Sottopassaggio by Nick Alexander

order more beer and stand at the edge of the dance-floor watching the carnival crowd dance to the fun-but-tacky music. When I need to go to the toilet I correctly guess where it is, which only emphasises the strange feeling of déjà-vu.
    By the time I get back, Tom is on the dance floor, blending into the carnival laughter, the jumping, waving madness of it all, so I go and join him, but someone else has spotted him. She’s 6’4”, has shoulders you could hang a marquee on, legs like Joanna Lumley and is wearing a very tight, very short red PVC dress.
    I linger behind her looking at Tom, watching him as she pulls on his beard. He catches my eye and breaks into a grin.
    â€œI like this,” she says, her deep voice destroying any remaining doubt that she represents the T in LGBT.
    Tom runs a hand over her arse and says, “And I
love
your outfit.”
    As Sophie Ellis Bextor’s nasal,
Take Me Home
slips from the speakers, PVC-lady begins to shift her hips and flop her ironed blond hair from side to side.
    She raises a finger and chews a cuticle. “Oh this old thing?” she says, running a hand over her dress. “I’d rather you loved
me
.”
    â€œAnd so say all of us,” I think.
    Tom laughs, flashing white teeth. “That really is a great dress though,” he says, imitating her groove.
    She laughs madly, runs a hand over his hair, then spins on one heel and heads off across the floor.
    Tom steps up to me smiling. “Isn’t she great!” he says.
    I’m impressed at his reaction. Warm, friendly, amused, unthreatened. Personally, I have always been a little scared of big trannies.
    â€œBut shall we go downstairs?” he adds. “I hate fucking Sophie Ellis Bextor.”
    On the ground floor the atmosphere is much more chilled.
    The music is louder; they’re playing rhythmic trancy Goa, and the men – for here there are only men – are younger, more masculine, better built.
    The feeling of familiarity is even stronger now; in fact if I didn’t know better I would swear that I actually
have
been here before. I decide that it must look a little like
Le Klub
in Nice.
    The dark dance-floor is packed with sweating steaming male flesh; half of the guys have their T-shirts in their pockets.
    We get fresh drinks from the bar and move to a raised side area. We look down at the dancers.
    In front of me – I could actually reach out and touch them – a group of muscular bearded boys are dancing badly. Body builders are always so stiff and I wonder briefly why that is. Do their muscles actually prevent them moving properly? Or are they just so body-conscious that they can’t let themselves go?
    The one nearest me has huge hoops hanging from his nipples, which gyrate and glitter temptingly as he moves rigidly from side to side.
    Tom stands to my left and occasionally points someone out, saying, “Wow! Look! He has better tits than the tranny,” or “Now that! That is
nice
.”
    When he speaks, he leans in making my ear vibrate, which, with the beer, the tribal rhythms and the smell of testosterone, is giving me a heady, horny, hard on. I lean on the shelf separating me from the dance floor to conceal it, but it actually makes things worse. Tom now lays an arm across my back as he speaks to me.
    â€œAnything you fancy out there then?” he asks, his lips actually touching my ear lobe.
    â€œ
You
,” I think. “How about all of them?” I shout.
    A humanoid synthesizer starts to soar above the rhythms and the dancers start to raise their arms. Tom leans in again.
    â€œYou should get out there,” he says. “You might get lucky.”
    I shrug.
    I realise that if I don’t get away soon I will end up kissing him, so I grin, down the third of a pint remaining in my glass, and trippingly descend the stairs into the heaving mass.
    A spotlight is sweeping across my face. One guy is dancing behind Mr