I screenshotted the message, and I looked at the profile, but it was nameless. The handle was a jumble of letters and numbers and there are no pics posted – a burner account. The profile picture is the Eagles logo, I guess to taunt me, and the account only follows me and the Eagles.
I still haven’t brought myself to block the guy, but. What if he retaliates?
There’s a constant panic in my head. At the club, my thoughts hum in background mode, like an air-conditioner. I’m scared if I think about it around the boys; they might pick up on it through brainwaves or Bluetooth or whatever. Like when you think of an OLED TV and your social feed fills with Harvey Norman ads. So, I never tell anyone about it.
Then, when I’m alone, it busts out loud and on loop, like that old pop-punk song my brother Doug used to listen to – ‘Scotty Doesn’t Know’.SOMEONE FUCKEN KNOWS, SOMEONE FUCKEN KNOWS, SOMEONE FUCKEN KNOWS. When I’m alone, my brain is an early-2000s rock concert at a skate park and there’s nothing I can do to unplug the amps.
Sometimes, as I make my peanut butter protein shake or weigh out my morning oats, and hum my theme song, I see my reflection in the black glass of the precision kitchen scales and ask myself out loud, ‘Buthowdo they know?’
This is what gets me. The DM was no stab in the dark, no lucky guess. This guy was dead certain: he knows for sure I’m … that thing.
I don’t like the word, so I won’t say it. It’s not the word for me. It’s not my fault my dick gets hard when I look at guys. I never asked for it.
But telling myself it’s not happening has never made it go away, even if I’ve only ever physically acted on it with one guy.
Which leads me to a second chorus.
ZEKE FUCKEN KNOWS.
Zeke Calogero. Biggest mistake of my life. In year eleven, I let my guard down with this Italian guy in my PE class. I used to give him shit for being crap at sport. If we played footy, he wouldn’t even try to get the ball. I don’t even think he knew he was meant to. He’d stand at the end of the oval and keep his distance. Who hopes to be left out of a game?
I got drunk one time and thought Zeke looked hot. I guess a guy can look hot, if you appreciate aesthetics, like a bodybuilder like Sam Sulek or a marble statue of a Greek god. I thinkIlook hot. Other players are hot. Zeke Calogero was hot. He kissed me while I was drunk and I went with it – no homo, just drunk party stuff.
I mean, then me and Zeke hung out in Doug’s ute, but as mates. We had burgers, talked about footy, jacked each other’s cocks, had onion rings, I gave him an Eagles scarf. Just boys bein’ boys.
Then there was the last time I saw him, when I mighta, sorta, just briefly … fucked him in the arse. I got no excuse for that. I think I liked it more than he did. I feel crook in the guts when Ithink about it. Most cringe thing I ever did. But in the moment, I loved it. I never came so fast in my life.
I’ve learned to look at that memory like it’s separate from me. I don’t factor it into my identity. It’s a mistake and it belongs in the past, like Zeke.
But now I got this DM, it isn’t safely in the past. Maybe someone saw us hook up? We fucked in a private hotel room, but our ute wank was in a carpark, and our first kiss was in a park outside a house party. Did someone see us and store the information, only to use it against me once they knew it could take me down?
It could be Zeke, but I don’t reckon he’d blackmail me. He’s soft as a marshmallow.
Better odds on that bogan faggot from our class, Charlie Roth, who knew about me and Zeke. Charlie is my lead suspect. He always had a shit attitude: an emo with black nail polish who’d arc up at anyone he didn’t like. Charlie was a smart-mouthed pissant like Oshy. If the DM is from anyone who knew me in Gero, it’s from Charlie Goth.
Unless it’s from someone I know now, like another player. I get more paranoid the more I dwell on it. Did I leave my phone unlocked and one of the boys saw my browser history? What if I accidentally hit ‘like’ on one of those dudes who always send nudes?
I’m notthat thing. But I don’t know what I am. I don’t know who sent the DM. And I don’t know what to do about it.
Someone fucken knows. ButHammer doesn’t knowa goddamn thing.
The day before a footy game, our captain, Sniper, takes us through a captain’s run. The captain’s run is cruisy compared to the big, full-on training sesh we do two days before, and today’s no different.
As we’re running two laps of the oval to cool down, Sniper handballs me a footy and gestures at me to veer away from the pack with him.
I follow his lead. Once the boys have zipped past, he says, ‘I saw your Insta story.’
My first thought is:Holy shit, I forgot to tell the club.
My second thought is:Did Sniper send the DM?
Me and Sniper have been drunk and coked-up together more Mad Mondays and off-season footy trips than I can remember. What if I got stupid enough to say something under the influence? Shit, what if Ididsomething? I have foggy memories of being naked with the boys on a lot of footy trips. If Sniper showed me video footage of me out of my skull on the booger sugar and taking him up the arse, I’d believe it.
I handball the Sherrin back. ‘Already deleted it, mate,’ I say gruffly. ‘It’s a non-issue.’
Sniper frowns. ‘Some of the boys saw it before you took it down,’ he says, shooting a short, sharp handball back at me. ‘Including me. Who knows who else? Someone will tell Roo and then everyone will know. You’re better off self-reporting it to the club now. It’ll look better for you if you admit to doing the wrong thing before you’re caught. The AFL takes these things dead seriously these days.’
He’s not wrong. My manager – the legendary shark, Lee ‘Wookie’ Wook – phoned me Thursday night and made me delete the story immediately. He also told me to report myself to the club, which, in all my obsessing about who sent the DM, I forgot to do. But it woulda only been seen by a few people and if I’d deleted it, what was the big deal?
