Chapter 24 #2
He falls asleep again without waiting for my answer. I still don’t have one. But Charlie was right. I can pre-empt the blackmailer and come out publicly. Or do nothing, and either he’ll out me, or he’s bluffing and nothing will happen.
My mind keeps drifting to Curtis, the bodybuilder I only met once. I didn’t know him, but he talked to me like he knew me.
The more I think about what he said, the more I know he was right.
‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ The big bodybuilder at the head of the table is on his feet. He jabs his finger at me. ‘This is my house, and you’re a visitor, son. Show some goddamn respect. Sit your ass down, or you’ll be out on your ass.’
They all hate me. They want me out of here.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t wanna talk. I’m out.’
I head to the entry and leave. I charge down the street in Inglewood looking for my car. I’m too charged up to drive. I want to run, fight, bash.
I get to my car as a voice shouts behind me. ‘Wait, buddy – hold your horses!’
It’s an American voice. I open my car door, but the bodybuilder dude has sprinted to catch up with me.
‘I left your house, mate,’ I say. ‘Like you asked. Leave me alone.’
‘I can’t do that, son,’ the bloke says. ‘Have I got this right? You’re the homophobic AFL player from the news, but you’re gay?’
The accusation stings like sunburn; I dip my face to the concrete. No point in lying, but. He knows. By Sunday, everyone will know.
‘You’ve done a lot of damage to a lot of people, Hammer,’ the guy says.
‘You don’t know me from a bar of soap, mate,’ I snarl. ‘You got no idea what I’ve been through.’
‘Right back at you, hot stuff,’ he says.
I look up at him. It’s like he’s opening a door for me.
‘You think nobody knows your pain? You think it was easy for me, working out who I was in the seventies?’
‘Probably not,’ I say. ‘But you probably just ran straight through any cunt who got in your way.’
‘I wasn’t always this big,’ he says seriously. ‘When I was sixteen, I was small and skinny and terrified cos I was a freakin’ faggot and nobody wanted to know me. You think I didn’t hate myself like you hate yourself?’
I don’t have an answer for how he saw through me, like my anger is cellophane.
‘Back then everyone else hated fags pretty easy, too,’ Curtis says. ‘Black or white, religious or not. I was scared of thugs and fag bashers and racists. So I had to get tough. I hit the gym and I took gear and I boxed. I had to get hard to survive. You feel me?’
I nod.
‘You look tough, but you’re not,’ Curtis says. ‘Your bitch ass can’t handle that God gave this cross to you. You’re suffering. Don’t tell me this feels like a good way to live, son.’
‘It’s not,’ I admit. ‘It’s like I’m trapped in quicksand and can’t get out.’
‘I learned to love myself when I accepted reality, rather than running from it,’ Curtis says. ‘I didn’t fit in the world I was born into. You don’t, either.’
I’m shocked he’d say that. It’s mean, brutal, unfixable.
Curtis notices my fallen face. ‘What? You want me to tell you you’re normal, Hammer?’ he says roughly. ‘You’re not, son. You don’t fit. You know you don’t fit.’
‘But then what the fuck am I meant to do?’ I demand. ‘You can’t just get here and diss me.’
‘I’m not dissing you; I’m trying to help you,’ Curtis says.
‘You are never gonna fit. Boys like you don’t slot into the gay scene.
Boys like you don’t slot into pro football.
You keep looking for a Hammer-shaped space in the world, but it doesn’t exist. You gotta do what I did.
You gotta make it yourself.’ He stabs his thumb at his pec, where his stringer tank gives way to hard muscle.
‘This Louisiana boy, living in Australia, is the biggest misfit out,’ he says proudly.
‘Some people like me and some people hate me. That’s life, kid.
But I carved my own path. I made it. That’s how you’ll get through this, too.
Make your Hammer-shaped space. And when you stand in that space, you won’t feel too big or too small.
You will thrive, cos you’ll be exactly where you belong. ’
When Zeke wakes up properly around eight, I tell him I need to get ready for my game.
But I don’t go straight home. I drive south, Curtis’ words in my ears.
It’s time.
I rehearse the conversation a dozen times as I drive to Hammersmith Automotive, but when I rock up to the yard, there’s a second car parked there. Mick’s red GT.
Goddammit. It’s a Sunday. I know Doug spends his Sundays here tinkering with his passion projects, but why is bloody Mick here, too? I need Doug alone.
When I rock up in the reception area, I pace behind the counter, waiting for Doug, when something catches my eye – something familiar. Before I can retrace my steps, Mick walks into the reception area, sits at Raelene’s computer and opens some car parts database.
‘Here to see your brother, mate?’ he asks. ‘He’s in the dunny.’ He pauses. ‘Don’t you have a game today?’
‘Yeah, this won’t take long,’ I say shortly.
Mick nods absent-mindedly, finds what he was looking for, and closes the car parts program.
Suddenly, my eye catches the familiar image. It’s in a background web browser window on Raelene’s computer: an Instagram account with an Eagles logo profile picture.
The same anonymous account that’s been blackmailing me.
Mick goes to stand up from the computer, and I lurch forward. I grab him by the collar and slam him against the wall behind Raelene’s desk. ‘You dog cunt!’ I shout.
I’ve seen red. I wanna kill him. I press him hard against the bricks and take a jab at his guts while shouting, ‘You blackmailing grub! You piece of shit!’
Mick’s shouting, pushing me back, but I’m stronger.
Suddenly, Doug is shouting, clawing at my back and tearing me off Mick. I shove him. His munted face looks shocked, then turns dark with a look I’ve never seen before: like I’m everything he hates in the world; like he wants to fucken kill me.
Doug winds up and delivers an uppercut right to my jaw.
I reel backwards, trip over the computer’s power cord and lose my balance, falling on my arse and whacking my head on the desk.
‘Your brother’s a psycho!’ Mick shouts. ‘Came at me out of nowhere!’
‘What the fuck, Kade?’ Doug shouts. ‘What did you come at Mick for?’
My jaw and my skull are both killing me, sandwiching my head in a vice of pain. ‘He’s been blackmailing me!’ I spit, disentangling myself from the power cord and causing a monitor to slide off its stand. ‘He sent me these fucked-up DMs on Insta.’
My brother leers at me. ‘No he didn’t, you idiot. I did.’
Doug and I sit on milk crates in the sun at the back of his workshop while he smokes.
I’ve never seen his munted face look so smug.
‘It was that night years ago at the Mercurial Winds Hotel,’ he tells me.
‘Robbie Calogero’s wedding. Remember, I came back to our hotel room for my phone charger?
I heard you having sex inside the room. Way before I knocked at the door.
You lied, said it was with some waitress.
I was pissed at you for leaving Richelle at the wedding.
She was down in the hotel lobby alone, trying to find you.
I waited at the end of the corridor for the waitress to come out.
I was gonna tell her what kinda dog you are, so she’d never root ya again.
Got a hell of a shock when the door opened and Zeke Calogero walked out, didn’t I? ’
Holy shit. How dumb was I to let Zeke out only a few minutes after Doug left?
‘So you knew, this whole time?’ I ask. ‘Why didn’t you just say something instead of being a psycho?’
‘I was gonna tell you the next day,’ Doug says, ashing his dart.
‘Well, actually, I was gonna torture you the next day. You gave me shit my whole life for my pimples. Shoe was on the other foot now, bitch. But then I heard Matt Jones from cricket necked himself and I was too wrecked to go after you. I remember worrying Zeke or Charlie might do the same, cos they were going through a lot.’
I hold my tongue. I don’t think Doug has a clue why Matt killed himself, and I won’t let him in on it, for Matt’s sake.
‘You were so bloody homophobic when I mentioned Charlie,’ Doug goes on.
‘I told you I didn’t have a problem with faggots, but you didn’t hear it.
Then next day, you’re back flirting with Richelle, and it never came up again.
Maybe it was a phase. But it was always in the back of my mind, all this time.
The way you could never commit to Richelle.
The way I never physically saw any of your one-night stands.
The way you’d look at fit blokes in the pub.
Nobody else could see you the way I could.
Then this Pride shit came up, and I knew why you were so mad – it hit a nerve … ’
‘You coulda just said something!’ I nearly shout. ‘You shoulda been nice to me. You’re my fucken brother!’
‘Oh yeah? We’re fucken brothers, are we?
’ Doug shouts back. ‘You shoulda been nice to me too. Me whole life, you been a cunt to me. And Mum and Dad let you. I’m the older brother but you were the one whose arse the sun shone out of.
I was Pizza Face and you were a bully, Kade.
You don’t know what it’s like to be bullied.
You always been the one kicking shit in people’s faces.
So yeah, the one time the world gave me a bit of power over you, I took it.
I’m not even ashamed. D’you know how good it felt to make you shit your pants that I was gonna out you?
It was the most satisfying revenge. Now you’ve ruined the ending. ’
‘Were you really gonna tell everyone today?’ I ask.
Doug flicks his cigarette butt to the ground.
‘Course not, fuck knuckle.’ My body tingles with a shiver of relief.
‘I was gonna watch you choke. The camera woulda zoomed into your panicked little face every time you shanked a goal. Wouldn’t be the Big Dog anymore once you were playing badly, would ya? ’
‘Why torture someone like that?’ I mutter. ‘It’s cold-blooded.’
‘It didn’t need to go on this long!’ Doug says hotly.
‘Why wouldn’t you just bloody admit you’re gay?
!’ His cheeks are suddenly red, eyes overflowing.
‘I know I went too far. Sorry. But that revenge felt like justice. Honest to God, the first time I messaged you, I wanted you to face who you are so you didn’t do something stupid. ’
Seeing my older brother cry makes me cry, too.
I put my arm around Doug’s shoulder and press my head against his forehead.
‘You won’t remember, but when we were really little, we used to be close mates,’ Doug says through tears.
‘We played backyard cricket and footy together. You looked up to me. If I had an Eagles cap, you wanted an Eagles cap. If I had a toy lightsaber, you wanted one. Once you got good at sport, Dad tore us apart. But I remember how it felt to have a little brother who looked up to me.’
‘I remember the lightsaber,’ I tell him. ‘It was green.’
‘Yeah, it was green,’ Doug confirms. ‘Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber.’
‘Do you think it’s Mum and Dad’s fault?’ I ask. ‘Like, for not being there for us? Did it make me the way I am, and you the way you are?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’ Doug clears his throat. ‘And can we not talk about my thing? It’s just a fetish, man, no big deal.’
‘I don’t wanna talk about it,’ I say. ‘It’s weird, but you’re not hurting anyone. Sorry if I overreacted. I don’t hate you for it.’
Doug swallows. ‘Orright,’ he says. ‘And I don’t hate you, either, for your thing.’
‘We don’t hate each other,’ I say. ‘That’s not bad.’
‘Not bad,’ Doug agrees.