CHAPTER 4
Bradford
It’s so peaceful lying here in the dead of night. The moonlight dances through the gap in the curtains, casting an ethereal glow around the room. The air conditioner gives a comforting hum, its steady stream of coolness allowing me to sink into Bruno. His breathing is slow and even against my neck. I could fall asleep, but I want to be present for every moment of this.
“It’s a decent size,” mumbles Bruno.
“Sorry?”
He gives a barely audible laugh, sliding his hand down to cup my dick and balls. “Well, this is a given. But I was talking about the room. I’m just noticing how much you’ve got in here.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, the big bedrooms in this place kinda make up for the small dark living room.”
Bruno raises his head slightly. “The piano, for instance.”
My piano . There’s a story there. “I’ve had it since I was a kid. My dad left it for me when he shot through. The last nice thing he did, really.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, mate.” Bruno relinquishes his hold on my crown jewels, raking his fingers through my chest hair and planting a kiss on my neck. “It must have been hard on you.”
“He wasn’t all bad. He was a music teacher and gave me piano lessons from the time I was old enough to understand. But when I turned ten he ran away with one of his postgrad students. Took off up north and started a new family as far as I know. Hardly ever heard from him after that.”
“Oh, geez, that’s just awful.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Ancient history. Anyway, I kept playing. Mum was adamant I shouldn’t lose my skills. She scrimped and saved and I continued having lessons with other teachers. By the time I was in my mid-teens I was teaching my own piano students. So, when I eventually took up singing lessons I was able to pay for them myself.”
“Gee, you’re so talented. Do you still play? I mean, with your sight, you know…” His voice trails off. I can hear the uncertainty in it. It’s incredibly sweet.
“I can play stuff by ear or things I remember, but I tend to mess them up. Piano playing is all about muscle memory, but you still use your eyes. Of course, I can’t see a music score anymore.” I know what comes next here. I’ve had these questions many times over recent years. “I mean, we all know there are world-class musicians like Stevie Wonder who have no trouble. But he’s learnt that way all his life. And the kind of music he plays is heavily improvised. Classical scores are full of intricate notation and precise directions.”
“It should be different with opera though, shouldn’t it? I mean, your voice is part of your body.”
“Sure. But you’ve got a ton of other things to follow. You’ve got the music notes and all the markings. Then you’ve got the lyrics running underneath and they’re mostly in Italian, German or French. And underneath all of that you have the other singers’ vocal lines and the orchestral accompaniment which you also have to follow.
“Then, you have to add in dramatic and musical interpretation. On top of that, you’re wrestling with vocal technique and voice production. Then, when you’ve learnt the music and you start doing stage rehearsals, you need to think about movement and the physicalities of acting.”
I feel like I’m rambling, but there’s no short version here and I don’t want him to think I’m some kind of self-pitying cop-out. “So, that chapter of my life is now pretty much over since I lost the sight. I mean, I could sit down and memorise a score if it was blown up to a large enough size. But running around onstage and climbing up and down rickety scenery is out of the question.”
“Oh. That’s such a shame. I loved hearing you sing.” Bruno snuggles in closer, his beard caressing my pectoral, his belly pressing against my hip.
“You’re gonna make me start blushing now.” I nudge him with my shoulder. “I haven’t given up on music entirely. I’ve done a few concerts, things where I could stand with other soloists in front of an orchestra. And I still do some part-time online teaching.” I gesture towards my desk against the opposite wall, with my laptop and massive fifty-inch TV monitor. “This spare room is actually my study.”
I’m tired of dominating this conversation. I never want to look like one of those people who goes on about themselves non-stop. What I do want is to know every detail of Bruno’s life. I’m fascinated, but I would hate to look like I’m prying. No, bugger that. It’s worth showing him that I’m interested . “Anyway, Bru, that’s enough about me. I wanna hear about you now.” Bruno gazes up at me, eyebrows raised. I fix him with my cockiest grin. That oughta manipulate him.
He shuffles around a bit, bending his elbow and propping his head on his hand. “This is where I tell you how boring my life is by comparison.” His dark eyes twinkle as he grins back at me. The creases at their outside edges are beautiful—the true mark of a man who’s lived a life of happiness. “Grew up in Maroubra, not too far from the beach. My parents are still together, still in the same home they bought over fifty years ago. My only sibling is the twin sister I mentioned, and she lives with her family just a couple of blocks from mum and dad. She and I go over and help them out when we can. They’re getting on a bit and they have a few health issues.”
“So, you live near there too?”
“Not far. Brendan and I bought an apartment in Randwick in the noughties when the prices weren’t so insane. We definitely wouldn’t be able to afford it these days. It’s great, because I work at Prince of Wales Hospital and I can walk there.”
I study Bruno’s face. It’s bizarre to think that he and I have lived within a few suburbs of each other for so many years, yet our paths have never crossed till now. But then, I’m not exactly a social butterfly. We’re also both ensconced in our respective domestic situations. Maybe it’s not so inconceivable in this big old city.
“Psych nursing,” he says, answering a question I’ve been too distracted to ask. “I was in management for ages. These days I just work in the casual nursing pool. Less stress, better penalty rates and I can pick and choose the shifts I feel like doing.”
I take in the scope of the hefty man pressed alongside my body. “Bet there aren’t many psych patients willing to take you on.”
“Oh, believe me, they try.”
“That’s what Jarrod does. Casual and agency nursing. I don’t ever know about his schedule. He comes and goes, works when he wants to.”
Bruno just looks at me quietly, a slight smile on his face. I regret bringing up Jarrod’s name immediately. Jesus, what the hell was I thinking? Have I gone and destroyed this blissful little bubble we’ve been in? He’s probably trying to work out how to execute his escape right now.
“Who’s that?” Bruno says. I follow his finger to see it pointing towards the photo on top of my piano. “May I?”
He’s already shuffling off the sofa bed, making his way over to it. I’m far too mesmerised by my first real look at his naked backside to think of answering. I mean, yeah, we’ve just been all over each other close up, but there’s something truly magical about watching a sexy naked man walk away. Bruno turns and comes back towards me, showing me his other side. I can feel a stirring in my loins again already. I’m kinda chuffed at my stamina, till I remember the half a Cialis I swallowed before going out earlier tonight.
Sitting down on the edge of the sofa bed beside me, he tilts the photo my way, but he needn’t bother. I know that picture like the back of my hand. “That’s me at seventeen, my sister Summer when she was four, and our mum.”
“Such a cute little kid! She’s much darker than the two of you.”
“Yeah, we have different dads.”
“And your mum looks so lovely.”
“You’re right, she was.”
Bruno glances sideways, hesitating. “Oh. Is she no longer with us?” He screws his eyes up and chuckles nervously. “Sorry, I’m being nosy.”
“No, not at all. She was a real saint. Worked her fingers to the bone to make sure we had a good life. Finally got to retirement age and died of cancer not long after.” The painful memories of my mother’s slow demise aren’t something I want to entertain right now. Coming back from Germany to look on helplessly as she slipped away from me. Barely able to comprehend the grief before I was plunged into permanent near-blindness. Somehow, I made it through. Maybe I’m stronger. Or maybe I’m delusional. Maybe I’ve just buried it all. In any case, I’m not about to start digging to find out.
Bruno reaches across and starts stroking the fur on my belly, still studying the picture. I admire his discretion. He’s sensitive enough to know that no further words are needed, but his physical caress tells me everything he wants to say in a much gentler way. “You were just as handsome back then, Bradford. I’ll bet you were popular.”
I want to laugh bitterly at this, but I dare say it wouldn’t be appropriate right now. “Thanks, but that wasn’t the case. I was right down near the bottom of the barrel. The boring little boy who hung out with the geeks and misfits. The kid who got called ‘poofter’ and ‘homo’ long before he even knew what it meant.”
Bruno looks surprised. “Really? Why would they say shit like that to you?”
“I dunno. I don’t recall being flamboyant or anything. It’s like they were just generic insults. Boys who play piano instead of rugby do tend to cop it, though.” I’m starting to sound really negative and I don’t like the impression I’m giving off. I need to paint myself in a better light. “I suppose other kids had it much worse than I did. I’d see them getting bullied badly. New kids, kids who were a bit different. It used to really upset me to see them all alone at lunchtime and I’d always try to befriend them. But, sooner or later they’d see my kindness as weakness. Work their way up the food chain, then they’d be the ones calling me ‘faggot’ whenever they saw me.”
Jesus, Bradford! How the hell did we get here? I’m desperate to change the course of this conversation. My childhood wasn’t peaches and cream. So much of it, I hated. It was something I was glad to be rid of.
“I’m sure you had a ton of attention when you got to this age, though.” Bruno holds up the photo slightly. His eyes are fixed on mine and they radiate warmth and compassion.
I so dearly want to tell him something positive and affirming, but I can’t lie—it’s just not in my nature. I decide to colour my response with as genuine a smile as I can muster. Bruno’s generosity deserves that much. “I’ve always been a short guy with a baby face. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I looked about twelve. Tween girls in Year Seven would flirt with me. Find out my home number and call me at all hours. Nobody my age would have looked sideways at me. Certainly no guys.”
Bruno’s eyes twinkle in the moonlight, encouraged by the smile I’m still managing to keep in place. “I find that hard to believe, mate. Surely there were boys secretly checking you out with longing glances.”
“Not that I ever knew of.” This isn’t entirely true. “Well, maybe there was one.”
Bruno’s looking at me intently. One hundred percent focused. Gee, he’s good. Bloody psych nurses.
“I was getting pretty good at singing and piano by the time I finished Year Ten, so I changed schools to one with a much better music program. There was this kid in a couple of my classes who hardly ever spoke. Thin guy with dark floppy hair. I gathered he was kind of an outcast because nobody had much to do with him. We were all a bit older then, so the bullying wasn’t so overt. But to me it was pretty apparent.
“Somehow we became friends. I can’t remember, it just sort of evolved. The school was on a small clifftop next to the beach. And if you walked around the edge of the grounds and across the student car park, you could make your way through the bushes and down a dodgy pathway to this little cove. It was supposed to be out of bounds for students, but we didn’t give a toss. We’d take off at lunchtime and go and smoke on the rocks at the base of the cliffs.
“Like I mentioned, this guy never said much. I could hear he had a bit of a stutter. He must have done a lot of work on it, because it wasn’t that bad, he was just kind of hesitant when he spoke. None of this mattered to me. It was like our quiet company brought us closer.”
I take a huge breath. This doesn’t have to be hard. It was forever ago. “Anyway, at the end of the year, he said his family were moving to some town up in Queensland. I felt extremely sad, but I didn’t know how to talk about it with him. We didn’t have that kind of verbal friendship. I just remember sitting there smoking with him down at the cove on his last day, neither of us saying a word to each other. I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to hug him, tell him how much his friendship had meant to me. But I wasn’t equipped with the right tools.
“I remember walking back up with him, past the school and along the road to the bus stop. I know we said goodbye, I can’t really recall any details. I just remember when he’d climbed onto the bus he made his way right down to the back. And he propped himself up against the rear window and waved vigorously. There was no expression on his face, just this urgent final signalling goodbye. Right then, I was hit by this overwhelming regret. I’d left it too late. I could have taken that risk and let him know how I felt, but I was too bloody gutless. I just stood there and watched him go as I tried not to cry.
“The next year on the first day back at school we were all gathered for the initial assembly, sitting on the ground in this big concrete undercover area waiting for the teachers. I remember I was there all alone, feeling more exposed than I’d ever felt in my whole life. There were these gossiping girls creating a frenzy and I was trying to listen in. I heard them mention his name, then a whole lot of overexcited yabbering, then some girl shrieked, ‘No way! He killed himself?’ I remember the sudden jolt of shock that went through me. But I didn’t believe what they were saying. They were just malicious rumour-spreaders who’d latch onto anything and try to own the drama.
“It wasn’t till we were sitting in our assigned homeroom and the teacher got all sombre and started spouting stuff like ‘tragic loss’ and ‘if you ever need to talk, my door’s always open’ that it finally sunk in. I have vague memories of standing up and barging out of the classroom, banging into chairs as I heard the word ‘faggot’ snickered behind me. Somehow I found myself down at our spot at the cove and for the first time it struck me—I’d never, ever seen him smile. Not even once.”
I have to stop there. I’m a pigheaded bugger and I can hold it together at the worst of times. But right now, I’m seriously worried I might lose it in front of Bruno. Why the hell did I even say all of this stuff? I need to round this off, stat. “I never went back after that. I enrolled in one of those adult dropout programs at TAFE college and did Year Twelve there instead.”
Bruno’s staring at me with a kind of bizarre intensity. I’ve just dumped a ton of heavy crap on him. Definitely not first-date material, let alone something to unleash on a poor hookup. But his reaction doesn’t seem quite right. His expression is off, somehow. “Craig?” he says.
I’m confused. It’s like I’m in an alternate universe. “My middle name. Nobody’s called me that since school.”
“Craig Reilly from design class at St John’s High in Little Bay? Before they knocked it down to make apartments?”
I guess that’s enough detail, he certainly couldn’t have mistaken me for anyone else.
Bruno’s eyes are wide. He taps his chest. “Matt Borelli. I was a year ahead of you, but there was only one combined design class. Remember? I used to come up to you and tell you off for smoking because I knew you were a singer?”
“Jesus! Big solid Matt with all that curly hair?” I’m staring at his nearly fifty-year-old features and there’s a slight familiarity coming into focus.
“You weren’t the only one who hated his first name,” says Bruno. “When I was in primary school, they used to call me ‘Browneye’ and bend over and stick their arse out at me.”
“God, kids are horrible, aren’t they?”
“They were a bunch of little cunts. It was easy to change when I went to Catholic High School and they all went to the public one. Nobody knew me, so Bruno Matteo Borelli just became Matt Borelli.”
“I started calling myself Craig after my dad left. I didn’t want to have the same name as him anymore.”
Bruno climbs over me and lies beside me on his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows. “Well, Bradford Craig Reilly, you’re wrong about one thing. There was a guy shooting you longing looks. I didn’t give a flying fuck about you smoking. I just wanted any excuse to talk to you, but you never seemed interested.”
Four, five times he must have walked up to my table and spoken to me that year. I can barely get my head around the fact he even remembers this. “Um, you were a big burly Year Twelve and I was a pathetic little Year Eleven. There was no way I would have even dreamt you’d want anything to do with me.”
“Oh, fuck, mate,” Bruno huffs. “I would have given my left testicle to know you better back then. You were such a sweet little guy.” He’s still staring at me in wonderment. “And I’m pretty sure you haven’t changed one bit.” He shakes his head incredulously. “Can’t believe I just got to shag my teenage crush.”
“… and be shagged by him.” I grin at Bruno. This turn of events is so bizarre. The past of more than thirty years ago has come hurtling into the present and smacked me so hard in the face I can hardly get my brain to catch up. “You know, even though I’m pretty freaked out by all this, you just gave me the biggest retrospective validation. I spent my entire teenage years feeling like I was worth absolutely nothing.”
Bruno’s brow wrinkles and he launches himself at my mouth. Without his lips leaving mine, he shuffles on top of me, his heft pressing me into the plush memory foam mattress. I’m completely encapsulated in potent masculine affection, surrounded by the kind of fervent, animalistic desire that I haven't realised until tonight how much I’ve been craving.
His tongue roams my mouth with every ounce of the verve he showed earlier. The fire inside me begins to rage as I realise nothing has evaporated between us. Our intimacy hasn’t ended with our orgasms; there’s more to come. Oh, God, please let there be more.
Softly he withdraws, placing sustained, tender kisses on my lips. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I must be squashing you.”
“Squash away, Bru.” I tighten my arms around his huge barrel chest, raising a facetious eyebrow. “You’re like a big furry wombat.”
Bruno guffaws at my ridiculous comparison. “Well, I guess ‘wombat’ is no more ridiculous than ‘bear’ if you really think about it.” He leans out a bit, looking me up and down. “And if I’m a wombat, then you’re a koala.” His lips curl up in a smirk. “ Blinky Bill .”
“Are you telling me my ears are hairy?”
He lowers his head and nuzzles my lobe, running his nose upwards along the curve of my pinna. “They seem pretty well-groomed to me, Blinky .”
“Good. Because I just paid the barber twelve extra bucks to wax them. And if we’re gonna start talking about children’s books, then you’re definitely Harry .”
“What? Harry the Hairy-nosed Wombat ?” He brushes a finger and thumb underneath his nostrils. “Who’s casting aspersions about excess facial fuzz now?”
The pressure of Bruno’s bulk has me giggling like a kid instead of laughing like a man. But the sound is infectious, and Bruno joins me, cackling away, clutching my body and rolling us onto our sides as our childish mirth dies down. It’s a sweet moment. The kind of comfort I’d expect with a lover I might have known a lot longer than a few hours. Of course, we both know we’re just being silly, just mucking around. We’ve met, we’ve shagged, we’ve chatted, but that’s it. Still, it’s nice to be relaxed enough with each other that we can share a dumb joke or two.
The reality check kicks in when Bruno’s expression changes slightly. His eyes search mine, flicking from one to the other, two big pools of gentle warmth. “Should I take off and give you a bit of peace now?”
“No.” My response isn’t planned. It’s automatic, emphatic. Probably far too needy for a hookup situation like this. My first instinct is to wince, but the way Bruno has just delivered his words gives me hope. It sounded like he was fishing for an invitation to stay, not seeking an excuse to leave.
Should I say more?
Yeah, I’m gonna go for it.
“This is nice. Do you have to leave?” Oh. Was that manipulative? Should I have given him an out?
Bruno allays my fears, cuddling even closer. “I don’t have to go anywhere , Bradford.”