Devil in Disguise Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been sent to
a boys’ prep school and later to a Catholic public school deep in the country.
In the classroom, and more significantly, the dormitory, he sought and found
the popularity that was missing at home. His cruel but uncannily accurate
impersonations of the teachers had his classmates enthralled and, encouraged by
their giggles, he found ever more outrageous expressions of his subversive,
ultimately angry personality.
    His
attention-seeking continued after lights out, and was not unsuccessful. Word of
his skill and compliance in the arena of darkness travelled to the bigger boys
and soon Simon’s nights were most eventful. Although sleep was a tedious
necessity, it became clear that there weren’t enough hours in the night. To
satisfy all the demands upon his services, Simon was soon keeping appointments
in the afternoons as well. When the school gardener sought to confirm the saucy
rumours, it was just a matter of time before Simon was expelled. The greenhouse
had not been a wise choice of venue.
    Back
home, his parents were able to add reproach and disdain to their gallery of
expressions. Even false smiles were now a thing of the past. Simon could do
nothing right. But with the good grounding of an expensive education, he sailed
through his A levels at the local college. The morning his results arrived, and
his parents looked at him with their usual blank-eyed indifference as he
announced his three A grades, he packed his bags for London, not caring where
he went, simply keen for a great adventure. After a couple of days at King’s
Cross station, he met some other desperadoes and moved into a surprisingly
civilised squat in Waterloo. Soon he had his first job, as an usher at the Old
Vic theatre, selling programmes and ice creams from a tray in the interval. The
uniform was bottle green and Simon decided he looked particularly dashing in
it. It was not taxing work but he enjoyed it.
    He sent
his parents a postcard with his new address, but didn’t phone home and heard
nothing from them. His new left-wing friends soon radicalised him, and he
became a fully paid-up member of the Socialist Workers’ Revolutionary Party,
forever going on protest marches and to sit-ins. He had his eyebrow pierced and
wore his hair so short it was only one step away from a shaved bead. Such a
look, with his lean limbs and soulful, bright blue eyes, made him a popular
addition to London’s gay scene. In fact, it was his eyes that people always
remembered. They could sparkle across a crowded dance-floor and lure
prospective lovers into his orbit. Once there, and given their full, heavenly,
mesmerising voltage, any boy or man was his for the taking, seduced by the
sadness that swam in their depths. He would take them home, have sex with them
and turf them out in the morning. More often than not, they kept coming back.
Something about Simon touched them, made them return for another look into his
soul. Even hardened gays, who’d had all the tenderness fisted out of them,
would declare themselves awash with love — who’d have thought it after all
these years? — and they would try to nurture similar feelings in Simon, who was
having none of it. He never seemed to fall in love with anyone, no matter how
much they aroused or amused him. He didn’t much mind — it was just the way he
was made.
    This
was a learning period for Simon. He discovered his own powers and also his own
desires. These included gay sex but not, rather confusingly, gay men. He was
bemused by this knowledge for some considerable time and chewed it over as if
it were a particularly difficult clue in a cryptic crossword, pondering several
solutions. Could he possibly be a woman trapped in a man’s body? Was sexual
realignment the answer? This he dismissed instantly. He was perfectly happy
with what God had given him, and therefore definitely not in the wrong body.
Even if surgery and hormones were going to make him attractive to ‘real’ men,
it was too high