Free Better Than Easy by Nick Alexander Page B

bellies.
Big
beer bellies. Tom’s wrinkled nose tells me what he thinks about the place, but because the bearded barman – who is as huge as his customers – serves usimmediately, we order two halves and retreat to the farthest corner of the room to watch.
    â€œIt’s a
local
bar for
local
people,” Tom sniggers, and it’s true, people are looking at us as if we just climbed out of a rocket.
    â€œI don’t think we’re
big
enough,” I whisper.
    Tom sips his beer. “Not obese, you mean?” he murmurs.
    â€œTom!” I say.
    â€œWell, call a spade a spade,” he says
    I drop my mouth in horror. “You can’t say that either!” I laugh. “That’s worse.”
    â€œTom frowns at me. “Why?” he asks, genuinely confused.
    â€œIt’s racist.”
    â€œOh!” Tom giggles, covering his mouth. “I always thought it was to do with, you know, spades and shovels. Anyway, you know what I mean,” he continues in a whisper. “All this eroticising fat – it just strikes me as an excuse for laziness really.”
    I frown at him and scan the bar once again. It’s true that most of the guys here probably
would
be diagnosed as clinically obese. But then, these days, so would most of the straight men in Birmingham. “I find it a bit of a relief,” I say. “A break from all the Stallone lookalikes.”
    â€œDon’t tell me you’d rather look at
these
guys?” Tom says.
    I gesture for him to
keep it down
. I know no one can hear us, but the conversation is making me nervous. If nothing else, our hushed tones are drawing attention to ourselves. A grey haired guy with a
humungous
belly crammed into a paw-print t-shirt and khaki, military combat-pants is definitely looking our way.
    I smile at him but he just frowns and looks away. “Let’s drink up,” I say to Tom. “We can carry on this conversation outside. I feel like I’ve invaded someone else’s patch. I don’t think the bears are that friendly.”
    â€œSo you think they’re cute?” Tom asks as we negotiate our way to the next venue.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe fatties?”
    â€œNo,” I say. “Not at all. But I like that they exist. I respect their right to eroticise something other than the Jean-Claude Van Damme model that we’re all somehow supposed to look like.”
    â€œHumph,” Tom says. “You’re just pretending to be politically correct. But you don’t find that kind of lard appealing any more than I do.”
    I nod half-heartedly and grab his elbow and steer him across the street. Our breath is rising in the cold night air. “You’re right, I don’t – though actually, big muscle guys don’t really do it for me either. But I really
do
like that they exist. I’m being honest.”
    â€œI don’t get it,” Tom says, then, “Fuck, it’s cold, isn’t it?”
    â€œYeah,” I say. “It is. You know how women these days have all these body-image problems because every woman the media idealises spends her evenings vomiting? Well, the fact that bears exist somehow reveals that the other model – the gym-bunny one – is just
one
model; it opens a route to feeling happy about who you are, no matter what you look like.”
    â€œIf you say so,” Tom says, squeezing between two cars and joining the pavement.
    â€œIt just means that it’s OK to not spend all your time trying to look like Schwarzy,” I say. I pause and nod at the door to Wolf. “Looks like the next stop,” I say.
    â€œWell, we know what the bears are like,” Tom says. “Time to throw ourselves to the wolves.”
    Wolf is a much bigger space than the other bars, and interestingly the men – lone, predatory, hungry looking – do meet a whole range of wolfy adjectives.
    I grab a couple of stools and wait for Tom