Chapter 1 Stanza Buia
STANZA BUIA
ZEKE
It’s not until I see him naked that I realise we know each other.
Kissing a complete stranger in the dark room of the bathhouse isn’t unusual for me.
The first time, years ago, felt like I’d blindly walked into a grungy Eastern European erotica movie, the kind that used to play on SBS after ten o’clock when I was a kid.
The dark room is pitch black, a horny sensory deprivation experience, designed so the wisdom of your eyes deserts you and you’re left with the dumb, myopic throb of your cock as your compass.
My first visit to this exact dark room at Perth Steam Works, when I was nineteen, was transcendent.
I felt the thump of lyricless doof-doof vibrate through my body.
The man who kissed me back was twenty years older than me, big grizzly bear, coarse whiskers scraping my bare cheeks as his face mashed mine.
His sweat was intoxicating. My bare arse stuck to the vinyl of the seat as I sucked his cock.
That was the first of dozens of visits to the sauna. It’s my favourite place in the world.
So, today is not a new experience. I had a four-hour gap between my shift in the call centre and the pick-up time for my graduation regalia, so I came here to kill time by rooting like a wild animal.
I brought fresh amyl and my well-worn neoprene cock ring.
I parked my Nissan out front and paid nine dollars for parking, since I knew I’d be in here a while.
I climbed the concrete steps, the air dank and moist. I said hello to the muscle jock named Johnny on the front desk (I have previously had my fist elbow-deep inside him), paid twenty-five bucks for entry (worth it), slid the rubber band with my locker key onto my bicep (flabby, since I’ve never set foot in a gym in my life), and wrapped my clean white towel around my waist (how many guys have sprogged over the cotton fibres currently touching the head of my dick?).
Some guys use a bathhouse when they’re closeted or sloshed or can’t host, though most guys my age would prefer to browse Grindr on the couch until they find a good prospect.
But me, I’ve always loved the thrill of the sauna.
You never know what you’re going to get, it’s always anonymous and uninhibited, and it’s guaranteed to be no-strings – no annoying follow-up messages begging for a second round. You come in, you cum, you go. Simple.
Today, I lurk in the dark room without luck.
It’s a quiet Wednesday arvo and the few guys who wander in bustle past me.
I’m considering going into the better-lit corridors and standing on a corner to advertise myself, like a gigolo, but that makes me self-conscious.
I’m a bit fat. Maybe the better word is stocky.
A fuckbuddy once described me as ‘a hairy Red Rooster cheesy nugget in human form’.
My wog genes are strong: at twenty-four, not only are the dark curls on my head still as thick and oily as when I was a teenager, but my chest and belly are covered in a dense black rug.
Even my shoulders are starting to sprout curls, like the guy who owns Spudshed.
The upside: the fur hides my man boobs, which flattened out a lot after puberty but never disappeared completely the way I hoped.
And lots of guys are turned on by body hair, so I am weirdly successful in terms of belt-notches. A sasquatch lothario.
But still, if I can avoid showing my body in the light, I will.
Before I give up on the dark room, a lean, twink-looking figure silhouettes himself against the entry, his chin sharp and pointed, like he can make out just enough of me to be interested.
I’m not typically into guys my own age, but my balls need to shoot, so when the skinny guy merges with the darkness around me and his cold hands touch my warm chest, I go with it.
We start making out. He tastes like mint – he’s got a chewy rolling around in his gob and I actively have to direct my tongue to avoid it as I probe his mouth. Gross.
‘Wanna get a cubicle?’ he asks, breaking away.
I tell him I do.
He leads me into the corridor, his back to me. He has scruffy brown hair and a tattoo spilling from his ribs onto his back – some lyrics in fine calligraphy I can’t fully make out as my eyes adjust, accompanied by a crown.
He finds a cubicle, leads me in and latches the door.
We drop our towels. His gaze falls on my boner and he gives a satisfied smirk, then roams north, across my pelt of belly hair, up to my face.
And we both recognise each other at the same time.
‘Holy shit!’ he cries. ‘Zeke – fucking – Calogero!’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I say. ‘Charlie Roth.’
It’s not just seeing Charlie Roth for the first time in seven years that shocks me. It’s the first time we’re seeing each other naked. We were never lovers.
Only friends, until we weren’t.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Charlie says, gawking at my body. ‘Wow. What are the odds?’
‘Probably good odds, to be honest,’ I say, crossing my arms over my chest. ‘I come here a lot.’
‘Wild,’ Charlie says. ‘I almost never come here – only did cos I got ghosted by a selfish prick on Scruff and needed to get off.’
Charlie mirrors me by crossing his arms across his body.
It’s an insanely redundant gesture of modesty given we’re both buck naked.
Charlie’s penis is soft but plump – more of a shower than a grower.
He doesn’t have a single pube, which always weirds me out and is why I usually avoid guys into manscaping.
His balls are waxed and smaller than mine.
While I’ve been scoping out his body, he’s been checking me out, too, and neither of us has reached for our towel.
My big veiny cazzo is hanging out. If this had happened seven years ago, we would have covered up immediately.
We were too close as mates to ever hook up.
But so much time has passed – without any words between us – that I don’t know what the rules are.
The world of man-on-man sex is a lawless place: you can hate a guy, run into him in a sauna, screw each other’s brains out, then never acknowledge each other ever again.
I’m not saying it’s healthy, but it is what it is.
And I’m not saying I hate Charlie Roth. Anymore. Maybe I never did. Maybe we were just mad at each other and we let it get out of control.
Suffice it to say I have no clue how this interaction is meant to proceed.
Charlie barrels through my confusion. ‘Always figured you’d be cut, dude.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Aren’t Italians always circumcised? Thought I saw that in a movie once.’
‘Dunno about other Italians, but I’m Sicilian,’ I say. ‘Either way, I’m uncut.’
‘I can see that, dude. Giant balls too. Good for you.’
I am weirdly proud of my nuts. They’re my best asset. Big, meaty, hairy nads that hang low and swing as I plough a guy. Charlie complimenting me feels nice, like a détente between Cold War superpowers, but him praising my nutsack, specifically, makes my skin crawl.
‘We’re not gonna fuck,’ I say.
Charlie snorts, his face creasing with laughter. I spot the familiar black industrial piercing at the top of his ear, but it’s now accompanied by an eyebrow piercing and a nose ring that weren’t there when I knew him.
‘Of course we’re not, you clown,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t see a thing in that dark room or I never woulda kissed ya. It’d be like fucking my own brother. So wrong.’
My shoulders relax. He called me his brother.
‘So … you’re not mad at me anymore?’ I ask, and it’s the most vulnerable thing I’ve done in this sauna, much more than standing naked in front of him.
Charlie’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. His eyes find mine. They are kind. It makes me tear up, him looking at me gently again. ‘No, Zeke,’ Charlie says softly. ‘I’m not mad at you anymore.’
I could cry, but I don’t want him to hug me while we’re naked.
‘I’m not mad at you anymore, either,’ I say hoarsely.
Charlie smiles. ‘Well, that was worth the twenty-five bucks alone, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘How about we pause being rampant sluts for a minute and catch up. Wanna drink, dude?’
When I was sixteen, Charlie Roth was more than my friend: he was my hero.
He saved my life.
We both grew up four hours north of Perth, in a hot windy coastal town called Geraldton, where you feel like the only homo in the village even when you know you’re not.
My Catholic parents found out I was gay at my brother’s wedding.
My dad hit me. My mother was mortified. They both wanted to disown me.
I was expected to go back into the closet to make them happy even though it would’ve killed me.
Being a mild-mannered Clark Kent nerd, I was going to do it.
But then, a miracle. Charlie Roth, outed troublemaker, announced he was bailing, upping sticks to the big smoke. I felt abandoned – my lifeline was being ripped away – until I did something totally unhinged.
I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go with him.
We hopped on a bus to Perth: two starry-eyed country boys dreaming of big-city liberation. That snap decision defined my life – for better and for worse.