Chapter 4 #4
I open the door to the flat, expecting Sabrina to be flopped on the taupe-coloured IKEA couch, but the living room is empty.
There’s a mug of English Breakfast on the coffee table, though, beside a packet of Tim Tams, which means some sizeable gossip just dropped.
Sabrina’s voice is muffled behind her bedroom door: she’s on the phone to Victoria bitching about Shane again.
Other than Charlie, Victoria is the only person who’s indicated mine and Sabrina’s dynamic is weird for two people who used to go out, occasionally referring to me as Sabrina’s ‘boyfriend’.
One time when I answered the door, Victoria blurted out, ‘Oh, hi, Will – is Grace home?’ (I was tempted to answer, ‘You know that makes you Karen, right?’)
It made sense for me and Sabrina to live together when this was a student house, though now we’ve both finished uni, I do wonder if it’s normal.
But I don’t know how to broach that conversation and besides, it’s working.
Plus, beggars can’t be choosers in the double-whammy of a housing crisis and a cost-of-living crisis.
I’ll never find anything nearly as cheap as this on . au.
I sling my Squirtle backpack to the floor of my bedroom, which is tiny.
If there were steel bars on the window, it would be the kind of jail cell the government deems unfairly restrictive for a prisoner.
But it’s home: a single bed I’ve never had sex on, the doona I’ve had since I was fourteen, Iron Man and Batman movie posters on the walls and stacks of textbooks and notebooks I’ll never look at again, but don’t throw away.
I boot up my laptop and go to the kitchen to make a vodka soda. On the bench is a hi-vis orange pen emblazoned with Stolen From George Sefton Building Company beside a plate of two cling-wrapped red velvet cupcakes with a yellow sticky note on them:
Zekey
These were left over from Maureen’s birthday so I nicked 3 for you. You owe me xoxo
PS Yes there’s only 2 now cos I got hungry on the drive home
I smile at the note. Scoffing cupcakes while driving through peak-hour traffic, probably while on speaker phone to Victoria, is about as Sabrina as it gets.
I wolf down a cupcake on the spot, then make my vodka soda.
When I dump the cupcake wrapper in the bin, I can see Sabrina’s tossed her first empty Prosecco bottle in there already.
Maybe this is why we get along, too. By day, we’re both high-performing – since graduating from her biomedical science degree, Sabrina’s been working for the CSIRO – and by night, we’re both geeky slobs, or slobby geeks.
We eat and drink and vegetate on the couch watching sci-fi and fantasy movies and TV shows.
We’ve even hit Oz Comic-Con and Supanova expos together, dressing up as characters from Game of Thrones and Star Trek and Buffy.
Sabrina’s all-time favourite show is Firefly – ask her how unfair it was Firefly got cancelled and be prepared for a long rant – and on her lounge-room wall are two posters she got signed by Firefly actors at Supanova.
Apart from conventions, we don’t go out much and rely on each other for company. It’s comfortable.
Well, it’s mostly comfortable. Usually, Sabrina’s a fellow slob, but every now and then she gets into a real OCD clean-freak mode and bosses me around.
She’ll also eat my food without telling me.
And every now and then some outrage du jour on social media will set her off on a rant that blows up into an all-or-nothing argument if you disagree with her.
Sabrina likes to win. She wasn’t President of the Debating Club for nothing.
Back at high school, Sabrina was a pious Catholic girl: I still (viscerally) remember her reacting to Charlie coming out by saying homosexuality was a sin.
Times have changed: a uni degree and her friendship with Victoria have mixed a dash of wokeness into her conservatism, to the point where it’s nigh on impossible to pin down her political leanings.
Her opinions aren’t based on left-wing or right-wing ideology, but on whatever she’s been pissed off by on any given day.
Her ideology is outrage. Once she finds something to fight about, she needs to win.
When that elderly Polish baker was getting piled on, Sabrina sent his business this scathing comment, then showed it to me expecting me to be grateful.
Like, the guy was in his eighties, hardly spoke English and survived some war shit in his childhood.
Sure, he probably should’ve baked the gay cake, but he didn’t deserve to be trolled out of business, did he?
To keep me on my toes, the next week she was ranting that at uni she felt discriminated against for being Catholic and claimed Christians were more marginalised than any other minority in the 2020s.
Again, it’s not all the time. Just once in a blue moon.
I take my vodka soda to my room, and close myself in my jail cell for some much-needed ‘alone time’.
I don’t have a social life and I don’t have mates.
My weekends and weeknights are all the same numb blur: drink, scroll memes, jack off, eat takeaway, hook up, pass out.
That’s my routine. I’m a classic Gay Loser.
I knock back the vodka, check my bedroom door is locked seven times (once bitten, twice shy) then knock one out to a porno of two bodybuilders muscle-worshipping each other in a locker room. I fantasise one is Jack, and the other is me, if I could ever get my shit together and get ripped.
The thought excites me until I cum, and lingers like sad smoke after fireworks.
I’ll never be that guy. I’ve tried diets and Lite n’ Easy and HelloFresh and always end up binge-eating.
I’ve never had the guts to go to a gym or play sport.
The only exercise I get is sex. I’m destined to be a fat fuck forever.
I order a pizza to be delivered, then flick open Grindr. There’s a message from Jack:
Cheers for the heads up Zeke – changed my bet to Hawks. Port getting flogged.
I smile, despite the gnawing sense of fraudulence in my stomach, and type back.
Footy Yoda got it right ;)
Jack fire-reacts to my message. Aren’t fire-reacts for when a pic is hot? Not just for acknowledgement? Jack’s a bit of a loose unit.
U watchin the game? he asks. I’m out at the Perth Italian Festival but keeping an eye on the score on the app haha.
It should be easier to lie to someone when they can’t see you.
I start to reply, but Catholic guilt yanks me back.
I stopped believing in organised religion when I came out, but those priests give you a morality hangover for life.
I struggle to ever outright lie. I still feel like I need to say ten Hail Marys as penance for giving that grad a fake rego code today.
‘Easy solution,’ I tell myself.
I turn my bedroom TV on and find 7Mate. The sound of sport blares – a roaring crowd, the thump of the Sherrin on a boot, two commentators arguing about a high tackle.
A panic of electricity darts through me at the thought of Sabrina catching me watching footy. I feel as frightened as when I was a teenager, scared my family would catch me watching porn. I don’t know why.
I mute the TV. Phew.
I watch the game unfold silently, then tap back, entirely honestly: Yeah watching atm. Port goalless and first quarter’s nearly over. Good thing we tipped Hawks.
‘Who do you think you are?’ I demand of myself.
Jack and I message back and forth about the footy.
I don’t know if this is how he flirts, or if we’re just being mates.
Either way, I’m out of my depth and running out of things to say about players.
I unmute the TV, put the volume on low so I can hear the commentators, then send versions of their comments back to Jack, passing them off as my own observations.
I eventually find myself bragging that I went to high school with Kade Hammersmith.
Jack replies: Piss off. I’m a Gero boy too.
Jesus, small world. I thought his accent was a bit too ocker for a city boy.
Before I can ask more about Gero, Jack adds: Was Hammersmith as much of a cocky cunt at high school as he is now? I can’t fucken stand him ay.
I’d love to let him know the lurid details: that Hammer fucked my arse, the hottest moment of my life, and I still think about it when I masturbate. But I don’t, of course.
Eventually, Jack has to go. He promises to send details of his footy team’s training. I tell him I can’t wait, then bite my hand so hard it hurts. What am I doing?!
After Jack goes, I keep watching the game.
The players are hot, no bones about it, but that’s all I know of them.
If I forget that my nerd identity was baked into my skin back in primary school, it’s embarrassing to know nothing about my national sport, isn’t it?
Like, why don’t I? Do I hate footy, in my DNA?
Or did the bullies just put me off it for life?
My phone vibrates. A text from a name that hasn’t appeared on my phone in years.
Charlie Roth.
Hey man, cool to reconnect the other day. I’m at The Court tonight, you out?
Urgh. I’d rather get dry-fucked with a cactus than go to a gay bar.
Forgive me my sacrilege, but I can’t stand the scene.
It’s always made me feel shit about myself.
For being chunky. For not being able to dance.
For not being gay enough. I’m hardly super masc, but I’m not camp and I don’t keep up with the music, the TV shows, the influencers, the fashion, the trends.
Nothing makes the gays more waspish towards you than not being gay enough and being perfectly content not to change that.
I reply. You too man. Glad we can talk again. No, quiet one tonight – have a drink for me, though!
Charlie comes back with: All g. Enjoy ur nite. I’ll send deets for our bar launch next Fri. It’s called THE TOOL SHED. It’s so slutty I love it. Peace out, dude.