Not that, I reply.I’m real sorry for what I did to you. Back in Gero. When we were at school and I was a cunt to you. And in that hotel room. I shoulda slowed down if you weren’t ready. I’m sorry ok.
Zeke sees my message but doesn’t reply. No speech bubble with dots or nothing. I feel like a dick. I’d delete my message if he hadn’t already seen it.
I watch the game on TV. Oshy kicks a goal and taps the rainbow on his chest, dedicating it to the homos. The commentators say it’s a thoughtful, beautiful touch that shows strong leadership.
My phone finally vibrates with Zeke’s reply.
This is a conversation I never thought I’d have with you. I’d rather do it face to face.
Not until he offers that do I realise I wanna see him, too. I don’t wanna be alone tonight.
Yeh ok, I write.Where u? I can cum over right now.
Lol no, Zeke says.I’m on a footy trip with the boys up at the Beach Shack, some Airbnb in Lancelin. It’s over an hour from Perth.
I could drive there, I offer.I’ve had a few drinks, but I’ll make it work. An hour’s not too far.
No, that’s crazy, don’t do that. I’m busy with the boys anyway. Look, let’s grab a beer when I’m back in Perth next week?
It’s my turn to go silent. I throw my phone on the couch. It’s like someone hauled me out of the quicksand, saw what I really look like, and kicked me back into the mud.
Then I grab my car keys.
It’s a wintry August night and I freeze my nuts off on the drive up to Lancelin. I’m wearing a Rip Curl beanie and a Mad Hueys hoodie and I’m still shivering behind the steering wheel. The reverse cycle doesn’t seem to be able to generate air warm enough. My breath is misting; the windscreen keeps fogging up dangerously on the dark road, forcing me to wind the windows down to unfog it, making it even more freezing.
I pull into Lancelin around nine o’clock. I park beside the IGA and check my AFL Live app. Oshy, Tank and Kingy got two goals each, but the Swans beat us. Shit.
I google the Beach Shack again and drive around the corner to find it. My engine idles outside, headlights illuminating a two-storey wooden house.
The Beach Shack is way bigger than a real shack, but it’s got beach house vibes with wooden steps and a mezzanine deck and ropes and buoys dangling outside like decorations. The place is rowdy. I can hear guys laughing. A ping-pong ball bounces off concrete and someone shouts. A chorus of blokes chant at someone to ‘scull, muthafucka’. The muthafucka does scull, and everyone claps. Daddy Cool’s ‘Eagle Rock’ starts playing loud from a speaker and everyone cheers. If this was me and my Eagles teammates, we’d all be dropping our dacks to this song.
I can’t see any of the Centurions boys from here: they’re all in the backyard.
I type a message to Zeke.I’m here. I drove to Lancelin. Let me in?
I swallow the lump of fear in my throat and it doesn’t go down. This was insanity. I can’t walk into this house. They’ll either crucify me, or they’ll find out. I can’t survive either. And now I’m here, I don’t trust myself to be around Zeke without forgetting myself.
I delete the message.
I stay parked outside, listening to the lads laugh and sing and swear and scull. I want so badly to be in there running amuck with them. Walk into the shack, grab a beer and a ping-pong paddle and hang with the lads. A whole team of guys like me.
Instead, I am outside, looking in on something I will never have.
I reverse away from the Beach Shack in silence, and the raucous laughs of the Centurions chase me down the road like ghosts.
16
FRATELLANZA
ZEKE
The footy trip to Lancelin is the best weekend of my entire life. Bar none.
Mason gives me a lift up in his Ram truck. He puts on a playlist of bogan pub rock by The Chats, which sets the vibe for the whole weekend. We rock up second at the Beach Shack, after Jack and Brick in Jack’s black SS ute, Phantom. Mason and I bags a room together – there are two bunks, so Mason takes one top bunk and I take the other.
From the moment we get there, everyone’s in the best mood. I’m used to seeing everyone dirty at footy training, but today we’re all freshly showered in thongs and footy shorts and sprays of Lynx. Blocks of beer are carried into the house on tanned shoulders. Bags of ice tinkle into Eskies. Keychain bottle-openers pop stubby lids; cans crack and fizz. Someone’s Spotify is hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker playing ‘Sweet Release’ by Hockey Dad. Everyone’s grinning, clapping hands in bro-handshakes, fistbumping, chill as fuck. There’s this loose party vibe in the air, rising up out of everyone’s pores. You can almost smell it, like how the air gets damp and earthy when it rains. Boys’ trip petrichor.
We spend the arvo getting rapidly shitfaced on the mezzanine deck of the house, overlooking the sun setting over the Indian Ocean. We’re all playing Pontoon and talking shit. Jack and Rogan hook up the Airbnb’s flatscreen TV on the outside wallso we can watch the AFL’s Pride Game. It’s the Eagles versus the Swans; everyone’s going for the Eagles and I realise, in all my footy tipping and now playing, I’ve never actually picked a team to go for.
