I’ve been lucky.
I’ve worked in different jobs, moved through different environments and spent time around all types of people—people I probably would never have met if my life had followed one neat, predictable route.
Construction gave me more than a few of them.
One was a bloke called Lee.
Lee was straight. Genuinely straight. There was never any mystery about that—and my gaydar is pretty good. Lee never troubled it.
He had two children, although that doesn’t prove anything by itself. Straight people have gay and bisexual children every day.
My dad was straight.
I think.
He certainly never told me otherwise—and, to be fair, he probably wouldn’t have.
My mother was presumably straight too, although we are not currently exchanging biographical corrections. Still, I should acknowledge her contribution to the circumstances of my conception.
Between them, they made me—and I’m bisexual.
Sexuality clearly doesn’t travel neatly from one generation to the next, and becoming a parent doesn’t hand anyone a certificate of heterosexuality.
I mention Lee’s children because they were part of the man I knew, not because they settle the question of who he was.
Lee was confident, good-looking and comfortable in himself. A skilled chippy who knew his woodwork, with years of experience in construction behind him.
By the time I knew him, he was operating around project-management level. He knew the job, knew the men and knew how to carry himself.
More importantly, there wasn’t really a conversation I couldn’t have with Lee.
Sex, men, women, bodies—whatever it was, he didn’t suddenly become awkward or start performing masculinity for the room. He didn’t need to recoil from something gay just to remind everybody that he wasn’t.
He knew who he was.
That was enough.
Nothing made him particularly squeamish.
Especially when he saw a woman he considered exceptionally fit.
Lee would look, take in the full situation and announce:
— Lee’s highest possible complimentI’d lick her shit.
More than twenty years later, I can still hear him saying it.
I don’t know whether Lee invented the phrase, picked it up from somebody else or heard it somewhere on another building site. I only know that I had never heard anyone say it before—and I’ve never heard anyone say it since.
That is probably why it stayed with me.
Plenty of people have said filthy things in my company. Most of them disappeared as quickly as they were spoken.
Lee’s line survived.
And it didn’t throw me off.
I was inexperienced back then, but the instinct behind it made complete sense to me. The thought of licking out a woman or rimming a man wasn’t difficult for me to understand.
I’ve always loved going down.
As long as everything is clean, it’s all good.
Lee’s wording may have been extreme, but the enthusiasm behind it required no translation.
That was it.
His highest possible compliment.
There was nowhere further for attraction to go. Once Lee had offered to cross that particular boundary, every other declaration sounded half-hearted.
Other men might have bought her flowers, taken her somewhere expensive or written something beautiful.
Lee had already made the ultimate sacrifice.
It was disgusting, obviously. But the conviction with which he said it made it strangely poetic. Not romantic. Not subtle. Just the purest form of construction-site admiration—filthy, excessive and delivered as though everyone else should immediately understand.
And we did.
He wasn’t describing an act.
He was establishing a rating.
Some women were fit.
Some women were fucking fit.
And then, very occasionally, there was a woman Lee would lick shit for.