The Toilet Block in The Park

The boy sat on the bench waiting. He positioned himself under a light, in full view. I viewed him there, sleek and pale and furtive but with a sudden calm descending when someone ventured by. I was hidden under a hedge, behind the woody scramble of it pressed against a wire fence. I had a coat wrapped around me and a satchel for a pillow.

Everywhere the insect rustling of leaves, a balmy cocroachy kind of night and me out in it. I was black on black and he was all golden glow. There was a toilet block nearby. This is how it seemed to work: one boy, this golden boy, would sit, jiggling his knee till some other boy arrived. This one was a dark shadow, edging by his arc of park-light . The new man waited outside the toilet block for a while, pacing idly as if he were just filling in time before popping back to work.

Then the deliberate stride into the squat brick building, a significant pause. The golden boy now still and upright, tight inside his pale clothing, erect, straining up from his seat as if he were a volcanic eruption about to occur.

When he stood it was as if he were a soldier on parade. All the straight armed tension in his body turning his stride into a march. I watched him glance around stiffly, checking that he wasn't being observed. How long does it take to get a headjob in a toilet block? Or was there more to it. Was there a partial removal of clothing, a bare-backed fucking with the toilet seat a handy place to rest a knee. I imagined the golden boy bent over the cistern in that sickly blue light they use to stop the junkies from finding a vein.

The thing about homelessness is that there is nowhere comfortable and private for masturbation. I clamped my hand between my legs and nestled my pubic bone against it and I rubbed quickly. No one would notice me down here in the dark crawlspace under a hedge. No one would expect a human being to settle down for the night in a claustrophobic space like this. The boys took significantly longer than I did. I watched, smoothing my skirt down over my drawn-up knees as another, older man crept into the spotlight and nestled down in the waiting space.

I wondered what would happen if I needed to use the toilet block. Would I be holding up the queue. I closed my eyes, dozed opened them. A new man sitting, smoking, waiting. I felt the throb in my bladder, but it if I just held on, I knew it would pass.