Chapter 7
LAUREATO
ZEKE
I’m meant to be a graduate today, but the day starts off distinctly teenage.
I lug my hungover arse out of bed. I order Uber Eats to soak up the vodka (Hungry Jack’s hash browns are little alcohol-soaking life savers).
I put an episode of The Boys on the lounge- room TV for background company (I wish I was Billy Butcher, but I know I am Hughie).
And I flop on the couch to start a new game of Pokémon Violet on my Switch (I choose Fuecoco, the fire-type crocodile, as my starter).
It makes for a chill hour or so, until Victoria drops in for breakfast with Sabrina and ruins it.
To beat the Will & Grace comparison to death, Victoria Fowler is Karen Walker’s personality in Grace Adler’s body: she’s a waifish redhead draped in designer clothes and Tiffany’s bling, with a disposition as sharp as her pale elbows.
She’s never thought much of me. When I let her into the house this morning, she has the same look she always has when she sees me: like she just stepped in dogshit, but remembered she’s on camera, so she’d better force a half-hearted smile.
I turn The Boys off while Sabrina and Victoria commandeer the lounge room for a bitchfest about Shane and Allison. I keep playing Pokémon but occasionally laugh or add my two cents. When Victoria’s spikiness isn’t aimed at you, it can be brutally funny.
When the Shane/Allison well of gossip runs dry, the girls’ conversation roams further.
Victoria goes on a diatribe about some fancy overseas brand of chocolate being appropriated by bogans as it’s cropping up in shops everywhere now: ‘Next thing you know, they’ll have it at 7-Eleven!
’ They discuss Richelle Meyers from high school, who’s now a big TikTok wellness influencer they both hate: ‘As if The Veronicas even knew who she was – she was probably just lined up at a fan meet-and-greet!’ Then they get scrolling on the TikTok of an influencer Victoria is obsessed with – one of those tradwife accounts that are trending: ‘It’s like a new wave of feminism where women can reclaim our feminine side but, you know, without the bigotry. ’
The whole tradwife thing gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I focus on my Fuecoco.
‘Modern technology has definitely made a lot of things worse,’ Sabrina agrees.
She watches a trad-husband chopping wood shirtless and carrying it into a house where his tradwife is baking an apple pie in a checked apron like Snow White.
‘God, wouldn’t it be nice if men were like that again?
Instead of grubby porn-addicted losers like Shane. ’
I accidentally snort.
‘What’s so funny, Zeke?’ Victoria prods.
I consider trying to pass the snort off as Fuecoco’s Ember attack before wading in.
‘Don’t you think it’s kind of pretend Stepford-wife stuff?
A performance for the camera? Those wood-chopping hunks are totally jacking off behind their wives’ backs once the recording’s done.
You realise even guys in the 1950s masturbated, right? ’
I’m not sure why I didn’t read the room or consider my audience. It just felt imperative to point out that these tradwhatevers are as fake as it comes.
‘You always have such a way of bringing us into the gutter,’ Victoria says drily.
‘Not all guys do that,’ Sabrina insists. I think she needs to believe there’s a prince out there who’s diametrically opposite to Shane.
‘And it’s not just a Stepford-wife thing, you know,’ Victoria adds.
‘There are gay trad-husbands, too.’ She taps on her phone and whips out a TikTok of a viral same-sex couple.
One guy wears plaid and chops firewood and builds a deck while his husband wears a simple white collared shirt while he vacuums their rumpus room and bakes gingerbread.
Their home décor is comprised of neutral, earthy tones that remind me of camouflage.
‘That might be the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen,’ I say.
‘Bit judgemental of you, Zeke,’ Sabrina scolds, but with a smirk.
‘Hey, to each his own,’ I say, with a shrug, and turn back to my Fuecoco.
‘You’d scrub up quite nicely as a trad-husband, Zeke,’ Victoria says, and I know it’s not a compliment, but to stir me up. ‘Get you off your devices, out into nature, some fresh air in your lungs, some muscle on your bones. Have you ever chopped wood before?’
I entertain saying something profoundly dirty about wood, and think better of it.
‘Victoria’s right, Zeke,’ Sabrina gushes. ‘You’d look absolutely adorable in one of those white collared shirts.’
Graduation night is a paradox.
Until tonight, I am a high-achieving uni student pursuing a double degree while moonlighting in a call centre. I’m admirable.
After tonight, I’ll be a graduate with two degrees and nothing to show for it but a dead-end, entry-level job. I’ll be a failure.
Nobody ever says it to your face, but I already feel the judgement.
Every time someone at the call centre half-jokingly (but half-not-jokingly) asks when I’ll be leaving for better things.
Every time Sabrina suggests postgraduate studies.
Every time my mother emails me a Seek ad with a message of This could be a good option for you, love? Xx
What was I thinking, doing a useless Arts/Business double degree, majoring in English and Marketing? I have no real-world skills. Who needs a grad who can write essays and marketing copy in an era when AI writes both?
Uni was a useful way of kicking big life decisions down the road. Any time I thought Where is my life going? I’d tell myself, That’s a problem for Future Zeke.
Now I’m twenty-four. I am Future Zeke.
Part of me likes the idea of burning out. No job, no home. Sméagol devolving into a horny Gollum. Would that be so bad? Nobody would like me, but it’s not like I have friends anyway. I could devote my life to sex – and if I die, I die. Plenty of worse ways to go.
Speaking of sex: despite me telling Jack I wasn’t free today, he messages me on Grindr.
In case ur schedule frees up – here’s my number bro.
I reply: Still busy tonight. Graduation. Hope we can play again soon. Ur hot AF!
Jack texts back: Graduation shmaduation. Come get ur hole pounded instead. :P
He adds an appealing array of eggplant and squirty cum emojis.
Suave bugger, I reply.
Burnout Zeke would love to skip his own graduation for cock. But my family will be there tonight. They made the trip from Geraldton to see the first Calogero boy to ever graduate uni. And they understand academia as much as they understand homosexuality.
Saint Lawrence, pray for me.
The Riverside Theatre is packed to the rafters: nervous students jiggling robed knees, duty-bound academics and roped-in loved ones stoically preparing for a three-hour snoozefest.
I’m in a velvety red seat five rows from the stage.
I’m between Caoimhe Cafferkey and Xia Chen, neither of whose names I pronounce correctly and neither of whom I’ve ever met.
In fact, I only recognise a handful of the grads around me.
I didn’t really make friends at uni. I had some banter with classmates, but we fell out of touch once each semester ended.
So, at my graduation night, I can only share nods and smiles with people whose faces I know but names I don’t remember.
Four years and it’s like I was never here.
Xia’s mobile rings. She answers and turns around, scanning the crowd before waving and grinning. She speaks into her phone in what I assume is Mandarin, eyes shining.
I give her the warmest look I can, which I suspect looks like that meme of Rupert Grint doing the awkward half-smile to a co-worker he doesn’t know well enough to say hello to.
Caoimhe leans over me and touches Xia’s elbow. ‘Are they your parents?’
Xia nods. ‘And my cousins. They flew over from Guangzhou for this. We haven’t all been together since before the pandemic.’
‘That’s so special,’ Caoimhe coos. ‘Me mam came over, too.’
The two girls chat for a bit, leaning over me, until Caoimhe presumably feels impolite and asks, ‘And do you have someone special here, Calogero?’
She thinks my surname is my first name, and she pronounced it the Aussie way instead of the Italian way. I’m tempted to get back at her for being snarky at me for not knowing her name was pronounced kwee-vah, but I never have the guts to be overtly rude.
‘Yeah, my folks are here somewhere,’ I say.
I peer into the crowd and spot them. My father is staring at the ceiling, mouth open gormlessly and a tired look setting like concrete on his deep-wrinkled, sun-cooked face.
His shirt is untucked. My mother, by contrast, is in a full-blown conversation with the woman beside her, both holding out their programs like they’re comparing notes.
They’re laughing like fast friends, but my mother’s jaw is pointed as it extends in an overly enthusiastic, lipstick-coated smile.
I know for sure she will tell me later she hated something about the lady beside her.
Sabrina is out there somewhere, too, but before I can search for her, the lights dim.
Grand music plays. A spotlight follows a regal woman in blue-and-yellow medieval-looking robes as she crosses the stage.
She’s our MC, the pro-vice-deputy-chancellor or some shit.
She introduces one of the uni’s Nyoongar Elders for a Welcome to Country, then a procession of professors heads up to the stage in ornate regalia ripped directly from the chic runways of the Middle Ages.
My own regalia isn’t quite as overdone: just a peasanty black cape and mortarboard with a blue-and-white sash.
Graduation is boring. It takes ages. Nothing interesting happens.
Eventually, our row is called to line up and cross the stage.
The Dean invites family members to make some noise for their graduate. When Caoimhe’s name is called before me, her mother absolutely howls for her.