‘It’s a nice room, Sam.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
I’d taken Joe upstairs and he was sitting cross-legged on the end of my mattress (I hadn’t got myself a raised bed yet), staring at me. He did owe me one; he was right.
‘Look, if you really wanna make it up to me, Joe,’ I put to him, ‘you can come with me to this Q&A Night.’
Joe rocked forward. When he rocked back, it was onto his hands.
‘I’m… I’m not sure, Sam.’
‘Come on, Joe, you can be my guy magnet. Just hang around till someone gets talking to me.’
Somehow we never made it, stopping off downstairs to purchase alcoholic courage, saying we’d scull it on the way. We did get halfway, but that was to a park. I sat down one side of a bench, Joe the other. Wally was on the ball when he insisted we take paper bags to wrap our bottles; the police wafted past but didn’t stop. Joe drank his lone stubbie of light beer like it was poison – which isn’t far wrong. I tore through a six-pack of the full-strength stuff, enjoying it – enjoying beer for the first time. I was learning to let my guard down.
Looking at Joe in the dappled light, with the shadows from the leaves above forming a wreath in his hair, I thought of the book 1984. Not sure why that, particularly. Maybe ’cause I was trying to suss Joe out, and in 1984 Winston does a lot of ‘sussing out’ himself.
That’s what I like best about the book. A lot of the political stuff goes over my head; I’ve never been that bright. But I love all that stuff about Winston trying to pick out others ‘like him’. It’s so subtle. He can’t let on he’s looking. He can’t just scream ‘Hey you!’ He has to try to tell if they’re on the same wavelength from a gesture, a smile. The blankest look. Something so – you know, practically invisible. He’s always on the lookout for this sign, this Winston. Wherever he is: out walking, on the train, in a crowd, looking for this sign. Poor old twat.
I tried to read 1984 in 1994 because I thought if I left it much longer, it would be too far out of date. I told a teacher I’d read it – Mr Caton – and he drilled me so horribly. In the end, he reckoned if I had read it, I’d gotten nothing out of it. And I know I was wrong on one score: it wasn’t about one time, but all time. Joe reckoned the same went for the Bible. Just ’cause it was written all those years ago – two thousand he put it at – doesn’t take a thing from what it has to say today. Not only does it speak the truth, he’d say, but the literal truth at that.
I got through my last stubbie, stood up and deposited the empties in a bin. We rolled over to the kiddies’ playground near the new museum (old museum now), which wasn’t far from our bench.
‘What if the Bible is all true, Joe? What then?’
Joe and I were hanging upside down, the blood pooling to our heads. (This was the closest Joe got to getting proper drunk!)
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Well, what would there be left to argue about?’
Joe’s shirt had untucked and fallen over his head. I saw a single tyre-tread of hair skidding down his middle, braking at the belt.
‘Nothing, I guess.’
I pulled myself up, so I could think better.
‘We’d just have that one book,’ I said, face still plum. ‘All the answers in that.’
Joe put his hands flat on the woodchip ground, then cart-wheeled sunny side up. ‘We could still make scientific discoveries, Sam. Work out how God made the universe.’
I tried cartwheeling down myself, but I didn’t land sunny side up – only scrambled.
‘Great!’ I said, pulling chips out of my hair. ‘That’d be like setting off to discover Australia today, not in Cook’s era.’
Joe ran up the slide.
‘Well, the Aborigines were here first.’
‘You know what I mean!’
I got up the slide the normal way, climbing the yellow ladder.
‘Nope, I reckon if the Bible’s right,’ I argued, ‘we’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to question. That’s it. End of learning.’
Joe looked back, chin on shoulder.
‘People will never follow the Bible properly, though, Sam. That’s why there’s been all this trouble with religion.’
‘I reckon it’s ’cause they have tried to follow it,’ I said, giving him what I hoped was a pointed look.
But Joe went slippering down the slide.
‘Head rush!’ he yelled when he got to the bottom, then he turned back to stare at me. ‘Shall we… ah, um, get more beer, Sam?’
And that began my time with Joe. For the next two months, we hung out practically all the time, even on those days we weren’t already thrown together at training and Saturday matches. Although I can’t say it was a totally happy time. I guess I wanted more than a friend. Arny came up quite a bit in my thoughts; my stupidity with all that really got to me. What if he’d been the one – the right one for me? I believed in ‘the one’. It occurred to me that I’d always believed in ‘the one’. I’m not sure if I arrived at that belief through books or my schooling or the views around me but it held firm. Someone to meet and then to spend the rest of my life with – that’s what I desired more than anything. The only part of my beliefs I’d changed was in swapping ‘the one’ from a girl to a guy. How many more times would I have to alter my dream till it shaped itself to reality?
What Joe and I did in our time together basically consisted of hitting the ball in the park, then a few beers in the pub. Joe and Kelly were still together, still dating, so nights were reserved for them.
One time in the pub, it suddenly got to me, this wrong step I’d taken with Joe. Not just a wrong step, but a step backwards. And that’s how I still viewed it. With Joe, I’d merely found someone to avoid life with. I was still stuck in kidland, home every night before dark.
‘You know, Joe, we’ve got the same routine,’ I said, flicking the plastic ashtray off the table. ‘Why don’t we really get drunk this time? So we can’t walk straight.’
I was taking a real shining to drinking. Because when you were drunk, you felt you might more easily work up the courage to jump at life’s possibilities. But hard drinking – and jumping at life – isn’t such fun on your own.
‘Come on, Joe?’
Joe turned from two dolled-up women on a nearby table who were gasping over him. ‘No, Sam.’
I looked down at that ashtray I’d flicked off: man overboard. The wood table rocked beneath my hands. The stupid thing had no sea-legs. My mouth suddenly felt like it had a ruler’s edge.
‘Joe, your parents are miles away – in the bloody sticks.’
Joe looked at me sharply. We’d discovered we both grew up in the country, not far from each other; in rural distances, that is.
‘What did you say that for, Sam? Why did you say that?’
‘You know, Joe, Tubby asked about us today at training.’
‘Us?’ he asked, alarmed.
He was right. There was no us.
‘I meant, about all the time you’re spending with a gay guy.’
Joe looked panicked.
‘Oh, well, what did you…? I mean, you didn’t tell him that I’m…? Sam…?’
I looked away, feeling mean. My little threat was pretty low-down and dirty. I took the two pieces of a cardboard coaster I’d torn and stuck them under a leg of the table. It stopped rocking after that.
Of course I wasn’t going to tell Joe’s secret.
Our next stop was the park, the same one where we’d hung out on the Q&A night. On the swings, I said it was getting late and one of us would turn into a pumpkin. And besides, weren’t Joe’s evenings reserved for Kelly? He said she had something on.
The conversation ended up the usual place: how I would go to hell. It amazed me that people still believed this stuff and, worse, that they still taught it.
‘No, I’m not planning on going to hell, Joe,’ I said firmly as I swung back and forth in the tyre, with its nasty wire hairs where the rubber had rubbed away. ‘Me and God,’ I continued, ‘we’ve got things to work through. He’s got a lot to answer for, that guy. Like why Australia lost to India in the Test match.’
Joe laughed a little, leaning back in the swing. With the sun now well and truly set, everything looked feathery and Joe was alive with moonshine. You could see it in his hair, nestling there. He was looking through his legs at the woodchips, which were practically black in the light, or for lack of the stuff. Actually, I don’t know that light’s stuff, exactly. I guess Joe could’ve put me right, being the one with a degree in physics.
Joe started swinging over that black patch. Only a ruler’s length swing, mind you, but swinging all the same, all the while looking down. I swung in time with him before grabbing the chain to his tyre.
‘It’s all right, Joe, we’ll tell God off together.’
I put my hand on his knee, the way Arny had put his on mine at that holiday shack. Like me back then, Joe’s body stiffened and he moved away.
‘Only the perfectly good and virtuous go to heaven, Sam.’ Joe stared at me with heartbreaking concern for my soul.
‘Then damn it, Joe, I’d rather go to hell and have company.’
And I laughed, but he didn’t. Humour doesn’t always work.
It was the early hours of the morning when we ended up at his place – only the second time I’d been invited there. I sat next to Joe on his bed and he kind of looked angles at me but I didn’t budge; I wasn’t sleeping on the floor. Joe put a couple of pillows between us as something of a Great Dividing Range. We got down to boxers and then Joe turned out the light. I was pretty tired, but I couldn’t sleep. My hand accidentally touched his shoulder but he shooed it away, mumbling something about getting the flyscreen fixed.
I thought back to that time at the shack when I invited Arny to share the couch bed with me. The current situation with Joe had similarities… disappointing similarities. Sleep came. You know when you’re asleep and you haven’t realised? Well, like that.
Sleep. Dreams.
And a thousand coconut castanets above.
I went to shoo the horses off the roof but Dad said they might stampede. All that red-righteous clay, clinkering to pieces – Mum wouldn’t be happy.
Horses on the roof…?
The sun was teasing the room gold. It’d worked its way under the blinds. I tried to roll away but I’d lain on one side too long; my arm was fizzy. I worked it round bowling-action-style till it went flat. Joe’s head popped up over the Great Wall of Pillow, and his face came over grey.
‘Sam?’ he asked, startled.
‘Nothing happened,’ I assured him wearily.
‘Oh,’ and he fell back on his side of the wall.
A bit later, we both woke up properly. The sun had called the room yeller.
Joe reached for an orange book on his side-table and started reading. It was To Kill a Mockingbird.
‘Is that one of your favourites, too?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Joe.
‘Then read it out loud.’ I was glad to know Joe read something other than the Bible.
He had a good voice. Very lively. Hopped along the words. Made me think of Mum reading to me, a chapter every night. I’d get into bed early, pull the doona up round my neck, breathing in that ironed smell of clean sheets and my damp hair. Used to shower nights, see, not mornings, and I’d leave my hair wet to take the heat out of my head. Only got a few minutes drenching, seeing we lived on a farm and water was scarce. I’d listen real hard. Mum’d finish the chapter and I’d beg for another. And another. I loved those stories. It was like you had two lives: the one you lived, which was pretty crappy, and the one in books – heaps better.
Mum once read To Kill a Mockingbird. It inspired me so much, we tried to take after it, with the dares and all, me and… well, my cat Zorro. (I’ll get to Zorro later.) I got so into that book that when it came to the end of the last page, I said, ‘Right, what happens next?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Mum.
‘Well, what happened after?’ I asked, pulling at her shirt.
Mum pulled away.
‘What happens to Scout an’ Jem an’ Boo an’ all the rest of ’em? I reckon Scout just had to’ve become a lawyer. Well, did she?’
Mum put the book down on my side-table and got up.
‘Sam, you know about this.’
‘But, Mum,’ I said. I’d half crawled out of the sheets.
‘Sam, stop playing.’
‘I’m not.’
‘She’s fictitious.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Made up.’
Now I’d known what ‘made up’ was, all right. Everyday, I’d make up something: that I’d done my homework, brushed my teeth, washed my face. But seriously, I’d make up other stuff. Those rocks – shaped like chairs – they were the Monument; that stand of blackberry bushes, that was the Amazon; and that old settler’s house, over the other side of the creek, next to the Chandlers’ – that was the Castle. But To Kill a Mockingbird wasn’t made up, none of it. It was more real, somehow, than what was. And to think Scout and Jem and Boo and the rest of them were fictitious… I ask you!
Mum insisted.
‘It’s just a story, Sam. When a story’s over, nothing happens next.’
To Kill a Mockingbird was the last story Mum ever read to me. Said I was old enough to read on my own after that. I hated her for ages. Reckoned she’d all but killed Scout just by getting to the end of that book. Scout couldn’t be dead – she couldn’t. I had gotten to know her – like she was a friend – and now she’d died. Mum had killed her.
‘You’ve killed her, Mummy! You’ve killed her!’
Dad came in. He and Mum looked at each other. Mum shrugged. I couldn’t stop saying it. Dad told me to stop yelling. ‘Do I have to take my belt off, son?’ – that kind of thing. He told me to lie down (I was sitting up) – to lie down and turn off my light. I wished he hadn’t told me to do something, because then I knew I wouldn’t. Dad stepped forward.
‘I won’t ask again.’
Mum stepped in. ‘Let’s just leave him, darling.’
‘I won’t ask again, Sam.’ And he didn’t – he backhanded me one. I lay down after that, the force kind of made me. They turned off my light and shut the door.
Only then did I cry. And cried and cried. Were you like that as a kid? I reckon I cried just about every night. Don’t know why. Must’ve been crying over something, I guess. Actually, I can remember some of it. Like, I’d cry over stupid stuff. Not even things that were real. Like I’d imagine Mum and Dad were dead. And I’d see myself at the funeral, and I’d be in black, but not crying, with all the teachers and kids looking at me different, somehow. Like I was strange, and the kids waiting till I’d found my seat in the classroom before they took theirs. And all this time I was make-believing, tears would tease their way out. There I was, under the blankets, with eyes shut like nail marks on your palms. I didn’t make a sound. Never have. And I always hoped Mum or Dad would come in one time and see. ’Cause that was about the only time I cried ever: nights. Not much good, then, I know. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t cry in front of anyone. Never. I just felt like… well, it’d be easier getting caught starkers. Besides, I didn’t want to be known as a sissy.
The one time one of ’em did come in – to close the window, I think (must’ve been raining) – I wiped my eyes so well they didn’t see. He didn’t see – Dad. Guess I knew I couldn’t explain it. The crying. That’s why I wiped the tears away. Hell, couldn’t explain them – then or now. Just wondered if any of you were like that, that’s all. Forget it.
But I got over Scout. Got over her enough to read that book again much later. To Kill a Mockingbird, I’m talking about now. Only, I had a bit of a problem with Atticus. For quite a long time, too. He annoyed me somehow. All right, I’ll be honest: he annoyed me something shocking, though I couldn’t see why. No one could. ‘But he’s so nice,’ they’d say. I almost felt bad for hating him. I couldn’t work it out for a long time, either, so I read the book again, wanting to like him, and finally saw something in him I could.
All the way through the book, Atticus does everything right. He’s the father of Jem and Scout and they live in this old American town. God knows where but it’s dusty, with swinging chairs on the front porches, guys with guns split over their knees like broken branches, that sort of thing. Anyhow, he’s just so right about everything, this Atticus. Like, there’s this time when a friend of Scout’s asks for treacle to put over his peas and beans. Well, that’s a pretty daft thing to do and Scout makes fun of it. Their housemaid, Calpurnia, tells her off after, and says the boy was her guest, don’t be rude, and if he wants to put treacle on savoury food then that his biz. When Scout complains to Atticus, Atticus backs up Calpurnia, one hundred per cent. Well, Atticus was right of course to do that. But that’s just what makes it all so sickening. I mean, he’s always right. And so-o-o nice. I mean, no one’s this nice, ever.
But the man’s saved, ’cause there’s this bit at the end where this guy’s killed. Mr Ewell, his name is. Real nasty piece of work: hates blacks, women; you name it.
Hell, I’m sure you all know the book inside out on account of everyone having to study it at school.
But just in case, maybe you live on Mars or something, I’ll continue. This Mr Ewell tries to attack Jem and Scout ’cause Atticus makes him look like dirt in court. Atticus shows it was Mr Ewell who raped his own daughter, not the black guy, not Tom. Atticus defends this innocent Tom guy but Tom gets convicted all the same – I don’t know, townsfolk soft in the head or something. Anyhow, even though this Mr Ewell gets off in court everyone still knows he’s really to blame. So that’s why Mr Ewell tries to kill Atticus’ kids – he has to get back at someone.
But there’s this other kid, Boo, who’s a bit of a mushroom on account of his never having seen the light and soft in the head like one too. And Boo saves the day by killing Mr Ewell with a knife. Up under Mr Ewell’s ribcage it goes, kaput.
So now this Boo guy, who’s really no more a nuisance than a mockingbird, will be up for murder.
Atticus starts going off: ‘I’ll defend him, won’t be easy, we can plead this, plead that, Defence Article three-two-seven’ – you get the idea. But the sheriff just says, ‘No, Atticus, Mr Ewell fell on his own knife.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Yes, he did,’ says the sheriff. ‘He fell on his own knife.’
Atticus hadn’t managed to save Tom, not by the law, and finally he sees he might not save Boo, not by the law anyhow. And that’s where I liked him, truly, for the first time. ’Cause he saw something. He saw you can’t do everything by the book.
Joe looked at me for a long time. His leg was on mine, half over it in fact. Somehow the great wall of pillow had been razed. He put down To Kill A Mockingbird.
‘For the first time, Sam,’ he said, ‘I feel… I feel passion! Such passion and desire!’
I was back in that room with a jolt, staring at Joe and nervous as hell. I somehow found courage to take his hand in mine, but half expected him to snatch it away. Instead, he blushed and laughed in about equal measure and got out of bed.
‘I should make us breakfast,’ he said.
Joe didn’t come back. Guess he expected me to eat breakfast at the table, but what about that talk of feeling lust for the first time? My stomach was in a flutter. Did he mean it? And if he did, did I return the feeling? I wrapped Joe’s dressing gown round me. Lydia was in the kitchen, cutting up carrots for juice. I said hello. She stared at me, then even harder at Joe’s dressing gown. Embarrassed, I asked if she’d gotten a good sleep. She asked me back, quite pointedly.
‘Didn’t get to sleep till six,’ I said.
Lydia stared at me. ‘What time did you get in?’ she asked.
‘Oh, ever so late. 5 o’clock maybe.’
Lydia eyeballed me. ‘I heard you come in at four.’
‘Oh.’
We both just stood there.
Well, I’d added on an hour. You know how you do. A night out, you always beef it up. But I reckon it was that by the time we’d gotten home from the park and gone to sleep.
Lydia looked at Joe’s bedroom door where I’d just come from and then at me.
‘You’re obviously not one of Joe’s “cured” friends,’ she said.
She was sure sounding jealous. Then I remembered: at the ice-skating rink, Joe said Lydia had ‘a thing’ for him too. Too! Did Ihave a ‘thing’ for Joe? Lydia averted her face then turned on the blender. The sound cut up the room, piecemeal. Noise is a weapon.
Joe was in the backyard, sitting in a wicker chair, looking happy. I sat next to him in a chair that had the bum worn out of it. Joe turned to me. I was still in a torment over this new ‘passion’ he felt, but Joe had something else on his mind.
That ‘something’ emerged through the side gate, red hair right royal.
‘I invited Kelly over, Sam, this morning when you were… ah, um, before you got here.’
I didn’t correct his lie. He must’ve rung Kelly while I was waiting for that breakfast. ‘Passion’ and he rings Kelly?
‘We need a drink,’ said Joe.
Unlike at the pub, he didn’t mean the alcoholic kind.
When we went into the kitchen, Lydia was waiting at the fridge like a cat. She said she was taking a permanent break from working on Untitled Number 372 to fix herself a cuppa. That meant we were all four crowded into the kitchen, trying to fix ourselves drinks: Joe and Kelly their hot chocolates, me a strong coffee and Lydia some exotic herbal tea. Then it was musical chairs for young and… well, young. Me and Lydia went to sit next to Joe on the two-seater, but Kelly got in first and trumped us both. I could see Lydia straighten her neck, emu-like, at this – probably as confused as I was. First she thought Joe and I were getting it on, now it looked like it would be Joe and Kelly.
That was certainly looking pretty likely, with Kelly rubbing against Joe on the two-seater. Somehow, it made me think of our old goat back on the farm, rubbing against the barbwire fence to alleviate an itch. At his favourite spot for that, the fence ended up a bit of a clothesline with all these mini wool jumpers hanging from it, pegged at intervals.
I guess all animals are enterprising creatures, no matter the species.
We each sipped in slurpitude.
Joe sprang that it was time for Bible studies. Lydia huffed but Kelly leapt off the two-seater, saying she’d join him. Joe looked surprised and happy. Obviously it was the first time she’d offered. That Kelly was pretty damn committed to the cause. I could tell even Lydia was impressed in her own, grudging way.
‘Can we tempt you as well, Sam?’ asked Joe, beaming.
After all, he now had a convert to his name. I wasn’t about to give him a second.
‘Prob’ly burn in my hands, Joe.’
The two disappeared into Joe’s room to get ready. The two-seater was now empty but neither Lydia nor I sat down. I noticed her cup. In bold black: ‘Don’t be a mug – pray to Jesus’. Lydia blew so hard on her herbal tea it would cool in no time. Geez, she was taking it hard.
‘Hey, Lydia – ’
‘Quiet!’ she hissed.
Joe and Kelly were making funny noises in Joe’s room. Eventually, they put on the radio. Lydia and I stared at each other. I’m sure my expression was as strange as hers. I kept telling myself to leave. Too late, Joe and Kelly emerged from their room, flushed and sweaty. They were standing close. Very close.
So that was the outcome of his feeling, for the first time, ‘such passion and desire’.
‘Good news, Sam, Lydia,’ said Joe.
‘What?’ asked Lydia tartly.
‘Kelly and I are getting married.’
‘True love has stopped waiting!’ shouted Kelly.
She and Joe certainly looked happy. I felt tricked – again! Lydia told them they were too young, but I simply congratulated them. Joe took my hand heartily enough but didn’t quite look me in the eye. Again, I thought of Winston from 1984, trying to pick out others ‘like him’. Joe wasn’t ‘like me’. I hurried home to my room over the pub.
I’m ashamed to say I became almost bedridden for the next few weeks, apart from training and matches. My ventures into society in Melbourne had been fairly disastrous. Cabin fever eventually forced me out of one enclosure, my room, and into another, the library. There, at least, I could read up on my new life. Trying to sandwich about ten gay-themed books between a John Grisham and a Thomas Harris, I approached the loans desk.
My librarian was onto me.
‘Do you really want these two?’ she asked.
Her name was Jen. Sussed that out from her nametag. She called me Sam, obviously from my card. Quite spontaneously, I told Jen I was gay.
‘I know,’ she said.
There was something familiar about those blue-rimmed glasses.
‘Hey, haven’t we met somewhere before?’
As soon as I said it, it sounded like the worst pick-up line ever. Sending mixed messages! What was I doing? But Jen didn’t take it the wrong way.
‘Yes, Sam,’ she said, ‘we have met before. At the ice-skating rink.’
She was having a pretty quiet day, she said, so we ended up having a good talk about places she’d hang. Turned out she was single and looking for the right gal. That made me think: I was single and looking for the right guy. But she beat me to it.
‘Maybe we could hit the clubs together,’ she suggested.
Life was starting!
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