Confide in Me

by Renae Kaye

  Anyway, I’m Steve Colvin and I won the second series of Remember My Name.

  Vanessa Amorosi said I had the voice of an angel. And one of the sisters from Sister2Sister—I can’t remember which one—said I eclipsed Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah,” which actually embarrassed me as nobody could do that. My winner’s single went straight to number one and stayed there for six weeks. Then my album debuted at #117, I got dropped from my contract, and my second single was never released.

  And the next year’s winner did exactly the same. Except their album debuted at #134. So, I won! Kind of. And even though I became an abject failure, I still get recognised. You would think they would completely forget about me, but I was prone to show up on those Whatever Happened To… lists, and anytime I actually tried to get a gig somewhere, singing my own songs, there was inevitably some write-up in a local gossip column pitying me and saying, “Surely he should realise the dream is over, and just give up?”

  Yeah, and become what? My older brother is a bank teller. Should I have become that? Not that I'm dissing Joel—he seemed happy enough, and he has a new boyfriend so he thinks life is fantastic—but bank teller was not my dream career.

  I didn’t even know if singing was, anymore.

  But it was how I made the little money I got. When you’re the least little bit famous, you’d always find some people who still gave a shit about you and turned up to your gigs. I knew mine by name. They’re ex-fourteen-year-old girls, who were now young eighteen-year-old women, but still in that fourteen-year-old mindset. And the twinks still loved me, or so Joel told me.

  And, look, trust me, I wasn’t dissing any of them either. I couldn’t afford to. They’d usually drag along some friends as well, and when those friends got tired of having to go to the gigs of some has-been they kind of remembered, they got replaced with other friends. And the cycle continued.

  And I was still dragging the weight of the closet behind me.

  When the moment happened—and subsequently passed me by—the reporter caught me off guard. I had just been coming off stage after a performance on the show. It was Disco Week and I had done a rousing rendition of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (wearing a black jumpsuit, not a white bit of flowy material held together with a belt). I was miffed because special guest judge Rob “Millsy” Mills had told me he wasn’t sure Kylie really fit the theme, as the Disco era was more a product of the 1970s. I had to bite back the retort that at least I wasn’t best known for “fitting” into Paris Hilton—who knows, maybe I should have? I could have been showcased on heaps of those Remember This Controversial Television Moment lists or specials, sandwiched between Dicko telling Paulini she was too fat to wear a gold dress and Rick Ardon losing his Speedo during his appearance on Celebrity It’s A Knockout!

  But, no. I had thanked him for his opinion and secretly cursed him to a lifetime of playing the Scarecrow in shopping centre tours of The Wizard of Oz during school holidays for the next decade.

  And that was when they got me.

  “Steve, as you know, it’s Pride Week before our next episode, and as an obvious lover of Kylie, is there anything you would like to say to your gay fan base?”

  I froze. It was a dig at me; I was sure of it. The media was convinced all the guys on Remember My Name were gay, even though they needed us to be straight so we could continue to be sold to the audience and gain them magazine sales and page clicks online. They didn’t think gay boys would be as popular as the straight ones, and obviously knew nothing about the advent of slash fiction.

  Maybe choosing Kylie had given me away. Of course, now I roll my eyes when I think back to that performance, and think yeah, der. I mean, sure there must be some straight men out there who love Kylie, but there’s a reason it’s a stereotype.

  My mind slowly turning over, and sweat appearing on my brow, I managed to spit out, “Sure! I love all of my fans. Pride Week is a time to celebrate, and as a straight guy I realise how much better off I have it than some, so I can only offer my support and love and hope everybody has a great party!”

  The reporter smirked at me. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and with that I sealed my fate.

  I played the game. There’s no denying I did it for myself. To stay on the show. To keep my straight female fans voting for me. Because I didn’t want to be known as “the gay contestant.”

  Because I was a coward.

  I could tell Joel was disappointed in me, although he never said anything. I had never told him I was gay as well, but I was pretty sure he suspected. Like knows like. But I couldn’t even be truthful with him. And I didn’t know how I could ever come out. I’d seen the reaction online to closeted celebrities who had taken their time to do so. Half the people admired them for doing so, because any out gay was supposedly a happier gay; the other half resented them for not being brave enough to do it earlier. It seemed you couldn’t win. So I lived in a state of stressed-out apathy—where I didn’t know what to do but was always anxious about it.

  It didn’t help that I had Joel for a brother, either.

  Joel Colvin was born out. Most photos of him as a kid showed him in some kind of pose, as if the song playing at his birth was “Vogue.” He was never in the closet at high school, saying, “It’s not like they don’t already guess it, so why bother pretending I’m not?” It seemed even his choice in boyfriends was a political act: his long-term uni boyfriend was the head of the campus Queer Alliance, and his new boyfriend, Mark, was a part-time drag queen. In my darker moments I dismissively thought Joel had to be the über gay.

  If I did ever come out, people would be wondering why I had never been as brave as Joel, and why I thought I couldn’t come out to my parents as they were already so supportive with their first son (seriously, they had already been to see Mark perform at Connections and were calling him their third son) etcetera, etcetera.

  Maybe, deep down, I just knew I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer.

  Okay, I knew I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. Just one word: fear.

  Unjustified, but very real, fear.

  And it affected everything. I’d drifted away from my family—and it was entirely my fault, because they never stopped trying and I pushed them away every opportunity I could get—and Joel always looked so hurt by it. He couldn’t hide his emotions like I could. Everything he felt was openly displayed. If he found something funny, he’d burst out with raucous laughter; if he was having a bad day, he’d tell you rather than saying “fine, thanks”; if he was sad, he’d cry until he got it out of his system. He was one of the most well-rounded people I knew—in fact, probably the only one.

  But I knew my days were numbered. The more I tried to convince myself of something, the less I believed it. My secrets were crumbling around me, and the world was getting smaller.

  Out of all the guys I’d hooked up with, there was only one who had gotten under my skin.

  His name was Dev, and I didn’t know why the fuck he let me treat him the way I did.

  And I was so aware of what I was doing and I couldn’t stop myself. Like I said, I was the worst.

  Dev's coolly confident, and always measured in his responses to everything. You could tell he truly thought about what he was saying before he said it, and because of that you could trust his opinion on anything—even if you didn’t like it.

  But he could also be funny, and I really liked hanging out with him. It was why I kept going back to him, even though he deserved better. I loved how his dark eyes glinted when he was happy, and I felt like I could fall into them if I let myself. I knew he wanted more, but I kept pushing him away. It was so fucked. But this was also what I was doing to myself, and it was why I resented Joel so much at the moment. He had the boyfriend, the job—well, a job—and the life he wanted.

  I wanted that.

  Dev’s also a rehabilitation nurse, so he's a really good person. His job is a cause, looking after people and trying to
make them well enough so they could go home able to look after themselves again. Believe me, I saw the parallels and the irony of me ending up in his life.

  When I first saw his pic on Grindr, he didn’t have a face. He was in his nursing scrubs, and he wore them well. I wished I could make him turn around so I could see his arse in them. I bet they clung beautifully—later on, I would find out they did and he would start to think I was a pervert with a hospital fetish. The V-neck of his scrubs gave a beautiful glimpse of a toned but not muscly chest, as the angle was looking down upon him. I wanted him, despite being faceless, and I’d hoped he would want me.

  And he did. But he also specified, Just making sure you saw my race in my profile.

  It had specified Anglo-Indian.

  Yeah, what about it? I messaged him.

  Just some guys don’t read it properly and then get pissed when I turn up.

  Really? Their fucking loss then, the racist pricks. Of course, I was also speaking with hindsight, because I knew Dev now. Their fucking loss indeed.

  I won’t, I texted back. Besides, how stupid are they if they can’t see from the photo?

  They just think I’m really tanned, he replied.

  He made me laugh out loud. That’s how quickly he captivated me. And even though he recognised me, it didn’t faze him, as he said he didn’t like reality television or pop music that much. That normally would have made me block the guy so he never showed on my feed again, but I actually found it refreshing.

  After a hook-up, I usually tried to get rid of the guy as soon as possible. Not Dev. We talked until all hours, fucked like bunnies two more times until our dicks cried out for relief, and it was Dev who had to beg off staying because he needed to try and get at least some sleep before his next shift.

  I had told him that I wasn’t after anything serious, and although I saw a flicker of disappointment, it didn’t stop him from coming over again.

  And then, before I knew it, Dev and me hooking up became a regular thing. Regular as in, he knew I liked my coffee with milk and one sugar and where I kept my condoms.

  So to cure myself from becoming too infatuated with him, I kept on sleeping with other guys. Like I said, complete arsehole.

  My phone rang. Dev’s smiling face shone from the screen, a picture I had taken of him one night in bed when we had actually just lain together and talked all night. Okay, sex had taken place first thing in the morning. But we really had spent most of the night just talking with each other, kissing and wrestling in the nicest way possible. Dev was the only guy I could do that with, even if I insisted to him during it that we were “bros helping another bro out.”

  Yeah, I really said that. The even more ridiculous thing was I actually believed it at the time. Any kind of sexual activity I had with guys was written off as “bros being bros,” even though I knew I was gay. I just thought if I didn’t get emotionally attached that it wasn’t really gay. Which was why I fought Dev off so much.

  It was a twisted sense of logic that served me well for quite a while. Now I admitted I was gay, and liked—no loved—fucking men, but I refused to tell anybody I was gay and I refused to fall in love with any man. Because then my heavily structured little bubble would burst.

  ~~~~~~~~

  ALSO IN THIS SERIES

  Wow! by Sean Kennedy

  (link)

  ALSO by RENAE KAYE

  Hard Feelings

  Yes, Professor

  Bear Chasing

  Out of the Rain

  Published by Dreamspinner Press

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  THE TAV

  The Blinding Light

  You Are the Reason

  LOVING YOU

  Loving Jay

  Don't Twunk With My Heart

  The Straight Boyfriend

  SAFE

  Safe in His Arms

  Safe in His Heart

  Shawn’s Law

  The Shearing Gun

  RENAE KAYE is a lover and hoarder of books who thinks libraries are devilish places because they make you give the books back. She consumed her first adult romance book at the tender age of thirteen and hasn’t stopped since. After years—and thousands of stories!—of not having book characters do what she wants, she decided she would write her own novel and found the characters still didn’t do what she wanted. It hasn’t stopped her, though. She believes that maybe one day the world will create a perfect couple—and it will be the most boring story ever. So until then, she is stuck with quirky, snarky, and imperfect characters who just want their story told.

  Renae lives in Perth, Western Australia, and writes in five-minute snatches between the demands of two kids, a forbearing husband, too many pets, too much housework, and her beloved veggie garden. She is a survivor of being the youngest in a large family and believes that laughter (and a good book) can cure anything.

  Her first novel, Loving Jay, was voted the Best Book Debut 2014 by the member’s choice awards in the Goodreads M/M Romance Group.

  E-mail: renaekaye@iinet.net.au

  Website: renaekaye.weebly.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/renae.kaye.9

  Twitter: @renaekkaye