Chapter 5 #2
There’s a pack of lesbians smoking outside, off to the side of the bar, and they are either checking the straight girls out or leering at them with disdain.
I recognise two of them as a couple in their forties who are close friends with Curtis and Ahmed: Tenille, a big butch leather dyke who works at Perth Zoo, and Kayla, a more femme-type who’s in marketing.
We’ve sat drunk around Curtis’ courtyard table enough times to exchange pleasantries when we run into each other on a night out.
Tonight, Tenille gives me a brusque but friendly nod, while Kayla runs into the bar queue to give me a hug.
When the woo girl goes off for the tenth time, Kayla mutters, ‘Oh, shut up, for fuck’s sake.
’ Behind her, Tenille glares at the woo girl, drops her cigarette butt to the concrete and stomps her leather boot on it with unwarranted aggression.
Yep, the lesbians are as sick of the straighties taking over here as we are.
Drunk straight hens are only half the problem.
The second half is the drunk straight dudes looking to score with them, who are often indistinguishable from drunk gay dudes, so you can grind with a tattooed bloke on the DF and half the time you’ll make out and the other half he’ll shove you.
I’ve seen full-on fistfights break out on this dance floor when straight guys get a whiff of dudes ogling them.
I’ve heard ‘faggot’ and ‘poofter’ yelled here, not ironically, but as weapons.
Yet there’s only two gay bars in Perth, so here we end up, over and over, bitching about how much it’s changed and how we’d like to go back to when being homosexual was edgy, so the straights would leave us alone to do our own thing.
Tonight is my mate Brayden’s birthday. Brayden’s a full-blown party boy.
If there’s a bottomless brunch or a drag queen bingo night, he’ll be at it.
That’s how we met: we were on the same table for a music quiz night at Connies once with some mutual friends, and between my rock knowledge and him being a human dictionary of dance pop, we wiped the floor with the other teams. We won a two-hundred-dollar bar card, spent it all on Wet Pussy shots that same night, and drunkenly became friends forevermore.
But while I’m jaded with the scene, Brayden still lives for it.
He goes to every party and knows every homo in town as either friend, frenemy or fuckbuddy.
He’s a funny prick, too, camp and bitchy, and he revels in being a skinny freckly redhead – he calls himself the Ginger Ninja.
When I finally elbow my way past the erratic woo girl and land at the bar, I see a new, heavily pierced, green-haired chick serving.
My replacement. This is the first weekend since I quit as a barman here.
No hard feelings. It was a fun place to work.
But working at the Tool Shed is gonna keep me too busy to juggle both jobs.
I order a vodka fire engine for Brayden and a Heineken for me and Green Hair charges me the standard amount.
I shout in her ear over a terrible Britney Spears/Ginuwine mash-up about my usual discount.
She goes out the back to check, and returns saying now I’m not staff, Rita has cut me off.
Totally fair, but I feel dropped like a sack of spuds.
I grab the drinks, fight my way through a pack of teenyboppers and break into the fresh air of the beer garden outside.
Brayden’s got a long table crammed with his friends.
I don’t know many of them, except the couple who are our mutual mates.
We make the usual surface-level talk but don’t tend to go further than that.
Brayden sees me coming and reaches for the glass. ‘Yes, Charlie! More BOOZE! I’m getting dangerously high levels of blood in my alcohol stream!’ he bursts out.
One of the couple giggles.
I hand Brayden his poison-red drink. ‘Happy birthday, dude. Bottoms up!’
Brayden winks. ‘I’m already up, babes!’
That innuendo sums Brayden up, and it’s probably why we’re friends.
I join the edge of the party. I’m half-arsing it.
Any time someone makes conversation I reply then turn back to my phone.
Even though I worked here for years, and can share a nod with the bar staff, the DJs and the drag queens, none of us are friends.
It’s superficial. I don’t know if that’s their fault, or mine.
I text a few muso mates to see if anyone’s out, and Reyna, in case she’s changed her mind, and Zeke, for good measure.
Reyna replies fast. Sorry Chucky – still at the Wembley doing a pub quiz which we’re WINNING! And to think my parents said I’d never get anywhere in life. Have fun at the fag hag bar. Do everything I would do.
I like Reyna. She gets me.
None of my other mates are out, either, but the biggest disappointment is Zeke having a home night. I wrecked our reconnection so bad. There’s so much I wanted to say, but I’ve never been good at showing other people how I feel, especially since Matt died.
My phone pings. A second message from Zeke. I missed you, man.
Ah, shit. I get choked up and sip my beer to draw attention away from it. Knowing Zeke doesn’t hate me means a lot. I’d rather be at a pub with him than here.
I smirk and type back: Gayyyyyyyyyy
Zeke is so sensitive he’ll overthink that, so I add: I missed you too, you big wanker.
Zeke likes the message. A knotted rope in my chest undoes itself. We’re gonna be okay. We can hang out next Friday at the Tool Shed and things will be good again.
I’ve been lonely without him.
There’s a squawk of commotion from the hens, who have settled at the table beside us. One calls out, ‘Is that really him? No way!’
The woo girl goes, ‘Oi! Xander! Can we get a selfie?!’
Everyone in the beer garden peers in the same direction, because a genuinely famous person has entered the bar.
Xander Sullivan, our sequin-studded Perthonality, has graced us mere mortals with his presence.
Tonight, he’s wearing a tight black T-shirt with rainbow words saying, SAME SAME – BUT DIFFERENT?
He’s got a Progress Pride flag badge pinned to his chest and a dangly gold earring.
His fake tan is darker than a bronze statue and his teeth are whiter than an igloo.
He pauses beside the hens’ night, flaps his hands around his face to pretend to be bashful about being recognised in public, then poses with them.
‘Woo!’ the woo girl woos, and the rest of the hens woo with her.
I hope they all get laryngitis. Tenille, the inked-up dyke sipping a whiskey on the rocks, looks like she’s ready to suplex them over the fence, Rhea Ripley style. I’d pay to see that.
Unexpectedly, once he’s done with the selfie, Xander makes a beeline for our table. ‘Bray Bray! Happy birthday, honey buns!’
Brayden’s face lights up. ‘Oh, you did come! Thank you, doll!’
They kiss the general air around each other’s jaws.
‘Just stopping in, like I said, busy busy, showbiz life, ya know,’ Xander says, pretending to touch up hair that doesn’t exist: his is cropped short to his head. ‘Having a good night?’ He peers at the dozen of us gawking at him. ‘Oh, hi, Brayden’s friends!’
Brayden quickly facilitates the introductions.
To his credit, Xander takes the time to repeat each person’s name and shake their hand as if he’s ever going to speak to any of us again, which is a nice gesture, I suppose.
I can’t decide if it’s genuinely polite to make the effort to meet all of us, or deeply entitled to rock up to someone else’s birthday party and make yourself the main character.
I go with the latter, because I don’t like the guy.
Like him or not, there’s something star-strikey about shaking hands with a famous guy and knowing he’s momentarily looking at you. My handshake is firm; his is loose and indifferent.
‘Charlie,’ Xander repeats. ‘I had a little fluffy Pomeranian named Charlie once! He died, though.’
‘Oh,’ I say. How the hell am I meant to reply to that? ‘I’m – sorry?’
Xander bows his head and makes the namaste hands at me. ‘Bless you,’ he says. Gandhi with glitter.
Before he moves on, I add, ‘Hey, I work at that new bar, the Tool Shed. I think you know my boss, Curtis?’
Xander’s eyes flash with recognition. ‘Oh, yes!’ he says. ‘He’s sorted an invite to your opening! I’ll make a little appearance if I can. So important to support new LGBTQIA+ venues in our community!’
He presses two fingers to the Progress Pride flag pin on his shirt, the way the nuns at my high school used to touch their crucifixes.
I’ll make a little appearance, my arse. He straight-up begged for an invite.
‘That’s good of you, dude – thanks,’ I say.
The interaction should end there, but then something heinous comes out of my gob.
‘Hey, would it be okay if I got a selfie with you?’ a Charlie-like voice asks Xander. ‘You’ve done such huge things as a Perth gay dude. I hope to make an impact like that with my music one day. You kinda inspire me, man.’
I am horrified. I am sure what I just said isn’t true, yet my craving to get some rapport with him made me say it, so there must be a kernel of reality buried in there.
I’m even more disgusted when Xander beams at me with approval.
‘I would love that, yaaaassss!’ he gushes, posing beside me while I snap a selfie of the two of us together. ‘I’ll see you next Friday at the Tool Shed, Pomeranian Charlie!’
Xander’s already made eye contact with the dude next to me and is off on his whirlwind tour of Brayden’s birthday table.
I feel like I just accepted cash for sexual favours.
Once Xander’s done – topping his state visit with another selfie with Brayden – everyone gushes about how nice he is. I gush too, two-faced coward that I am. But I wonder if I’ve been too mean and bitter, purely hating on Xander for being more successful than me. Maybe he’s not the enemy.