Out in the City: Butterflies in my stomach - Is it love?
I was wandering homeward back up Portobello Road last week and the Christmas trees were being put up on the lamp-posts. The Notting Hill air was crisp with festive thoughts and there was probably a cool party going on somewhere in W11 that I should have been at. But I didn't care.
Because I was happy. I can't remember the last time I woke up feeling slightly hung over but with butterflies in my stomach. But that morning I had.
The night before I had gone to a ball. My table was the only young one in the room and during the auction we threw fruit and corks at each other and got told off by the auctioneer. On said table was another gay, Arthur, 21, at art school in London but originally from New York, and he was wearing a yellow tie, not a black one, which I thought was rather cool. We shared a cigarette outside in the cold. We danced really stupidly.
And at midnight we all left and hopped in cabs and headed to Annabel's, which didn't let
me in because I was wearing black skinny jeans, not proper trousers. So instead I took them all to the Cuckoo Club, which, while less chic, is probably the only club in the West End that has any interest in letting me in easily.
It was a howling mess of decadent Eurotrash in standard jeans and shirts and loafers, with their girls in mini Versaces, all freezing in the cigarette pen outside on Swallow Street. But it didn't matter as my friends and I crowded into the basement by the bar. I danced and then Arthur kissed me and then we danced and kissed for hours. And despite the odd poke in the back from mocking straight people — one of the hazards of two boys making out in that sort of place — it was nice. Very nice. At 3am we said goodbye with a kiss outside St James's, Piccadilly and headed our separate ways.
When I came down the next morning I noticed a half-defrosted pie face down in the middle of the sitting room floor, my discarded black tie mingling with the sauce. And I also noticed that there was a missed call from Arthur on my phone.
