For the rest of the day, I feel liberated.
I spend that night at the Tool Shed – as a patron. Saturday night is busy, but less intense than last night’s opening. I chill in the cruising lounge, phone charging while I drink my vodka soda and surf Grindr.
But the hookup never materialises. I end up talking with guys in the bar instead. The first dude is a Tasmanian in his forties, in Perth for a holiday. We end up playing pool, and then get challenged to a doubles game by two French backpackers. Gradually we attract other guys who’ve come to the bar alone.
By ten, we’re a group of eight, all on the D-floor, drunk, laughing, singing to cheesy nineties house music. I’m even drunk enough to dance (terribly).
When I head to the dunnies, I discover one cubicle now has a fully functional glory hole. I alert Curtis, who says, ‘Goddamn, faggots are quick muthafuckas.’
Nobody has any idea who cut the glory hole, or when, or how they managed to do it without anyone noticing, but there it is.
It’s one of the only nights out in my life where I don’t end up at the sauna or in some strange guy’s bed. I’m having too much fun with random mates I barely know and will never see again. We laugh and drink and party until closing time.
This feels like what I moved to the city for: the freedom I always wanted.
On Sunday, I see a headline about Hammer. He’s gone viral and is in hot water for publicly opposing the AFL’s Pride Round and refusing to wear the guernsey.
When it comes up at Curtis and Ahmed’s anniversary brunch on Sunday morning, it dominates the conversation, during which Charlie tells everyone how we went to school with Hammer and he was a douche-canoe.
‘Back in the nineties, we thought those attitudes were starting to change,’ Curtis says. ‘And here we are thirty years later, the best we’ve ever had it, and it still only takes one comment to throw us right back.’
‘Or remind us we never left,’ Ahmed quips.
When we’re getting into bed later that night, Charlie says, ‘It’d really throw a spanner in Hammer’s gears if we told the truth about him, wouldn’t it?’
I freeze. ‘As in, to Curtis and the guys?’
Charlie has fire behind his eyes. ‘No. Publicly. We’re the only ones who know he’s gay.’
‘I don’t know that he is anymore,’ I say. ‘He ran from me and never came back …’
‘You know what I mean,’ Charlie says, sliding his socks off. ‘If he’s not gay, he at least experimented, which makes him a stinking hypocrite.’
‘Always the closet cases who are the loudest homophobes, right?’ I say, performing the nightly routine. ‘Goodnight, Tom.’
‘He’d have to eat his words,’ Charlie says, with a savage grin. ‘Nasty, bullying dickwad he is. Goodnight, Tom.’
He turns the light off.
‘But we wouldn’t do that, would we?’ I ask. ‘Outing someone is messed up. You know that after what Alicia Stratton did to you back home.’
Charlie pads across the carpet, trips over his own socks, and almost somersaults into the bed beside me. ‘Yeah, I didn’t deserve it. But I wasn’t a famous footy player going on homophobic rants on TV, was I?’
‘He doesn’t deserve it, either,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s one thing to think about outing him. But to actually do it would make you the bad guy, not him.’
Silence has stretched between me and Sabrina for days now.
I’ve opened Messenger a few times when I’m in Charlie’s bed at night, staring at the last message she sent me on graduation night:I’m here up the back. See you in the ballroom after! So proud of you.
I feel guilty when I see that. The last message she sent was nice – and I didn’t even reply, cos by the time I saw it, we’d already fought. It’s crap to go from thinking someone got you, and cared about you, to total silence.
I try typing a few messages but always stop cold cos I don’t know what to say. Do I want to reconnect? Do I want to grab my property from her flat and run? Do I want to move back in? I could never stop watching porn, but I could hide it.
But why hide, when I could live like Charlie or Jack?
And every time I wonder what the best move would be, I remind myself Sabrina hasn’t said anything to me, either.
I’ve never broken up with someone, but that fight felt like a break-up, which is probably a sign that the whole scenario was unhinged anyway.
