Chapter 25
MASCHIO
ZEKE
It’s hard to feel good about surviving the night when Curtis didn’t.
When I wake up in the quiet ward, I have another big cry.
It comes over me like a rampage of tsunamis.
Every time I think I’m done, another tsunami hits, and I’m a mess again.
I think about Ahmed, losing his husband.
Charlie, losing a father figure. Me and Rex, losing a protector.
Curtis seemed so tough you’d think nothing could kill him.
I ask my nurse where they take the bodies. She says Curtis’ll be in the morgue and I can’t see him. It feels cruel to be in the same building and not be able to tell him I am here.
Nobody is exactly sure how Curtis died. Rex had mopped the kitchen so there was no mess when Ahmed got home from Kayla and Tenille’s.
Curtis came home, kissed Ahmed in bed, went into the kitchen for his night-time protein shake and walked out into the courtyard to drink it in the moonlight in front of his favourite bonsai tree.
Ahmed and Rex were startled by the thud of that big man’s body hitting the wooden deck, and nothing they or the paramedics did could save him.
We do know it was a massive heart attack, but what triggered it might never be known: the stress of being attacked by Xander, or the panic of bankruptcy from the boycott, or the hate crime and harassment.
Then again, Curtis abused steroids for decades and hit stimulants like a fiend.
And he’d had a hard life, fighting against the grain.
Maybe it was all of it combined. His heart just couldn’t hold up to it anymore.
Nobody’s indestructible.
In the moments where my tsunami rampage ebbs, I realise that last night, I think I tried to die.
But waking up alive does not feel like failure. It feels like a second chance.
I think about Hammer, rematerialising into my life as if he hadn’t ghosted me for years. I still don’t understand how that happened or why Charlie called him. But that’s hardly my focus: I can’t stop thinking about what he admitted.
I only broke it off with you cos of footy. Not cos I ever stopped liking you. Okay?
Does that mean what it sounds like it means? The jock I was stupid enough to have a crush on didn’t just like me back – he still does? And he’s rocked up now to tell me that? Is he going to speak to me again? Will he reply if I text? Or will he ghost me again?
No matter what’s in store for me and Hammer, losing my shit at him last night has undone a toxic knot of grief I didn’t even know was strangling my solar plexus.
Maybe snapping at footy training yesterday unlocked something in me.
I feel lighter and stronger. Last night, I said to Hammer what I should have shouted in that hotel room.
I was angry like Jack Brolo.
I was strong like Curtis Levesque.
Once I’m released from the confines of my drip, I pad barefoot to the hospital ward toilet to take a dump.
The exhaust fan whirrs. The tiles are cold on my feet.
My reflection in the mirror is bruised, my knuckles bleeding again.
If I died last night when my heart stopped beating, I would have died a coward.
Hiding, twisting myself into knots for the approval of my parents, Sabrina, the world.
It has been such a mistaken way to live: this desperate, frightened approval monster I became.
There was never anything wrong with me and I never needed approval to be my own man.
Curtis tried to tell me that. I’ve learned it now.
Nothing the world throws at me can ever hurt me more than I hurt myself.
I don’t fear displeasing anyone anymore.
The hospital’s foam soap smells of fresh citrus and stings the grazed skin as I wash my hands clean and allow myself to smile at my reflection instead of scowl at its imperfections. I am pear-shaped and shirtless and stocky and hairy and alive.
And I am so fucking done not being myself.
When I get the missed calls from my mother, I ignore them. I forgot about my plans with my parents: a coffee catch-up after my cousin’s christening. The last thing I want is for my parents to find out I’m in hospital and go full Sicilian on me.
But then Charlie texts. Hey dude, ur folks rocked up at the front door and Rex let slip you’re in Charlie’s. Sorry. They’re heading to see you. Heads up.
Goddammit.
Thanks for letting me know. I hesitate, but add: How are you holding up?
Still in shock. I can’t believe it. Curtis. I loved him so much, Zeke. He was Superman to me. I thought he’d live forever. Ahmed has fallen apart, all over the shop emotionally. Kayla and Tenille are here. Rex is a mess. We’re all sitting here like stunned mullets.
There are no words to make it better. Before I can formulate a reply, Charlie adds: He was like a dad to me, man.
Another tsunami slams me; saltwater all over the bed sheet.
I know. I’m so sorry. Curtis was a good man.
The best man I’ve ever known, Charlie replies. Dunno what I’ll do without him.
Sorry I’m stuck in hospital. Do you have someone there for you? I ask. Reyna?
Reyna’s in Mandurah – Hectic Lettuce had a gig there last night.
Mason? I suggest.
Charlie’s reply is quick. I can’t. I fucked things with him. I guess it’s over.
The old Zeke would have said something gentle and comforting, but I tap a fired-up message to Charlie instead.
Sorry for the tough love but here’s the truth.
You can’t let relationships die the moment there’s one little argument.
You let it happen with me, with Matt, even Hannah and Rocky.
Mason likes you and you like him. Don’t fuck this up.
Make the first move. You need him and he’ll be there for you, he’s that kind of guy. You deserve to be happy.
There’s a long silence. Several times, Charlie’s three dots appear and disappear. Finally he writes back: Wow, what got into you?
Padde, I write back.
Wtf is padde? Charlie asks.
It’s Italian. Sicilian dialect, actually, I tell him. It means balls.
When a staff member waves my parents through to see me in bed, my mother instantly bursts into tears, covering her face with her hands.
My father puts his arm around her shoulder and gapes at me, aghast. I’m so used to my parents using their emotions to manipulate me, I’m not ready for how real this is.
They are truly upset to see their kid in a hospital bed.
My mother’s face is pallid. Possibly for the first time in my life, I feel genuinely sorry for her.
‘What happened, exactly?’ Dad asks, once they move up to the head of the bed to kiss me. ‘Your housemate said some chemical spilled on you during a party?’
Hell of a double euphemism, Rex.
‘Look, Mum, Dad, I’m gonna be honest with you for once,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t a chemical, it was a drug.’ My mother gasps. ‘And it wasn’t a party, it was sex. I was having sex with two guys, and too much of a drug got into my system, and it nearly killed me.’
My parents are horrified. My mother stares at me like I just unmasked myself as a villain.
‘That’s – too much information,’ Dad says, his gaze lingering on the chart beside my bed. ‘We don’t want to hear this about our son.’
‘Tough titties, Dad,’ I say, with the same voice I’d use on the footy oval.
‘You what?’ Dad snaps.
‘Tough titties. I don’t care if you want to know or not, this is who I am,’ I say, locking eyes with him.
‘I’m not bisexual. I only said that cos I thought it might make you hate me less.
I’m not into girls, only guys. I don’t want to live with Sabrina.
And I’m not gonna move into your flat. I want my own place. ’
Italian boys aren’t allowed to say this, but this is the truth.
‘Are you trying to hurt me?’ my mother cries, clutching her chest. ‘Why dump this on me now? I’m already upset about my poor boy in hospital. And we can’t pop in and stay in a pied-à-terre if you’re not living in it!’ She presses her palms to her cheeks. ‘No. This is too much to take in.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be if you’d listened to me the first time,’ I say flatly. ‘I told you who I was years ago. You made me feel like shit for it. I’m done bending myself out of shape to fit your life. You can bend to fit mine.’
While that verbal bitch-slap ricochets off the walls, my new nurse in this ward, Siobhan, trundles in with her obs kit on wheels and utterly fails to read the room. ‘Oh, do we have visitors?’ she asks in her Irish lilt.
‘Uh, yep. These are my parents. Sam and Anna Calogero.’
‘Lovely to meet the pair of you,’ Siobhan says, but in a bit of a jaded monotone.
Unlike Pooja, who had an upbeat energy, Siobhan’s a stocky forty-something brunette with a clenched jaw like she’s perpetually had enough of everyone’s shit but has to smile cos she’s at work.
‘I just need to do Zeke’s obs – five minutes and you can have him back … ’
Something savage overcomes me. ‘They were just telling me how proud they are of me, Siobhan,’ I lie. ‘Because I’m gay.’
Siobhan presses her hand to her chest. ‘Oh, bless, that’s too sweet!’ Her mouth forms a shocked ‘o’ shape, like something genuinely unexpected has snapped her out of her monotonous shift. ‘Goodness, I didn’t interrupt you – coming out …?’
‘No, no, my parents have known for years,’ I say. ‘We were just talking about how hard it is when you’re from a small town, and Italian, and Catholic. How it made me hate myself. But it made all the difference, having loving, supportive parents.’
Both my parents look like they could sink through the floor.