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I’m not gay. I need to get that down in black in white. I’m going to burn this piece of paper but it needs to be said: NOT GAY.

Not overcompensating either.

Bloody girls in my team. Lovely ladies, but get them on two for one cocktails, let slip you go to the gym with Colin, and then nothing will shift them from the subject of his hot gay bod. I tried telling them it wasn’t like the showers at school, how it’s all private cubicles of frosted glass and nothing to be seen but blurry shapes.

Stilled them for two seconds, that did, and then the obvious question: how big are these shapes?

Colin is a beautiful man. He’s slim build, not into bulking, but the kind of body where everything in the right proportion, biceps and pecs, but not the musclehead strut through the changing rooms kind. Polished marble statue. Greek god.

That dinner the first time we spent any time together that wasn’t gym and wasn’t sales talk. Did I talk much? Only thing in my head was how it was a little over two hours and we would be going to bed together.

He told me he could have used a little of my fatherless childhood, spared him some of the fun of coming out to a Viennese Pentecostal bible seller. But Colin able to grin about it now, laugh about it even, pleasing his old dad by joining the wrestling team. Not that he ever won many bouts, too busy getting pinned, you know?

Why could I not have ridden out that cancelled flight with one of the girls from sales? Sadie on a mission to do every guy in the department, or Alice, acrimoniously divorced from a cheating scumbag, and so the rumour mill went, gagging for it. We were lucky to score a room at all. Blizzard that rose out of nowhere, hotel lobbies crammed with elbowing suits and leather laptop cases more lethal than Ninja throwing stars.

Neither of us were drunk when we went to bed. We split a bottle of wine, shared some bourbon. Relaxed, and easy, I guess you’d say.

Colin stopped time by looking me in the eye and saying he was glad he was stranded with me.

Colin, with his pianist’s fingers paused delicately at the clasp of his belt, those same fingers I had seen grip the shaft of a barbell with vengeful fury now tenuous and uncertain as he continued to look me in the eye.

I matched his smile, and then he spoke again.

Glad to be stranded with me, because imagine the rest of those dicks on our team. Hello, reception? Can you send up some armour-plated pyjamas? And while you’re at it, any elephant strength sedatives on the go?

What was it with some guys? They ever stop to wonder that the reason he went to the gym and the reason he wrestled was he liked the gym and he liked to wrestle? It was possible to share a bed with a gay guy and for it not to turn into College Guys Gone Wild 3.

Colin and I shared a bed together, and it was eight hours of shut eye bliss.

For Colin.

It was a unusual fact that Lawrence Olderthann had no father. It was unclear if this was due to a heavenly intervention or a biological mishap, depending on if you asked his doctor or his mother.

The missing part of his upbringing was replaced often and to various degrees by passing father figures. This began with shopkeepers, whom Lawrence would follow around wide eyed, while his mother shopped then the waiter at their local coffee shop, that watched him when his mother finished work late. But his favourite was the Postman and he would wait anxiously each morning for him to arrive. He was allowed one difficult question each ‘visit’ and would spend the whole of the next few days thinking what he could ask the next time they had post. To a 5 year old it was a game that taught him more about the world than most fathers would have at that age. When the postman, an alleged serial dater according to his mother and a confirmed over sharer with a limp from a childhood wrestling accident, wasn’t delivering parcels of inappropriate knowledge, it was the turn of the primary school’s only male teacher, the miserable Mr Guest; a man who bitterly extemporised like an 80 year old war veteran but in the body of an overweight 50 year old primary school teacher.

Lawrence didn’t have many friends his own age; his worldly knowledge separated him out from the other boys. His ‘friends were the older men that he visited. At aged 10, when his mother was diagnosed with a rare immune disorder it was Lawrence who found the specialist Dr Hartman online. It was Lawrence whose overly mature demenaur and in-depth medical knowledge of her condition, that made the Dr think he was emailing her husband not her son.

It would, these days be called a bromance, but the 6 months before they moved to Vienna, was a whirlwind of emails that swiftly moved from professional interest to endearing friendship. Lawrence was smitten.

On arrival Dr, Hartman, though at first affronted by his own misreading of the relationship, Lawrence never having lied in any email, was soon brought round to the family's plight and swore to do all he could. Alas a short while later Dr. Hartman who had to deliver the news that the condition was both terminal and heridatry. The disease, which affected the kidneys, could be slowed by transplants. But the waiting list was long, unless they had a match from a deceased or sacrificial friend or family, of which they had neither. The Dr.’s questions of a father went unanswered. Lawrence’s mother was given weeks, Lawrence months.

In the end it would be another heavenly intervention or bilogical mishap, that changed the situation. Since there was no father to donate to the son and the only match for the mother was a son with the same problem, it appeared an unsolvable situation. Until out of the blurb a donor was found. A chance match, the Dr. told Lawrence, between the quiet intense conversations the Dr. had with Lawrence’s mother. When she died, shortly after, Lawrence cried not as a confused child but with the deep grief of knowledge.

It was months later on a trip back home to clear the house, that Lawrence was surprised to see a new mail-women at the door. And even more surprised to hear that the old one had died on the operating table. It was unusual, she explained, because he had seemed so healthy at the time. Dr. Hartman, who had travelled with Lawrence, had quickly ushered her away, and they set to the task of clearing the house.

Our first son Jake is named after an old friend of mine from back home. My Jake asks about that Jake all the time, but I never really know what to say.

Mum didn’t like me playing with that Jake. I don’t know if it was because his clothes were always dirty, or because his mum worked in the biscuit factory in town, or if she just took a dislike to his snot-nosed grubby face. She said he was a bad influence, but I always remember him as an architect (he made our treehouse from bits of scrap from the street) and as the boy who could get his hands on anything. He once brought half a bottle of whisky into class and was the most talked about kid in school for two whole days.

That Jake and his mum never had holidays or nice things, but that’s not the sort of thing you notice when you’re seven. I never saw his blackened fingernails or the holes in his jumpers; that Jake could pee higher than anyone in our year and knew how to get hold of dirty pictures for the right price - even the older boys in year 10 came to Jake for those. His sources were a mystery, but I knew he lifted them from the corner shop after he distracted Old Man Mario with some story about a rat, or a suspicious looking customer. Never failed.

We shared everything though, from wrestling figures to new swear words. I gave him half my sandwiches at lunch. He gave me unfaltering loyalty and an unending supply of half-inched penny sweets from Mario’s.

We spent hours in our treehouse, poring over the centrefolds in Jake’s magazines, Vicky from Vienna, Carol from California and the others. At first we were filled with awe and disgust, confused as to why anyone would give Jake £3 for these. Then, later, we were filled with something else that neither of us quite understood.

Jake never told me how he got his bruises and black eyes and I never asked. He never made fun of the stupid clothes my mum made me wear either. Once I told him he should talk to our form teacher about but he shrugged it off, said the other kid would think twice before talking shit about me again. I didn’t know what to say, so I never said anything.

My Jake has the best of everything, new clothes, swimming lessons, the works.

I wish I could pin down the last day that I spoke to that Jake, but I can’t. I’m ashamed to admit that, but I sort of let him go. One moment we were together every spare moment and the next my life was crammed with tennis lessons and exams and new people. One day there just wasn’t time for Jake anymore, then one day you’re forty seven years old and wondering what happened to your life and friendships that don’t have to be managed and scheduled and lubricated with booze to work.

I do think about him. I think about what he’s doing now; if he’s still in that town. I think about looking him up and asking to see him.

But I never do. I’m scared I still won’t know what to say.

Taking the east exit off the Shonan-Shinjuku Line late one evening, I wrestled my way off the train and into a steady yet comfortable flow of strangers heading into downtown Zushi. I stopped in Docomo Shop, right off the line, grabbed a quick coffee, and proceeded down to the McDonald’s, one of many American businesses in Zushi, where beautiful and polite Ai worked as a cashier.

I inquired as to when she would get off work, to which she replied, “Two more hours only, cherry blossom!” and went back to greedily eating her pocky in front of me, without even asking if I would enjoy a treat.

“You are a fatherless child and your mother was a busu!” I puffed my arms out like a big chicken, which in truth I was, and Ai laughed so hard that chocolate flew from her mouth and onto my pretty yellow dress.

“Majide!” I shouted and jumped backward. Ai cupped her mouth with a manicured hand and whispered sorry over and over, into the folds of her palm, pausing only for fits of laughter. She then extended a tissue and a piece of her poky. I accepted both.

The McDonald’s was packed for a Friday evening in normally quiet Zushi, and as I wiped the chocolate freckles off my dress, I asked Ai why it was so busy.

“Don’t you know? Kenzo is here!” Ai squeaked like a cat toy when she spoke. I found it her best and worst trait as a person.

“Ah, Ai-chan, we must go see the most famous Sumo in all of Japan! I demand you leave work so we can attend this event.”

“Gomen ne. The match begins in one hour. Maybe next time.” She took a bite of her pocky and rang up a customer for a hamburger and coke.

“I should ship you to Vienna and let the virulent men of Europe have you for eternity!” I shouted under my breath after the customer left. Ai’s mouth opened in shock, her tongue chocolatey black.

“You take that back, or I swear I will push your mother into the waters of Zushi beach, naked and shivering!” Ai squeaked back at me.

“Gomennasai,” I said, eyes downcast. I’d gone too far with the joke.

“Now, let me finish up and I will see you back at the flat. And did you go job hunting today?” Ai’s tone was too serious for me. I was ashamed.

“No. Well, yes. I filled out one application. But that was all.”

“One is better than nothing.” Ai’s tone softened. Another guest ordered a hamburger. She quickly obliged. “Do not give up hope. Why won’t you come work here with me? Yoko-san will hire you. She likes you. As long as you don’t eat all the fries.” Ai glared behind her back at an older woman with puffy hair.

“Maybe I should. Maybe I will.” What I really wanted to do was take a walk to the beach and let the waves carry me away into the forgotten sea.

“Don’t look so sad, cherry blossom. This too shall pass. This too shall pass,” Ai’s voice rang out like a faraway church bell, distant and charming. She smiled sweetly at me and handed me a free small fry.

Night deepened on the streets of Zushi as I sipped my coffee and ate my fries in silence.