Charlie’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. His eyes find mine. They are kind. It makes me tear up, him looking at me gently again. ‘No, Zeke,’ Charlie says softly. ‘I’m not mad at you anymore.’
I could cry, but I don’t want him to hug me while we’re naked.
‘I’m not mad at you anymore, either,’ I say hoarsely.
Charlie smiles. ‘Well, that was worth the twenty-five bucks alone, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘How about we pause being rampant sluts for a minute and catch up. Wanna drink, dude?’
When I was sixteen, Charlie Roth was more than my friend: he was my hero.
He saved my life.
We both grew up four hours north of Perth, in a hot windy coastal town called Geraldton, where you feel like the only homo in the village even when you know you’re not. My Catholic parents found out I was gay at my brother’s wedding. My dad hit me. My mother was mortified. They both wanted to disown me. I was expected to go back into the closet to make them happy even though it would’ve killed me. Being a mild-mannered Clark Kent nerd, I was going to do it.
But then, a miracle. Charlie Roth, outed troublemaker, announced he was bailing, upping sticks to the big smoke. I feltabandoned – my lifeline was being ripped away – until I did something totally unhinged.
I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go with him.
We hopped on a bus to Perth: two starry-eyed country boys dreaming of big-city liberation. That snap decision defined my life – for better and for worse.
At first, it was everything we dreamed of. We stayed in a grungy, dirt-cheap hostel in Northbridge called Francis Street Backpackers, living off a couple of grand Charlie would much rather not have inherited. It was like we were overseas on a backpacking holiday. We slept in a six-bed dorm: me on the bottom bunk and Charlie on the top. The carpets were sticky and the whole building reeked of morning-after puke and mi goreng noodles. Charlie and I befriended people from all over the world: Brazilians, Germans, South Koreans, Americans. They’d buy us grog from the bottle-o on Lake Street and we’d hang out in the hostel beer garden getting wasted on Foster’s (they thought it was an Aussie beer) and kicking hacky sacks and throwing frisbees. We smoked cigarettes and weed. We hooked up with other backpackers, and strangers, and did everything we’d ever craved to do now we had the horny freedom of the city.
The Francis Street era was golden: the best fun I’ve ever had. The real Zeke emerged from his cocoon. I’d always played Good Catholic Boy, but in that hostel, I was unapologetically myself: a red-blooded man who wanted nothing but pleasure. I felt like the Beat poets of the 1960s. I was Jack Kerouac waking up every day in a hedonistic haze I was too young for, but never overwhelmed by: my best mate was right beside me.
It lasted three months.
My parents had been trying to get me back home: the outrage I did to their authority by running away was thermonuclear. My mother even reported me as a missing person. The Gero cops called me, and I had to convince them I was safe and escaping myhomophobic parents which, weirdly, the grizzled Gero sergeant seemed to understand. The old me would have been worried about not graduating, but in that hostel, the old me was a dead me. I dismembered myself to come to Perth – a mouse ripping off its own feet to escape a trap.
But burnout life was only fun until the money ran out, and the reality of living as emancipated minors hit us like a frisbee to the face. A fog lifted. Hostel life was expensive, long term: we’d need jobs, a share house. The dream lost its lustre: trawling Seek for entry-level jobs was depressing, especially with our nearly blank resumes. I don’t think Jack Kerouac had to lower himself to that level.
And then, the kicker: my dad got cancer.
That was it. No matter how much I hated my dad, I didn’t want him to die. I told Charlie I had to go home to see him. The Gays in the Big Smoke Dream was dead.
Charlie and I had the worst fight of our lives. A screaming match. A total shitfight. We both went for the jugular. Charlie called me a traitor. I called him hypocritical for not realising how important it was for me to see my dad since he’d lost his own dad, years earlier, and his boyfriend, only months back.
I told Charlie I’d come back once I saw my dad but he called me a liar and said I was abandoning him. He said if I went back to my family I wouldn’t come back to him.
The worst part was he was right.
There’s ambient music playing in the sauna’s lounge area, much softer than the cruising-area doof-doof. Two grey-haired daddy types are having a quiet beer, but otherwise the place is deserted. Muscle Boy Johnny is behind the bar. The collar of his black polo shirt is popped – he’s a Pommie boy from Essex and either popped collars are still cool there, or he’s just a wanker – and hisshirt sleeves are rolled up, tattooed biceps straining against them. If I hadn’t run into him in the sauna’s mirror room one night, I’d think he was a rough dom top, but he’s a hungry bottom.
‘What’ll it be, lads?’ Muscle Boy Johnny asks. He doesn’t look me in the eye. He hasn’t since I had his torso on my hand like a puppet. I’m not sure if he’s embarrassed or if he wants me to do it again. I would.
‘Heineken, mate,’ Charlie says.
‘Could I get a vodka soda with lime, please?’ I ask.
Charlie snorts. ‘The most classically homosexual drink,’ he says. ‘White spirit and soda water, so you don’t drink too many calories before Pride.’
I gesture at my chubby, hairy chest. ‘And as you can see, it’s working great.’
Charlie laughs. ‘You look good,’ he says. ‘You look like you grew up.’
‘Well, we’re not kids anymore,’ I remind him.
‘Youth is in the mind,’ Charlie says, tapping his skull. His knuckles are tattooed, spelling the wordsPUNK ROCK. Apart from his piercings and ink, but, he doesn’t look that different: same build, same sneer, same concave chest. I grew up, but I’m not sure he did.
Muscle Boy Johnny brings our drinks and takes our money. We head out onto the open-air terrace. It’s pleasant – Perth winters can be irrepressibly sunny, even in July – and the high walls of the surrounding buildings protect us from the wind.
