Meeting People Is Easy

S01E01

Luckily for him, our Nate is saved by the bell when the phone rings. Stuart answers, barking a series of questions ("When? How? What time?") into the phone, never leaving his kneeling position between Nathan's legs; he is quite clearly giving the young lad a handie, which culminates -- in record time, of course -- in Nathan jizzing all over Stuart, who loudly exclaims his protest, "Did you have to?!" Maybe he was stroking Nathan's cock to practice his cow-milking technique or something, but either way, he should have expected to get a bit sticky. He showers Nathan with semen with a flick of his wrist. Ta, mate. The woman on the phone asks Stuart what his problem is, which gives him a good opportunity to learn the name of the boy he's just tossed off -- as you do. After introducing Nathan to Lisa, the woman on the phone, he asks her some more questions ("Where is she now?"), thanks her and hangs up. He then tells Nathan that he'll call him a taxi, and Nathan says that he would have to be going anyway, as he has school in the morning. Stuart asks him how old he is, to which Nathan replies that he's eighteen. Stuart, displaying all the investigative savvy of a drive-through liquor store clerk, asks him what year he was born. Pause. "1981," offers Nathan. "Bollocks! You had to think. No one has to think about what year they were born." Nathan is so busted -- not that that'll stop him from lying again. After claiming to be sixteen, he finally 'fesses up to only being fifteen. Stuart lays another snog on him, either not caring about, or being turned on by, the idea of sex with a minor. Actually, it's probably a little of both.

Stuart does take time out from kissing Nathan to ring Vince, who was just beginning to get down to business with the beefy stalker man. Now it's Vince's turn to ask loads of questions ("When?" Who was there?"), and when the beefy stalker man continues disrobing -- revealing a very fat, hairy gut -- his jaw drops. "OH. MY. GOD. OH. MY. GOD." The beefy stalker man proceeds to pick lint from his bellybutton. Yum. At this point, is anyone who's watching not craving cotton candy?

Vince, having fobbed off the beefy stalker man with the excuse that his friend's mother is seriously ill, drives to the hospital, where Stuart and Nathan arrive together in a cab. They rush down corridors and into a room full of women, who are crowded around a mother holding her newborn. Stuart rushes to her, taking the baby in his arms. It becomes apparent that he is the father of this child, and when the friends of the mother -- Romey -- chime in that they think Frederick would be a good name for the baby, Stuart tells them that it's not ironic enough, and decides that Alfred will be the baby's name. Romey wonders aloud if Stuart is going to introduce the blonde boy to everyone, and Stuart asks him, "What's your name, again?" One of Romey's friends, Lisa, answers, "Nathan," obviously annoyed that Stuart can't even remember the name of his young playmate.

By this time, Stuart, having procured the telephone number of the man from the phone booth, is walking to catch up with Vince, who's waiting patiently for him at the Jeep. As he does so, he passes Nathan, throwing him a lingering glance. We see this in slow motion, the only audio being the muted tones of some dance track emanating from a nearby club. Stuart looks away from Nathan's cigarette-smoking figure for a couple of seconds, and then stops and turns to face him. I thought he was going to tell him to have his GP check out that (possibly malignant, definitely fugly) growth on his face, but no.

Cut to Stuart against a red backdrop, facing the camera and talking about the first time he ever messed around with a guy. He was twelve years old, it was his PE teacher, he (Stuart) babbled a lot and ended up joining his teacher in the shower, fully clothed. Thanks for sharing, Stu, but you were just about to ask the little blond boy to go home with you.

After Stuart asks Nathan to come back to his place, we cut to another character-facing-camera shot -- this time it's Nathan, talking about how proud he is of himself that, the first time he ever went to Canal Street to pick up a guy, he scored -- especially since he's only fifteen and all. After his little "Go, me! Go, me! It's muh birthday!" celebration, he looks at the camera and recites Stuart's full name -- Stuart Alan Jones -- in the sickly-sweet way I'd previously thought annoying teenaged girls had patented as their own.

Needless to say, Nathan agrees to go home with Stuart, and Vince -- still anxiously waiting at the Jeep -- is visibly annoyed at the young pup's appearance on the scene. But our adorable, put-upon Vincent soon has his attention diverted to his beefy stalker-man, who is obviously following the Jeep out of the parking lot in his own sports car. "Go a-way," Vince moans.

Back at Stuart's vast, meticulously decorated flat -- the kind of place The Real World's producers try to pass off as just your average roach motel, but is actually only used as a set for shows like Queer as Folk and...The Real World -- Nathan witters on about how he doesn't cook, eats loads of take-out, loves Chinese food, blah blah scaredvirgincakes. So, no, he's not handling the nervousness thing very well at all. Stuart, who's made his way toward the bedroom, takes his shirt off and moseys over to Nervous Nellie. "You stayin' out here, or what?" he asks, in a voice that's not deliberately provocative, but does the job all the same. They engage in what I recorded in my notes as a "hot, long snog," with the camera circling them for a good ten seconds. It's camerawork Spike Lee would be proud of.

Elsewhere, Vince pulls the Jeep into the parking space in front of his house, and the beefy stalker man pulls right up behind him, gets out of his car and compliments Vince on the Jeep. After explaining that it's not his, Vince launches into the "It's been nice meeting you, but I have to get up I have to get up really early tomorrow morning" speech as the two of them stand in the rain and get drenched. Not missing a beat, the beefy stalker-man says, "Are we shagging, or what? It's pissing down out here." Suffering either from masochism or just plain old bad judgment, Vince leads the strange, bald, fugly, beefy stalker man into his home. What could have been a very unpleasant, Robert Bardo/Rebecca Schaeffer moment is reason enough for Vince to get his slut on. I try to picture David Letterman inviting Margaret Ray into his house for a cup of tea and some tossed salad, but thankfully I'm distracted by the scene.

In case you hadn't guessed, nekkid Stuart is already on top of nekkid Nathan, and asking him what he likes to do. "I like watching telly," Nathan answers. "What do you like doing in bed?" Stuart clarifies. "This is fine," answers Nathan with what can only be described as the very definition of "timidity" in his voice. "Rimming?" queries Stuart, going in for the kill. "Yeah," Nathan replies, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that he has absolutely no clue what rimming involves, and yet you don't really feel sorry for him, because any curious fifteen-year-old with access to late-night cable TV should know what kind of mess (no pun intended) he was getting himself into. Poor Nathan; so young, so inexperienced, so bloody ignorant.

Stuart: Oh, yes, Lisa was on the phone when Nathan shot his load all over me.
Lisa [gesturing to Romey, looking at Stuart]: So you've both had a child tonight, then.

Stuart makes some statement about how the call from Lisa was the most important phone call of his life, and Nathan was there when it happened. "He was there," he repeats. Then he looks at the child in his arms, looks at its mother and asks in an "Oh shit, I'm a gay man who's just fathered a baby for my lesbian friends and now I have to work every day for the rest of my life to keep him in Pokémon cards and Gap khakis" tone of voice, "Romey, what the fuck have we done?"

We then get a shot of Nathan, struggling with an armload of snacks he's just retrieved from the hospital vending machines, as well as dropping one of the two cups of tea he's procured (he's gripping the other Styrofoam cup with his teeth). After he distributes refreshments to everyone, Stuart orders him to go get some flowers for Romey and the baby, and he obediently begins to search the hospital for a suitable bouquet, eventually stealing one from an elderly gentleman who catches him red-handed; Nathan simply takes off down the corridor, running past doctors and orderlies. Okay, he's known Stuart less than three hours, and already he's doing his dirty work -- including theft -- for him? Nathan, Whitney Houston called; she wants her "subservient partner who'll break the law for her man" shtick back; she has a Clive Davis tribute in Vegas weekend and hears that international mail can take a while.

Meanwhile, Stuart leads Vince up to the roof of the hospital, where Vince comes up behind Stuart and wraps his arms around him tenderly. They look out at the sprawling, twinkling lights of Manchester (just imagine the sprawling, twinkling lights of Toledo, Ohio), and Vince starts babbling about how weird it is that the baby is real: "I mean, it's brilliant... but it's weird, y'know?" "Most expensive wank I've ever had," Stuart says ruefully. He then walks Vince over to the side of the roof, and comes up behind him. "Arms out..." Stuart directs. "I'm always Kate Winslet!" pouts Vince, otherwise visibly pleased to share such a moment with Stuart, who's shouting -- only half-mockingly, we suspect -- "King of the world! I'm king of the world!" They then hug, and Stuart teases Vince about his hard-on. "Vincent, I never knew you cared!" Vince makes some dismissive comment about how he hasn't had sex in six months, and at this point he's "like Pavlov's dog." Stuart says, not without a trace of cruelty, "You sad bastard," and walks away. It's a moment I would have enjoyed if I didn't feel so sorry for Vince, whose face crumples in obvious pain. Reminding myself that he was pathetic enough to want to have sex with his nasty-ass stalker, I am able to take some pleasure in seeing his ego crushed. Ah....

As the two of them make their way back through the hospital corridor, Stuart looks over his shoulder at a passing orderly, who also turns around and makes no secret that he's staring at Stuart. Vince chides him for so openly cruising for men on such a momentous occasion, and Stuart loudly declares, "Had him!" He then offers Vince some ecstasy, and when his friend turns his nose up at the offer, replies, "More for me," and swallows all of the pills. Stuart then strides through the lobby and says to Nathan -- who's sitting in the midst of all of Romey's friends, "Nathan, let's go. It's all getting a bit lesbian in here."

On the ride home, Vince is driving, while Nathan and Stuart cuddle up in the backseat. Stuart is acting very strange (for a change, right?), sweating copiously and muttering things about how funny it is when kids die of meningitis. Vince demands to know what the pills were that he took, because no one acts that damn stupid five minutes after taking E. Stuart admits that he has no idea what they were, and starts fondling Nathan. He whispers to Nathan, in not such a quiet voice, that he's going to take him home and, er, make love to him all night. Except he says "fuck," not "make love," okay? Stuart is obviously not one for sweet-talking his conquests.

Vince, meanwhile, is getting very pissed off at the spectacle in the backseat, which he's watching in the rear-view mirror -- leading to him almost crashing the Jeep. He informs Stuart that he's taking Nathan home, and that's final. Stuart kisses Nathan, who tells Vince defiantly that he's not going home, he's going back to Stuart's. "Good boy," coos Stuart, and I think to myself that silly teenaged boys really aren't that different from silly teenaged girls. The males aren't from Mars, and the women aren't from Venus; they're both from planet Whipped, and I think that Nathan was just appointed their leader.

Vince, more dejected than ever, goes home and throws an old -- and well-worn, we can tell -- Doctor Who video in the VCR, reciting the lines along with the actors. So, no, not at all lame and piteous. I honestly expect him to appear in the scene all kitted out in full Dalek regalia.

In the meantime, Nathan is lying on his stomach across Stuart's bed. Stuart is on top of him, licking him from the nape of his neck to the small of his back...and lower. Naturally, they are both nude. Stuart's lapping action starts to move lower and lower, until it is quite obvious that his tongue has grasped the brass ring, as it were. Nathan shivers and moans with delight, and Stuart says to him, "No one ever told you about that, did they?" They then begin to have sex, with Stuart taking obvious care to go slowly for his virgin conquest's sake. He then starts babbling about the football team and gets rougher with Nathan, and it's all too apparent that he is quite fucked up on whatever those pills were that he took.

The morning, Vince wakes up to the sound of a car alarm; he looks out the window and sees two kids jumping up and down on the roof of the Jeep and trying to rip off the windshield wipers. He sprints down the stairs and outside, but the kids run away, yelling, "Y'poof [gay person]! Y'fucking queer!"

After Stuart's alarm goes off, Nathan hesitantly reaches to place his arm over his chest, a gesture that is both touching and, well, sad. Stuart opens his eyes, which move rapidly to read the multi-coloured scrawls that cover his bedroom walls. Nathan reminds him that he drew "Stuart's Sex Map" all over them last night, in an attempt to illustrate all of the countries where he's had sex. In his drug-induced, apathetic haze, Stuart's also created a replica of the Millennium Dome in the dining area, much to his own annoyance. He says -- more to himself than to Nathan, who can hear him from the bathroom -- that he thinks his dealer gave him dog worming pills again instead of ecstasy. Yeah, I hate when that happens. Stuart then hits the Play button of his answering machine, hearing a message from Romey which had been left the night before, when he was out clubbing and had his cell phone turned off. When she mentions something about her contractions, Stuart exclaims, "FUCK! I've got a baby!" (I wish I had an audio clip of him saying this for you to listen to, because it really is a note-perfect delivery; make no mistake about it, Aiden Gillen has the self-absorbed jerk thing down pat.) Instead of moping, he reminds himself, out loud, what a "twat" (erm, that means "stupid fool" over in the UK) he is, and then asks -- not completely rhetorically -- "Why doesn't anyone stop me? It's not my fault." This pretty much sums up Stuart's entire take on himself and his life, methinks. But there's no time for self-contemplation when there's soapy love to be made, and he wastes no time jumping in the shower with Nathan.

When Vince arrives to pick them up, Stuart doesn't seem to care much about the damage that's been done to his Jeep -- because, as he tells us, it's a company car. He surveys the vandalism and then asks Vince, while gesturing to Nathan in the backseat, "What's his name, again?" Alas, he's not kidding.

Stuart takes the wheel, and they drive the little lad to school. Instead of dropping him off on the road, Stuart decides that he wants to drive him right up to the front door. Vince implores him not to, saying, "But they'll see the car!" Stuart smiles and turns into the drive (bitch), careening down the narrow path as bodies fly in every direction, Suede's Beautiful Ones ("High on diesel and gasoline / psycho for drum machine / Shaking their bits to the hits...Cracked up, stacked up, twenty-two, psycho for sex and glue / Lost it to Bostik, yeah...") blaring from the stereo. As the Jeep blazes a trail to the front of the school, we see for the first time that the word "QUEERS" is spray-painted in red over the black lacquered finish of the driver's side doors. Needless to say, Nathan's fellow students do not greet his stylish entrance with cheers and rapturous applause.

Nathan gets out of the back seat, and asks Stuart when he can see him again. An girl who looks very peeved asks Nathan where he's been, to which he replies rather testily, "Piss off!" Stuart teases him for being so rude to his "little friend," and Nathan asks again when he can see him, telling Stuart that he could arrange to see him tonight. One boy, standing with a couple of friends, makes kissing noises and shouts to Stuart, Nathan and Vince, "C'mon, boys, give us a kiss!" Stuart glares at him and replies firmly, "I'll give you a FUCK, you tight little virgin. You won't be laughing then." Cue respect and delighted laughter from moi; this is exactly the sort of scene which just won't let you hate Stuart, no matter how overly confident, smarmy, rude, mean and selfish he can be. When he releases that cocky venom on someone who really deserves it, you don't really want him to be cursed with impotence as much as you did just a few short moments ago; suddenly, stabbing pains to his scrotal area every so often would be sufficient punishment for his ways. I can see, a little, why Nathan is so enamoured of him; you can't help being in awe of someone who can put anyone (but especially homophobic future frat rats) in their place with one deftly executed threat -- especially when it sounds like a threat he'd love to fulfill. Alas, the boys shut up -- wouldn't you? -- and Vince and Stuart drive away, leaving Nathan standing in their dust.

We then cut to a shot of Nathan facing the camera, delivering the following monologue to the strains of Air's Sexy Boy: "I was just a shag. I knew it. I guess I fell in love a bit, like you do. I thought I'd never see him again. How was I to know? Stuart Alan Jones [PUKE!]. Six months later, he's begging me to stay."

Roll credits.