I can’t stop thinking about Sabrina saying I’m meant to feel joy. Why? Because straight people want me to feel joy? What if I don’t? Was ‘it gets better’ our message, or theirs? I mean, coming out did make me better, but it didn’t solve my every problem. It never does, and nobody ever admits that. I feel like I’m not allowed to say it out loud – like the gay mafia will shoot me if they hear my treason.
If I’m honest, and a Catholic boy always is, joy is not something I feel. Watching a show made by straight people telling me to ‘feel joy, or else’ doesn’t change that. Day to day, I feel miserable, lonely and empty.
On Wednesday at Steam Works, I thought of myself as light and dark. But maybe there’s no me at all. I’m a series of masks and illusions, dancing and performing for whoever is in front of me, and beneath the masks there’s nothing. The oxygen in my lungs is other people’s air disgorged into me, tumefying my rib cage – never my own breath.
5
CALLING ALL SKELETONS
CHARLIE
On Friday arvo, I’m in my mate Reyna’s garage jamming with her and her band, Hectic Lettuce.
Reyna and I have been friends for years. She’s a good egg. A proper garage rocker, getting her brother’s housemate to tattoo her arms and bleaching her own hair until it went a dull, brassy orange she self-effacingly calls ‘Asian blonde’.
Reyna and I bonded one drunk night at Amplifier when we discovered we both emancipated ourselves from our families: me from my white-trash mother and stepdad, Reyna from her traditional Indonesian–Filipino parents who couldn’t handle her rebellious streak. She was basically cast out and disowned by her parents; I actively ran away from mine.
It’s rare to find people who understand family estrangement. People judge you for it. They see you as someone with an attitude problem – like it’s entirely my fault I don’t have a relationship with my mother. The truth is I have a mother who isn’t hateful, just neglectful: in fact indifferent to my existence. Her reaction when I was outed was to laugh and think I was carrying on like a pork chop. That three months when me and Zeke stayed at the backpackers cut me more than he will ever understand. Zeke was always pissed at his parents for trying to track him down. My mother never did that. All I got was a few half-arsed exchanges on Messenger, where she told me off for being a drama queenrunning off to Perth but then said I was sixteen and free to live where I wanted as long as I was safe, and there was always a home for me in Spalding with her and Fitzy. It was such a nothing message. It meant nothing to me. She was too out of it to have any space for me in her life.
I still see my mother’s posts on Facebook. It’s almost funny that we’re Facebook friends but I haven’t seen her in seven years. I might as well be dead. I get birthday and Christmas messages. Sometimes she likes my posts and I think,Fucking why? And I grit my teeth when she posts photos of her doting on Fitzy’s kids: buying them new clothes or Mr Whippy ice creams. Even though her affection for those kids is a performance for social media, a tiny part of me fears it isn’t fake at all. What if it was justmewho was unworthy of her love? What if I’m so unpleasant that even a mother can’t love me?
When I found Reyna, I found someone else who doesn’t just get it – but who had the same reaction to neglect I did: she wants to get famous, too.
‘It’s like, a core psychic wound,’ Reyna told me over drinks at the Moon one night after a gig. ‘Your parents don’t love you. Fuck. How are you meant to come back from that? I’ll tell you how, Chucky. We go find that love somewhere else. We go out into the world, make music for thousands of people, and make them all love us. Then the missing love of two small people stops hurting us.’
I am no psychologist, but I bet she’s right. About why we want to be famous, that is. I’m not sure the missing love of our parents will ever stop hurting, but then I haven’t gotten famous yet. Maybe if I do I’ll be too loved to ever think about it again.
So, me and Reyna are two peas in an emotionally devastated pod. We’re demi-orphans who always look out for each other and support each other’s careers – except Reyna has gone on to succeed where I failed.
Hectic Lettuce has a much bigger profile than me. In the last two years, they’ve hit the Triple J Hottest 100 with two separate tracks (#93 and #81 respectively), have nearly thirty thousand listeners on Spotify, and got a slew of festival bookings over east. They’re well on the way to having the career I always wanted.
My last two years have gone in the other direction: while Hectic Lettuce are shooting up towards their zenith, I’m plummeting to my nadir. After ‘Roof’ came out in 2023 and went nowhere, I was so butthurt I threw all my toys out of the pram. Classic Charlie. I snarked at the radio DJ and wrecked that relationship. I had a big fight with my band – we billed ourselves as Charlie Roth and the Mongrels – and we broke up. I stopped hanging with most of the people I’d spent five years building relationships with.
What else is new? I’m the best there is at feeling way too much for someone and then lashing out and burning it all down. Impulse control has never been my strong suit.
Since I parted ways with the Mongrels, gigs have been few and far between. I’m not an interesting acoustic act, and strumming Oasis covers at weekend suburban markets got demoralising hella quick.
Hectic Lettuce’s guitarist, Adrian, had a baby last year, though, so he’s been swapping some gigs for dad duties. Reyna’s done me a solid: any time Adrian can’t play, she lets me fill in for him on guitar and back-up vocals. I’m still connected to my dream, even if I’m riding Reyna’s coattails.
Today, we’re rehearsing a set list for Hectic Lettuce’s gig at Lucy’s Love Shack in a few weeks’ time. We finish running through most of their debut EP and a new song, ‘Ibuprofen’ – complete with Reyna’s final, Brody Dalle-esque scream at the end – then Reyna cries, ‘Fuck yeah. We are killing it. Take five, guys.’
We all reach for either alcohol or tobacco. Jesse, the drummer, and Yannick, the bassist, drift into the backyard, while Reynapops her stubby of Swanny D and leans on my shoulder while I light a dart. ‘Been too long, Chucky,’ she says.
‘Reckon,’ I say. ‘Haven’t seen youse since you got back from Byron Bay. How was it?’
‘Killer,’ Reyna admits. ‘Wild to see crowds over east bopping to our songs. But also, mixed. I think it’s an artist thing. Like, on one hand, you’re blown away. People came to see us! And then your ego is like: but only two hundred people. Only forty of them are bopping. Only a handful are singing the lyrics. Why aren’t we bigger? You know?’
I bite my tongue. Reyna has no idea how much I’d walk over broken glass to have even half of what Hectic Lettuce have.
Reyna picks up her guitar again, tuning it. The rest of the band always takes a long break, but Reyna doesn’t rest. Her work ethic is probably why she’s more successful than me.
‘Listen, on “Ibuprofen”, your vocals don’t need to be quite so melodic,’ Reyna says. ‘It’s a shouty kinda dirge. You can go less nasal Green Day and more growly Sex Pistols. Like be all flat like John Lydon.’
In my dream, I was the lead singer, not the fill-in backing vocalist, and I didn’t have to take notes. ‘No worries, easy done,’ I say, holding up my smoke. ‘I’ll just smoke a whole carton of these before the gig.’
Reyna laughs. ‘Ease up: don’t go full Courtney Love on me.’ She noodles on her guitar. ‘Okay, so, I’ve been obsessed with Grrrl Gang lately. I wanna play “Pop Princess” at our Lucy’s gig. I think it’ll go off like a frog in a sock. Do you know it?’
We jam for another hour.
