Chapter 9
PRIME TIME
HAMMER
I’m pissed off from the start. While us boys are waiting for our flight on Thursday, Tessa comes over with one of them combination padlocks.
‘A fun video for social,’ she says. ‘Can you boys guess the four-letter combination?’
We try a bunch of words – BALL, cos of footy, PIES, cos we’re flying to Melbs to face Collingwood, and WEST for West Coast Eagles, but nothing works. I even try KADE and HAMR when nobody’s watching, but then I realise Tessa’s phone camera is still on me and I look like a self-absorbed dick.
I look even worse when Sniper cracks the padlock with the word OSHY.
‘That’s right!’ Tessa beams. ‘It’s Oshy’s first game at the MCG. What a moment!’
Sniper musses Oshy’s hair. Oshy’s grinning as if he’s hell humble when we all know he’s got tickets on himself. Wonder how his face would look if I was standing on top of his kneecap, telling him I’d break his leg if he didn’t suck my cock. My dick twitches. Shit. Stop it, MC Hammer.
Then, we fly to Melbs and get annihilated by an in-form Collingwood side.
There’s no footy club more obnoxious than the Magpies.
They think they’re hot shit and the loud, long COLLLLLLLINGWOOOOOOOD chant goes around the MCG even when they’re losing.
Their young full-back is a tough bastard and manages to stick to me like glue.
Oshy ends up getting the crumbs of every major contest and slots four goals: his best game of the season. I get one goal and one behind.
It’s a humiliation. We lose by forty-two points.
‘You’re lucky nobody screenshotted it, babes,’ Richelle informs me over cocktails at a swanky laneway bar in the heart of Melbourne. ‘Saying what you said on Insta can be career-ending these days.’
She sips at her drink, a ‘virgin espresso martini’ that cost twenty-one dollars. But if it’s a virgin espresso martini, isn’t it just a ridiculously overpriced cold espresso?
I’m drinking an old-fashioned. Richelle insisted on cocktails and I chose the most normal one. It’s as blokey as a cocktail can look: orangey-brown, like liquid rust, with a big orange slice like they used to give us at footy training.
‘I took it down, no biggie.’ I shrug.
Richelle raises a shaped eyebrow and tucks her dead-straight blonde hair behind her ear, revealing a little pink gem piercing at the top.
‘It’s a different world now,’ she says. ‘Trust me, babes, I’m chronically on TikTok. One little drop of water can spiral into a tsunami these days.’ She sips her twenty-dollar espresso. ‘Speaking of TikTok, did you see I met The Veronicas?’
I reach for my old-fashioned. ‘Yeah, yeah. That’s pretty awesome.’
Richelle shoves her bejewelled phone in my face and starts playing me videos of her and the two female singers.
‘Oh my God, they were so nice! And they were literally long-time fans of my posts. And they follow me back now! They were the ones who asked for a selfie with me, I swear! I was like, Nooooo, you guys are the real famous ones!’
She laughs, looking for me to join in, and I dog her.
‘Yeah, good on ya,’ I say shortly.
Richelle pauses the current TikTok video and rolls her eyes.
‘Oh, I forgot, it’s all about Hammer,’ she says drily.
‘You can’t handle anyone getting more attention than you.
My counsellor says that’s why we didn’t work.
I was getting recognised in the street, and you couldn’t stand being the less-famous person in a couple.
That would’ve been your worst nightmare. ’
I clunk my glass onto the table harder than I mean to. Those last three words ring in my ears. ‘Why did you say that? “Your worst nightmare”?’ I demand.
Richelle squints. ‘Uh, cos it’s true, babes?’
I stare at her. Richelle was at Amber’s house party the night I kissed Zeke. Did she see us sneak off into the bushes? Does she know? Did she send the DM?
I don’t provoke her further. If she’s not admitting to sending the DM now, she won’t.
‘You have a bye next week – are you staying in Melbs to make a holiday of it?’ Richelle asks breezily.
My jaw is rigid. I don’t wanna tell her anything in case she’s the blackmailer. ‘Nah. Back to Perth tomorrow ay. No holidays.’
Richelle raises a tired eyebrow. ‘I forgot what you were like. We hardly ever took a holiday when we were together. I don’t miss that.’
I never let myself slack off or take holidays, even now I’m single. If I went overseas where nobody recognised me, maybe I’d get drunk enough to do something I’d regret.
‘You know what, it’s late,’ Richelle says. ‘But let’s get a cute selfie of us together before we call it a night. It’s been too long!’
I pose for the selfie. Richelle takes about seventy – not exaggerating. We need to get the right lighting, right pose, right boob-squish, right look in each other’s eyes like we’re sharing a laugh even though nothing either of us said was funny.
Tank’s no counsellor, but he once said that me and Richelle were still using each other. He was probably right. The selfies help her look famous and influential, and they help me look like I could have a girlfriend.
Win-win, right?
Once I get back to the twin hotel room I’m sharing with Tank, I head into the dunny to take a monster shit. As I finish wiping my arse, my whole back seizes up, bad enough for me to shout, ‘FUCKEN HELL!’
‘I’m not coming in there to look at your turd, bro,’ Tank calls. ‘I don’t care how big it is, I’ve done bigger.’
‘It’s me back, dickhead,’ I seethe. My whole lower back is locked in place. ‘I done somethin’ to me back. Get your hands off your knob and help me up.’
Tank helps me hobble to bed, where I collapse. He calls Mosey and asks for the club physio. Mosey says the physio’s two hours away, but in the meantime, he’s sending the physio prac student to help me.
Tank leaves the room for me to get my treatment.
The physio prac student is a big bulky Aboriginal bloke named Brick.
You can tell he works out but has also never said no to a Whopper with cheese.
He looks flustered, hair messy like he quickly pulled on his Eagles polo but was in the middle of something more vigorous. I wonder what.
If he’s pissed about having his night in Melbourne interrupted, he doesn’t show it.
Brick is hell polite. He brings in a plastic tub containing Deep Heat and RockTape and spiky balls.
He presses his thumbs down my back and I confirm each vertebrae is increasingly painful as he descends, until he reaches my waistband.
‘I’m going to go under your shorts, is that okay?’ he asks.
I’m wearing a clean pair of footy shorts and tell him it’s fine. The pain is so bad.
Brick pulls my shorts back, says ‘Oh’ quietly, cos I’m freeballing, then continues to press his thumbs down into my glutes.
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘It’s worse there than the lower back.’
Brick trails as low as it’s possible to go without molesting me, then skips across my glutes and starts massaging my hamstrings, which are tight as a drum, all the way down to my knee. He tries the same pattern on the right side, and there’s no pain.
‘Did I do my left hammy again?’ I ask dully, staring at the lights of Melbourne’s CBD through the hotel room window. Might be a long time before I get back to this city.
‘I don’t think so,’ Brick says. ‘Seems like piriformis syndrome.’
‘So you’ve seen this before?’ I ask.
‘I’m only a prac student,’ Brick says. ‘I’ve never treated it. I had it myself, as a patient. Piriformis syndrome is a bitch, but I know how to release the pain.’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Do it.’
Brick calls the physio, Donald, for approval, then comes back.
‘Orright, no homo, but the pressure release point is deep in the glute, mate,’ he warns. ‘Lot of guys can be put off by being massaged there, but trust me, the relief is unreal.’
‘All g. Go ahead.’
Brick squirts massage oil into his hands and grinds his thumb deep into a knot about an inch from my anus. It starts crunching. Holy crap, it feels incredible.
‘That okay?’ Brick checks.
‘Really – fucken – good,’ I manage. I’m glad Tank left the room. He’d never stop giving me shit for this.
Brick grinds my arse for a while, then applies the same pressure downwards. Right when he’s pummelling my hammy, my leg suddenly spasms and clicks like a guitar string snapping back into place.
‘Holy shit,’ I say. ‘What did you do?’
‘Try standing,’ Brick says.
He helps me off my stomach and holds out his hands for me to stand up. I do. Easily. My back is still tight, but the pain is gone; it’s no longer locked up.
‘Thank you so much, mate,’ I say, taking a few steps to test it. I’m mobile again, even if I’m not a hundred per cent.
‘Glad I could help,’ Brick says. ‘Donald’s on his way – he’ll assess you properly.’
‘Could I get some Deep Heat on it?’ I ask.
Brick gets Donald’s approval, then I slide onto my bed and wait for him to pull my shorts down again.
Brick rubs Deep Heat all over my buttocks.
His hands are warm and strong. It’s nice how rhythmic his touch is.
I ask him to do my back and my legs, too, and he does, so I get another five minutes of his hands all over me.
‘Donald will call when he’s here,’ Brick says. ‘Feel better soon, mate. We need you back out there booting goals.’
Once he’s gone, I stand in front of the mirror, hard-on poking out of my footy shorts, and jack off at the thought of letting Brick rub oil over every single muscle of my body.
Donald agrees my piriformis was the problem, but stops short of calling it a syndrome. He gives me stretches and tells me I’ll be monitored closely for fitness for next week’s game.
The pain is way less intense the next day. I have to get ready early: Tessa is rocking up at nine to take me to the Fox Footy studios for a live TV interview. It’s one of their pre-game shows: a panel of retired footy greats and journos doing footy news and analysis.