ZEKE
It is a universal truth, acknowledged by no one, that gay men are meant to be so grateful for the straight people who don’t actively want to murder us that we ought to sit down, shut up and be the kind of faggot they want us to be.
I should know. I tried to please everyone, walking a tightrope for the world’s approval, and that’s how I ended up here: in a literal toilet, barefoot, bruised, bleeding and, most unbearably of all, alone.
Here’s the thing: some straighties are super chill, but on any given day you stumble fucklong into someone with a fixed idea about what gay men should be.
We’re meant to be married and mortgaged, with two adopted kids and a fluffy Cocker Spaniel, for the moderate conservatives who tolerate us as long as we’re clean and (w)holesome – living proof even deviants obsessed with buggery can be redeemed by a collared Tarocash shirt and Sunday mass in a broad-minded parish.
We’re meant to be wounded victim poster-boys for outrage addicts masquerading as allies, who like to use us as human battering rams for advancing their activism campaigndu jour. We are brilliant little clockwork toys: pull the string on our backs to hear one of six nauseating pre-recorded phrases like ‘it gets better’ and ‘love is love’!
We’re meant to be camp, witty ‘yasss, queen’ bunny rabbits for a certain subset of toxic straight women who see homos as about as useful, interchangeable and capable of self-actualisation as a Gucci clutch purse.
And we’re meant to be as beige as possible for the straight guys who will deign to talk to us about shared interests as long as we don’t make it too obvious we’re not proper, fully functional males with a red-blooded thirst for tits.
Nobody talks about how it is humanly impossible to be all these at once, but we’re expected to try, to prevent whoever is in front of us from turning their back on us (gay kryptonite, fatal). It’s not even their fault. If we didn’t have to contend with those who sometimesdowant to literally murder us, we could ignore them. But we need the nice ones, so we become hypervigilant approval monsters. When we’re given the choice between death or disapproval, never underestimate our willingness to choose death.
Why? Because nobody, and this is the real issue, wants to accept us for who we really are:
Horny.
Dirty.
Male-fucking.
MEN.
Men we are, and men we were, and men we always will be. From the first homosexual caveman, Ug, who shoved his club up the clacker of his buddy Grug, to the gay pirates, toBrokeback Mountain. From me and Charlie and Hammer to some future poofter named Zoltan zipping around New Sydney on his hoverboard in the year 3000, dodging killer AI robots in his quest to trawl for some hot tradie man-arse at the cyber-mall.
It will never change. We are who we are. We are who the world is disgusted by and who the world does not want us to be. We pretend not to be ourselves even among those who claimto love us. We contort ourselves into publicly pre-approved, psychologically unsound pretzel shapes to be spared total social opprobrium from the rest of the tribe.
Or we die.
Which is how this was always going to end, when the three of us collided with the world. It was foretold. Inexorable. A maverick can’t break out of the box and expect to survive. It was always going to end exactly like this.
With one of our hearts no longer beating.
FOUR WEEKS EARLIER
1
STANZA BUIA
ZEKE
It’s not until I see him naked that I realise we know each other.
Kissing a complete stranger in the dark room of the bathhouse isn’t unusual for me. The first time, years ago, felt like I’d blindly walked into a grungy Eastern European erotica movie, the kind that used to play on SBS after ten o’clock when I was a kid. The dark room is pitch black, a horny sensory deprivation experience, designed so the wisdom of your eyes deserts you and you’re left with the dumb, myopic throb of your cock as your compass.
My first visit to this exact dark room at Perth Steam Works, when I was nineteen, was transcendent. I felt the thump of lyricless doof-doof vibrate through my body. The man who kissed me back was twenty years older than me, big grizzly bear, coarse whiskers scraping my bare cheeks as his face mashed mine. His sweat was intoxicating. My bare arse stuck to the vinyl of the seat as I sucked his cock. That was the first of dozens of visits to the sauna. It’s my favourite place in the world.
So, today is not a new experience. I had a four-hour gap between my shift in the call centre and the pick-up time for my graduation regalia, so I came here to kill time by rooting like a wild animal. I brought fresh amyl and my well-worn neoprene cock ring. I parked my Nissan out front and paid nine dollars for parking, since I knew I’d be in here a while. I climbed the concrete steps, the air dank and moist. I said hello to the musclejock named Johnny on the front desk (I have previously had my fist elbow-deep inside him), paid twenty-five bucks for entry (worth it), slid the rubber band with my locker key onto my bicep (flabby, since I’ve never set foot in a gym in my life), and wrapped my clean white towel around my waist (how many guys have sprogged over the cotton fibres currently touching the head of my dick?).
Some guys use a bathhouse when they’re closeted or sloshed or can’t host, though most guys my age would prefer to browse Grindr on the couch until they find a good prospect. But me, I’ve always loved the thrill of the sauna. You never know what you’re going to get, it’s always anonymous and uninhibited, and it’s guaranteed to be no-strings – no annoying follow-up messages begging for a second round. You come in, you cum, you go. Simple.
Today, I lurk in the dark room without luck. It’s a quiet Wednesday arvo and the few guys who wander in bustle past me. I’m considering going into the better-lit corridors and standing on a corner to advertise myself, like a gigolo, but that makes me self-conscious. I’m a bit fat. Maybe the better word is stocky. A fuckbuddy once described me as ‘a hairy Red Rooster cheesy nugget in human form’. My wog genes are strong: at twenty-four, not only are the dark curls on my head still as thick and oily as when I was a teenager, but my chest and belly are covered in a dense black rug. Even my shoulders are starting to sprout curls, like the guy who owns Spudshed. The upside: the fur hides my man boobs, which flattened out a lot after puberty but never disappeared completely the way I hoped. And lots of guys are turned on by body hair, so I am weirdly successful in terms of belt-notches. A sasquatch lothario.
But still, if I can avoid showing my body in the light, I will.
