Chapter 2 Jesus of Suburbia #3
And if Curtis is sensitive about his age, Ahmed is outright allergic.
He gets Botox and lip fillers and facelifts to cling to his youth.
But no matter what he does, the modelling shoots are fewer and farther between every year, which I think is why he swings between warm, nurturing dad and waspish, bitchy faggot.
When I first moved in, Ahmed quipped at Curtis, in front of me, ‘Why didn’t you tell me we’re taking in another stray?
Are you going to fuck this one, too?’ Then he fixed me with this absolute beaming smile. ‘Welcome to the family, bud!’
Jesus.
His comment about strays stung at the time.
I already felt weird accepting the invitation to live with a guy and his husband, especially given Curtis and I had had sex.
Open relationships are a dime a dozen in the gay world, but living with the couple felt like a bridge too far.
But Curtis reassured me he had a history of taking in multiple lodgers to help pay the mortgage.
I’m in the back room and in the middle room is Rex, a FIFO worker, so it doesn’t feel enmeshed: more of a share house.
That said, Curtis and Ahmed’s place in Inglewood is way nicer than the festy share houses I’ve lived in.
Most of my Perth years, I’ve lived with other musos, in dero houses with leaking taps and missing light bulbs, and eventually I outgrew the constant parties and drugs and sticky floors and mouldy dishes and music at all hours.
The night I moved in with Curtis and Ahmed, six months ago, Curtis cooked us a steak dinner, paired with a red wine.
The whole thing tasted phenomenal. Ahmed made up a bed and fussed over me like I was a new puppy.
Every Sunday, he makes me strip the bed and put on the fresh sheets he’s washed.
Never in my life – not even when Dad was alive – have I had clean sheets on a regular basis.
My room always smells like lavender-scented Omo, and I weirdly like it.
Not the Omo, but the whole vibe: the cooked meals, the laundry, the check-ins about where I’ve been, as if they genuinely care about my wellbeing.
I pay board to live here and do chores: taking out the rubbish, washing the dishes, setting the table when we eat together sometimes.
It’s the closest thing to a normal suburban family life I’ve ever had.
This is a home where I don’t need to worry about a housemate puking in my bed after eating too many shrooms. It feels safe, warm and clean.
I’ve never lived anywhere less edgy in my life, but I’m liking it too much to ever want to leave.
‘Your profile was active on Grindr,’ Ahmed elaborates. There he goes: warm to wasp with one stir of his lentil ladle. It’s like having a dad who can track all my seedy movements. ‘You hooked up.’
‘I mighta been out with a guy,’ I admit, smiling coyly. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Spill the tea, hun,’ Ahmed says, flicking on his phone to choose Lady Gaga’s ‘911’. ‘Was he hung?’
I grab a can of Monster Energy from the fridge, slide onto the bar stool opposite Ahmed at the bench, and tell him about my fuck.
I embellish: I’m not proud of only being able to net a mediocre root, so I make my landscape gardener sound hotter and more alpha than he was.
Ahmed is great for bragging about sex to – he lives for gossip. Maybe I do, too.
As I’m running out of lies to tell, Ahmed’s phone pings.
‘Curtis is on his way home,’ he tells me. ‘Quick, pop into the shower so you’re all clean for dinner. But take the rubbish out first, please: it’s nearly full.’
It sounds so domestic I can’t help but quip, ‘Yes, Daddy.’
Ahmed shudders. ‘Don’t ever call me that!’ he moans. ‘I’m too young to be a daddy! Yuck!’
Dude, you’re forty-five, I think.
I carry the rubbish bag outside and see the whole street is lined with red-lidded council bins. I forgot it was bin night. To be honest, I rely on everyone else in the street to remember for me.
I dump the bag and drag the wheelie bin to the verge. It’s a cool July night, and the wind cuts through my hoodie. The street is quiet, traffic-calmed with built-in curves and speed bumps, and nothing bad ever seems to happen here. But nothing remarkable happens here, either.
The stars are out. Growing up in a country town, it was so easy to see them.
The city’s light pollution often obscures them, but tonight’s a clear night.
I look up at Orion’s Belt. I still think of Dad watching over me when I see it.
But I no longer get inspired by Orion’s story the way I used to.
Orion was an ancient Greek mortal who made it to the stars, among the gods.
But he was just a myth.
I chug the remains of my Monster and jump into the shower with music blaring from my phone. I’ve been playing early Ramones and Blondie lately, good CBGB-era punk, but tonight, for no conscious reason, I put on ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters.
I stand motionless in the shower for the whole song, while hot water splashes off me, immiscible with my pain.
I towel off and get into my shiny black boxer shorts and loose camo-green tank top. There’s no expectation to dress nicely for dinner. Me, Curtis and Rex all slob around the house in boxers or footy shorts. Ahmed is usually the only one in a collared shirt.
Through my door, I hear Curtis get home. Ahmed calls out to him and I hear them kiss and start chatting in low, warm tones. I like to hear that each night. It reassures me true love can exist between two men and not end in tragedy.
As I slide my cheap watch back on my wrist, I glance at my bedroom, full of the bric-a-brac I’ve collected over seven years in the city.
The walls are plastered with posters of Aussie bands like The Living End and The Chats and Amyl and the Sniffers.
There’s a blockmount of Rancid’s … And Out Come the Wolves album cover.
It’s so iconic, that mohawked punk on concrete steps with his head in his lap.
Is he hungover, angry, devastated, asleep, dead?
You can’t tell, and that’s why I love it.
Maybe he’s all those things at once. You can’t tell if he never lets you look in his eyes.
The Rancid poster always makes me wanna shave my hair into a mohawk, which I’ve never done.
I need my scruffy hair to look the part of indie muso in this country.
If I went full punk, someone would call me a poser, or I’d be seen as too much.
Maybe I could have a mohawk in New York or London, but not in Perth.
I have three guitars propped up against the wall – my wooden acoustic Gibson piece of shit, my black-and-white Les Paul covered in stickers, and a borrowed yellow-and-black-striped EVH – and more guitar picks on my chest of drawers than you can shake a dick at.
The top of the drawers is scattered with various shit – a couple of Billy Talent vinyl records, my Beats by Dre headphones in Defiant Red colour, the pack of condoms and Wet Stuff lube from my adventure to Noranda and my black leather studded wristband.
I check my door is locked and remove the vinyl records, revealing what I keep behind them.
A stack of CDs of my 2023 song ‘Roof’, which almost nobody wanted, and a larger stack of my 2021 EP Cocksucker, which absolutely nobody wanted.
A vision board I drew up, the week I moved to Perth, of where I thought I’d be by now, which includes a mansion, a Lamborghini and a seven-figure record label contract.
And a little green army man figurine Matt left me, standing guard over an envelope stuffed full of his anguished letters.
I can’t bear to look at those for more than a second.
I stare at my vision board. That first week here, I really thought I was escaping the destiny my hometown had laid out for me.
I had this almost euphoric feeling, that if I could outrun my origins I would also outrun all the pain of my father, and my mother, and school, and my shit bandmates, and Matt, and the humiliation of a whole town hating me for being a homewrecking homo.
I thought that Greyhound out of Geraldton was my blaze of glory: I was gonna be a famous rock star and show the world it should never have treated me so shit.
Turns out when you’re a white-trash faggot from Spalding, glory only exists in your imagination.
With every passing year, I realise Gero was never the problem.
There’s no way out of the shithole life you’re born into.
Wherever I go, there is my shithole. I was born poor and I’ll die poor and there’s no making it to the stars, no matter what the world sells us.
Life will never get better and I’ll never be rich or famous.
And if that’s the case, what am I meant to do with my life?
I am so fucking lost.