Colby replies, ‘But Z doesn’t make sense – Charlie starts with a “C”?’
I have a mental flash of yeeting my headset across the partition. Of course, I never lose my temper. When you work in customer service, you have to swallow your rage like a pill so you can keep functioning. I sometimes imagine my anger dissolving in my stomach like a red-hot, radioactive Berocca. Wonder where it goes after that.
‘I’m saying the letter C, Colby,’ I say patiently. All I can think of is that stupid AI voice going,Did you say ‘dog food’?‘C for Charlie. C for cake. C like the first letter of your own name, Colby.’
‘Ohhhh. C! That makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?’
I do my cheery customer-service laugh. ‘Haha. Sure does, Colby! Is there anything else I can help you with today?’
Thankfully, there isn’t.
I hang up on Colby, taking the forty-second break between calls to sip my coffee.
Unlike corporate call centres, we don’t have sales targets: we’re purely here to help. It’s what made me apply for the job. Being the first in my family to go to uni, I was lost when I started my degree. I thought helping other students would be meaningful, and on the good days, it is. But most days, it’s disillusioning to see how many incredibly book-smart people are virtually useless at basic life tasks.
That said, a call centre job is cruisy. We can wear casual clothes: today I’m in aTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesT-shirt, blue jeans, white Nike Air Maxes and a Wolverine cap. We can eat and drink at our desks. And the banter about dumb callers can be funny.
The call centre is staffed by women except for me and three other guys. On lunch breaks, there’s always bitching about officepolitics, but being young and male, I mostly get left out of the drama. I use a blunt knife to spread John West tuna onto my three Cruskits and just agree with whoever’s ranting. It’s easier to be liked that way. Although I’m pretty sure when I’m not in the room they bitch about me, too.
My favourite lunch rotation is with four women in their fifties. They’re too close to retirement to be ruffled by office politics, so their talk is more about sex. Until I worked here, I had no idea women could be as dirty as guys. Some of the sexual confessions they bust out with are hilarious. Sabrina’s hair would curl if she overheard them: these women don’t just watch porn, they talk about it over their lunchtime curries. It’s like the cast ofThe Golden Girls, except they’re rough Aussie sheilas who coach netball and smoke Alpine Lights.
The other dynamic that’s bearable here is when me and the other male staff end up on a break together. I like hanging with the other guys, even if we don’t have much in common. They’re all part of the uni’s staff footy-tipping comp and this year I let them bully me into joining them, mostly so we’d have something to talk about.
After Colby, I take a few more calls on autopilot while I do other stuff. I answer emails. I double-check my own graduation registration is confirmed for tomorrow – it is. A reminder goes off in my phone:Take PrEP!I take out the pack of blue pills from my Pokémon backpack (shaped like a Squirtle) and swallow one with the cold dregs of my black coffee, which makes me shudder. For a while, I was taking PrEP on demand, but I have so much sex it made no sense not to be taking PrEP permanently, so I could safely bareback without stressing about catching HIV.
The thought of barebacking sticks in my mind’s eye. While I’m on a call, I tap my phone and refresh Grindr. I’ve already whored my way through any staff who are a match, but thereare always new students and, more importantly, contractors. One of the hottest roots I ever had was in the Engineering building dunnies with a big dirty scaffolder.
Grindr’s grid refreshes. Unexpectedly, there’s a muscular profile closest to me – a close-up of massive tattooed pecs under a yellow hi-vis vest. It’s one of those scams – a ripped beefcake photo probably linking you to some website that steals your data. I can see it already messaged me once before, two years ago, and I already replied and called it a fake profile. Urgh.
Another reminder goes off on my phone:Friday footy tipping!
Look, I don’t know who I’m trying to fool by being a footy-tipping guy. I’m not sporty and I grew up in a soccer family. Dad loved Perth Glory and pushed it onto me, which didn’t take, and my brother, Robbie, which did. Although Robbie played both soccer and footy for a while, and he and Dad barracked for the Dockers, AFL was never their main passion.
As a kid, I actually found AFL more interesting than soccer. I even kinda liked it: games were fast and exciting, marks and goals were spectacular.
But whenever I asked a question to learn more about the game, I was ridiculed.
One time, I asked Dad what a fifty-metre penalty was. Robbie threw the remote at me and said, ‘Zeke, how can you not know that? Don’t embarrass yourself!’ Dad laughed. Robbie laughed. My uncles laughed. But nobody answered me. That was the routine every weekend. It made me feel dumb, like there was something wrong with me – like a real boy would’ve automatically known how footy works. But how was I meant to learn if nobody would tell me?
At school, jocks like Hammer picked up where Robbie left off, so I kept associating footy with bullies. I ended up tuning out of sports altogether rather than keep going back to a place where I felt mocked.
But anyway, I’ve paid my ten bucks for footy tipping for the season. I could win a few hundred bucks, so I log my tips each Friday, just in case.
In the most unexpected turn, I’m good at footy tipping. I’m ranked seventh in the league of sixty. I’ve learned to trawl the AFL website to suss out things like player injuries, home grounds, past game performances, and use that to make informed guesses. Since I don’t have Robbie or Dad mocking me for it, I don’t feel ashamed of googling what a ruck rover is, or checking who the coach of Essendon is now, or finally learning what a fifty-metre penalty is. The fear of sports I’ve carried forever doesn’t apply to this tiny corner of my life: I can wager on the footy in peace if nobody’s giving me grief. I have this pathetic daydream about winning the tipping comp, telling Dad, and him being like, proud of me or something.
When my dad first found out I was into guys, he sent me to the priest for confession. When he found out it wasn’t going away, he punched me in the face. Not ideal. Dad’s Sicilian and Catholic, which never gave me much of a chance. After his cancer diagnosis, he mellowed, but it wasn’t like we made peace. More like a ceasefire: I wouldn’t be overt about what I ended up claiming was my bisexuality (‘Which means you still like girls!’) and he wouldn’t punch me. It’s better than it was.
Dad will never invite me to bring a boyfriend home. But if I won the footy-tipping comp, he might say, ‘Nice work, son.’ I’d take that.
I’m scrolling the AFL website about a Port Adelaide key forward’s season-ending ACL injury when a Grindr notification flashes on my phone. Like any Office Gay™, I live in constant terror that one day the extremely recognisable boop sound will go off and the whole workplace will find out I’m a massive slut.
But as usual, my phone is on mute.
It’s the fake muscle labourer profile.
Hey bro
Right before I tap the ‘block’ option, a second message comes through.
