Irish Darren

Irish Darren had nice eyes and a handsome face. He was a traveller, blown into town only for a short time. I guess you’d call him temp staff.

He had those slightly bandy legs and big feet. He had a thick arse and quite a bulge in the front of his trousers, you know, like he had a cricket box shoved down his jeans. Smooth and round and plump. I couldn't help but notice.

He had a great accent. I could have listened to him talk forever.

Lunch times, I chatted with the girls in the kitchen at the big table about my boyfriend, as they chatted about theirs. Hardly any of the sexless HR girls had boyfriends. Knowing look. A few did. Astonished look. It was usually the same faces talking, my team, and the same faces listening, the HR team.

I'm a bit of an over-sharer, rather than the opposite, so I often chatted. Irish Darren sat at the table with us, which was unusual for one of the other guys, it was usually just me and the girls. He’d sit and eat his lunch, listening, and then he’d join in the chat, sometimes. He’d talk and give of himself, he didn’t sit quietly by, that is what I liked about him the most. He was up for a chat as much as the rest of us.

I chatted about Mat, my boyfriend. Spanky McGee spoke about her husband, handsome Carl. May Pang spoke about Mike McRoberson. Irish Darren would talk about the places he’d been and the people he’d met there. He mentioned his girlfriend once, or twice, but not a lot.

I think I spoke mostly about the idea of a boyfriend, a conglomeration of all my past guys filling in the gaps, rather than strictly talking about Mat, so once I got going, I had stories, never ending stories, instantly cleaned up, and shortened.

When the girls and I laughed about guys, you know kind of intimate (nothing really) I noticed that Irish Darren was taking it all in quite intently, his eyes moving from one person to another. Kind of smiling, but not. Apparently, he has a girlfriend somewhere? Back in Ireland? Siobhan? I'm not sure now. He’d listen intently, say something interesting, and we'd be left smiling at each other, when we'd run out of things to say.

He'd smile at me.

I’d smile at him.

He’d hold my gaze just a little too long.

I’d hold his gaze just a little too long.

After a summer of that, me talking about guys in the lunch room, with him listening, often intently, I swear he followed me into the toilets a few times. It was late in the year, summer had well and truly started, the office was quiet. Of course, that was most likely my imagination, and lunch time hours being what lunch time hours are, people being out and about, but a boy can day dream, can’t he?

He had these big feet, and he always wore those leather shoes. The walls of the toilet cubicles had quite a gap at the bottom. And the bare light globe was right over the toilet cubicles, angled in such a way, so a guy’s reflection was reflected on the shiny tiled floor pretty quickly after he slides himself out of his trousers. If the guy was of the leisurely persuasion, which Irish Darren was, the times that I saw him, as he slid his pants off, and then his jocks, well, the reflection left nothing to the imagination, and if a guy stood there, which some do, rather than sitting down immediately, well, it was, practically, a picture show. 

Irish Daren had a big one flopping about, from what I could see. 

Then one time, I'm sure he sat forward with a hard on, rubbing it up and down. It bent upwards like a large banana. 

Did it? Was it? Was I imagining it? Ah? I could have made it all up, easily. We see what we want to see, isn’t that what ‘they’ say? True of life.

Those big feet, socks and hairy ankles, it’s intoxicating. And I am left wondering how much of it was all in my mind, fed only by my basest desires.

After a summer of that, me talking about guys in the lunch room, I swear Darren followed me outside a few times. 

By late summer, I’d started smoking again, stupid me. It had been the result of weekends on pot with my mate Leo.

I’d sit out the front on, what I assume was once, a planter, but had long since been filled in to effectively form a square concrete box, on the street, outside our building. It would be bathed in sun in the afternoon.

When Darren appeared on the footpath for the second time, when I was out having a smoke, he looked at me and smiled

Cute, pretty, Irish Darren. Nice, too. Such a nice bloke.

“Can I bot one of those?” he asked. Pointing to the cigarette burning in my hand with his chin, nonchalantly.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

“I don’t.”

What could you do? I offered him up my box. Lid set open like a cigarette commercial, and a slight Sale of the Century flourish.

“Thanks,” he said. He sat down next to me. I lit his cigarette for him.

“So, what’s with the smoking?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged.

“Really? You don’t know? It’s not something people do unconsciously, now a days.”

He lay his head on my shoulder and went all floppy pretending to be unconscious. I’m not ashamed to say I liked it. His head on my shoulder. I could smell his hair. I could smell him. I could also feel his size, um, weight on me, I liked that too, feeling him press against me. 

He sat up. He shrugged again. “My visa is up, I have to go home.”

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“No.” He looked at me. “Oh, yeah, sure, I want to go home, but not just yet.”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you want to see her?” I was thinking the correct answer to that was no. Ha ha.

“No,” he said. He laughed. “Yes.” He looked at me. “She didn’t want me to come to Australia and leave her behind, so I don’t know if she is my girlfriend, or not, any more.”

“Haven’t you been speaking to her while you’ve been away?”

He grimaced.

“No?’ I asked.

He grimaced again. That handsome face, looking unsure, it was sexy.

“Why?” I asked.

“She was pissed off. Every time I spoke to her she was…”

“Angry?” I offered.

“Well, not angry exactly, but not happy either.”

“Oh,” I said.

“She wanted to get married.”

“Married?”

“Well, we’d finished uni and got jobs, and as far as she was concerned that was the next step.”

“And you didn’t want to get married?”

“Well, um, no. I didn’t want to get married, I wanted to go and see the world.”

“And she didn’t?”

“She wanted, wants, to buy a house and have kids, she says we can see the world when we retire with plenty of money to enjoy it.”

“How long before you retire?”

“Exactly,” Darren said. He flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter. “She doesn’t understand…”

“You,” I offered.

“No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”

The straight boy lament, I thought, just before you go down on them.

“I like it here,” he said. “I want to stay.”

“Anyway, I’m being sent into the CBD office to work the rest of my contract,” he said.

“When are you doing that?”

“From next week,” he said.

“So, I won’t see you after this week?”

“No,” he said.

“Oh.”

“You better give me another one of your cigarettes,” he said. “And we can enjoy the time we have left.”

“Sure,” I said. I had another cigarette too.

The sun shone.

I didn't see him after that. Only at his farewell. We all went to the local pub and drank until it got dark. We all got drunk and hugged at the end of the night. 

I hadn’t seen Darren pissed before. He hugged me goodbye, kind of tight rather more tenderly than was really warranted. I remember, because he felt all lither and muscular. I could feel he was somewhat ripped, perhaps not abs, maybe, but a nice shaped chest, which he wasn't shy about rubbing against mine. We were out in the street after the night had finished, first out. It was just me and him at midnight in the dark, both pretty hopped up on alcohol.

"This is it, I guess," he said. Shy. Blushing. 

“I guess.”

He held his hands out, but made eye contact again, for a brief moment. "It was really great getting to know you." Hold the gaze. Hesitate. How are we going to touch each other? Go in like mates. As our heads came side to side, he turned his head, and I could feel his hot, luscious breath on my cheek, momentarily. His chest rested against my chest. He pushed in slowly as though we were going to rub crotches together. It was suddenly a game of chicken, close, close, hips twist, hips twist, hips twist. Three of the other guy’s trip drunkly out the door, suddenly, with a crash. We turn side on at the last minute and hug like mates. 

"I'll miss you," he slurred.

“I’ll miss you too.”

“Our toilet breaks,” he whispered drunkenly.

He spoke close to my ear and I don't think he meant to be quite that intimate and as soon as he realised what he'd done, he broke away. Stepping back. 

“What?” I said. What?

“Cigarette breaks,” he said. “I’ll miss our cigarette breaks.

“They won’t be the same,” I said.

He smiled and laughed self-consciously, kind of at the same time. He pulled away again. "See you." His adorable Irish accent. 

“See you,” I said.

He looked towards the other guys, who were right next to us by then, blind to what was going on. The three of them made blokey greeting each other noises. You know, grunt, grunt, grunt.

We held each other’s gaze unbeknownst to the others. I got tingles, wondering if I’d been just too shy to…