I was impressed by his ardour.
The texts stopped for a few days, but then he rang and suggested we become gym partners. I knew it probably wasn’t a wise move. But he was a personal trainer and I was feeling distinctly out of shape. I agreed on the basis that we kept things strictly professional, and he swore he would. But of course those sessions merely provided an excuse for him to phone me, spend time with me, and touch me. He was by nature a very tactile person, but the way his hands lingered on me and he looked at me with that cocky, sexy smile, one eyebrow raised, aroused me immensely. He was always rearranging his cock, which I remembered so well, in his gym shorts and winking. I refused his invitations back to his apartment to devise a new program or for him to give me a rubdown. I wouldn’t even go into the changing room for fear of him following me and luring me into something I shouldn’t do. I walked home in my gym clothes, hot, sweaty, and extremely horny.
I resisted Alejandro quite valiantly for two months. What finally wore me down were the text messages he sent. They were very blunt and very filthy—‘I want 2 fuck yr ass in a jockstrap’, ‘I want u to sit on my face’—and I found them extremely erotic. One wet Sunday afternoon, he sent them half-hourly, leaving me in a state of almost constant erection. I became so worked up I had to surrender. I’d always ignored his suggestive texts, but finally I responded with a simple Yes. He replied immediately, confused:
Alejandro: I sent many text. I don’t know what u agree 2. A fuck?
Stephen: I agree 2 everything. I want u 2 do all of it 2 me.
We had maybe thirty texts to work through. I would delete the message from my inbox after the particular act or fantasy had been executed. We were halfway through the messages when I left on my trip to Italy with Blake.
While we were travelling, I sent Alejandro a postcard and a couple of sexy e-mails. He didn’t reply and I didn’t think anything of it. He’d failed to keep in touch when he went back to Bogotá, despite all his declarations of love. Still, this sudden loss of contact made me realise how much I had come to enjoy his attentions: the texts, the phone calls, the sessions at the gym and the sessions back at his apartment. I missed him which was very bad. Thankfully, this realisation struck when I was on the other side of the world. The circumstances were ideal. Distance and a complete break from him was exactly what I needed. It was even good that he was a hopeless correspondent. A reply would only have fuelled my feelings. I needed to forget, feel nothing, and return with a new resolve.
Some holiday liaisons were the ideal way to distract myself, forget Alejandro and rekindle some excitement into sex with Blake. However, before long the same frustrations and disputes arose again. Blake wasn’t really into Italian men, whereas being blond made me very popular with them. There were plenty of willing candidates. But Blake dismissed everyone I liked the look of and after a while, his behaviour began to seem purposeful, even a little spiteful. In the end, I threw a tantrum and refused to go to any more gay bars with him.
Yet the frustration remained. There were hot guys everywhere, looking and appraising me; lingering in the piazzas at dusk or strutting the streets in their snug Diesel jeans. But sexiest of all were the young soldiers on trains slouched in their seats, calling out to girls or crudely remarking on them, though their eyes also raked over me, asking silent, erotic questions. I began to ask myself if perhaps I might be better off single, or with Alejandro.
However, in America, we had more success. We hooked up with a number of preppy boy-next-door types that Blake liked, though he was also curious to experiment with a black guy for the first time. It was an experience he seemed to enjoy considerably, if the racket he made while he was being fucked was any indication. So when we did return home, I felt quite sexually satiated and didn’t contact Alejandro. However, after a week had passed and he hadn’t been in touch, I began to feel a little perturbed. Before I left, he’d put my return date into the organiser on his phone. He knew I was back. I sent a text message, suggesting ‘a work-out’, to which he didn’t reply. I sent a couple more and when they too failed to elicit a response, I began to imagine that he must have lost his phone. Finally, I went to the gym at a time when I knew he would be there. He looked sheepish and claimed that he’d been meaning to call me. ‘I have been very busy.’
‘I can imagine,’ I laughed.
Alejandro frowned. ‘No, no, it is not like that. I have met someone I am serious about.’
I congratulated him, assuming this wouldn’t have any bearing on what we had going on. Alejandro was highly sexed, and quite incapable of fidelity. However, I was wrong. ‘Joshua is very special. Only I have sex with him,’ he insisted solemnly.
I took his words with a grain of salt. I figured after a few weeks of working out together again, I’d be able to tempt him back. However, when I suggested we get cracking on the bench press, I was told that our gym partner arrangement was also over. If I wanted it to continue, I would have to pay Alejandro his hourly rate. I declined his offer tersely, and flounced off to the warm-up area where I did some extended stretches in very suggestive poses, making sure I was in Alejandro’s line of vision.
Our positions were reversed and it was awful. I was hurt—I didn’t cope well with rejection. Now that he was unavailable, of course I wanted him, desperately. I was in a state. I was sexually frustrated and also a little heartbroken over Alejandro. I felt desperately in need of a wild night at Bodyline to restore my ego and release some of my pent-up sexual energy. Though as we were just back from holiday, Blake had no plans to go away anywhere. I tried to encourage him down to Canberra for a weekend to catch up with Gemma, but instead, he invited her and some dreary date up to stay for a weekend.
I spent the entire weekend imagining the action that was undoubtedly unfolding in the steam room, while I went through the motions of playing host for Gemma and Kirsten. By Monday night, it had become intolerable. I told Blake I was going to my mother’s but instead went to Buddy Night at Bodyline.
That was the start of me being less cautious about my activities. I went to the sauna when I was horny rather than when Blake was away. Three weeks after Alejandro had told me he was being monogamous, I ran into him there. That same sheepish expression crossed his face. Then he gave me that sexy grin, winked, and before I could tease him about poor Joshua, he proposed a three-way with the guy across the room who was eyeing us off. He turned out to be a tourist from Serbia and the most sensational top.
It was back on with Alejandro. We’d get together at least once a week. It was a more discrete option than the sauna for both of us, a consideration when we both had boyfriends. Though, occasionally, if I had a yen for something different, I’d take myself to Bodyline. Meanwhile, at home I’d endeavour to fuck Blake most weekends and feign great enthusiasm for any threesome possibilities.
One night, we went out to a Ruby party, with the idea of finding someone. Of course no one was interested in pairing up too early in the night and after a couple of knock backs, Blake threw a hissy fit and we ended up going home at three am, alone. But I was so worked up from the thrust and frottage of the dance floor, the idea of sleep was impossible. Blake had completely passed out, so I did something quite audacious. I left him there asleep in our bed and snuck out to the sauna for two hours. It was completely wild: impossible to get a cubicle, with amazing scenes of abandon in the steam room. When I got home, Blake was still safely asleep and only stirred when I slipped back into bed beside him. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘I was very horny,’ I whispered. ‘I needed to come and didn’t want to disturb you.’
Of course, he imagined I was downstairs jerking off to porn.
He had no idea.
4
Chapter Three
There was another reason behind my infidelities, something other than my issues with Blake or the return of Alejandro. My career as an actor had slumped ignominiously after a heady beginning. Sometimes sex with an admiring stranger was an adequate substitute for the abs
ence of applause, attention or an audience.
My prospects had seemed so promising initially. I did my three years at drama school, then landed a prominent role in ‘Sunnyside Street’, an evening soap which had been running for years. I was the first in my class to get TV work, an achievement which created quite a stir in that hotbed of envy, ego and rivalry. Of course everyone ‘acted’ as if they were delighted for me, but out of earshot they were sniping that I’d only got the job because of my mother. Admittedly, that pedigree was often the first thing mentioned in any article or publicity about me, but I didn’t really care. I was just starting out. Working as an actor was competitive, and if I had an advantage that helped me to stand out from the pack, then I was prepared to use it.
‘Sunnyside Street’ was a quintessential Australian soap. It depicted the extraordinarily messy lives of the families who resided on a Sydney beachside street. The star of the show was Marnie Montgomery who played Tara, and I was brought in at the beginning of the ratings season to play her new love interest, Troy. At the climax of the previous year’s series, Tara’s newlywed husband had been swept out to sea in a rip while they were on their honeymoon. His fate was somewhat inevitable as he had planned to move Tara off the street, away from all the heartache and tragedy she had endured there.
Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Tara’s romantic life. She had a history of short-lived relationships. If her husbands or boyfriends didn’t die in freak accidents, she was quite likely to turn a gun on them. She was a murderess twice over. Invariably there was a complication with anyone she fell for: they were either trouble, terminally ill, or psychotic and had to be shot. I don’t know why I imagined that my fate would be any different. I suppose I was foolish enough to believe the articles in ‘TV Week’ that proclaimed Tara had finally met ‘the one’.
Those first months on ‘The Street’ were heady, exciting, glamorous. There were articles about me in newspapers and magazines. I did promotional appearances at suburban shopping malls and charity events. We even had a trip to London as the show was phenomenally popular in the UK. It was only when it all ended that I could see the truth—I was merely an accessory to Marnie. We were Tara and Troy, never the other way around. Tara always came first. The alliteration of our names seemed to doom us to be always written about and pictured together. I was on those magazine covers with Marnie, never by myself, and she eclipsed me every time. Sometimes the lack of interest in me was downright embarrassing. Even being accosted for autographs was a sobering experience. It was rare for a fan to know my full name or even my first name. Usually they just referred to me as Troy and if I signed my real name for them, they got confused and disappointed. A few times, fans even screwed up the autograph in front of me and demanded I sign again as Troy.
The London trip was definitely the best perk of my time on ‘Sunnyside Street’. I had some free time, as everyone was more interested in Marnie than me. So I made the most of doing the shops and the sex clubs (which were mercifully dark, so I was never recognised).
However, Marnie was also busy during her London down time. No one knew that she was sneaking off for appointments that her agent had set up with various UK record executives. Two weeks after our return to Sydney, she announced she would not renew her contract and would leave the show at the end of the season. She had a record deal and was launching a career in pop. Marnie’s vocal ambitions did not go down well with the producers of ‘The Street’. She was their most popular star and would be difficult to replace. Nor did they take kindly to her doing deals on the side of the business trip they had paid for. The writers were instructed to do away with her for good and as nastily as possible.
Rumours swept the set. Tara would be the victim of shark attack, a bad ecstasy tablet, perhaps even a suicide bomber. One night I invited Curtis, the gay guy on the writing team, for a drink and put a few ideas into his head as to how he could dispense with Tara. He loved my suggestions. My favourite was that Tara would be fired from her job, disowned by her family, hit rock bottom and become Sunnyside’s first street person. She would pass away on a park bench one night due to hypothermia, as poor Tara only owned the skimpiest of outfits. A less family-oriented version of this storyline was that instead of being homeless she would become Sunnyside Street’s first prostitute. She would ply her wares after dark, become the pariah of the street, until one night she got into the wrong car and came to a sticky end—very sticky.
Curtis promised he would raise my ideas at the script meetings but we both knew they wouldn’t fly. Tara’s eventual demise owed a lot to ‘CSI’. They set a serial killer loose—The Sunnyside Street Strangler. Tara was the first victim.
I relished her demise. We’d been forced to spend so much time together for publicity purposes, our ‘friendship’ had become a little strained. Once Marnie knew she was leaving, she dropped all pretence of being nice to me. She even insinuated to fellow cast members that I was having a raging affair with Roger, her on-screen father, which I wasn’t—though it wasn’t for a lack of trying on his part. Pretending to be in love with Tara and mourning her death for the cameras is truly the best acting work I’ve ever done.
I never imagined that my own fate might be precarious. I presumed I’d be comforted through my bereavement in the arms of Tara’s best friend Jasmine or sister Lucy, or even both simultaneously. But the producers had other ideas. They were very nervous about what the loss of Tara might mean for the show. Her murder had proven to be a ratings winner and they were desperate to retain that momentum. So it was decided that the Strangler would claim another victim and apparently it was a no-brainer as to who that should be. Tara and Troy were so intrinsically linked, my fate was sealed.
So, my fool of a character declared he wouldn’t rest until he had discovered who had murdered Tara. I became the Nancy Drew of ‘Sunnyside Street’ and after weeks of intrepid sleuthing, managed to uncover the killer’s lair. However, I made the fatal mistake of lingering there to ring Lucy and tell her what I had found. While I was preoccupied on my mobile, The Strangler returned, crept up behind me and throttled me before I could incriminate him. Meanwhile, Lucy listened in, unmoved by my death cries. Finally, she remarked, ‘This line really sucks Troy. Can you call me back?’
Alas Lucy, Troy could not.
I imagined my onscreen death would be the biggest thing since Laura Palmer in ‘Twin Peaks’. But no, the entire focus was on ‘whodunit’, not ‘who was done in’. The only death anyone seemed to care about was Tara’s—even though her fate had been heralded so much in advance, it was almost a relief when it finally occurred. By comparison, my murder was swift and shocking, yet only attracted half the viewers who had tuned in to see Tara dispatched. It was genuinely disturbing to watch my own death and subsequent funeral on television. I cried; then cried some more when I saw how little those magazines and the general public cared. ‘TV Week’ referred to me as ‘a disposable minor character’. The cast of ‘Sunnyside Street’ mourned me for ten minutes during the funeral episode, then collectively forgot me. They were distracted by Jasmine, who developed a drinking problem after too many wines at my wake.
It was a cruel time and even my friends weren’t particularly supportive. To them ‘Sunnyside Street’ was a joke and I was better off out of it. They all assumed, as I did, that I’d land something better. At first, I was rather glad of the extended holiday, but as the weeks turned into months and brought no new opportunities, I began to feel alarmed. My mother had warned me when I’d first mooted the idea of being an actor that there could be a lot of downtime in between jobs. Of course I hadn’t listened. I thought she was merely projecting her own predicament onto me—roles were certainly rare for someone of her advancing years.
But times were tough in television. Soaps and dramas sagged in the ratings while reality shows—‘Big Brother’, ‘Australian Idol’, ‘The Block’—ruled. TV was all makeovers—apartments, straight men, frumpy women. Opportunities for a fledgling TV actor like me were pret
ty much non-existent. My agent Ann lamented ‘this reality scourge’ but all she could offer me was ads.
She talked me into becoming the household face of a new tomato sauce, Tommy, ‘a versatile sensation’ that could be squirted over sausages or drizzled over pasta. I had my reservations about becoming known as a versatile sensation—it made me sound like a rent boy— however, the money was five figures. I played a character, also named Tommy, who was supposed to be reminiscent of Jamie Oliver. I had to butch it up for the part, but that was no problem. It was an act I’d perfected over the past ten years picking up boys in bars.
My TV death had begun to seem like my career death knell, until finally, after three bleak months, Ann rang me with the opportunity of a breakout role in theatre. The play in question had been a great success off-Broadway with the gay audience and the promoter was mounting a production to coincide with Mardi Gras. ‘It’s the lead role,’ Ann exclaimed. ‘The exposure will be fantastic.’
Then the script arrived and the exact nature of that exposure became apparent. It was a play about a porn star which called for the lead actor (the role intended for me) to spend almost the entire play naked.
That was never going to happen. There were already more than enough guys in Sydney who knew that the size of my equipment was less than the commonly accepted average. I certainly did not intend to flaunt that fact on stage for the paying public but I was also reluctant to reveal such a personal detail to Ann. It would be all around the industry and inner Sydney within hours. Her personal assistant Eric rivalled the ABC as an effective national broadcaster!
I phoned Ann with a string of reasons as to why I didn’t want to pursue the role—the lame script, the money, a reluctance to play ‘gay’ and be forced into dodging questions about my own sexuality when I did publicity, and then finally a hesitation to appear nude. ‘What do you mean you don’t want to go nude? Eric tells me he constantly sees you at Lady Jane Beach.’
Time to Upsize (The Indignities Book 1) Page 5