Lunch with my friend P

I hadn't seen my friend P since last November so it was good to catch up with him last Friday. We'd arranged to have lunch together at the smart Italian restaurant near my office, and after we've placed our order, the conversation becomes more interesting.

"What have you been up to then?" I ask him, hoping for a good story. P's private life can be quite colourful at times.

"Oh, the usual!" replies P, grinning mischievously. "Actually I went to a big conference in Paris with work a few weeks ago, and I had to share this cheap flat in the suburbs with my straight Russian colleagues. I even had to share a room with one of the other guys. But I didn't fancy him so I didn't embarrass myself."

"But they know you're gay, right?"

"No, they think I'm as straight as a die," he says with a smirk on his face, "and actually I quite enjoyed that, being one of the lads for a while and going to strip clubs with them!"

"What? You went to a girlie strip club??"

"Yeah of course, that's what straight guys do, right! Luckily we'd had loads to drink so I didn't have to perform with any of the strippers or anything. But one of them fancied me, I'm sure I could have pulled her, she said I was cute before she took her clothes off in front of me. She put her fanny right up close to my face and I'll swear that it smelt of M&S tuna fish."

"But off course she'll tell you she likes you," I laugh, "that's her job!"

"Errr, well she didn't have to say that," says P defensively, but from his expression I can tell that he knows he's on dodgy ground.

"Anyway, when the Russians left I stayed for the weekend," he continues, "but then I wasn't pretending to be straight!".

"Did you find any nice Parisian guys for fun then?"

"I must have downloaded gigabytes of data to my phone as I trawled round the gay fleshpots of Paris," laughs P, "because if one place wasn't any good I moved on to the next one!"

P pauses to eat some of his lasagna, but of course I want to know what happened.

"Well you can't stop there mate," I tell him. In my mind I'm thinking that I'll be able to post the story here on Sunday if it's got a good conclusion.

"You know I always tell you everything GB," replies P reassuringly, still eating. "Anyway, I ended up in this maze in this sauna, and I was being felt by this guy when I suddenly realised it was someone who'd been at the same conference as me!"

P seems to think that that's particularly amusing, although it's not clear to my why. "Did that matter?" I ask.

"No I guess not, but anyway, I spotted someone who was cuter so eventually I did the business with him instead, in one of their private cubicles :-). I felt a bit guilty afterwards because the first guy seemed quite nice, and as he was still around afterwards I ended up chatting to him a bit. It turned out that he was going to be in London so I agreed to meet him over here."

"Uh huh, and did you?" I ask, "if he wasn't good enough for you in Paris why would you want to see him in London?"

"Well I don't know, I just did because he was OK even if the other guy was cuter, so I picked him up from his hotel in my convertible and showed him the sights of London."

"Sightseeing doesn't sound like you P, what sights did you show him?"

"Well where do you think," laughs P, "Chariots of course!"