Chapter 23 #2
‘Just feel like I’m a munted pancake,’ Hammer says, and it’s not the hoarse voice of the big footy bloke in his twenties, but the boyish, wounded voice of the frightened lad who’s been hiding this part of himself since he was a little Auskicker.
‘What?’
‘The one that didn’t get cooked right. Feel like I don’t matter. Like I should get chucked in the bin.’
Auskick Hammer holds me tighter, his skull hard against my solar plexus. He’s hugging me too rough and hurting me, but I know to break away now would be fatal to him.
‘Hammer,’ I say. ‘Even if you were the most munted pancake in the world, you would still matter.’
Hammer and I talk outside for ages. He tells me he’s sorry for how he treated me when I was outed in year eleven. I tell him so he fucking should be.
I tell Hammer I’m sorry I protested him when I knew he was closeted. He says it’s okay, but I feel guilty about it. I should never have sided against him.
I steer Hammer towards his next steps. If he’s going to be outed, he can either wait for it to happen, come out first, or call the blackmailer’s bluff and do nothing.
‘At least tell your family,’ I suggest. ‘Hell of a thing to have your family find out from someone other than you – trust me.’
‘Shit,’ Hammer says. ‘My parents won’t like it much. My brother Doug might be okay … cos he … yeah, he might be okay …’
‘Then start with Doug,’ I recommend.
Hammer asks what I’m doing these days. I admit I’m jealous of him. We both left home looking for a blaze of glory – a punk rocker and a footy player. He got his glory but I never got mine.
‘I wonder if being straight-passing is what it takes,’ I muse. ‘You’re the straight-ish one, and you got the dream.’
‘Did you ever ask me if I like the dream?’
‘Hammer, the only thing more obnoxious than being famous is telling me some poor rich-boy story about how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Well …’
‘Oh, piss off,’ I say. ‘I would kill for one per cent of what you have.’
‘Okay.’
‘Fine. Go on then, dude. Say it.’
‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Hammer says.
Hammer tells me about his lonely, repressed life.
He’s never had sex with a dude since Zeke.
He doesn’t accept it in himself. He wishes he had a best mate he could work out with and play footy with and drink with and fuck.
It barely resembles what I would call a relationship, but I can see in Hammer’s eyes it’s what he wants.
Poor fucker is so confused. It’s like the universe gave him a homosexual dick but a heterosexual brain.
I remember Matt grappling with the same thing. The world didn’t allow a man like him to exist freely. He needed a place where he could be himself.
While my mind is on Matt, a voice from the waiting room calls out, ‘Calogero? Family of Zeke Calogero?’
‘That’s us!’ I shout, racing inside.
An exhausted doctor with bags under her eyes looks me and Hammer up and down. ‘And how are you related to Zeke Calogero?’
It comes out like a reflex. ‘He’s my brother.’
Zeke is sitting up in his hospital bed drinking orange juice from a cardboard cup.
He’s shirtless, electrodes attached to his chest and wires snaking from his finger pulse monitor to a machine.
He doesn’t have pants on, his groin is covered by a blanket and his black hair is tousled and sweaty.
His skin is the colour of cement, with a few odd bruises.
The back of his head is bandaged, his lips and fingernails still look too blue to be healthy, and his knuckles are grazed and raw, but his eyes light up as me and Hammer walk in.
‘You’re both here,’ he says, beaming. ‘In the same place. The things I do to get us back together, ay?’
‘Three country boys, one bed,’ I say instinctively. ‘I’ve seen that porno before.’
Hammer gives me a horrified sidelong look, but Zeke laughs. ‘Oh yeah? Was Dirk Caber in that one, too?’
I get goosebumps of relief and wrap Zeke in a warm hug. He’s still Zeke. He’s okay.
Hammer hangs back, peering intently at Zeke with his arms folded.
‘What made you come—?’ Zeke starts to ask Hammer, but that shit can wait.
‘Dude, what’s the go?’ I ask, probably killing a moment between them, but I need to know if he’s out of the woods or not. ‘What did the doctor say?’
Zeke’s eyes bulge. ‘Well, my heart stopped for a bit, and I’m no doctor but apparently that’s not ideal,’ he says.
‘The amyl made me sick. I’d been hitting it hard all day.
And drinking a lot. And sniffing the amyl fumes gets you high, but you’re not meant to get the liquid on your body or drink it, or it depletes the oxygen in your blood to dangerous levels.
Hypoxia. They said both my blood pressure and my blood oxygen saturation levels were so low I should have been dead.
But I’m here drinking orange juice, so … ’ He shrugs.
I touch the back of my head. ‘The bandage?’
‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ Zeke says. ‘Just some blunt force trauma to the skull.’
‘That all?’
‘The scans came back okay. I didn’t do anything nasty. But losing blood from the head when the rest of my blood had no oxygen in it probably didn’t help, you know?’
‘You’re lucky, you idiot,’ I say. ‘But what happened with you and Rex – were you …?’
‘I’ll tell you all about it later,’ Zeke says firmly. ‘Not now.’
I nod. ‘Roger. Well, no more poppers for you, ever,’ I say. ‘You can just take cock up the bum and feel the full pain the way God intended.’
Hammer coughs awkwardly. I forget he’s not used to this kind of talk.
Zeke shrugs. ‘Amyl’s relatively safe. The doctor just said I shouldn’t leave it uncapped, or it can spill and – well, you know …’
‘I’m sorry, but – what’s amyl?’ Hammer asks.
‘Oh, my sweet summer child,’ I say.
We give Hammer his first lesson in gay culture, which prompts him to uncomfortably mutter about needing to go to the dunny. He hastily disappears.
‘So, why did you call Hammer down here?’ Zeke asks, as soon as he’s out of earshot. ‘And why did he say yes? Are you guys all good now?’
Zeke has no memory of Hammer being the one who saved his life. He was unconscious. I have no idea how to explain it to him – Hammer being suicidal – and it feels wrong to burden him with something like that when he’s recovering in a hospital bed.
Before I can answer, a voice blares over a loudspeaker, announcing an incoming Priority One. Doctors and nurses race to the ambulance entrance. Zeke and I fall silent out of morbid respect as we hear someone being resuscitated nearby with both CPR and a defibrillator.
There is no sudden long beep of a heart monitor failing, but we know it’s over when a doctor swears. Someone murmurs, ‘Time of death, two seventeen am.’
‘Poor person,’ Zeke mutters.
‘Horrible,’ I say.
All I can think is: That could’ve been you, Zeke.
‘Are we okay?’ Zeke asks.
‘Of course we’re okay,’ I say. ‘Don’t be an idiot. Just a dumb fight. I didn’t mean what I said about you and footy.’
‘Felt like you were trying to hurt me, man.’
‘I was,’ I admit. ‘I’m sorry, dude. I’m legit happy you’ve found yourself with sport. You seem happier than I’ve ever known ya.’
Zeke smiles. ‘I am,’ he says. ‘I’m happy there. Or I was. And I’m sorry for bringing up Matt. That was a dick move. I was just hurt, too.’ He trails off. ‘Seriously, why is Hammer here? Did you call him?’
‘Me and Hammer had a good talk—’ I start, but I’m saved from answering fully as Hammer returns, drying his wet hands on his hoodie, followed by Zeke’s doctor.
The doctor tells Zeke he’s gonna be kept for observation overnight to make sure his heart and oxygen levels are normal.
It’s late: the Tool Shed will be shut by now. I wonder how Curtis and Ahmed reacted to finding the chaos in the kitchen.
As I think that, my phone vibrates with an incoming call from Curtis.
‘Hey, Curtis, you okay?’ I ask.
The frantic voice at the end of the line keeps saying, He’s dead, he’s dead.
‘No, it looks bad cos there’s blood on the floor, but he’s okay,’ I say calmly. ‘I’m with him now.’
‘What are you on about? The doctor just told me, he’s dead. My beautiful man is gone. We’re at Charlie’s ED. Where are you?’
That’s when I realise the hysterical voice on the phone isn’t Curtis.
It’s Ahmed.
The man who died at two seventeen was Curtis.