Tigerland

by Sean Kennedy

“No. They’re just worried about us. They know it’s pretty stressful.”

  That was putting it mildly. We avoided the television, as we knew Heyward would probably be on the news, and ended up putting on a DVD which we both fell asleep in front of. We like to rock hard.

  The next day over breakfast I felt like a prisoner awaiting execution. I knew at some point during the Midsumma festivities we would probably run into Heyward. The powers that be wouldn’t be that kind to allow us to avoid him all night. As king of the festival he would surely be at the film festival premiere. I only wished he was actually King of Moomba, because then there was a chance we could put him in a badly constructed airplane and push him off a plank into the Yarra.

  At least we would have our faithful posse to support us—Abe, Lisa, Fran, and Roger had all agreed to go. But I think that had more to do with Coby ringing them up and threatening them with bodily harm if he didn’t see them there. I was actually touched he was willing to let us stay at home rather than be in the same space as Heyward, although I wondered what his reaction actually would have been had we said we weren’t going.

  That night I dressed as if going into battle. My twelve-hole Doc Martens with the steel caps, laced up all the way to the top, ready for an arse kicking. The cargo pants with more pockets than humanly imaginable so all weapons could be concealed… uh, like my wallet, phone, and keys. Black, slightly hipster-ish jumper bought from an opshop.

  “You look like you’re ready to break into a government facility to rescue bunnies from a lab,” Declan said when I emerged from the bedroom.

  “Really?” I asked, looking down at my all-black ensemble. “I thought I just looked like a true Melbournite.”

  Dec snorted. “That too.”

  “Black hides blood.”

  “Fantastic,” Dec drawled. “You’re going to be trouble tonight. I can tell.”

  “I’m going to be on my best behaviour,” I promised.

  And I was. It was just that circumstances worked against me.

  THIS year the opening of Midsumma was spread along the east side of the banks of the Yarra, just behind Federation Square. Large gazebos had been erected as designated drinking and dancing areas, and the forecourt of the Square had also been roped off for that occasion.

  That was where we found the others, already getting stuck into champagne.

  “What’s the big deal?” Dec asked, throwing himself down on the steps beside Abe.

  “They’ve been waiting for you to get here,” Roger said.

  “This might not be the best timing,” Lisa said, her eyes full of mischief.

  “But maybe we could all use some good news,” Abe cut in.

  Their act was all very mysterious and cute, but everyone was too impatient, and the two of them were drowned by protest.

  “We’ve decided,” Lisa said, “to, uh, formally live together. Forever.”

  There was a silence as everybody digested that.

  “Do you mean married?” Fran asked.

  “Yes, that’s the word.” Abe started pouring champagne for Dec and me into plastic tumblers, which were the height of class.

  Protests turned to congratulations, then more questions.

  “But you guys weren’t even officially ‘back together’,” Roger said.

  “We were,” Abe said. “To ourselves.”

  “We had to make sure,” Lisa added.

  “It didn’t take that long to make sure,” Dec pointed out.

  “We pretty much already knew before.” Abe grinned.

  “I don’t think I’ll believe it until I hear both of you say the word you’re trying to avoid,” I said.

  “What word?” Lisa asked.

  “The m word. Go on, both of you say it.”

  “Fine,” Lisa said, looking at Abe and rolling her eyes.

  “We’re getting married!” they said in a mockingly serious unison.

  “They said the m word,” Dec whispered aside to me. “Now it’s official.”

  “Yep, it sure is.”

  “One day,” Dec said, and he didn’t have to say any more.

  “One day,” I repeated, hoping like hell it would happen.

  We drank the champagne, and it was so cheap and nasty we were sloshed almost immediately.

  “It’s going to be tiny,” Lisa said. “Tiny tiny tiny.”

  This made Roger and I howl inappropriately, and Fran to whack us both.

  “She is not casting aspersions on my manhood,” Abe said.

  “No, your manhood’s okay,” Lisa said, patting him on the arm.

  “Okay?” he demanded, but she ignored him.

  “We want to do it pretty quickly, and it’s only going to be very close friends and family. Neither of us wants a huge wedding.”

  Dec leaned in to Abe and asked, “Are you guys pregnant?”

  Abe laughed. “No, in love.”

  “That’s great,” Dec said, and they hugged it out.

  A camera flash erupted, and we all turned, stunned, to see Jasper Brunswick standing on the steps above us, having appeared out of nowhere like a Disney villain.

  “Not another gay outing for the AFL?” Jasper asked, letting his camera hang freely from his neck.

  Dec and I both jumped up, although I think Dec was doing it to restrain me as he didn’t know what I might do.

  “I wouldn’t seek the attention,” Abe said coolly. “Not like some.”

  “Can I quote you on that?” Jasper asked. “It could be added to the paperback edition of the book.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “You really think you’re the Kitty Kelley of Australia, don’t you?”

  Everybody looked at me blankly.

  “Okay, the Rita Skeeter?”

  Still no response.

  “I know you bastards have seen Harry Potter!”

  I still didn’t think my analogy was getting through to them, so I turned back to Jasper. “Give me that camera.”

  “Really?” Jasper sneered.

  “Give me that camera, or I’ll throw it in the Yarra. With you still attached to it.”

  “Call off your yappy little poodle, Declan,” Jasper said.

  Now it was Dec advancing on Jasper, who panicked and jumped back. Forgetting there were steps behind him, he lost his balance and fell against them. He stared up at Declan, who then offered a hand to help him up.

  “Forget it.” Jasper got to his feet without assistance, his pride wounded. “Simon, can I talk to you alone, please?”

  “Sorry. I’m done yapping at you.”

  Jasper shrugged. “Your loss.”

  Exasperated, I looked at Dec to see what he thought.

  He shrugged. Some help.

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction,” I heard Roger say.

  I shrugged. “It’ll be my response that gives him any kind of satisfaction.”

  Dec sank back down onto his step. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “I’ll be cool,” I said, jumping up the stairs to reach Jasper.

  “Not here,” Jasper said, well aware that the eyes of my friends were all upon him.

  He led me to the back of one of the tents. Shadows of people danced upon the canvas, lit from within. It was a pretty surreal backdrop.

  “What do you want, Jasper?” I asked.

  “No hello, then? It has been a while since we last saw each other.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re going to stand there and pretend that we should be civil to each other? Give me a fucking break.”

  “You always have to be so antagonistic!”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “I’m just doing a job.”

  I was almost ready to shoot back a response that would have Godwin-ed me, but I held it back. “That’s your reasoning?”

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt that I don’t like you.”

  “At least you’re telling the truth now. Shame you couldn’t do it in that piece of shit book you’re hawking.”

  “You think my bo
ok is that bad?”

  “It stinks of all the bullshit that’s in it.”

  “Greg gave Declan the opportunity to collaborate.”

  I couldn’t believe his gall. “Yeah, when he had already finished it. There was no way he wanted Dec to write it with him because then he would have had to tell the truth.”

  “Well, that’s all subjective, isn’t it?”

  “No, I’d say it’s the definition of lying.”

  Jasper sneered. “Wow, you really think Declan is perfect, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I know Dec isn’t perfect—” And with that I realised I was giving Jasper the perfect sound bite.

  “Yes?” Jasper asked eagerly. Too eagerly, in my humble opinion.

  I leapt for him, my hands scrabbling at the front of his shirt. He howled and tried to pull away, but I was ripping his buttons open and holding onto the material at the same time, so escape was practically impossible.

  “What are you doing?” he cried.

  “Checking you for a wire!”

  “You’re fucking crazy!”

  Maybe I was. Or maybe I was just too buzzed on champagne. But I needed to check, and this meant seeing a lot more flesh of Jasper Brunswick than I had ever wanted to see in my life. Nothing was attached to the sparse hairs on his chest, but I wasn’t satisfied. He tried to pull away again, and in some action I probably saw in an episode of Highway Patrol or Border Security or some bull crap local reality show that tried to scare us into thinking that our moral order was rapidly deteriorating, I yanked the back of his shirt down to his waist, effectively pinning his arms together.

  “Help!” Jasper yelled to some of the passing crowd, but to them on this night of nights it probably looked like we were just involved in some strange courting ritual.

  He was clean. There was nothing strange on his back, except for one mole that he should probably get his doctor to check on his next appointment.

  “Let me go!”

  I pushed him away, and he stumbled while trying to free his arms.

  “You are absolutely insane!” Jasper yelled.

  “No,” I said. “I’m just a little drunk.”

  “Well, for someone who is trying to stay out of the spotlight, just wait until this is all over the media tomorrow!”

  “Just you try it.”

  “I have witnesses!” he cried, buttoning his shirt back up. A couple of buttons were ripped and hanging freely, and he was pretty pissed off about it.

  “Who?” I asked, gesturing around us. “Nobody gives a fuck!”

  “What about him?” Jasper asked, pointing behind me.

  As I turned, Jasper made his escape.

  It was Declan, coming to see what all the commotion was.

  I whirled back around. “Keep running, Jasper Brunswick! Head straight for the river!”

  “Did I just see you manhandling him?” Dec asked.

  “Oh, he wishes!”

  “Somehow, I don’t think he does.”

  I tripped over my own feet walking over to him, and Dec caught me.

  “Oh, my hero,” I said, kissing him and giving a small blessing in my head that there were some events like this where we could do this in public like a “normal” couple.

  He seemed pleased by the attention, at least by the way he responded to my kiss, but when he pulled away he still looked concerned. “You know, it probably wasn’t the best thing to antagonise him.”

  “I’m past caring what Jasper Brunswick thinks about me.”

  “What about the things he could write about you?”

  “What’s the point?” I asked, and I may have sounded a little bit mean when I did so. “He’s just going to write them anyway, and both him and Heyward are never going to have to worry about either of us responding to it.”

  I pulled away from Dec and made my way back to the others. It took a few moments for him to follow me.

  THINGS were a bit more sombre after Jasper Brunswick’s intrusion into our group, and although everybody tried to put on a happy face for both Abe and Lisa, and Coby for his film entry, we never got back to the same high we had before. After my “manhandling” of Jasper Brunswick, I decided to switch to coffee and stay away from alcohol at least until I reached the safety of home.

  Things got worse when, at the screening on the foreshore, Heyward took to the stage, wearing his tacky gold crown as King of Midsumma, to open the film festival. Everyone visibly stiffened, and I could feel their gazes upon me and Dec.

  Dec pretended not to feel it, and stared ahead as if Heyward was just any other person on the stage. I couldn’t. I stared down at the paper cup in my hand and started shredding it from the lip, uncurling it in one giant piece like an apple rind.

  “We have a wide range of films to show here tonight,” Heyward was saying, even though it sounded as if he was speaking underwater as everything around me was starting to take on the surreal twinge of a nightmare. “The feature film selections will be running for the next week, while all short films selected will run tonight. There are a large range of genres, and some very talented directors, including up and comers like Sarah Vujcich, Diana Perino, and Coby Harker.”

  At the sound of Coby’s name our small group immediately started hooting and cheering, which was a mistake, as it immediately drew Heyward’s attention towards us.

  “Seems to be a pretty popular guy,” Heyward said with his faux affability. “But I have to say, ahead of accusations of conflict of interest, although he is the personal assistant of Simon Murray, I have no say in the voting.”

  It seemed like most of the audience had now turned to look around at where our cheering had come from. I might as well have been on the stage next to Heyward, with the spotlight shining upon my sweaty, panicked face. I might not have been as famous as my partner, but in this circle even I was well known just by association with him.

  Heyward paused long enough for the audience to start feeling uncomfortable, and I wilted under the attention. “But enough about that. The first film in the projector is a comedic tale of a high school teacher who must decide whether to acknowledge her own sexuality when teaching equal marriage rights in a debate class.”

  He continued to ramble on, and now that the audience’s full attention was back on him I got to my feet and muttered that I had to find the loo. Dec looked as if he was about to follow me, but I waved him off.

  I felt like I needed to go to the loo, but it was more a churning in my stomach, and it felt more like I was going to puke. The cheap champagne from earlier seemed to be having a bad effect on me—my head was pounding and I felt sweaty and overheated.

  I ended up behind the stage, calmed by the water lapping at the bank. I sank down beneath a tree and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on the sound of the river rather than the pain in my belly and the tinny noise coming from the film playing behind me.

  “Simon?” a familiar voice asked.

  I opened my eyes. Coby was standing above me.

  “Hey, Coby,” I said, although it was more of an indecipherable mutter than anything else.

  “You saving that seat?”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Me and all my friends.”

  Coby sat beside me. “All your friends are sitting in that audience. And one’s sitting beside you now.”

  “I know. I just needed… air.”

  “You’re in the open air. You were in the open air where you were sitting before.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. I’m really sorry that dick did that to you.”

  “It’s not your fault. He just used you because it meant he could then take a pot shot at us.”

  “Doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  I laughed, but it was more of a disappointed snort. “Nah, me neither.” I lifted a small rock and threw it into the water. I heard it crash through the surface but couldn’t see it. “When is your film showing?”

  “It’s the fourth one.”

  “Is he going to
introduce each one?”

  “I’m afraid so. Look, you can go home if you like.”

  I shook my head. “He’s already been a shit. If he does it again, he knows he’ll look bad, and he’s smart enough to avoid that.”

  I felt stupid now for running away, and even more foolish for pushing Dec away. On some level I guess I was trying to punish him because I wanted him to stop Heyward from doing this, but I also knew there was no way he could really stop him. Even if he wanted to confront him, in that stupid macho sportsmen way they’d probably resort to blows, something that easily happened on the football field as a way of resolving sledges.

  “I better go back,” I said. “I don’t want to miss your film.”

  I got to my feet and went to give him a congratulatory handshake, but he surprised me with a hug.

  “Thanks, boss.”

  I wanted to tell him to stop calling me boss, that we had gone beyond that now. That he was a friend. But as usual, I had trouble saying it. “That’s okay, plebe.”

  But he knew what I meant. He’s worked with me too long not to know.

  I didn’t want to make my way back from the front of the stage and pass through a whole crowd of people who had just seen me called out by Heyward, so I cut through a small swathe of trees to enter from the back when I saw Heyward and Dec before me. They hadn’t seen me, and I ducked behind a tree for cover, curiosity getting the better of me.

  They were arguing, but I was having difficulty making out what exactly they were saying. Luckily they were too distracted to see me moving closer, but still under cover, so I could hear them better.

  “You ever do that again—”

  “And what?” Heyward hissed. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “You leave Simon out of this. This isn’t about him.”

  “It’s always been about him. About the both of you. How was I supposed to compete with that?”

  “It’s not a competition! Jesus, you could have had the bloody spotlight all you wanted. Neither Simon or I care! We’d be happier without it.”

  “But you got there first,” Heyward said, and I was surprised at the anger in his voice. “The only way I could do it was to try and top you.”

  “You never cared about coming out when we were together,” Dec reminded him. “So it seems pretty fucking stupid to worry now about who deserves the glory.”