CHAPTER 6
Jeremy didn’t go to the gym for a week after the elevator incident, for reasons that began with a complicated feeling of shame around his emotional outburst to a stranger, and continued with a generalised embarrassment about his whole plan to make his life better being pulled apart by Sam.
Also, now that the original flush of endorphins had worn off, the gym class was becoming a real drag.
A few nights later, he came home from work and discovered his housemates drinking wine in the courtyard and decided to tell the elevator story. Or at least a version of it.
‘Like, I already knew he was an asshole,’ Jeremy said, rolling his eyes dramatically. ‘He’s basically the teacher’s pet, but at a gym. And big straight-guy energy – you know he doesn’t wash his legs.’
‘Okay, I can see it,’ said Bradley, pursing his lips. ‘Does he smell like Lynx Africa and have a really basic haircut that’s unflattering but also incredibly bland?’
From being stuck in the lift with him, Jeremy knew Sam actually smelt surprisingly good – like sweat and something sweet but definitely male, and good soap. His hair wasn’t exactly manicured, but it was thick, deep auburn and wavy.
‘Exactly,’ Jeremy lied shamelessly. ‘Classic straight-boy haircut, probably cut by his mum’s hairdresser who he’s been going to since he was a kid.’
‘Eww gross,’ interjected Harry, another of the housemates, a short drama kid turned drama adult. ‘Sounds exactly like my brother – literally the worst thing he’s ever done was wear boardshorts to our sister’s wedding.’
‘Didn’t he also go to jail?’ asked Bradley.
‘Yeah, but just for tax stuff. The boardshorts were worse.’
‘Anyway,’ continued Jeremy pointedly. His housemates were fun, but they were also extremely bad at listening to stories. He could already see them waiting for their turn to talk again. ‘We ended up getting stuck in the lift together for, no joke, hours. Literally hours. I wanted to die.’
‘Oh my god, what did you even talk about?’ asked Bradley. ‘I honestly wouldn’t know how to carry a conversation with a straight guy. Like, how do you begin? “Hey, great chinos. I love how they are beige and don’t fit you.”’
‘Had any good stocks and bonds lately?’ added Harry.
‘Isn’t it fun to be able to drive a car? Have you … stormed a beach lately? With a rifle?’
‘He’s not a soldier from World War II,’ snapped Jeremy. ‘But yeah, it was a bit like that. But we ended up talking about my ex-boyfriend, and you know what he said to me?’
‘Did he call you the f-word?’ asked Harry.
‘Well, no, but he told me I had to be the bigger man and basically that I should forgive Miles.’
‘I’ve never been the bigger man in my entire life,’ declared Harry. ‘Emotionally or physically.’
‘You are a very tiny queen,’ said Bradley.
‘But the audacity! How dare he?’ pushed Jeremy. ‘He doesn’t know me.’
‘What did your ex do again?’ asked Bradley. ‘Was he the one who accused you of having chlamydia but then it turned out he was the one with chlamydia and he was just trying to gaslight you into thinking it was you?’
‘You bitch, that was my boyfriend Tim,’ said Harry indignantly.
Jeremy was tempted to spill the sordid details of all the fucked-up things Miles had done to him – not just the cheating and the break-up, but the real trauma of what had come next – but his housemates were the most famously and unrepentantly indiscriminate gays in the city, if not the world.
They’d enjoy the story, but then so would everyone else.
Already too many people knew about it. As much as he could possibly control the narrative, Jeremy would.
‘Oh, you know, the usual, broke my heart,’ said Jeremy, watching the interest die in Bradley’s and Harry’s eyes.
Their third housemate, Bastian, came through the back gate at that moment, holding a garbage bag full of choc-tops, already shouting about something weird they’d seen happening in the back of the arthouse cinema they worked at during a Casablanca screening.
Reluctantly, Jeremy accepted that his time to bitch about Sam was over – plus he wanted an ice cream.
The next day, Jeremy grudgingly walked to the gym, wearing neither his little shorts nor his running shoes.
He’d spent the last few days since the elevator incident dropping out of all the activities he’d signed up for, desperately trying to recoup any money.
He hadn’t had much success. He discovered that the gym membership was almost impossible to cancel and they would perhaps sent debt collectors after him.
In a last-ditch effort, he’d decided to go in person after work – on a day his normal class didn’t run – to see if he could beg his way out of his contract. He was prepared to cry if necessary.
‘No doubt!’ boomed Carlo as he walked to the desk, which made Jeremy pause for a second, because he hadn’t said anything. ‘Radical. What can I do you for?’
‘Uhh,’ said Jeremy, looking into the trainer’s extremely wet eyes. He didn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that just because this guy was upbeat and muscular he was also stupid, but there was something empty in his wide, bright smile.
‘I’m really sorry, but I have to cancel my membership,’ said Jeremy, shaking his head in a way he hoped implied something sad and serious had happened.
‘Oh no, my dude, that’s bad news.’
‘Yeah … yeah, I was hoping you could help me sort that out.’
‘Right, so it’s pretty simple. We don’t do it here – you have to call up the debt agency we run our memberships through, although they don’t love ending them early. How long did you sign up for?’
‘Twelve months I think,’ said Jeremy.
‘Right, and how long have you been here?’
‘Well … that’s hard to say exactly,’ Jeremy said, knowing full well he’d been at the gym for a hot month. ‘Close to two months I think.’
‘Hmm.’ Carlo looked genuinely apologetic.
‘I think that’s going to be a hard sell, sorry, buddy.
Is there any way I can convince you to stay?
I can show you a machine that helps make this one muscle really huge.
’ He pointed at a section of his rippling back exposed by his tank top and made a muscle under his shoulders pop out like an eel underneath a blanket.
‘That is quite an offer,’ said Jeremy, feeling a wave of hopelessness pass over him. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing …?’
He trailed off, because Carlo had already wandered away and was energetically hoisting a new water bottle on to the drink fountain.
‘All right then.’ Jeremy sighed, realising that, for better or worse, in sickness or in health, he was now married to this gym for the next eleven months.
He turned around, ready to slink back home, trying to decide what lies he could tell the debt collection agency – death in the family?
He was dying? He was dead … and was his own brother …
Beremy? – when out of the cursed lift walked Sam.
Sam, like Jeremy, also wasn’t wearing gym clothes.
He’d clearly just come from work, and while he was dressed relatively casually – fitted jeans, a plaid button-up shirt open at the neck with sleeves rolled to the elbows and sneakers – it somehow served to make him look more adult, more real, not being in workout gear.
His hair was thick and wavy and wild, without being unkempt and wet like it usually was.
He saw Jeremy and visibly brightened, smiling and waving across the room, then he trotted over while unslinging a backpack.
‘Jeremy! I’ve been hoping to run into you. I haven’t seen you at class recently.’
‘Oh,’ said Jeremy, feeling weirdly awkward about this new version of Sam. ‘Yeah, I’ve been … busy.’
He didn’t smile, attempting a cold, aloof tone, but feared he’d come across as sulky. It didn’t matter, as Sam barrelled on regardless, flashing that big broad smile again.
‘Look, I wanted to apologise to you. I was totally out of line the other day in the lift,’ he said, as if apologising was a normal and easy thing to do.
‘Oh … that’s fine. About what?’ asked Jeremy.
‘I shouldn’t have been so high and mighty about your ex,’ explained Sam earnestly.
‘I’m lucky in the sense that I get along with my ex, but literally one of the reasons we broke up is because she said I’m such a people pleaser that I often diminish other people’s emotions as a result, because I want everyone to get along.
I know that’s not the case for a lot of people, and I should be more open-minded. ’
Jeremy came from a conflict-averse family and wasn’t used to being apologised to – his mother usually just froze people out and then divorced them when they annoyed her. He didn’t know how to respond. ‘Oh, that’s okay … I wasn’t mad or anything,’ he managed.
‘Okay, that’s good, but I’m still sorry. I don’t know anything about you or your ex, and you don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘You were right, though,’ Jeremy said. ‘My whole revenge scheme was pretty pointless.’
‘No, I never said that! I just think it could be more efficient. And look, as part of my apology, I’ve made you something.’ Sam reached into his backpack past a pile of clothes and a water bottle and pulled out a clear folder that had a Climate Commission sticker on the corner.
‘Are you going to help me cut my emissions or something?’ quipped Jeremy, receiving the folder tentatively. ‘That sounded like a fart joke.’
Sam smiled, pointing at the title, which said Jeremy’s Revenge Campaign 2.0 . Then he flipped open the folder to reveal several pages of official-looking documents with what Jeremy assumed was Sam’s handwriting filling in some boxes.
‘This is the standard campaign outline we fill out at work when we start a new project. The most recent one I worked on was an awareness campaign about a new open-pit mining proposition being built on Indigenous land. This is where we break down the goals and strategies and budgets.’ He pointed.