The true story of L and S

In a comment to my recent posting Update on the situation with boyfriend number 1, a guy called Daniel was kind enough to say that my blog was like “Bridget Jones's Diary - but much better”. Having my blog compared to fiction reminds me that fiction is often only a pale reflection of what happens in real life. One of the stories I like to tell to prove this relates to a couple of guys L and S that used to live near us.

As well as living nearby, L and S owned and ran a flower business together. They had a small shop, but the main part of the business was providing flowers to offices and restaurants across central London. Apart from being business partners they were also gay lovers, and had been together for around 18 years. L was the sort of guy who knew everyone in the area, a great guy to chat with and catch up on the local gossip. S was a bit older than L and a bit more reserved, but both of them were nice guys.

Eventually myself and boyfriend number 1 invited L and S round for supper one evening. That evening we discovered that S was actually bi-sexual. In fact, he had a wife and grown up kids, who knew nothing about his gay relationship with L! They thought that L was just a business partner. Monday to Friday S would live with L in central London, but at the weekend S went back to his wife outside London to play the perfect husband. Incredibly, this had been going on for 18 years.

The secret couldn’t last forever. The following year S and L were together at a London restaurant on Valentines Day. They didn’t pay any attention to the filming which was going on there for a television program, after all a lot of filming goes on in London all the time. But on this occasion, the filming was for a program which was aired on prime time TV, and by a stroke of fate one of S’s children spotted S with L on TV, “Mum come and look at this, isn’t that Dad with L having a Valentines Day dinner?”

S ended up having to confess the whole story. Of course S’s wife wanted him to choose between her and L, but in fact somehow he managed to continue with the existing arrangement, living with L in the week and her at weekends.

Unfortunately the relationship between S and L wasn’t to last. In fact, it might have be the arrival of myself and boyfriend number 1 which was partly to blame.

“I’m always alone at Christmas”, L would confide in me. “I’ve been trying to get S to leave his wife and live with me full time for 18 years. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.”

L would see myself and boyfriend number 1, always going away together on holidays, together at Christmas. Gradually he wanted a full time boyfriend more and more. Now, pay attention, it gets a bit complicated ...

A year or two later, all the gossip was about L. One summer, some other neighbours were having a lot of renovation work done to their house. We all spotted R, a cute, hunky builder who was usually stripped to the waist. He looked very heterosexual to me, but none the less L managed to get him into bed.

For a while L was seeing both R and S. S found out and argued bitterly with L about the situation. L agreed to stop seeing R if S left his wife. Of course S wouldn’t leave his wife so L continued with seeing both R and S.

Then one day L caught S in bed with R. That was the catalyst for L to leave S, and take R as a full time boyfriend. They even had a big party for the occasion. Everyone was invited, L, S, R were all there, all the neighbours, and it was a fabulous party. At the party, I actually got talking to R’s brother. It turned out that R was bisexual too, with a couple of ex-wives, several children, and a depressive streak which sometimes caused him to attempt suicide. As I said above,I reckon that fiction is often only a pale reflection of what happens in real life.

Although L and S tried to continue as purely business partners, it didn’t work. Within a year they’d sold up, S was living full time with his wife, L and R had moved out of London together, and unfortunately I haven’t seen or heard of any of them since.

So at the same time, living in one tiny London street there was me secretly meeting guys for casual sex, our neighbour with his mistress, the story of L and S, and more as well no doubt which I don’t know about. I said in a blog posting a couple of months ago that the false paternity rate proves that there’s a lot of infidelity in our society. It’s all around us all the time. The only issue is how much of it we're each aware of!