Curtis and I set up until seven, when he tells me to knock off.
I don’t head home. I sit in the bar’s dunnies, refreshing the apps, cockblocked as hell. First, the Scruff fuckboy ghosted me – I rocked up to his house and he wouldn’t answer the door – whodoesthat?! Sociopaths and cowards. Then I hit the sauna and run into Zeke and we have a big deep-and-meaningful instead of me getting railed by that jock barman. The universe gave me blue balls and I’m not ending the day without getting what I need.
I scroll Grindr until I find an average joe lazy top who’s done me missionary style before. He’s a bearded landscape gardener, otter body type, decent dick but not much energy in his thrust. Still, any cock’s better than none when your arse is itchy.
I grab an Uber for his house in Noranda and settle for an unsatisfying eight minutes staring at his ceiling while he tells me, pretty unconvincingly, that he’s a fucken alpha, and, more convincingly, that I’m a dirty slut boy.
Ahmed is fussy as hell when I get home. The moment I open the door and smell the savoury red lentil soup wafting from the kitchen, he starts at me. ‘Curtis said you left the bar ages ago! I was so worried about you.’
‘I’m fine, Ahmed, just had some stuff to do,’ I mutter.
I click the front door shut behind me, slide my black-and-white Converse sneakers off (Curtis and Ahmed insist on no shoes in the house) and shuffle in my Globe socks across the lacquered-wood floor into the kitchen.
Ahmed’s stirring the soup in a giant silver pot. His wooden spoon whirls through the brown lentil muck in a way that seems haphazard, but I know is much more deliberate. The fizzy sounds of a track from Lady Gaga’sMayhemare blaring from the Bluetooth speakers on the white marble bench.
When Ahmed turns, he has a shit-eating grin on his face. ‘Had somestuffto do?’ he probes. ‘Or someoneto do?’
Ahmed has always seen right through me. He’s got zero tolerance for bullshit – the only quality he and Curtis have in common. Otherwise, they’re polar opposites: Curtis is big and butch, full of masculine American swagger; Ahmed is slim and the bottomiest of bottoms. He’s in his forties with stunningly hot Arab features: dark eyes, shaped eyebrows, skin so bronze over muscle so chiselled he could be a statue. Raised in Perth by an Egyptian father and English mother, he fled to America straight out of high school to pursue acting, which didn’t work, and modelling, which did. In his twenties and thirties, he was on the cover ofAttitudein the UK,Têtuin France andDNAMagazinehere in Australia. I reckon he did porn too, but he’s never admitted it.
And if Curtis is sensitive about his age, Ahmed is outright allergic. He gets Botox and lip fillers and facelifts to cling to his youth. But no matter what he does, the modelling shoots are fewer and farther between every year, which I think is why he swings between warm, nurturing dad and waspish, bitchy faggot. When I first moved in, Ahmed quipped at Curtis, in front of me, ‘Why didn’t you tell me we’re taking in another stray? Are you going to fuck this one, too?’ Then he fixed me with this absolute beaming smile. ‘Welcome to the family, bud!’
Jesus.
His comment about strays stung at the time. I already felt weird accepting the invitation to live with a guy and his husband, especially given Curtis and I had had sex. Open relationships are a dime a dozen in the gay world, but living with the couple felt like a bridge too far. But Curtis reassured me he had a history of taking in multiple lodgers to help pay the mortgage. I’m in the back room and in the middle room is Rex, a FIFO worker, so it doesn’t feel enmeshed: more of a share house.
That said, Curtis and Ahmed’s place in Inglewood is way nicer than the festy share houses I’ve lived in. Most of my Perth years, I’ve lived with other musos, in dero houses with leaking taps and missing light bulbs, and eventually I outgrew the constant parties and drugs and sticky floors and mouldy dishes and music at all hours.
The night I moved in with Curtis and Ahmed, six months ago, Curtis cooked us a steak dinner, paired with a red wine. The whole thing tasted phenomenal. Ahmed made up a bed and fussed over me like I was a new puppy. Every Sunday, he makes me strip the bed and put on the fresh sheets he’s washed. Never in my life – not even when Dad was alive – have I had clean sheets on a regular basis. My room always smells like lavender-scented Omo, and I weirdly like it. Not the Omo, but the whole vibe: the cooked meals, the laundry, the check-ins about where I’ve been, as if they genuinely care about my wellbeing.
I pay board to live here and do chores: taking out the rubbish, washing the dishes, setting the table when we eat together sometimes. It’s the closest thing to a normal suburban family life I’ve ever had. This is a home where I don’t need to worry about a housemate puking in my bed after eating too many shrooms. It feels safe, warm and clean. I’ve never lived anywhere less edgy in my life, but I’m liking it too much to ever want to leave.
‘Your profile was active on Grindr,’ Ahmed elaborates. There he goes: warm to wasp with one stir of his lentil ladle. It’s like having a dad who can track all my seedy movements. ‘You hooked up.’
‘I mighta been out with a guy,’ I admit, smiling coyly. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Spill the tea, hun,’ Ahmed says, flicking on his phone to choose Lady Gaga’s ‘911’. ‘Was he hung?’
I grab a can of Monster Energy from the fridge, slide onto the bar stool opposite Ahmed at the bench, and tell him about my fuck. I embellish: I’m not proud of only being able to net a mediocre root, so I make my landscape gardener sound hotter and more alpha than he was. Ahmed is great for bragging about sex to – he lives for gossip. Maybe I do, too.
As I’m running out of lies to tell, Ahmed’s phone pings.
‘Curtis is on his way home,’ he tells me. ‘Quick, pop into the shower so you’re all clean for dinner. But take the rubbish out first, please: it’s nearly full.’
It sounds so domestic I can’t help but quip, ‘Yes, Daddy.’
Ahmed shudders. ‘Don’tevercall me that!’ he moans. ‘I’m too young to be a daddy! Yuck!’
Dude, you’re forty-five, I think.
I carry the rubbish bag outside and see the whole street is lined with red-lidded council bins. I forgot it was bin night.To be honest, I rely on everyone else in the street to remember for me.
I dump the bag and drag the wheelie bin to the verge. It’s a cool July night, and the wind cuts through my hoodie. The street is quiet, traffic-calmed with built-in curves and speed bumps, and nothing bad ever seems to happen here. But nothing remarkable happens here, either.
The stars are out. Growing up in a country town, it was so easy to see them. The city’s light pollution often obscures them, but tonight’s a clear night. I look up at Orion’s Belt. I still think of Dad watching over me when I see it. But I no longer get inspired by Orion’s story the way I used to. Orion was an ancient Greek mortal who made it to the stars, among the gods.
But he was just a myth.
I chug the remains of my Monster and jump into the shower with music blaring from my phone. I’ve been playing early Ramones and Blondie lately, good CBGB-era punk, but tonight, for no conscious reason, I put on ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters.
