CASA DEI FRATELLI
ZEKE
In the week after my first footy training, I discover I’ve never been prouder of anything than being a member of the Perth Centurions Football Club.
I mention it to everyone. When the call centre guys ask what’s new, I tell them I’ve started playing touch footy. ‘Just socially, for fun,’ I over-explain. ‘I’m not any good.’ When I stop at a servo, the lady looks at my grass-stained jumper and says, ‘How was footy training?’ I get this rush, like someone knows I like footy and I didn’t get torn to shreds for it.
After my second training, Jack takes us to Lot Six Zero in Yokine for a team brekky. The woman who owns the café says, ‘Uh oh, here come the footy boys again! I’m putting you outside – you lads got too rowdy last time.’ We all look bashful but proud of ourselves for making a ruckus.
Is this what straight guys go through life feeling like? Not shat on, not shrinking ourselves, not mocked? Rocking up, every day, wherever you want, as exactly who you are, and being loud about it, and being accepted with a wry smile?
I have been missing out on a fuckingdrug.
When I play footy, something shifts in my demeanour. I’m usually hunched because of my past man boobs, but when I wear a footy jumper I feel confident enough to puff out my chest, andthat change in my posture changes my brain. I don’t have to be ashamed of myself anymore. I’m part of a team now.
I start building my week’s schedule around footy, changing my arvo shifts at the call centre to mornings to make sure I don’t miss training.
The Hammer stuff is still raging in the media, but I’ve tuned out. Like Brick said, if we make ourselves angry every time, they win. I don’t want to be angry every day of my life.
Charlie and I have talked about whether we should contact Hammer. If he’s still closeted, then he’s a shark caught in a net. Charlie reckons he’d ignore us. He might be right, but I still feel more compassion for him than I should, given how he treated me.
Sometimes, I scold myself for not being more confident to play sport as a kid. Then again, I only play now because I found a team that welcomes guys like me, which Gero never had. My exposure to footy as a kid told me I’d get bullied. I did what made me feel safe.
The thing you can’t fully explain to a straight person is when you’re the homo at a table of heteros, you do your best to be normal and not upset the apple cart. But when you’re in a team of homos, you all speak the same language. We can sit on the grass after training cracking cans of beer and talking about AFL games, then switch seamlessly into dirty innuendo or discussing a Grindr hookup or collectively checking out a hot cyclist. We all know it’s just banter – or as Fergus calls it, ‘bants’.
At the Saturday team brekky, Fergus is telling us about a fuckbuddy who revealed a bizarre kink, and Jack reckons the human brain is so horny anything can be a fetish.
‘Piss off,’ Fergus says. ‘Go on. Make a random object on the table a fetish.’
Jack’s Italian eyes hunt across the table. He dips two gym-callused fingers directly into the bowl of yellowcrème anglaisethat came with Tommo’s flapjacks and holds them up, custardslowly dripping down his long, rough finger. ‘You want me to feed you my hot alpha custard, bro?’ he says to Fergus, in a deep, seductive voice, like anUnderbellybiker. ‘You want me to force it down your slut throat? Yeah, you like that, you dirty custard faggot?’
Fergus breaks into laughter. ‘God, stop it, that actually did something for me,’ he cries. ‘My hole twitched.’
Then the discussion shifts seamlessly to footy. Nobody takes the banter as anything weird. Unlike when hanging with uptight straight people, gay stuff doesn’t clumsily halt the flow of a conversation – itisthe conversation, and it’s always welcome.
When I walk into the call centre on Tuesday, I have an email from my supervisor Carol asking me to meet with her one-on-one.
At ten thirty, Carol takes me into what in office-speak is called a ‘break-out room’, which is ironic given how trapped I always feel in those tiny beige spaces.
Carol tells me my contract has been terminated, effective immediately.
‘Wait – you’re s-sacking me?’ I splutter. ‘Why? On what grounds?’
Carol’s neck tightens. ‘Does the name “Jack” ring a bell?’ she asks. ‘I was doing your monthly call monitoring and heard something I’d rather never hear again.’
Oh yeah, that’ll do it.
Turns out the phones don’t stop recording a call when the student hangs up; they stop when we hang up our headset. It keeps recording if you leave your phone off the hook.
Like I did the day in the work toilets with Jack.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ I tell Carol. ‘Obviously I didn’t realise that was being recorded.’
What a weak apology. I’m clearly sorry I was caught, not sorry for doing it.
Carol makes noises that absconding for sex might have been forgivable if it hadn’t been on work time, and recorded. But she points out that I also abandoned my team in a busy time when they needed me, and gave a student the wrong information.
I’m sent home immediately. In American movies, you always see people who get fired carrying a box of stuff out of the building. I didn’t have any stuff here, which is even more embarrassing. Not a single photo in my pod, no personal effects, nothing. I worked here for years and never brought anything of myself to this place.
