the sky and stuck my tongue out to catch some raindrops on it. Then I ran a hand over my scalp, shook the drops of water from my face and headed on to our house. I grew up in an estate on the northside of Dublin that everyone says is shit poor, but I like it. Yeah, so there’s the odd broken-down car on someone’s front lawn, and half our neighbours live on benefits, but so what? It’s pretty much live and let live around here.

When I got to the gate, our house was more or less the same as usual. The grass in the front garden needed a trim. One of the light bulbs had blown on the porch. The front door needed a lick of paint. One thing was different though.

Someone had painted ‘GAYS OUT’ on our wall.

OK, so not everyone voted to let gay people get married. You still get the odd dickhead ruining it for everyone else. I knew which particular dickhead had done this, and I was going to kick his arse, but that could wait till tomorrow. I lingered on the doorstep, not ready to go inside just yet. A light came on in an upstairs window of the house next door. A familiar tousled head peeked out, a cigarette between its lips. Chelsea flipped on her lighter, which lit her face from below like a villain in a black and white movie. She’s a big girl, but