Bad Days Good Days

Bad Days Good Days

By

Alaba Okuyiga

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Alaba Okuyiga on Smashwords

Bad Days Good Days

Copyright © 2012 by Alaba Okuyiga

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

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Many thanks to Dada and Sisi as well as my friends who helped me edit this book. Also, to thank the experiences that enabled me to write this book.

I hope you enjoy the stories as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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Bad Days Good Days

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Chapter 1- In The Name Of The

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Barry adjusted his glasses cycling up the hill past the old water mill now abandoned with green fungi all over it. Once over the hill he freewheeled towards his mock Tudor housedown the end of the lane. He saw Evelyn his wife sat in her car chatting to one of the neighbours so he gave both a wave turning into the drive into the side gate where he put his bike. John, his son was at home as his Yamaha 250 motorbike was also on the drive blocking the front door.

‘John’ Barry shouted as he strode into the house ‘Will you flaming move that bike of yours to one side?’ Silence. He and John had rows aplenty now that the son had moved back home when he lost his job up the shipyards of Sunderland where with the government cutbacks, many jobs had gone even specialist ones like systems designer his forte.

Barry and his wife Evelyn had been married for 28 years after they had met at their local Catholic Church social. Barry standing at over six foot had just returned from Germany where he had been in the army. He was now balding, overweight, wore glasses but still boisterous and larger than life. Evelyn was still as slim as when they met and now a lead nurse at the local hospital’s high dependency unit. They were both active in the local community and church here in the Bristol area with Barry running basketball sessions for youths every Saturday morning with Evelyn hosting the elderly tea sessions. Barry had his vices one of which was his visits to the dog races every Friday night which after one visit Evelyn declined to join him at. He also followed Brentford even though he hadn’t been to a home game since he stopped going south after his mother’s demise. Raised a strict Catholic, Barry spent a lot of time in the church both as an altar boy and member of the St Dominic’s Church football team. For all his religious pretensions, his father had been a bully, and the household was full of tension as he, his siblings and mother cowed from the head of the house.

Evelyn was the only child of a father who was a ship’s navigator and a mother who was one of the first female managers of Woolworth’s. Indeed her son John had developed his love of ships through his grandfather even if he had hardly known the old man before he died. Evelyn’s home life was happy even though her father was away at sea a lot but he made up for such absences when he was back on land.

Their son John’s birth was a difficult one and the labour was long but worth it as he had deep brown eyes and in many ways was a caring soul. They lived close to the sea so he was able to indulge in sailing activities and dreamt of being a pirate. Both parents had hoped he would get into the local grammar school but it was not to be although he excelled at his studies which culminated in him completing a ship design course in Gdansk, Poland. He then went on to secure employment with one of the many ship building firms in the Northeast rising rapidly through the ranks until the ship industry collapsed under government cuts. He hadn’t married although he had brought girls back home often enough and told his mother that the time wasn’t right for him to settle especially with being jobless as well as back at home. He had never gotten along well with his father and on more than one occasion Evelyn had to step in to stop physical fights by both her men.

Barry’s father was loud and obnoxious along with swearing but he never missed mass and he made sure all his children attended as well. He was an equal opportunities bigot so the air was rank with terms like ‘kike’, ‘niggers’, ‘Pakis’, ‘frigging micks’ and ‘back alley bandits’. The latter was his pet hate and he often avowed he would disown any of his children who was gay. When Barry and his mates discovered puberty as well as sex, it turned to be an uncomfortable time for him as he found to his disgust at first and then loathing of himself that he was looking at boys instead of girls.

To counter this, he turned to more manly matters through the army cadet scheme with long marches and camping trips. He joined in and told the most homophobic jokes as well as leading attacks on people they deemed as ‘fags’ as they played around the streets of Bristol. He eventually kissed a girl on his 15th birthday thanks to his mates setting it up and eventually losing his virginity to the same girl at the age of 16. Home for him was still not a happy place and as soon as he could, he joined the army where boot camp was hard although fun.

With induction completed as well as the passing out parade, he was notified he was off to join the 1st Armoured Div in Rheindahlen Germany. It was to be his first time abroad and he took the decision to break up with his girlfriend so he could enjoy his time away. His platoon was full of other young men like him who had discovered a love of drink and outrageous behaviour when off duty. On a weekend pass after three months of being in Germany, four of them ventured into Düsseldorf with all its bars and red light districts.

The four were Jonesy, Ritz, Dibs and Terry all looking for booze and women, not necessarily in that order. After some hours they were all drunk and Barry struck up conversation with an older German man about the merits of their respective football teams. Even though Brentford could not match the power of a Bundesliga team like Düsseldorf, Barry still stuck up for his team as well as the great England team of ’66. Staggering out of the club in the early hours, he found he had lost his mates so his new German friend, Helmut asked him to come sleep at his place from where he could head back to base in the morning. He took Helmut up on his offer and when they arrived at his flat, he was offered whiskey which he swallowed in one gulp. Helmut then leant forward and kissed him on the lips. Barry shoved him away as the German advanced again and this time Barry didn’t push him away.

The next morning Barry left quietly and made his way back to Rheindalen with his friends asking him where he had been. He told them that he had met a lady of the night with whom he stayed till the morning. He was very confused especially at the pleasure he had felt being with Helmut. He also remembered all his dad’s words of disowning any child of his who was gay and swore he would never have sex with a man again.

However, for Barry his sexuality had come to the fore and he found himself staring at the other men in the communal showers even though he knew he had to be very careful. He began spending his leave by himself and not going drinking with his mates in the various towns around the base. He had developed a gaydar for similar minded individuals in bars and several times a month he was intimate with a variety of men. He told himself he had to stop it, that it was wrong but he couldn’t help himself. His four year tour ended and he opted to leave the military by now a communication expert so he returned to England where he had found work in the Bristol area far away from his family in the outskirts of London. Then he met Evelyn and as far as he was concerned, this was what he needed to get himself to where he should be in terms of sexuality. They dated then got married and eventually John came along. Money was good as he worked in the telecommunication industry and this took him all over the southwest at various installations. Evelyn had also gone back to work when little John was 5 and was now making her way up in the nursing world at a local hospital.

In the 1980s, the telecommunications world was very macho and homophobic banter flew about all over the place with Barry very prominent in its usage. His demons had returned and he quickly found where men met other men or ‘cottaging’ took place. He continued to live this double life for several years and indeed when he told Evelyn he was off to the dogs on Fridays, he would drive miles away into neighbouring counties to have sex with men.

Then thanks to the internet, he had also discovered an A road lay-by 15 minutes from home which had toilets behind it where men met for anonymous sex through the use of holes drilled in the walls of the cubicles which separated the toilets. The way it worked was that there would be three taps and a reply of two ending with one person putting their member through the holes for copulation of various types.

In a society where in spite of laws (no comma) public condemnation of homosexuality was great and had not changed fundamentally over the years, the idea of a man with a female partner was expected and many men who’s true sexuality was not this, often sought ‘beards’ or women to use as a front for respectability. Barry was one of many persons with a hidden sexuality.

In the 28 years Barry and Evelyn had been together, she worried about the physical side of the marriage. She guessed that perhaps when he worked away, there were dalliances but never of a same sex nature. Overall she was happy, her job demanding but she had great work colleagues, family and friends. John, their son, was going through employment challenges and moved home but in her upbeat way she thought he would soon sort himself out.

On her way home, she had stopped to chat to Dorothy, the neighbour, about Dorothy’s angina and on getting home had found Barry and John having another ruckus about how John had parked his motorbike.

She made the dinner for all of them and there was forced conversation with the usual over the top comments from Barry on everything political.

She tried to keep it light, ‘Off to the dogs tomorrow Baz?’ ‘Oh yeah‘, he replied ‘I have a hot tip on the fourth race and if it comes in as I (thought) think, I’ll bring home a bunch of your favourite flowers for you, my darling’. ‘Ah, that’s nice‘Evelyn replied.

After the meal, John got his leathers on and as always took his bike out for a run not returning till after both his parents had gone to bed.

Next day was Friday and Barry set off to work early to complete a go-live date of a fibre optic system for a client in Worcester. It was a successful launch followed by a drinks evening which was fine by him as Evelyn was on night so it was getting dark when Barry set off down the M5 towards home. As he approached his motorway junction, his weakness overtook and he headed for the lay-by on the A road.

It was dark and there were the usual assortment of vehicles parked there. Heavy duty lorries, white vans and non descript, maybe, company cars like his. There was always very little eye contact on entering the building and there was the occasional male rushing out of the toilets who had genuinely come in there to use the facilities, then realising there was a secondary purpose to the