Chapter 7 #4
‘What? Are you kidding me? You’re moving out? Over this?’ Sabrina stares at me like I’m the one abandoning her. ‘Zeke, I know you’re not an arsehole like Shane. Surely this isn’t a hill worth dying on?’
‘It is, actually,’ I say. ‘And I don’t think Shane is an arsehole.’
Sabrina’s face contorts, momentarily more wounded than raging. ‘I can’t believe you just said that to me.’
I waver, wanting to say so much more, but too scared to verbalise any of it.
I race out the front door, a frightened animal fleeing the predator from the past and the present, all at once.
Lost and with nowhere to go, I end up taking Jack up on his invitation for a root.
I drive to his house in the northern suburbs, where he rails me for over an hour.
Jack calls me bro. I call him boss. I submit to his muscular body as he drills me hard.
The friction of our bodies – man on man, the way nature intended – generates a wave of ecstasy in our groins.
Jack ejaculates deep inside me, and I jizz all over my stomach.
His forehead dripping with sweat, he grins as he licks my cum out of my abdomen hair and delivers it back into my mouth with a deep, hard kiss. I swallow it.
This is how life should be, always. This moment, this fuck, is everything beautiful, everything right, everything that makes life worth living.
Jack offers me a drink after, and I accept it, mostly as I have nowhere else to go. He cracks two cans of Woodstock Bourbon and slides them into Collingwood stubby holders. I take a sip and nearly physically recoil.
‘This is rocket fuel.’
Jack smirks guiltily. ‘Ah, yeah, love me grog strong, ay,’ he says, scratching his chest. ‘Bit of an alco. Tried to get sober, didn’t take. But I used to be a real menace on the piss. I’m practically a saint now.’
I’m obsessed with his house. Jack and his boyfriend Brick are both into footy: there’s a mix of Eagles and Collingwood sports memorabilia on all the walls.
Among the unopened cardboard boxes in the garage – they must’ve only recently moved in – there are gym duffel bags and boxing gloves and footy boots and work boots piled up beside an exercise bike and a weight bench.
The kitchen bench is covered in so many tubs of protein and pre-workout it looks like a Supplement Mart, and the fridge is overflowing with grog.
Pinned to the fridge with Brolo Earthmoving magnets is a photo of Jack, wearing Pit Vipers, beside a young Italian woman and a curly-haired teenage boy I assume is his son.
A bar runner on the bench says JACK LIVES HERE and a Magna Doodle on the back of the door into the garage says, ME LOVE PEENUS! with a drawing of a dick and balls.
This is a man’s house. I wish I lived here.
Jack grabs a black Akubra hat and a pack of cigarettes and takes me out onto the patio.
Jack and I finally get to talk about how we’re both from Gero – he and Brick have moved to Perth temporarily, so Brick can complete his physio degree – and we suss out if we have any relatives in common.
We don’t, but Jack’s family goes to the same church as mine, his friend Elena’s boyfriend Pete plays seven-aside soccer for La Fiamma with my brother Robbie, and I used to work with his sister Lucy at IGA. Gero’s that kind of town.
I ask Jack if he likes living in the city.
‘Nah, fuck the big smoke,’ he booms, ashing his cigarette.
‘Only here for Brick to do his pracs then we’re back to Gero.
Bit more to do in Perth – like that Italian Festival I went to with Elena.
She’s Italian too. We got wasted on free Limoncello, ha.
But nah, me and Brick both love bein’ country boys. I can’t wait to move back home. You?’
I never think about it much, but tonight it’s been violently shoehorned into my consciousness.
‘I don’t hate Geraldton, but I couldn’t live there again,’ I admit.
Not least because of my parents. I circle back to the compulsory conversation between any two Italians who meet in the wild. ‘So, which part of Italy are you from?’
Jack and I talk about being Sicilian. His family was even more homophobic and horrible than mine: by comparison, I’ve had a cakewalk.
‘Some Italians can’t handle it,’ he concludes.
‘Not only Italians who can be weird about it,’ I say. ‘I just had this big fight with – urgh – you probably don’t wanna hear a sob story.’
‘Yeah nah, fuck that,’ Jack says. ‘Boring.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Fair enough …’
Then he bursts out guffawing. ‘I’m fucking with you, bro. I’m a cunt but not a total cunt. Go on, what happened?’
It’s not a sexy way to end a great root, but I end up spilling my guts about the fight with Sabrina.
‘You seem really pissed at this Sabrina bird,’ Jack muses, plucking another smoke from his pack. ‘Why are you blaming her?’
‘Because she’s made me feel uncomfortable being gay in her house,’ I say.
‘But like, has she got you locked up in a cage?’
‘No …’
‘So you’re free to leave,’ Jack says simply. ‘Why don’t ya?’
‘Well, I think I will,’ I say defensively. I feel like he’s calling me weak and I can’t think of a good comeback. ‘I can’t be myself there anymore.’
Jack winces. ‘Don’t waste time on people who don’t like who you are. Learned that a while back. Let her do her thing. You do yours. You said she tut-tuts at Grindr?’
‘Yeah. She thinks it’s gross.’
‘Bro, you got no business living with someone like that,’ he says. ‘Move somewhere you can talk about your hot Grindr hookups. Like this bloke Jack Brolo who rearranged your guts tonight with his thick wog cock.’ He chortles.
I flick his arm playfully. ‘Yeah. I think you’re right.’
‘Even Grindr’s fucked now,’ Jack goes on, swilling his Woodstock.
‘They forgot they were meant to be an app for men. Few blokes I know got scared off using it cos they’re closeted and had women and non-binary people popping up on the grid.
Feels safe to show your face around other gay blokes when you’re discreet – there’s like an unspoken code, right?
– but that protection goes up in smoke if you open it to everyone.
That app’s jumped the shark – totally unfixable now.
We deserve a hookup app for blokes only. ’
My heart rate quickens. ‘I don’t know if you’re allowed to say that, are you?’
Jack snorts; bourbon drips from the corners of his mouth. ‘What the fuck are you on about? Not allowed? A bloke isn’t allowed to say he wants an app to meet other blokes for a root? How beaten down are you?’
I imagine Sabrina or some of the people I went to uni with overhearing this conversation and sniping me and Jack for being modern-day gay heretics.
‘Some people I know would lose their shit at this,’ I explain. ‘Everything’s meant to be all-inclusive – even gay sex apps, apparently. Which defeats the purpose and makes them not safe and not what we need. But it’s like: all-inclusive or else.’
‘Or else what?’ Jack demands. ‘Or else they’ll punish us? We’re blokes who fuck blokes. That’s what being gay is. It’s not freedom if we’re living in fear.’
‘I agree,’ I admit. ‘Hey, any chance I could crash here tonight?’ I blurt it out without thinking. Jack is so strong in what he’s saying, it makes me feel safe with him.
Jack shakes his head. ‘Sorry, bro,’ he says.
‘I like you. Hope we can fuck again. Hope we can play footy together. But me and Brick, we have an open relationship only for sex, not anything else. We don’t let guys stay the night.
Home is just for us. And he’ll be home soon …
’ His forehead creases. ‘I’m not turfing you out into the streets, am I? You got someone you can stay with?’
I pick up my phone. ‘Guess I’m about to find out.’