“Hey! How much?”

I look across the road -- some barrel-bellied twit in a cheap suit is waving a fifty at me. He doesn’t stand a fucking chance. Just because I make a living from selling my arse doesn’t mean I don’t have any self-respect. Some fat fucker flapping a fifty at me appeals to me about as much as cancer.

“Hey buddy! Hey! I’m talking to you!”

I walk on.

“Ya fuckin’ faggot!”

I laugh.

You’re the one desperately waving a fifty at me and I’m the fuckin’ faggot?

I keep walking. I lift a hot dog from a vendor while he’s bending down to get more serviettes.

“Come back ya bloody arsehole!”

I’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing I haven’t been called. Faggot, poof, pansy, queer, slut, pillow biter, bum bandit, poo puncher, arse pirate. Oil on water. It doesn’t penetrate. What do a few names mean? Nothing. I have my health, my looks, my freedom, and enough money to live the way I want to.

I’ve got a small bedsit where I usually go to crash. It doesn’t have much furniture. There’s a bed, a small bedside table, a bar fridge, an old television, a chair, and a beaten-up wardrobe. I don’t need anything else. And if I have to get out in a hurry, it’s not like I’m going to miss any of it. I have a few photos of family and a couple of trinkets I took from my mother to remember her by. They’re the things I’d miss. I keep them together in an old cigar box so all I have to do in an emergency is grab the box and I’ve got everything that’s important to me in the world. Oh, and the money. I keep that in an old biscuit tin under a loose floorboard beneath the wardrobe. Granted, not as safe a bank, but tax free.

That’s where I’m headed. The bedsit. I wave to Mrs Tong in the Chinese supermarket. She looks after me, gives me stuff like the last of the sweet and sour pork or a couple of apples if she happens to be stacking them. She’s like my mother, or at least I imagine she is. Memories of my own mother fade a bit every year. She left me with my shit-of-a-father when I was ten. Never mind. One thing leads to another.

“Hey, Jimmy!”

I study the man who’s running across the street towards me. I don’t recognise him, but he’s smiling at me.

“Jimmy. Hi there. You wouldn’t happen to be free, would you?”

He sure is a fine looking specimen. Solid body under a pin-striped suit. He’s got a five o’clock shadow and blue eyes framed by dark bushy eyebrows. I like what I see.

“How do you know where I live?” I ask defensively.

“I don’t know where you live. I just saw you across the street.”

He glances down at my crotch and I’m glad I’m wearing my tight jeans.

I search his face. I still don’t recognise him, but I don’t see anything shifty -- just a horny schmo on his way home from the office.

“What did you have in mind?” I ask.