‘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 mademe 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.’
