Chapter 2 Jesus of Suburbia #2
Hell, even I want to bask in Xander’s ass-glitter.
Despite my feelings about him, I start imagining a scenario where he comes to our bar and we become mates.
I’d hang out at his flash house in Dalkeith and he’d introduce me to TikTok celebrities and big-shot TV producer guys by the pool while we smoke Cuban cigars and eat Wagyu beef or caviar or whatever shit rich people eat.
Maybe his coattails would let me ride into a world of fame and success by proxy, in a way my music never did.
Am I really that desperate to be famous?
‘I think he’s kinda airheaded,’ I say, trying to remind myself I don’t like him. ‘But he’s influential. We should say yes. What harm can it do?’
Curtis nods slowly, but there’s apprehension in it, like he’s frightened of making a vigorous movement anywhere near Xander Sullivan.
‘What’s your reservation?’ I ask, leaning on the stainless-steel counter behind the bar. Crates of glasses are stacked on the bench, ready for me to wash for the opening.
I see one of the thick veins in Curtis’ muscular neck twitch. It’s a vulnerability I’ve only ever seen in him when we’re in the post-coital afterglow.
He gestures to the bar around us. ‘This whole place feels like such a risk,’ he admits. ‘Someone as famous as this Xander boy could make us, but if he doesn’t like what he sees, he could also break us. And son, we are building something goddamn niche here, you know?’
The Tool Shed, I’ll admit, is a friggin’ ambitious project for a city with a smaller scene like Perth.
Curtis and Ahmed’s vision was to recreate the vibe of the Castro in the 1970s – when gay bars were for us, not for straight people.
It is a reclamation. I sat down with Curtis and Ahmed and we talked it over, designing something we thought could fill a void.
What were the biggest gripes of local guys?
There was no exclusively gay bar anymore, and hookup app culture had decimated attendance at bars anyway.
So, we designed the Tool Shed to tackle all of it.
The Tool Shed is a dirty, grungy, sleazy dive bar for men only.
There’s one bar, flanked by yellow Men at Work signs and tools we bought from Bunnings Bayswater hanging off the wall.
The opposite wall is plastered with a mural of a muscular, shirtless cowboy riding a kangaroo like a horse and shouting ‘G’day’, which makes absolutely zero logical sense but looks iconic as shit.
The central area is mostly booths and tables, with a big green pool table to the side and space for either a giant line at the bar or a small dance floor.
There are big TV screens throughout the bar, on which Curtis intends to show either sports or porn during the day and pop music videos at night.
The rear of the bar is where it gets rad – where our brainstorming paid off.
We talked about what guys actually do these days.
We’ve abandoned meeting over a drink or dancing with a stranger.
We’ll spend hours on Grindr or Scruff, stop at the local sex shop for any necessities, then head to a guy’s house for sex.
We decided to lean into that, and make the Tool Shed the most convenient, comfortable place for guys to prepare for a hookup and have a drink on the sofas while they trawl for cock.
Since hookup apps need GPS switched on, which drains a phone battery, we have eight power points with freely provided chargers for both iPhones and Androids in the centre of the table in the lounge – as well as free wifi.
Tucked away in a corner is a vending machine selling condoms and lube.
There’s a shower cubicle in the bathroom, with a douche.
We even have a back room for a cruising area, but that’s not fully set up yet.
The Tool Shed’s front faces onto William Street, prime Northbridge real estate, especially for the local homos.
We’re equidistant between Connections Nightclub to the west, Perth Steam Works to the north and the Court to the east. Whether guys are going out to party or to fuck, we’ll make a great first port of call for a night out.
We’ve got government approval to make this bar a single-sex male space, which Curtis was insistent on. Guys can cruise for sex without worrying about straighties infiltrating this place. The Tool Shed is just for us.
Curtis is right that this is niche, though. The gay scene has become so squeaky-clean, something like the Tool Shed feels almost too dirty to be allowed – like the sex part of homosexuality is now something we should be hiding again.
And as I study his face, I realise that’s what he’s apprehensive about.
‘You think Xander Sullivan is too wholesome for this place?’ I venture.
Curtis nods slowly, his head movement so controlled and tight that I sense real fear.
‘He feels off-brand for us, and we feel off-brand to him,’ Curtis admits. He flips his phone case shut. ‘Maybe we’re better off not diving into the world of influencers yet.’
I shake my head. ‘Saying a flat-out no to someone like Xander is probably a bad idea.’
Curtis slides onto one of the red vinyl stools facing the bar with a pained expression. ‘You sayin’ he might become our enemy if we don’t let him be our friend?’
I swallow. ‘Maybe. He called out a bakery as homophobic once, for not baking a cake for him and his boyfriend, even though it sounded like a big misunderstanding.’
Curtis stares at me. ‘The boy can hardly call me homophobic!’ he cries. ‘I was in this game when being gay meant being a registered sex offender. I marched for my rights before his lilywhite ass was born. He only has the easy life he has because of what my generation took to the streets for.’
‘I know, and maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ I say.
‘Xander might be wholesome, and a mismatch, but if he’s offering support, he probably means it.
For him, it’s a way to show he’s supporting a local venue.
For us, it’s good exposure and will make us seem on trend, which we kind of aren’t. ’
Curtis sighs and reopens his phone case. There’s a small, glossy photobooth picture of him and Ahmed from a trip to Sydney tucked behind one of his credit cards, which is endearing, but he’d growl at me if I mentioned it.
‘Okay,’ Curtis says. ‘I’ll tell him he’s invited cos my Chief Youth Adviser told me to do it or I’d be cancelled.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I mutter. ‘You’re full of it, old man.’
Curtis peers at me over the top of his phone screen, eyes ablaze. ‘Who you calling old, bitch? Make yourself useful and get me a Southern Comfort.’
I shuffle off to get Curtis’ drink and turn my heart’s eye back to Matt, but the interruption has made those feelings glide back out of sight. My grief for him haunts the bones of my rib cage, but refuses to step into the light.
Curtis and I set up until seven, when he tells me to knock off.
I don’t head home. I sit in the bar’s dunnies, refreshing the apps, cockblocked as hell.
First, the Scruff fuckboy ghosted me – I rocked up to his house and he wouldn’t answer the door – who does that?
! Sociopaths and cowards. Then I hit the sauna and run into Zeke and we have a big deep-and-meaningful instead of me getting railed by that jock barman.
The universe gave me blue balls and I’m not ending the day without getting what I need.
I scroll Grindr until I find an average joe lazy top who’s done me missionary style before. He’s a bearded landscape gardener, otter body type, decent dick but not much energy in his thrust. Still, any cock’s better than none when your arse is itchy.
I grab an Uber for his house in Noranda and settle for an unsatisfying eight minutes staring at his ceiling while he tells me, pretty unconvincingly, that he’s a fucken alpha, and, more convincingly, that I’m a dirty slut boy.
Ahmed is fussy as hell when I get home. The moment I open the door and smell the savoury red lentil soup wafting from the kitchen, he starts at me. ‘Curtis said you left the bar ages ago! I was so worried about you.’
‘I’m fine, Ahmed, just had some stuff to do,’ I mutter.
I click the front door shut behind me, slide my black-and-white Converse sneakers off (Curtis and Ahmed insist on no shoes in the house) and shuffle in my Globe socks across the lacquered-wood floor into the kitchen.
Ahmed’s stirring the soup in a giant silver pot. His wooden spoon whirls through the brown lentil muck in a way that seems haphazard, but I know is much more deliberate. The fizzy sounds of a track from Lady Gaga’s Mayhem are blaring from the Bluetooth speakers on the white marble bench.
When Ahmed turns, he has a shit-eating grin on his face. ‘Had some stuff to do?’ he probes. ‘Or someone to do?’
Ahmed has always seen right through me. He’s got zero tolerance for bullshit – the only quality he and Curtis have in common.
Otherwise, they’re polar opposites: Curtis is big and butch, full of masculine American swagger; Ahmed is slim and the bottomiest of bottoms. He’s in his forties with stunningly hot Arab features: dark eyes, shaped eyebrows, skin so bronze over muscle so chiselled he could be a statue.
Raised in Perth by an Egyptian father and English mother, he fled to America straight out of high school to pursue acting, which didn’t work, and modelling, which did.
In his twenties and thirties, he was on the cover of Attitude in the UK, Têtu in France and DNA Magazine here in Australia.
I reckon he did porn too, but he’s never admitted it.