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It was the first time I’d seen him, or his husband James Royce-Royce, without their newly adopted son in months. Their newly adopted son who they had, inevitably, named James.
Bridge was sitting beside me, wearing a penis hat and, like all of the guests, a T-shirt that, owing to a miscommunication on the phone with the printers, read Bridge’s Bitches No Oliver I Think It’s Fine We’re Using It in the Reclaimed Sense and Anyway It’s Too Late to Change.
“Last week,” said Priya in a devastating monotone, “you emailed me to ask my opinion on a table lamp.” As one, the guests gasped. “Luc,” cried James Royce-Royce. “No. Not a table lamp.”
“It just would have been great to be able to say ‘Hi, Miles, fuck you, my life is great.’” Oliver gave a sort of half laugh. “You could still have said it.” “Yeah, but I’d have had no proof.” “You’re proof.”
bitch no one’s asking you for proof
Remember to look up the Cee-Arr-Ay-Pee-Pee website and to follow us on the Twitter, the You Tubes, the Instant Gram, Tick Tocks and Only Fans. Be seeing you.”
NO WAY.
“Well, thank you for this little talk. I hope you consider yourself to be emotionally supported.”
me whenever someone’s crying
“Then get them a toast rack and put a note in it asking when he’s going to pay back the fifty thousand pounds he owes you.”
taking notes
It was just that in her case, it was a mess that said, I love everything so much that I can’t possibly bear to be parted from it because my world is full of beautiful memories and not I hate everything, and my pants live on the coffee table now.
“Do you think we should just leave it to God?” asked Priya. “In my experience,” Liz replied, “God really hates being taken for granted.”
I think it said everything about Bridge that, even in the middle of a personal crisis, she didn’t want Baby J to feel left out of the conversation.
<33
“I think he almost said ‘dadda’ the other day. Well, it was more sort of a…bluh, but he’s getting there.”
lmaoooo
Jesus would not have sent the picture.” Melanie glanced up from Baby J’s toes, which she’d been leaning over to this-little-piggy. “Saint Paul might have. I bet he’d have sent it straight to the Ephesians.”
DYING
“Technical issues.” Bridge’s voice rose. “It’s a dress, not a Dyson Airblade.”
“Judy and I, we were thinking we may have to break up with the Drag Race. There is just too much of it these days. It is like when you buy something on the internet and then the internet, it thinks to itself, Well, she bought this thing, she must like this thing, so I will show her adverts for this exact same thing that she just bought from now until the day she dies.”
she is so real for this
But you know, like, feelings make me self-conscious. And being self-conscious makes me defensive. And when I’m defensive, I’m sarcastic.” “And I love you anyway, Lucien.” “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “I love you too.”
He was in pearl grey, which brought out the silvers in his eyes, and he’d gone with one of his I’m-secretly-more-flamboyant-than-I-let-on ties—with a pattern of subtle pewter swirls and dusty-pink roses.
“But I’ve always felt my passing familiarity with well-known, highly distinctive architectural styles is an essential part of my bad-boy image.”
“See. I apparently have incredible sexual instincts. The rest of you would be covering Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson in completely the wrong kind of condiments.”
You may kiss the bride if you want to be disgustingly American about the whole thing.”
I could totally do this. I was fine. Well. Fine-ish. Fineoid. Definitely heading in a fineular direction. Maybe.
using this the next time i’m not fine
And his reaction was very much not nostalgia. It was the opposite of nostalgia. Like fuck-this-shit-algia or something. I think he’d have been more comfortable at a bullfight.
“Laxatives in the champagne. There’s a twenty-four-hour chemist up the road.”
perfect let’s go
“I’m glad you’re happy. You and JoJo seem like you’ll be great together. But we are never going to be friends because you will always be the guy who sold me out for the price of a Toyota Supra.”
YESS
But you should know that I am yours, more truly than I have ever been anyone’s. Because when I’m with you, I’m me. Not someone I think I should be. And I’ll be with you, however you want, for as long as you’ll have me.”
Of course he’d said yes, correctly discerning that if he’d said no, I’d have changed my name, moved to Pluto, and joined the French Foreign Legion.
I don’t know how James Royce-Royce, despite having a still faintly Muppet-esque baby strapped to his chest, managed to have more gravitas than me, but he did.
“when I said I made a mistake, I meant that I didn’t propose in a very romantic way or in a way that expressed how…how great you are and how…like…feelings you make me.”
“Congratulations on the wedding. I was so pleased to hear about it when Luc told me that it was happening, which he did several days ago.”
“Yes,” said Oliver, as he de-spanielled the sofa. “My refusal to drink milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.”
“Google Maps never lies.” “No,” I admitted, “but it’s sometimes very economical with the truth.”
“the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.” “And also with you,” chorused literally everybody else. Fuck. Nobody had told me there was supposed to be audience participation.
I was half-tempted to leap to my feet and yell He can’t marry her. He’s already married to me just to make it stop.
“A customised portrait where it’s two angels embracing but the angels have our faces.” That earned me a worried look. “Suspiciously specific.”
and now you’ve had your head turned by some artsy fairy who can’t keep his arse out the papers, and suddenly you think you’re better than us.”
I divided my attention between a lolly in one hand and a beer in the other. And that was some duality-of-man shit right there.
“This may be just another habit of mind I’ve inherited from my parents, but I tend to believe that the things which feel worst are the things which feel truest. That doesn’t mean they always are.
it’s for those of us left behind to pick over ourselves and ask, ‘Am I this way in spite of this person or because of them?’ And so often the answer is simply yes.
“It was really brave of you. I mean, there was me, thinking the options were eulogy or no eulogy. But, dark horse that you are, you went through the door marked Extemporaneous monologue about fatherhood and loss.”
I gave him a squeeze. “Well, I suppose we did come to bury David Blackwood, not to praise him.” “Lucien”—he looked unflatteringly surprised—“was that a Shakespeare reference?”
“Mia”—I announced over the top of the Blackwood brothers—“do you want to just run off together? I know I’m gay, but I reckon I can work something out.” Stepping pointedly in between Christopher and Oliver, Mia took my hand. “Yeah, let’s go to Paris.”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing art is about. It’s about making you feel bad because you didn’t go to the right school.”
Thankfully my appetite outweighed my empathy. Which, thinking about it, was why I’d make a crap vegan.
