My brother Ashleigh rang, laying guilt on me about Mum and Dad. He’d called the pub direct.
‘Hey, Sam, come back. You can stay with me and Tarlia if you want.’
Wally was watching from behind the counter. I told Ashleigh about that night at Dirk’s, but in whispers, half-twisting the phone cord around myself to get some privacy from Wally, who eventually got the hint. Then he started collecting bottles, adding another distraction.
‘Yeah, well, Dirk can be like that,’ I heard Ashleigh say between clinks. ‘But, Sam, that’s Dirk’s life, telling jokes. We had it harder than you. By the time you’d come along and wanted to be a batsman, Mum and Dad didn’t say a word about a “sensible” career.’
Dirk had been a good wicketkeeper, but Dad insisted he finish his mechanic’s apprenticeship. Dirk still listened to the cricket, working under the cars.
‘And what about me? I can’t even catch,’ laughed Ashleigh.
Ashleigh was as crap in the field as on the pitch. He’d lucked out there.
‘Mum and Dad are coming round. People get worn down by life, Sam.’
Perhaps being worn down was a good thing. It made you rounder, smoother. Wally walked back in, dumped the bin, and resumed his place behind the counter. He made a show of busying himself with checking the levels of the spirits.
‘Tarlia’s made up the bed in the spare room for you, Sam. I know what it’s like staying with your parents once you’ve moved out.’
Ashleigh had moved in and out of Mum and Dad’s quite a number of times; finding a job was tough.
‘Thanks, Ash,’ I said, moved by how supportive he was being. ‘But I need to make my own way for a while.’
Tarlia came on the line.
‘Next time we come down to Melbourne, Sam,’ she said, ‘we could go to a gay bar. It’s so nice to dance without being hit on.’
We wrapped up the conversation and I handed the phone back to Wally.
‘Who’s coming down?’ he asked.
I dropped by the library. In the past weeks, Jen and I had become good friends, planning our assault on the town. When Jen got a break from helping customers, she came over to the seat where I was reading. She was wearing a suit. Instead of the blue glasses, black.
‘Guess what?’
I shrugged.
‘I’ve got you a date for Friday.’
I grinned.
‘If it doesn’t work out romantically, Sam, you can still be friends.’
I didn’t hear her. Friends? To me, it was a date. Couldn’t stay cut up over Arny. And Joe? He’d made his choice. This time I wouldn’t miss my chance.
On the Thursday, Jen got me to try on about a zillion outfits up and down Chapel Street. Had to spruce up, she said. No more tracksuit dagginess, baggy green caps, any of that cricket casualness. Nup. Tight-fitting stuff from now on. Sleeves cut off just past your shoulders, not billowing out like dresses over your elbows. That’s all right if you’ve got muscle to give your shirt shape, not ribs like me, your skin pushing against them like sails. I felt like a bit of a nong at first, staring into the shop mirrors. Afterwards, I even had my hair cut. Short’s the go in this scene, too, apparently.
‘What about a piercing, Sam?’
I baulked at that.
‘Through the eyebrow?’
‘Nah.’
‘The ear?’
‘Nah.’
‘A bolt…?’
‘Oh all right,’ I said. Bloody hurt but it was cool, I guess. Jen said so.
So that was me decked out.
A date!
Now I know you’re going to think me pretty daft, but all the way to the restaurant the next day, off to meet my blind date, I kept thinking over the night. The night to go, I should point out. Yeah, I know, pretty dumb. I mean, you can’t think over a night till it’s happened but some of us are daft enough to try. Maybe you’ve done the same so you won’t be judging me too harshly. I’d seen how me and my date just sat and talked, the deepest stuff, for ever so long. Oh, I don’t know, but on and on, the candle lights linking together in streamers. Then the walk home, the goodbyes outside the door, and the kiss, lips polishing lips. The only boy I’d ever kissed before was Any… But I had to put him out of my head.
No, the new guy – he was ‘the one’.
I was getting pretty mushy on this sop when I got to the door of the restaurant. When I walked in, there he was, sitting by the window like Jen had said he’d be.
‘Sam…?’
And he put out his hand.
Hello, I thought, you’d go down like a good claret.
And he said his name Jen had already told me.
‘Zane.’
Zane ordered from a woman who, from the looks of it, moved on tracks. She just seemed to glide by.
‘That was the maitre d’,’ said Zane. ‘I call her The Stopwatch. She times just how long you take to give your order. Sammy, you were taking far – far – too long. If I hadn’t jumped in there and saved you, darling… well, you never know what. She might’ve ticked you off.’
And he tucked his great big serviette into his collar.
I was a bit taken aback by the flamboyance. I almost wanted to leave, but stopped myself. I couldn’t run again. Besides, his manliness, or lack of it, didn’t reflect on me now, did it?
I decided to be chuffed with his talk, the use of ‘darling’ – okay, maybe he said that to everyone – but the overall chumminess, anyhow. And he called me Sammy, too, which I’d never liked till Arny had called me Sammy. Yes, everything was as it should be, ’cept there weren’t any candles, of course, still being daylight and all. Hell, I wasn’t going to let myself get too fussy.
Out came our meals and we got stuck into them. Zane had ordered us a treat – eye fillet, medium rare.
I kept looking at Zane, tearing and munching the meat, the blood making his teeth pink. I must say, he looked at his food almost lovingly, which was fair enough – meat’s meat – but boy, was Zane something to look at himself. He had the longest lashes, black like a match gets after the flame’s gone out, skin browner than barley sugar and … and twice as sweet, I’d say. You wouldn’t say he was tubby but he was, well, thick. His arms were thick, his hands were thick, even his fingers were thick, right down to the tips. Hell, thick elsewhere too, I guess.
So nice not to have to curb a thought.
All that closeness with Joe, our time together, that night sharing a bed – in truth, I didn’t have any other thought.
Zane must have known I was watching ’cause he looked up, trying to chew down a mouthful too big, pushing a boomerang of onion all the way in with the back of his knife, so he cold get his words out.
‘I’m just a tubby bitch, that’s all I am, Sammy.’
I was a bit shocked. I was about to say, no, I wasn’t looking at you… I mean, I was, but not at you eating specifically… I just meant…’ when he jumped in first.
‘Sammy,’ he said, leaning forward, cleaning the corners of his mouth with the napkin, ‘on weekdays I’m nothing. At work, I’m ambiguity itself. Meek as a mouse. But on weekends? On weekends I’m a faggot. Ferociously.’
Hell, how would I catch up? Zane was way out in front in this game. He even wore a shimmering chain round his neck. Couldn’t pick its origin, but it was pretty flash. Sexy as hell. I felt round my neck. Just skin. I’d never worn a necklace. Bugger that. I mean, they were for… for…
Well, ‘poofters’.
So all in all, with Zane sitting there, groomed more immaculately than a dog at a doggy sideshow, I felt pretty normal all up – downright conventional, ‘one of the guys’.
‘Conventional?’ screamed Zane when I put this to him. ‘Darling, I hate to lift the bridal veil from your eyes, but you’re homa-sex-u-arl. There’s nothing conventional about being gay.’
I smiled. Homa-sex-u-arl – he even gave that word a tasty tang.
A clatter at the door – a woman was trying to get her pram through. I got up to help when the maitre d’ cut me off with her sawtooth hair.
‘Breeders,’ said Zane, pouring the wine. ‘Can’t they fuck off? This is a gay restaurant.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Breeders,’ said Zane. ‘Hetero trash.’
I looked over to the woman with the pram. She was trying to wheel it to a table. No one moved out of the way. I thought of Ashleigh and his fiancée, Tarlia, soon to have a kid, and… well…
‘Don’t you have straight friends?’ I asked Zane.
‘In orientation, yes. Not in outlook. Like I said, I’m only straight during the week. At work.’
I looked around. How could a restaurant be gay? I mean, that’s like saying ‘gay tyre’ or ‘gay pencil sharpener’.
I put some of this to Zane, not so well as all that (or as badly, you’re probably thinking) but this is what he answered: ‘You really are a novice, Sammy. I’ll have fun breaking you in,’ and he took a slurp of the red. I spluttered mine, that echidna in my stomach unfurling. This wasn’t Arny, or even Joe, but I’d stick with it.
Zane went on to talk about how everything he did was gay in some way. ‘Except work, of course.’ He kept throwing that in.
Well, I’m not too bright. Abstract stuff – I’m no good at it. So I asked him to give me an example.
‘All right, my wuff twade,’ he laughed, ‘I’ll outline my day for you.’
And he went on to tell how in the mornings he’d nip over to the Prahran Pool – notoriously gay (that was his word) for a dip and a squiz. Then it would be the whole big breakfast thing: eggs, bacon, tomatoes, at Fresh, the gayest gay eatery in town. Then work. That word again, which he’d always lip-synch. (I’d have to sing it in my head to hear it at all). For lunch, he’d duck out to feast maybe at Geralto’s, run by the Gay Supremo, Costa, or even the place where we were now, Settee, with the StopWatch, a biker dyke if you’ve ever seen one. I gave her a look. Hell, I hadn’t even picked she was a dyke let alone what brand. This Zane was in. The In Zane, as he said it. He went on to talk about his gay gym after work, then the men’s bars, the gay nightclubs. Hell, you could spend all your life in a gay world.
It was kind of entertaining and all, and nice of Zane to fill me in, though I reckon he enjoyed it something shocking, but it was also a bit sad somehow, like an old lady dancing with a teddy bear. I didn’t know why, exactly. It just was, that’s all.
And I wondered if it made me sad because I was worried this was to be my life.
Zane slurped his wine. When a bit sortied his shirt, he said sorry but he just had to refuel after all that gasbagging. Then Isaid something – something I didn’t mean to – but it just popped out.
‘I don’t wanna be gay all the time.’
Zane looked up.
‘Sorry, darling?’
‘Well, I mean…’
‘I hate to shatter your illusions, girly, but you are gay, now and always. Well, not unless Jen’s given me a bum steer.’
I shook my head. I could see him looking around, trying to locate the waitress. Hell, maybe I’d gone on a bit too much with all this. I’d said enough, and now I was boring him. Sam, Sam, you’re spoiling it, I thought, but… well… So I said, ‘Zane, sometimes I’m Sam just riding a bike, or Sam playing cricket.’
Zane stopped waving for the waitress and turned around to face me.
‘Oh yes, but you’re always gay, darling,’ he said. ‘They don’t forget that.’
And I saw what he meant. But at the same time, I sort of also didn’t see. If you can do both, that is. I was just going to be Sam, who also happened to be gay. You know, the way straight people might also happen to be hydro-geologists.
But was being gay more than just who you wanted to have sex with? One of the books Jen put me onto at the library was by a celibate priest who still felt the need to out himself.
I tried to order. The maitre d’ looked away.
‘Don’t fret, Sammy,’ said Zane. ‘The Stopwatch will notice me. Everyone notices me. Here, watch this. She’ll give meservice, darling. The royal treatment.’
The waitress walked over to a bald man.
‘Oh, look at that fat queen,’ cried Zane. ‘Probably, secretly, a leather man. Oh baby, baby, beat me, I’ve been baaaad!’
And he accentuated the ‘a’ in bad, dragged it like a sack along a highway.
‘I don’t think people notice me much,’ I said as the waitress finally looked over in a seagull sort of way.
‘Oh, come now, darling,’ said Zane, ‘you’re not that bad-looking,’ and he scanned for the waitress.
Just great! There I was, self-deprecation. No one gets off on modesty. So I thought, I’ll make it into a joke. I kind of had to tap the table a bit before he stopped looking around for the waitress. Then I hosed my throat with the red.
‘Zane,’ I said, ‘people really don’t notice me. I mean, people have sat down and said, “Oh sorry, I didn’t know you were there.” ’
Zane said nothing.
Shit.
Fuck.
I’d done it again! Could’ve hit myself. Self-deprecation a second time! I’m such a moron, I know it. But then the impossible happened. The joke got through. Zane actually laughed.
At least he knew I had a sense of humour, even if it was lame. Before, he must’ve wondered if I wasn’t as sharp as a sponge.
Keep with it, Sam.
‘That’s Sammy’s street sculpture,’ said Zane, re-tucking his napkin. ‘Living sculpture at the tram stop. You pretend to be a seat. “Come sit on me, come sit, come sit awaaay.” ’
Hell, he was even going with it now, adding his own twist.
‘We know how you get your jollies,’ he added.
We both laughed. The other customers smiled. Zane’s laugh came out like a dessert wine, mine a breathless whisky. But then Zane stopped, mid-guffaw.
‘You’re very heterosexual, Sammy.’
‘What…?’ I’d stopped too.
The way you carry yourself… laugh,’ said Zane. ‘You’ve got to suppress those heterosexual urges.’
‘What…? I…?’
And I groped about. Like the only light on the moors had gone off. A house snuffed into darkness.
Zane must have sensed it, ’cause he said, ‘Oh, Sam, don’t listen to me,’ and he leant across and patted my hand. ‘I’m just a silly Sally, Sam. Aren’t I a silly Sally?’
And he smiled. He’d found a torch, spotlighted the way. I guess I was proud of being a regular guy, but did being a regular guy make me a bore? Jen had completely altered my wardrobe and hinted that my old outfits were pretty daggy.
Zane had let his hand rest on mine. Here I was, doing something I’d put out of my mind for so long. Hadn’t even acknowledged, except in dreams, and you can’t help those. But now here it was, for real. I was out, on a date, with a man! I wanted to say something to Zane, tell him thanks, what it meant, and I was just about to, honest, when … well … his hand shot away.
‘Look at that!’ he cried.
‘What?’
I looked about. I couldn’t see anything.
‘My God, I’m going to be sick.’
‘What?’
Zane stared at me.
‘That bitch’s hair, that’s what.’
‘Who?’
‘The breeder with the baby.’
She was now visible through the gap the leather queen had made.
‘Really,’ said Zane, ‘the blow-wave look. That went out with Tina Turner. Hideous.’
And he picked at his tongue, like he’d half-swallowed a hair.
After the bill had been asked for and paid, we sallied on over to Zane’s joint. It was the swankest apartment you ever saw. Real precise and geometric like the insides of a computer. I couldn’t see a single sock lying about or even a plate left unwashed. Zane buzzed about this metallic vase on his mantelpiece for ages. Muttering something about how harmless I looked, he finally reached into the vase and pulled out a letter. Pretty odd place to store correspondence, I thought, but then he said: ‘Want some Charlie?’
For a sec, I thought he meant Charles Acton-Heath. But he couldn’t. I hadn’t mentioned him to Jen, and she was the only connection. I decided to play it safe.
‘Who’s he?’ I asked.
Zane laughed, patting the envelope.
‘Darling, you really are a novice.’
Charlie was the envelope? Or in it? Zane pointed to the stereo. When I did nothing, he pointed twice. It took me a bit to get his meaning, but finally I sauntered on over. He had a stereo like the cockpit of the USS Enterprise, it was that flashy. He told me to put on some easy beats: the soft-serve sounds of Air. It was like nothing I’d heard before. ‘Loungey’ was Zane’s word for it. After all that pub rock back home, this was a revelation – liquid beauty steamed into sound.
Zane slapped a porcelain ashtray in the microwave.
He showed me what was in the envelope, and who this Charlie feller was.
‘He’s A-Grade stuff, Sam,’ said Zane. ‘Two-twenty a g, darling. Mates rates.’
That fairly blew me. I mean, I knew what a g of dope went for (through Cinders, of course), but this was off the scale. I looked in my pockets for cash. Zane waved me away. He’d done the same over dinner.
He set the microwave: half a min’. When it lit up, it was like there was this room within a room all of a sudden. Then it beeped out, leaving us in the half-light. Zane didn’t wait the five secs’, but flicked the door open, clanking the ashtray down on the marble bench, then dump-trucked the Charlie. It made a snowdrift.
He must’ve seen I was watching edgeways ’cause then he said, ‘Easier to spread, darling, if the dish is warm.’
He cut the powder with a razor blade – tiny guillotine slices.
‘Good for twenty-four lines, that,’ said Zane. ‘Twelve each.’
He opened his wallet. Plastic popped out, concertina-style. Zane half slipped out his Visa, but stopped and laughed, sliding it back into its sleeve, divvying the powder with the blade instead. But he went that other cliché, rolling up a five-buck note. Zane did the first line, then held up the fiver to me.
Oh well, here goes.
And I did the second.
Then it hit.
A vanilla essence tang, shooting up my nose like I’d pin-dropped into ice-cream, a creeping down the back of the throat, a Snuffalufagus snorting, but in instead of out. We fingered the paper envelope and rubbed the last of the piss-yellow specks on our gums, getting a numb-gum dentist feel, lips like a horse’s, but with a vibrato buzz.
Tasted like a punch in the nose. Metallic nasty.
‘Now, Sam,’ said Zane, splashing the finest crystal water on his face, fooling into the bevel-edge mirror, ‘time for an E.’
‘E?’
‘Ecstasy.’
Ecstasy? Hell, I hadn’t tried drugs before. The odd beer. More than the odd beer lately. But now an E on top of coke? Zane whisked out a white pill.
‘Swallow,’ and he gave me a brandy chaser to wash it down.
I asked what was in it.
‘Ketamine. Good for stallions. Good for you.’
I slapped down into this black couch, which was having its own pillow fight, it had that many cushions, and cased the place from comfort. Something was odd, only it took me a bit to work it out. Then it clicked. There wasn’t a single photo in the whole place. Not one. All this artwork, yeah, but no photos. Jen said Zane was from New Zealand, so you’d think he’d have brought something with him. Maybe even some trashy picture of a peak in Wellington. But nope, not a thing.
He’d done well to hide his accent. I wondered if that was something he’d had to work at, or whether it fell away naturally.
I don’t know why, but I tried to ask him about his parents (guess my own were figuring on my mind), but he said he didn’t have any. Hell, everyone does. He grabbed my arms, lifting me up to dance. But I wanted to nail this New Zealand thing. Zane muttered something about the type that gets talkative on E’s. Just his luck.
I fell on his bed and pulled a pillow under my head. There was so much, shaken beer-like, I had to say. Zane changed the beats to WagonChrist, another education in sound. The mood flipped, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Zane’s parents. There I go again, you see. Like thinking over this night before it happened, I was thinking about Zane’s folks without ever having met them. But I was thinking about them all the same, wondering if somewhere over there, in their house, they had a picture of Zane, on a dresser, maybe. And even things lying about: unpaid bills magnetised to the fridge, washing up undone … All I knew was that I had to express myself somehow… To talk. More than I’d ever wanted to before. Was it the coke, the E, both?
‘Zane,’ I said, ‘don’t you think it makes you care more?’
Zane stopped dancing.
‘What?’
I sat up on his bed.
‘I mean, all this time in the closet, you’re hearing stuff that’s hurting you. Even if you don’t know why exactly, it makes you think about what you say, and how it might hurt others.’
All those times hanging out with Dirk and his mates, rubbishing homosexuals, even though I hadn’t even considered myself gay, I never joined in. Well, except for that day at school, teasing Carl.
I could see Zane staring out the window, sipping some banana smoothie cocktail he’d fixed for himself. I tried again.
‘It does make you care more… don’t you think… Zane, please?’
Zane licked away his pencil-thin mo of foam and leaned forward.
‘That might have been the case for you, Sammy boy, but not for everyone. Gay people come out when they no longer care. While they do care, they can’t. Not caring is the stage they have to reach. They don’t care about themselves, they don’t care about their parents, their friends, society. Every gay person starts their gay life not caring. And why the fuck should they?’
‘Yes, but – ’
Zane cut me off.
‘You sure you’re out?’
The mood passed. I forgot what I was thinking about. All I could see was that I was spoiling things. Get this moment, Sam, this – while it’s happening. Zane’s actually angry, idiot!
‘Sammy, darling, enjoy your sexuality while it’s still novel. In only a few years, there’ll be shows on those commercial channels where the aim is to pick “straights” from “gays”.’
‘No way!’ I spluttered.
‘Capitalism was always going to ensure our liberation. There is money in the pink dollar.’
Zane proffered a hand.
Dancing scared me but I took his arm. Go with it, Sam. Get dancing.
So I stood up. Zane got in close, moving to the beat with me, but I was out of step. I couldn’t – could never – get any rhythm. Zane turned off the music and went back to the window.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m just going to hang my cock out the window. Let’s face it, it’s the only way I’ll get some action.’
I moved to the door. Did he have to move so fast?
‘Relax,’ said Zane, ‘I’ll pack a cone. Want one?’
Dope on top of coke and an E? He pulled an envelope from another vase, this one filled with bud. (I could tell marijuana when I saw it from watching Cinders roll countless joints.) As Zane chopped the leaf, mixing it with tobacco, I started to see his hands as Arny’s hands, his arms as Arny’s arms, Arny’s face as his. Then Arny, in full, by the fire, toasting the sides of the burger with a fork.
Which he’d toasted to perfection, if I remember right. Pretty good, that, considering what he had to work with. A crackling fire and a bent fork. He’d rolled it round, making sure it was just right.
I remembered how I couldn’t do anything but eat it. Even with those cricket mates sitting around, their noses in the air like they’d sniffed something was up. And how it was actually really good. I could see the others looking at me. He was looking at me: Arny. Rather than lean back, he leant forward, head tilted up.
And then those words later, the two of us alone, in the shed, where the light pierced the boards.
‘Nobody’s Sam, don’t you want to be somebody’s Sam?’ he asked.
And then the killer.
‘Maybe even… Arny’s Sam?’
‘Arny,’ I yelled, ‘you’ve got it wrong, I’m not a… I’m not…’
But I am. And that thing I’d wanted to say. ‘Yes, I do! Sam’s Arny, yes I do.’
‘Sam.’
‘Yes!’
‘Sam!’
‘What?’ I looked about. Zane had finished packing the bong.
‘Toke this.’
And he passed me a bong shaped like a cock. He laughed when I tried to draw it in and nothing happened. He showed me where to put my thumb over the hole. I sucked till my mind condensed to white.
Toco Productions 