The Flat White Man

We worked in a fishbowl cafe. Punters rushed, flinging money across the shiny metal counter. I spilled coffee on them in return, anemic coffee, mostly milk, froth like hairdo's used to be, high, air-filled. Crap coffee. They weren't paying us enough.
"They're not paying us enough," he told me and I agreed.
He was gay. He didn't know it but he was gay.
"I don't know if I'm gay," he'd say when we dragged ourselves out into the oily inner-city air and filled our lungs with the thick fug of nicotine and petrol fumes. I'd roll my eyes.
"My partner's gay." I told him, which just confused the man. The very idea of sex was complex enough for him. Now he had layer upon layer of complications for his imagination to deal with. He puffed away on his cigarette and glanced at me, an accusation.
"I'll never find love," he moaned, "I'm too shy. I'll never go to bed with anybody, ever. I can't even have a conversation with someone in a bar."

I took him to a bar. We had a conversation.
"See," I told him, "easier than you knew."

Later, after, I didn't kiss him. I knew him from the fishbowl. He was a friend of mine. He laughed because he had never been naked with anyone before and he was nervous. I laughed because we might have been drinking tea together or baking scones. My partner, Richard, wasn't laughing. I could feel the slight tremor in his hand as he stroked my friend's solid hip with his fingertips.
"But," nervous, giggling, "See, I don't know if I'm gay or straight or anything."
"Don't be so prescriptive." I settled my hips, my legs straddling his wide lap.
He was all Lempica edges, solid curves. I almost kissed him out of habit. It is easy to kiss someone when you are on their lap and their penis has slipped inside you. It is comforting. But tomorrow we would go out for a smoke and there would be a kiss between us and it would make for awkward conversation. Instead I set up a rhythm, kneeling up, settling down and soon Richard was behind me and inside me too, and leaning over and around and the two of them nuzzling at my breast, using my nipple as an excuse to brush their lips together, their tongues shy as anenomes, venturing out to lick and suck and pretending that the kiss that they eventually came to was some kind of accident.

At some point I became superfluous. I rolled aside and my body was no longer the point at which they collided. I watched their twin condoms, both moist with the scent of me, tapping against each other, little wet kisses of their own. I lay back and watched and felt fond. Nice men, both of them, and I was glad that now, briefly, through the thin veil of my skin, they had found each other. There was still wine, and I sipped at it, leaning back against the cold sweat of the concrete wall.
When Richard moved too fast, forcing my friend back against the pillow, making clumsy excited lunges too quick, too soon, I leaned towards them, placed my hands on both their chests and felt their wildly beating hearts slow a fraction.
Mistress of ceremonies. Nothing more. But I took care. Care with the lubrication. Care with the contraception. Care with the post-coital hugging and the herbal tea by the bed, with three mis-matched tea cups giggling with flowers.
Careful too, not to wake Richard when my friend crept away before dawn. Careful not to say a word at smoko. Lighting his cigarette with the lit tip of my own. Smiling, winking, a little nudge with my hip to make him smile, my transient friend who never again wondered about his gender preference and who never again found himself naked in my bed.