The bar is quiet, only a handful of guys. Ahmed’s making a meal of cleaning some glasses before making our drinks order.
Xander’s rant isn’t over. ‘How will there ever be an out AFL player if this is the culture we allow to fester?’ he demands loudly, in the hopes Ahmed will hear.
‘We’re the only sporting code with no out players,’ Mason tells us. ‘It’s bullshit.’
I can tell from Brayden’s constant glances at TikTok that he’s disappointed his buffer plan didn’t work and he’s waiting for the topic to change.
‘Charlie, can’t you talk to them?’ Xander presses.
I shake my head. ‘Their minds are made up. Curtis has fought homophobes for decades,’ I add, making sure he understands Curtis is one of the good guys. ‘But he’s got his own way of doing things, and he’s got a business to run.’
‘Sorry, but that makes him problematic,’ Xander snaps. He stares at Ahmed, who I am now sure is taking a deliberately long time to make the cocktails as retribution for Xander pressuring them. ‘You have to hold people accountable for their actions.’
I wonder if he swallowed someSlacktivism for Dummiesmanual after his reality-TV run ended. The more Xander speaks, the more I realise ‘hold them accountable’ is a 2020s euphemism for ‘punish them’. And ‘problematic’ really means ‘heretic’.
Hanging out with Xander turns out to be a fascinating glimpse into the psychological dents in his armour. I thought he lived in a sparkly fame bubble, but he comes across unhappy. In one breath, he’ll name-drop Aussie household names he’s had drinks with, and mentions being friends with a music producer who worked with Silverchair (that gets my attention). Then in the next breath he’ll make some comment that makes me wonder if he’s okay. Like, ‘Ha,parents who give a shit whether you’re alive or dead! Imagine that!’ Or, ‘When you get famous, people only pretend to like you. It’s all fake!’ And even his brag about a local newsreader: ‘I remember being in a three-way in his mansion, but I totally overdosed and I can’t recall if he fucked me or not!’ It seems seriously bleak, but he laughs after, so the rest of us laugh with him.
As staunchly progressive as Xander’s political positions are, he doesn’t seem to have a grasp on other human beings having different opinions. He seems to think if he can shout down everyone who doesn’t do things his exact way, he’ll fix the world. He lives for naming and shaming, and when he regales us with his kill list of minor celebrities and small businesses whose careers he’s ruined with public pile-ons, none of them are hardcore bigots: just people who weren’t quite woke enough for his liking. One was that tiny bakery run by an eighty-year-old grandfather before Xander obliterated him.
Xander doesn’t seem to have any empathy for them, either.
‘You reap what you sow,’ he says repeatedly.
The more we speak about Curtis giving a statement, the more inflexible he becomes. And the more a pit starts to form in my guts.
I swill my Heineken. ‘Well, holding people accountable is great, but when you take a step back, Curtis is just some guy who runs a bar,’ I say. ‘He isn’t the accountability police.’
And neither are you, Xander.
‘I’m not afraid of using my platform to call this out,’ Xander fires back.
‘You should,’ Mason says. ‘You have a huge following. Call Hammer out.’
‘Not Hammer,’ Xander says. ‘This place. Curtis.’
My blood chills to ice. ‘Whoa, wait, what?’
‘If he won’t speak up for his own community, he’s a fake ally,’ Xander says. ‘I was already put off by this bar being male-only. That’s exclusionary.AllLGBTQIA+ venues should includeeveryone.’
I grit my teeth. My contempt for Xander is rising to the surface.
‘This place was created because all gay venuesdidopen to include everyone,’ I say cautiously. ‘Every letter of the alphabet, and the straighties too. And tried to please all of them, which is impossible, so every gay bar became as bland as any other bar. Curtis started this to give us something just for us. And he’s not anally: he’sone of us.’
Xander picks up the bottle top of my green Heineken bottle and flicks it at me, hard. ‘Not. Good. Enough,’ he says. ‘Talk to him, Pomeranian Charlie, or I’ll say something.’
This is why Curtis was afraid of inviting Xander into the bar. The perks of having an influencer as your friend are huge, but an influencer as your enemy is downright dangerous.
‘Isn’t Hammer the real problem?’ Brayden suggests.
‘Exactly,’ Mason says. ‘Let’s go after him, not Curtis.’
‘Anyone who isn’t with us is against us,’ Xander recites in a sing-song voice, eyeballing Ahmed, who has finally started to mix the drinks. ‘I know there’s a protest against the Eagles. I’ll go show my support. What about your football team president, Mason?’
Mason’s brow furrows. He looks cute when he does that. I hope Xander and Brayden bail and leave us at the table together. Apart from this footy issue, Mason has this placid aura around him, like he’s too simple to be negative. I find it extremely attractive.
‘Brick doesn’t want the Centurions to make a statement either,’ Mason says. ‘He cares, but he’s got his own way of doin’ shit.’
‘Gutless leadership from Brick, then – maybe I’ll speak to him, too,’ Xander quips. ‘Gutless leadership everywhere.’ He raises his voice in Ahmed’s direction. ‘Doll, sorry, it’s been likefifteen minutes since I ordered our drinks?’ His tone is so sugary it’s toxic.
