Gay City and Other Stories - Alan Keslian (book recommendations based on other books .TXT) 📗

assorted items, ornaments that might go on a little shelf or window ledge, house plants in decorative pots, some photographs, some pens in a wooden pen holder, and a few finger rings and other small silver items. 'What about the clocks?' asked Felicity's mother. 'He has wonderful clocks in every room.'
'The clocks are quite valuable, they're listed individually on the inventory of his estate. These are just knick-knacks in case you would like a personal memento, something to remind you of him.'
Nothing could have been worth a great deal. Felicity watched embarrassed as her mother picked up various objects, trying to assess their value, and put them down again. She saw her hesitate over a double photograph frame, hinged in the middle, only to reject it in the hope of finding something that would be worth more. Felicity asked the executor: 'Those two photographs in the frame, is one of them my uncle?'
'Yes.' He picked up the frame and handed it to her. 'He's the one on the right. It was quite a few years ago, of course.'
'And the other man?'
'Ah, he and Benjy were very close, for a long time.'
'What happened to him?'
'He died some years ago - he'd been very ill - it was a dreadful thing. It was after that that Benjy devoted himself to setting up the Trust, I think it helped to take his mind off - he was so distressed after his dear friend’s death.'
Looking at the pictures of the two men, taken when they were in their thirties, she imagine what it would have been like to have been friendly with them. She could have visited them in their flat, perhaps gone out with them to a gay pub like the one she and her husband had stumbled upon by accident once. She would have smiled at them and teased them, pretending to flirt with them, knowing all the time that they felt no attraction to her, only to each other. She smiled gently and looked up to see the executor watching her, his face kind but terribly sad. 'Would you like to take that?' he asked.
'Perhaps I should leave it for someone who knew him better.'
'No, if you like it, take it. I'm sure he would have wanted you to have it.'
She had a collection of framed family photographs on some shelves at the side of the fireplace at home. The photograph of Benjy and his lover would go well with them, and at the same time it would be something out of the ordinary. She hoped that she would be, in this small way, be showing at last a little kindness and good will towards her uncle. If only the opportunity had come earlier. She hoped that, if Uncle Benjamin could somehow know about it, he would not mind her putting his picture with those of other family members.
She heard her mother sigh in exasperation, having reconciled herself to nothing better than a small glass vase. 'Oh Felicity, you don't want that surely?'
She had put up with Elaine moaning for long enough. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'its really nice. They were both so handsome. I know exactly where I'm going to put them on show.' She let a broad smile spread over her features, and watched Elaine's face screw up in disgust as her mother realised where the picture was to be be put on display.

Silly Daddy

After dinner Terry sat down with his wife and two daughters to watch television. Only part of his mind was occupied with what he saw on screen. Foremost in his thoughts was that, when he left the house in the morning, he would be away on a work trip for several days. Half a dozen or more times a year, trips away for work provided a welcome breaks from his life at home.
The hour or so of TV after dinner was a family routine, enabling Terry, his wife and two daughters to spend some undemanding time together. Unfortunately he had, over the years, increasingly found himself in a minority of one in choosing what to watch, and had slowly reconciled himself to being satisfied with whatever his wife and the girls decided to put on.
This was easier with some TV shows than others. On this particular evening he had to endure a quiz show that, were he to set aside his fatherly instincts, he would have called loathsome. A compère introduced several pairs of newly weds who competed for the prize of a beach holiday in the sun. With their spouses out of earshot, one of each duo was required to answer questions such as: 'What would you say is the thing that your partner most likes about you?' or 'Now obviously you must know each other really well, so tell me and all the viewers at home, does your partner like tulips?' – or antiques, or going to the shops, or some other personal trivia. To Terry these details about the lives of complete strangers were of no interest. His wife and daughters, however, clearly found them engrossing.
He sat patiently as the next couple was introduced. 'And how,' the compère Yvette asked, 'Did you two first meet?'
'We met at a night club,' came the response from a terrified contestant, probably alarmed by the enormous smile that that flashed across Yvette's face, the gleaming rows of big bright teeth seeming to crack out beyond the boundaries of her cheeks.
Terry thought about work, where his interests and opinions were not, as at home, judged to be irrelevant. At work one of his colleagues was also the father of daughters, and during beaks they would sometimes share grumbles about the price of girls' shoes, school uniforms and the like.
His firm supplied fire safety equipment, alarm systems, fire extinguishers and, best of all, training sessions for customers' staff who were appointed as fire wardens. He enjoyed meeting customers and discussing their needs for equipment, and most of all he enjoyed giving fire warden training. The trips away, when he taught groups of up to twenty to put out small fires, were his favourite activity. The firm paid the cost of his hotel room and meals in restaurants, as well as a generous allowance for other unspecified expenses, the latter really an incentive to compensate trainers for being away from home. An incentive was hardly needed in Terry's case, but the firm paid it anyway.
The next morning he set off for work in a jaunty mood, knowing it would be three days before he would have to sit down again with his family to watch TV. Calling at the firm's offices, he collected the course materials: the fire extinguishers he would use for demonstrations; the canisters of inflammable liquid; and the paperwork he would hand out to trainees. The mix of age and sex in every group was different, and the trainee fire wardens were always happy to have a change from their routine work, even those who found the practical side of the course frightening. Unless someone was very scared, fort instance visibly shaking with fear, he would get every one of them to put out a controlled fire of some kind that he had carefully set and ignited.
Experience helped him select those who were likely to prove most capable. He would start with paper smouldering in waste bins, progress to a fire in a pan of cooking oil, go on to a larger blaze of inflammable liquid in a shallow tank, and then finish with the most serious fire it was safe for a non- professional fire fighter to tackle, that of a sheet of flame from spilt petrol spreading over tarmac. In setting these fires he had to ensure they could easily be tackled by one person using the right type of extinguisher, and that, should a student panic, he could intervene and extinguish the fire himself.
His first group on this three day trip included three young guys. He guessed they were not much more than twenty, or even younger. They sat together at the back looking at their mobile phones and exchanging whispers and sideways glances. He called one of them to the front and showed him the best way to hold a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. 'Now read the instructions, and see if you can direct a short burst from it over towards that far corner, no more than a couple of seconds worth.'
The trainee found that when he tried to pull the lever to release the jet of liquid carbon dioxide, a plastic tag prevented it being pulled back. 'You should find all extinguishers have those, it's the way we make sure that they have not already been used and you won't be trying to save lives using an empty extinguisher. If you're strong enough you might be able to break the tag with your fingers, but the best thing is to cut it with a knife or scissors.' After snipping through the tag he directed, 'Now try again.'
This time the jet of carbon dioxide gas shot towards the corner. 'Okay, okay,' Terry said quickly. 'Now lightly touch the body of the extinguisher with your hand. Cold, Isn't it? What you have to remember with carbon dioxide is that, as the contents are released, the extinguisher cools rapidly. If you're touching the cylinder with your bare skin, you'll find yourself firmly stuck to it because, condensation and moisture in your skin freezes, bonding you to the cylinder. That's why I showed you how to hold it firmly by the handle without touching the container.' He took the extinguisher from his assistant. 'Thanks for your help with that little demonstration.'
The young guy returned to his seat. His friends had been watching closely while he was up at the front with Terry, and they all paid attention for the rest of the course. Later, when the time came to spill fuel over the tarmac in a disused car park and set light to it, he chose the same you guy as the one to quell the blazing curtain of orange-red petrol flames by steadily sweeping the hissing jet from the extinguisher from side to side, whilst slowly walking forwards as the flames retreated. When the fire was out his young man relaxed, and as he handed back the cylinder he smiled and nodded respectfully. With a calm serious face he returned to the group of trainees. Terry, pleased with the way he had helped in the demonstrations, felt proud of him.
Happy though he was with that training session, it was not the high point of his trip. He had arranged for a caller to visit him at his hotel that evening. For a long time sex with his wife had been very tame, and was becoming increasingly rare. Their love-making had not really recovered after her second pregnancy, which had been a difficult one. Growing sexual hunger had led him to explore erotic sites on the internet. Almost by accident, one day he happened upon a video clip of two men kissing passionately. Not only was he sexually stimulated, but they filled his mind with wonder, even longing. He easily found many similar images of men kissing, and others too that showed men making love together. He became fascinated to know what it feel like if he held a man in his arms. Looking at sites where 'male masseurs' or 'male escorts' advertised, someone seemed to be offering a sexual massage in every town he visited .
The very first time he 'rented' a guy for sex he had been worried and nervous. There were risks. The photograph might be misleading, or to look at pictures on a screen might stimulate him, but physical contact with a man in the