Putting Reek in Greek pt 2. (Patreon)

A follow-up to the Putting Reek in Greek story.

I could hear the envelope slide against the floor as I opened the door. I don't get much mail, it's mostly email or automatic web services, so I was intrigued by what had been put through the slot. The yellowish padded envelope didn't show any logos, only Gaz Taylor and my address neatly written on it in blue ink. Never before had I got a mail with handwritten address, not using that name at least, so I grabbed it quickly and kicked the door shut. I used to care about keeping my work no further in than the hallway, but I've been ever laxer about it. No boots in the bathroom is my current standard. Curious I sat down in the kitchen, turning the envelope in my still work-grimy hands. It was taped shut with some real packing tape, so I took the knife from my belt and carefully cut it open. I grabbed soft, black cloth from inside the envelope and unfolded it on the table. A black tank top with the text “I HAVE THE DICK SO I MAKE THE RULES” across it. So they'd found me. Perhaps they'd known all along. Why send this now?

Then it hit me. This was the half-year anniversary of the most momentous decision in my life. The drugs, the haircut, the tattoos. I was barely allowed on the plane that day after, coming straight from the police station. Back at Stansted after a horrible flight, both for me and those around me, I had no keys, no phone, no money. The girl at the information desk clearly didn't want anything to do with me as I approached. I think she was shocked to hear me ask a proper question. I told her that I'd been on a stag do, but lost my phone and wallet. She very helpfully provided me with an emergency eight-hour Transport For London travel card and allowed me to call my landlord to unlock my apartment door for me. I told him my keys had been stolen abroad and I was arriving late. This way I could get all the way from the airport to my apartment building, enter the front door code, and get into my unlocked apartment. Thankfully there weren't a lot of people traveling at that hour, so I could keep enough distance that people wouldn't be bothered by the smell. The looks I got from people just seeing me were bad enough.

As I entered the apartment I just dropped my essentially empty bag on the floor, slid myself down the door, and joined the trunk on the floor. Everything just hit me. Nothing on my body was mine. My body was barely mine. I had lost my job, my appearance, and even my name. As I looked into the apartment it didn't feel like it belonged to me either. It belonged to some other guy, not to Gaz.

I stood up again and dropped what little clothes I had on me on the floor, headed into the bathroom, and had my first proper shower in I can't even bother to figure out how many days. I was happy to not use the pool shower at least, but as I washed my body I kept finding things to hate. Ugly tattoos, some I didn't even know the meaning of, all over my body. I knew there was a giant "GAZ" on my back, but didn't want to see it in the mirror for myself. God knows what else is back there. I should know, I realized, but I didn't care right then. I just wished the soap would make it all go away, like body paint down the drain. It didn't of course.

After I dried myself off I looked into the mirror. Just as promised the hair, even damp, formed a big, daft dollop on top of my head. There wasn't that much change overall though, was there? I could cut the rest of the hair short and in a few weeks it would look like an actual haircut. I could replace the gaudy glass ear studs for something more respectable, or not bother with anything at all. The top of the St. George tattoo on the neck would still be visible though, but wearing a suit that would be the only thing revealing any tattoos. No one picks a neck tattoo as their first and only tattoo though, so people would know there were more of them.

I fell asleep as soon as my body hit the bed and I slept deep. None of the alarms on my phone woke me up. The phone was somewhere in Greece, presumably, and I didn't have a job to go to anyway. The phone on the wall next to my apartment door buzzed me awake. Without waking up properly I jump out of bed, ran to the door, and answered it. In the other end, down by the front door, was a DB Schenker delivery guy claiming to have a package for me. I pressed the button to open the door and at the same moment realized I was still naked, standing on a pile of rank-smelling clothes I'd worn from a police cell in Greece all the way back here.

I kicked away the pile so it wouldn't be visible from the door, ran back into my bedroom, grabbed a white T-shirt and my workout shorts from the wardrobe, and ran back to the front door, dressing myself on the way. The doorbell rang as I was pulling my shorts up. I ran my fingers through my hair, as I usually do after putting on a T-shirt, only to feel the naked, shaved sides of my head. My heart sank a little bit.

On the other side of the door was a delivery man, about the same age as myself. He didn't bat an eye when he saw me, but only held out one of their tablets for me to sign. In fact, he didn't look that dissimilar to me. Short crop, studded ears, and tattoos up his arms. "Sign here". I was just about to sign my name when I saw "Gaz Taylor" on the display. I'd never thought about what my signature as Gaz would be, not that it mattered much on the shitty tablet with that dinky pen. I scribbled something and got a fairly big box in return.

The delivery guy was out of my sight in an instant, running down the stairs. I closed the door at looked at the big box. Who would send something to me using the name Gaz? The smell of sweaty clothes still lingered. It took me a second to realize it wasn't the box or the pile of clothes down the hall that stunk. It was me. All that slow-release Human Growth Hormone they pumped me full of made me smell like a locker room. I could again feel my heart sink even further. I had only slept since my last shower, so I should smell like lemongrass or whatever scent the shower soap was, not gym and armpit.

I grabbed my spare keys from a hook next to the door and used them to cut through the packaging tape of the box. Inside it was all the stuff from my hotel room in Greece. The only thing missing was my cabin bag. Even my phone and wallet were there. As I rummaged around in the box of summer shirts and board shorts my arm, filled with ugly tattoos kept distracting me. I stood up and looked in the hallway mirror.

What I saw there made sense, as ugly as it was. No one would question a guy looking like me wearing a T-shirt and shorts. It would be the shirt and tie that would make people look, and I so didn't want people to look. Perhaps what I needed was to play this character for a while, figuring out how to move forward.

I called the number one of the lads wrote on my arm in Greece and only a few minutes later I had landed myself a job in the construction industry. They were desperate for workers. I showed up early morning the next day. By the end of the week I was into a routine working 7-4 every day. Roy, who ran the site, had been helpful the first day and showed me what I needed to buy and where to get it. I looked like anyone else on the crew by the second day. Sturdy boots, work bib, sweatshirt, and helmet, all purchased for cheap at a second-hand shop and all covered in fine dust by lunch. Since I was the new lad I got all the worst tasks, often the heaviest ones. While it sucked, at least I didn't need to go to the gym to get a workout. My work benefit gym membership had been revoked anyway when I was fired.

I had a lot of expensive stuff, the apartment, pension fund, stock, savings. Unfortunately it also wasn't cheap to live where I lived. Getting a job was a good start but not enough, so I decided to find a smaller apartment and let the nice flat out furnished. That way I could keep a lot of my stuff there while someone paid the rent for me. I boxed away stuff like my clothes into the building's attic and moved to a small apartment in Brixton. It all happened much faster than I would have predicted, and only two weeks since the vacation I was a construction worker living in a different apartment under a different name in a different part of London.

That's when I got the message from Michael. He was an old date that hadn't really developed into a relationship, but we've had sex a few times since. He wanted to meet me, and I thought why the hell not. I can at least scare him away. I probably surprised him by suggesting Nando's chicken in Brixton as our meeting place. He had gotten there before me, and when I showed up in my work clothes he didn't recognize me even when I sat down at his table. He was dapper as always, and good-looking. It took seconds for him to work out who I was. "What the fuck happened to you!?" was the first out of his mouth. Over a chicken dinner I recounted my vacation in Greece, but his reaction was strange. He clearly listened intently to what I was telling, but he appeared more and more distant. When I started to tell him about the construction work he cut me off. "I have no fucking idea if you are shitting me or not, but this is the hottest shit I've ever heard." He grabbed my hand and continued. "I'm so fucking hard right now. Let's pay and leave now, or I'll fill my trousers with semen."

He paid for everything and we hurried to my apartment. Everything there was a mess. I had barely moved in and had a combination of too much stuff from the old apartment and too little furniture. There were work clothes, former gym clothes, and even the rags I got with me from Greece strewn around, all smelling like my locker room self, but Michael didn't care. Perhaps it made him even more aroused. What followed was one of the more passionate fucks we've ever had, and lasted longer than previous hookups we've had. After he'd freshened up and got dressed, just before he left he said "Whatever kind of role-playing you are doing, keep it up. This is seriously hot."

That made me think if I should really embrace this while it lasted. I created a new Grindr profile for Gaz Taylor and watched my notifications blow up. The worse I made my profile with phrases like "constantly sweaty tatted construction worker" the more interest I got. I quickly fell into a routine of ending each workday with a few hours of fucking some banker or insurance clerk.

I was quite versatile before, but all but a few matches wanted me, the construction worker, to take charge. What had started out as newbie tasks had kind of stayed with me at the site. No doubt the Russian growth hormone I'd been overdosed with in Greece had played its part, because together with all the heavy work tasks assigned to me I had filled out remarkably over the months, rivaling the most muscular of the workers on the site. I decided to keep the haircut, more or less. High and tight, but without the perm. Looked a bit harder without it.

I looked at the back of the envelope again for a return address but there was none. The tank top hadn't been washed in the six months since I wore it, but its fragrance had mellowed to almost nothing. I looked inside the envelope and found a card.

"Gaz! We always knew you would make a great lad. I hope Roy hasn't been too hard on you. We did ask him to load you a bit to pump those guns of yours. Cheers! The lads"