Good Lord, that is the most Victoria thing I’ve ever heard come out of Sabrina’s mouth. I can see them sitting with their uni friends over a grazing board of vegan dark chocolate and figs to ironically watch a game of AFL with the intention of dissecting it. One of them would go on to write a sententious opinion piece inThe Conversationabout how the milieu of Australian football upholds both rigid heteropatriarchal gender norms and white supremacy. Nobody involved with the AFL would ever read it.
‘Some guy I’m seeing is into footy, so I was watching it out of curiosity,’ I say.
Sabrina smirks. ‘Oh, this is too funny. Zeke Calogero! Watching sports! Who are you trying to kid here?’
‘It was just one game,’ I mutter, like a straight boy found with a cache of shirtless male beefcake pics.It’s my first time, I swear.
‘Oh, I get it – trying to impress your new guy … a hangover from your crush on Hammer,’ Sabrina says matter-of-factly.
I’ve never told Sabrina everything about Hammer. But one drunk night not long after I first moved in, we did have a big D&M, and I got uninhibited enough to admit I had a crush on Hammer in high school. She doesn’t know that crush was partly reciprocated, or that he fucked me, but that’s enough for her to feel qualified to judge the situation.
‘This guy’s name is Jack,’ I tell her. ‘He’s not Hammer.’
‘No, but … it’s a bit cringe when you’re going after, like, proxy macho meathead guys in place of Hammer, you know? Like psychologically?’
Sabrina originally enrolled in a psychology degree. She excelled in the classwork but failed the practical component: instead of listening to her patients, she always tried to fix them. She swapped into biomedical science, but she never misses an excuse to wheel out some vague therapy-speak.
‘I dunno if that’s it,’ I say. ‘This guy’s totally different to Hammer.’
If anything, he’s more meatheaded than Hammer, but she doesn’t need to know that. And what she never gets is that I go after macho meathead menbecause they’re fucking hot.
‘Oh, I’m sure – just looking out for you,’ Sabrina says, touching me lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’ve dated a meathead. You can’t get anything real out of them. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. And I’d hate to see you take on this guy’s hobbies to impress him. Football isn’tyou.’ Sabrina looks into my eyes with her piercing, ice-blue irises. ‘You are Zeke. Sweet, soft Zeke. That’s why we love you. No need to pretend to be something you’re not, okay?’
My hand twitches involuntarily. I hide it behind the pizza box, but it keeps going, like there’s a damaged nerve trying to form a fist. ‘Of course not,’ I reassure her, with my sweet Mehrabian smile. ‘I’d never pretend to be who I’m not.’
‘Good,’ Sabrina says, with finality. She grabs my remote and switches the footy off. ‘On that note, it’s movie night! Bring your pizza into the lounge and I’ll order Shining Dragon. You can pick the movie! Oh!’ She pauses, pointing at my wall. ‘What’s that still doing up?’
On my bedroom wall is a Tom of Finland poster of the most gloriously homoerotic image I’ve ever seen. It’s a classic black-and-white print of a muscular, shirtless cop sitting on top of two African American leather dudes’ laps. The cop has a cartoonishly humungous bulge in his jeans. The Black men are sitting either side of him, each sucking one of his nipples, while their hands grasp beneath his bulge, reaching for his arsehole almost asexplicitly as Jack reached into mine today. The leather men both have a patch on their jackets branding themTom’s Menwith a symbol of a dick and balls.
I bought the Tom of Finland poster when I was sixteen. Even though it’s not nude, it felt more suggestive than porn. I posted it up in my and Charlie’s hostel dorm room and we had a ritual before bed each night where we’d touch the poster and say, ‘Goodnight, Tom.’ When I moved back to Gero, I taped the poster to the back of my wardrobe, and continued the ritual. I stumbled across it in a box of my old Gero stuff a few months ago, and taped it up to the wall of my bedroom-cum-jail cell.
‘It’s a Tom of Finland poster,’ I tell Sabrina. ‘Erotica.’
No man in history has ever more cautiously chosen the word ‘erotica’ over ‘porn’.
Sabrina screws her face up. ‘I just … it’s a bit … borderline, don’t you think?’
‘Borderline what?’ I ask.
Sabrina’s next words see-saw on the fulcrum of her frown before falling on the side of a smile instead. ‘Look, never mind,’ she mutters. ‘Let’s watch a movie.’
My shoulders relax. ‘Keen,’ I say, seizing the moment to turn my bedroom light off, hiding my poster and signalling that conversation is over. ‘But first, tell me what went down with Shane and Allison …’
We shuffle to the lounge together to have a big bitch session over vodka and Prosecco while Sabrina orders Uber Eats.
Tonight’s movie is a romcom I thought might be good cause it has a hot actor in it, but it turns out to be the same-sex version of Hallmark slop. The two male leads cuddle and peck on the lips but never go below the pants, which might be the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen on TV. I mean, it’s sweet, but I can’t help thinking this movie was made for straight women who like to see gay guys as cute and sexless.
Which we fucking aren’t.
‘It was a bit cliché, but I liked it,’ Sabrina says at the end of the movie. ‘Like, it’s beautiful and happy. It’s like they want you guys to feel joy now and you really should! It must resonate for you, right?’
‘Oh yeah, it’s so great, I love it,’ I mutter meaninglessly.
Before I get into bed, I touch my Tom of Finland poster.
‘Goodnight, Tom,’ I say. ‘You’re a legend.’
I lie in bed awake longer than usual. Seeing Charlie on Wednesday, then Jack and the footy today, and the graduation tomorrow – where I’ll see my parents – makes me feel like I’m swirling into a whirlpool. Life was structured at uni, and now I’m rudderless.
