Men

with a mate who does it better sober than you ever would drunk. You're out and about in a new city, a new club, and a sea of new men all moving to a familiar rhythm.

You still long for that missed connection you were texting outside. A boy you were trying to meet at his bar, if only the timing had worked out. But whoever had the bright idea of making this club a mobile deadzone, you whisper thanks to.

So you guzzle gin, dance with your mate, slip deeper into the rhythm of it. Slip so far that you only laugh as you're pulled onto the stage—as a stranger starts making eyes at you—as he grinds up against you—as you pull him into a kiss—as you make out on the dance floor while your mate films it all for the morning-after shame—as your lips part to laughter.

You want to dance longer, but the next drink calls. You drag your mate to the bar, feeling this stranger's eyes following you all the way.

More drinks—the beautiful noise and colour that is a drag show in two languages, you're so proud to be gay—followed by your eyes searching the crowd for that stranger. You've not nearly had enough of him yet.

You make excuses to leave your mate behind, step through the crowd to the bar in hopes of finding him. Needle in a haystack. Until you hear him call out.

Not the stranger, but the missed connection. Sitting by the bar, he is everything this city is: Beautiful eyes under the grunge, tenderness in the rough. So he made it to the club after all.

Buys you a drink, he stares into your eyes, you're hypnotised. Your lips graze once, and it sparks a slow dance: Pressed against the bar, making out, feeling his beautifully bearded face... You slip deeper down.

He tells you of his plan to hit another club. But another slow dancing kiss later, he revises it into a question: Come home with me?

You have time enough to say goodbye to your mate, to pass the stranger on the dancefloor on the way out. Time even to ask him for his number before the boy drags you home, and onto his couch. Where he rolls a joint as your rain-soaked clothes come off.

He is tenderness, until the primal fucking that blows your brains and leaves you panting and laughing in the sheets, covered in your and his fluids. On any other night, you would drag him into the shower and wash it away, but on this, you fall asleep blissed out in his arms.