Chapter 18 Edging
EDGING
HAMMER
On Tuesday, we have our last open training session of the season.
Now the Pride Game is over, I’m hoping everyone can forget about it, but something’s off from the start.
Roo and Mosey welcome me back, but they’re cold, bearing a grudge.
The trainers and runners and Sniper and Oshy and everyone else is the same too.
Everyone’s kicking the footy to me, but the moment we pause for a drink, I’m a leper.
I’m surrounded by my teammates, but I might as well be alone.
Worse: when we run a match sim at the end, I hear a loud swell of ‘Booooo’ from the stands as I mark the footy.
At first, I glance at the other boys, assuming someone did something dodgy.
Then I realise it’s me. I’m the one our own fans are booing.
I refused to wear the Pride Jumper and now the fans hate me.
I line up and take my shot at goal. I shank the kick and it doesn’t even go through for a behind. Out of bounds on the full.
The crowd jeers. Someone yells out, ‘Retire, you grub!’
Weird how the people who support my stance against Pride only ever tell me in private. They never have the guts to show up and cheer me in front of people. Cowards.
I miss both my other shots, coming away from the match sim with a piddly 0.2 score. Oshy booted 2.1.
Oshy’s a gun. I’m a dropkick.
At the end of training, we head to the stands to meet the crowd and sign their posters with black Sharpies. Tessa intercepts me more efficiently than a full-flight Darcy Moore.
‘Let’s skip the fan interaction today,’ she suggests, touching my shoulder.
‘What, so I’m still being punished?’ I snap. ‘That’s not fair.’
Tessa recoils slightly. ‘The club isn’t punishing you, Hammer,’ she insists. ‘This is for your own safety.’
When I get out of the showers, Tank and Kingy ask about heading to mine for a feed.
I say no. I badly want someone to be nice to me, but I even more badly want everyone to leave me the fuck alone.
I check my phone on my walk out into the carpark. I have a ton of notifications again and brace myself for another social media video having a go at me, but it’s not that.
It’s worse.
Old mate Hardwick has dropped a new article.
He’s calling for me to face formal punishment from the AFL.
He’s advocating for a major fine and a three-week ban.
He says the AFL needs to send a message that the sport is inclusive, and allowing me back into the squad sweeps a major cultural problem under the rug.
‘What do you want from me, cunt?’ I shout as I wheel my car out of the carpark way faster than I should. ‘D’you wanna finish me off do ya? D’you want me dead?’
I’m shouting it through tears, which blur the part of my vision that should have seen the metal bollard in front of me.
I crash into the bollard so hard the air bag blows up in my face.
I tell myself I’m driving to Hammersmith Automotive to get Doug to assess my car’s damage, but truth is: I need my big brother.
When I rock up, Doug’s yard is closed, but the mesh gate is only pulled to – it isn’t padlocked, and his Clubby is still parked there. I can hear an engine roar inside the workshop.
I park on the street and survey the damage to my car in the streetlight.
The bumper’s caved in where I hit the bollard.
The hood is wedged shut, metal twisted, so I can’t yank it open and see if anything’s busted open.
Something’s dripping on the ground and I don’t know how vital it is.
Just windscreen washer fluid – a survivable flesh wound?
Or am I leaking oil, or coolant, or petrol – fatally bleeding out?
I pull the gate open and shut it behind me, creeping into Doug’s workshop. Everyone else has gone home and the lights are off except the workshop one. The air smells of petrol fumes. An engine is still being revved up.
As I walk into the workshop, I see the ruckus is coming from a souped-up Maloo ute parked under the metal hoist, its tyres chocked. Doug’s behind the steering wheel, absolutely flooring the accelerator so loud he must be hurting his hearing.
‘Doug,’ I call out. ‘Oi, Doug!’
Doug glances up abruptly, at the same moment a spray of white liquid shoots all over the inside of the windscreen.
At first, I think: weird time to test the windscreen wiper fluid.
Then I see Doug’s twisted expression of red-faced horror as the engine settles down.
And the phone screen in his hand with an image of a busty blonde model getting absolutely railed by a race car driver.
The penny drops.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Doug shrieks, shoving his dick back under the belt of his work pants. ‘I’m closed.’
‘Jesus Christ, bro, were you just …?’ I can’t even get the words out.
This is somewhere between cringe and gross and totally sad.
‘Fucken hell, you’re not meant to be in here,’ Doug splutters, pulling the key out of the Maloo’s ignition. I can hear the blonde chick from the porno moaning as the racer ploughs her until it falls silent.
Doug scrambles to get out from behind the steering wheel, then suddenly pauses, and pulls his legs back into the car. He’s realised he can’t hide his stiffy.
‘That’s pathetic,’ I say, horrified. I haven’t moved my feet since I realised what he was doing. ‘You need to imagine you’re some speedway driver to get off? Jesus Christ, you’re a weird unit, Doug.’
Doug’s face crumples, like when I called him Pizza Face as a teenager and he realised everyone could see how ugly he was. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he says weakly. ‘Don’t tell anyone. The yard’s closed. What are you doing here anyway?’
I put my hands on my head. My brother’s as messed up as I am. ‘Yeah, cool,’ I tell him. ‘Never mind. You can’t help me.’
‘What do you mean help—?’
‘Mum and Dad really fucked us both up, didn’t they?’ I say.
‘What does that—?’
I don’t wait to hear his reply. I bail.
On my balcony, I hit the bottle – tonight, Bundaberg rum with no mixer – and scroll through the contact list on my phone.
Doug can’t help me. I can’t even look him in the eye right now.
Everyone at the club hates me.
My parents have only ever given a shit about my footy career if I was succeeding. They never want to hear about the rough times.
That leaves one option.
I DM Zeke.
Zeke replies: he’s at footy training and can’t talk. He says we could catch up on Friday for a beer. I say okay, Friday works.
Zeke asks me if I’m okay and I lie.
I get drunk and spend the rest of the night typing out Insta stories and hovering my thumb over the post button, playing Russian roulette with my career.
On one post, I write: Oi I’m a big homo so why don’t you MFs get off my back and leave me TF alone?
After that, I try a new story: Yeh, u caught me out Hardwick. I hate faggots.
I don’t post either, but edging my own annihilation is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.