Invisible Boys

by Holden Sheppard

  ‘I’m Siobhan,’ the nurse says gently. She whips out a tattered blue clipboard. ‘So Kade, our triage nurse says you wanted an HIV test. I need to ask a few questions to determine if that’s the right course of action. Can I ask what’s happened?’

  Siobhan goes through a checklist of questions about what kind of sex I had, writing my answers down on a clipboard. I stretch the truth a lot. Like, I make it sound like the guy I had sex with was older and I don’t know his name and that I can’t be completely sure that he was HIV negative. I know Zeke was a virgin, but she doesn’t need to know that. I just need the damn test. I need to know. I want them to take my blood and tell me I’m sick or tell me I’m okay but either way then I’ll finally know what I am.

  ‘Mouth to mouth contact isn’t usually an issue,’ Siobhan says, ‘but if his mouth was bleeding from an injury, then blood transmission could be a risk factor.’ She wraps a strap around my bicep and pulls it tight. ‘We’ll just do a blood test now and see how we go.’ She presses a brochure into my hands before swabbing my arm with alcohol. ‘This might be relevant to you.’

  Big words on the front of the brochure say: Could I be GAY? The word gay is capitalised and in rainbow striped colours. The photo on the front displays a collection of five or six of the biggest degenerates you can imagine: weedy, pale guys with no muscle, overweight guys wearing tight pastel T-shirts, and guys with plucked eyebrows and off-centre haircuts.

  There’s a sharp scratch on my skin. ‘Sssh, it’ll be done in just a minute,’ Siobhan says.

  I grit my teeth until I feel the needle pull out. The moment Siobhan puts a circular white Band-Aid over the puncture, I drop the brochure like I just burnt my fingers; it flutters to the floor.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Siobhan asks. ‘You’re not feeling faint?’

  ‘I don’t know how many times I have to say this,’ I say. ‘But I am NOT gay.’

  Siobhan holds up her hand. ‘Easy. That’s the first time you’ve said it.’

  ‘You don’t know me. I’m going to be a footy legend. You have no idea how big I’ll be. Guys will want to be me. Girls will want to sleep with me. Boys will have posters of me on their walls.’

  Siobhan blinks. ‘That’s a nice dream.’

  ‘It’s not a dream. It’ll really happen. I’ll be the best.’

  She wipes the corner of her eye. ‘And you can’t be that man if you’re gay.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  Don’t know what the fuck she’s crying about when I’m the one with actual issues here.

  To my surprise, she says, ‘I get that.’

  Her saying that wrecks me.

  I shake uncontrollably in that hard plastic chair, head in my hands as the horror hits me. Drops of water fall from my eyes, forming a little pool on the vinyl. Siobhan says nothing. I eventually go still and the water stops flowing and she still says nothing, just rubs my back. Then she stops rubbing and we just sit there in silence, my head throbbing.

  ‘You must have something you can give me,’ I say, without looking up.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Drugs. Or hormones. Or something to reverse it.’

  ‘Reverse it?’ Siobhan says, her Irish lilt kicking in.

  ‘Undo it. Make me straight.’

  ‘Sweetheart. It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘But I don’t want it.’

  Siobhan sighs. ‘I’m afraid we don’t always get what we want in this life, Kade.’

  ‘You’re telling me a guy can turn into a fucking woman if he thinks he was born in the wrong body, but you don’t have anything at all to make me straight?’

  Siobhan swallows. ‘Sorry, darlin’. It just doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Well, that’s rotten. And you’re rotten. You won’t even try to help me.’

  Siobhan clatters the two vials of my blood together and sticks labels on them.

  ‘So, is it negative?’ I ask.

  She chuckles. ‘It’s not that quick,’ she says. ‘We’ll get the results in a few days.’

  ‘Days?’ My stomach caves in on itself and suddenly I don’t care about the results. I wanted a result now, an answer, a determination. I wanted it right now because I need to decide right now. I can’t wait days for my blood to tell me what I am.

  That’s it. I have to make the decision myself.

  ‘Now, I’m going to give you some referrals,’ Siobhan says. ‘The first one is to a wonderful counsellor, his name is –’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Kade, I think in your state of distress, you’d benefit from –’

  I stand up, chest puffed out and arms tensed, and look Siobhan dead in the eyes.

  ‘I got it wrong,’ I say. ‘This whole thing was just a phase after all.’

  ‘Kade –’

  ‘And the phase is over now,’ I assure her, opening the door of the consult room. ‘I’m fine now.’

  She calls after me again but I leave anyway. I have to get out of this fucking hospital. I’m surrounded by sick people and I don’t belong here because I am not sick anymore.

  I’m cured.

  Final Letterbomb (#6)

  Matt

  I was ready to do it that night at the wharf. One final hook up, then he’d drive away, nuts empty, and I’d sit behind the steering wheel and think about plunging my car into the wharf. If I rolled the windows down, surely the cold fizz of water would hit me like concrete and knock me out before I drowned. And even if I had to drown, so what? It would be panic and pain for a few minutes, then I’d be dead, and float down to the bottom of the sea and they’d have to dredge my body up.

  It was always an idea in the back of my mind.

  It went from an idea to a plan the night Dad came home in a foul mood.

  ‘Did you hear about that Kevin Stratton bloke?’ he raged at me and Mum. ‘Turned out to be a fucken faggot! He did the plumbing on this house. He has kids. He has a wife!’

  ‘Such a disgrace,’ Mum agreed.

  ‘It turns me guts!’ Dad cried. ‘I was mates with that bastard. Got half a mind to get the shottie and sort him out, y’know.’

  ‘Fucken disgusting,’ I said. I knew how to survive. ‘Should put ’em all in jail.’

  ‘Course they should,’ Dad said. ‘They used to. They’re sick in the head but you can’t say that anymore, can you? If you ask me, this whole country’s gone to hell!’

  Yeah, that was the night it became a plan, and I went to the wharf to execute it.

  But because life likes to kick me in the nads, this skinny punk guy hops in my car and wants to be my boyfriend.

  As if that’s not proof that God’s a cruel bastard. And I fell for Charlie. He said what he thought. He was out. Even though he didn’t choose it, he was free, and his freedom rubbed off on me and made me think about being free too. The night with him after the dance was the best night of my life. I never wanted that feeling to end, but it did because the next morning he wrecked it all.

  ‘Sometimes I think it would be great to just start again, somewhere better, with a different name and a different face,’ he’d said. ‘Leave everything else behind.’

  ‘But leaving people behind would hurt them,’ I’d said.

  ‘But they’d get over it,’ Charlie had said. ‘Even you’d get over it.’

  And like that, I realised this paradise wasn’t real. Or permanent. Charlie had no qualms leaving me.

  So I went back to the plan.

  I couldn’t survive being abandoned again, the way Brent abandoned me. When he left, he just gave me the green army man from his ute and told me to take care. The worst part was he never knew I wanted him. He was just a farmhand and I was just his boss’ son. I used to get out of the shower and walk around shirtless in front of him, dumb enough to think he’d take an interest and wanna spend time with me. But nobody could be interested in me. I’m the ugliest fuck ever. Bucky Beaver, they call me. I could eat an apple through a tennis racket. I’ve heard all
the jokes. It’s not my fault I have fucked up teeth. I hate them SO MUCH. Just glancing in the mirror makes me want to grab a set of pliers and yank every canine and molar out of my gob. But even then I couldn’t win, because I’d still be a massive girly, pooncy poof. I’d never be a real man.

  So I hate myself. I hate every single thing about me. But tonight, I finally get to escape myself. Tonight, I’ll be free like Charlie.

  Tonight, I will fly.

  25: Weir

  Charlie

  ‘I can’t stay here anymore.’

  Once the words come out of my mouth, I can’t believe I didn’t say them sooner.

  Zeke shifts beside me on the bed, the protective shell he’d formed around me uncurling.

  ‘You wanna go somewhere?’ he suggests. ‘Grab something to eat? I’m starving.’

  ‘I don’t mean this house,’ I say. I sit up and rub my eyes. They’re raw from all the tissues. ‘I mean this town. I can’t live here anymore. It’s dead to me.’

  Zeke doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m going to run away, Zeke.’

  He gives a soft ‘mm’ of acknowledgement.

  ‘I’m going today.’

  ‘But you’d need to pack stuff. You’d need to –’

  ‘I don’t need anything. The clothes on my back. My phone and charger. My wallet. My guitar. That’s it.’

  I roll over to face him. His eyes are wet again, but he’s holding it in.

  ‘There’s nothing left here for me,’ I explain. ‘This town is a cemetery. I don’t want it to include my headstone. If I’m gonna live, it has to be somewhere else.’

  I truly mean it. The only thing I’m sad about leaving is Dad. His dust is in a grave a few kilometres away, in Utakarra, but all I need to see him again is Orion’s Belt, and I can see that in the sky anywhere in the world. Dad didn’t want me to dream about making it big. He wanted me to do it, so I’m going to – for me and for him.

  I have to leave and never come back.

  Zeke rubs his knuckles into the corner of his left eye, but he can’t touch the swollen right one; the tears just cascade down over the bruise. I never noticed how thick and long his eyelashes are.

  ‘But I’m here,’ he says in a small voice. ‘I can’t get through this without you, Charlie.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I say. ‘You’re smarter and stronger than I am. If anyone can survive being a homo in this town, it’s you.’

  ‘But you’re –’ Zeke’s throat catches. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  I hate the way he says it, because it makes me feel something and I don’t want to feel anything. ‘We are, dude. But I can’t stay here for a friend. I have to leave or I’ll end up like Matt. I promise you that.’

  Zeke hugs his arms around his chest. ‘Will you come back and visit?’

  ‘Maybe. I dunno. I might never come back.’

  ‘Where will you go? Perth?’

  I pick up my phone and scroll through until I find what I need. ‘Perth to start with,’ I say. ‘The Greyhound leaves in an hour and a half. Better get my arse into gear.’ I sit up and slap my hands on my thighs. I feel simultaneously worse than I ever have, and better than I have in weeks. ‘After Perth, maybe Sydney. Maybe London or San Fran. I’ll find somewhere where everything works for me.’

  Zeke flinches. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  Damn him for making me feel stuff.

  His face goes slack. ‘I can’t. I’ve got school. I’ve got …’ He trails off. ‘Huh. Maybe school is all I’ve really got anymore. But I can’t leave. I could never.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ My phone vibrates as a message comes through. ‘Can you help carry my guitar?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Zeke says dully. ‘If you give me a lift back to the hotel.’

  ‘Deal,’ I say, checking my phone.

  My heart jumps into my throat.

  It’s a scheduled email from the account of Matt Jones.

  And it’s only four words: Check your bottom drawer.

  I bounce off the bed and throw the bottom drawer open. I turf out every single pair of jocks and socks until I yank out a small brown paper bag.

  ‘Matt did this,’ I explain, as Zeke gapes at me.

  I open the bag carefully and tip its contents onto my bedsheets.

  Matt left me four items. A wad of cash: at least two grand in fifties. The mix tape I made him for Valentine’s Day. A little green army man. And an envelope, stuffed with torn-off, lined sheets of paper, desperate blue ink smudged and scrawled all over them.

  The front of the envelope bears my name.

  And a badly-drawn love heart.

  The Letter

  Dear Charlie,

  I know me saying ‘sorry’ is never going to be enough, so I won’t. But I am.

  I wish it could’ve been different. Wish I could’ve coped. Wish I was as brave as you. Wish I could’ve said yes to going to the dance with you. Wish I hadn’t got hurt by what you said the morning after. Wish I hadn’t left. Wish we could’ve stayed in bed cuddling all day. Wish we’d had breakfast in bed, even something shitty like baked beans on toast. We could’ve eaten together under the sheets, maybe fooled around a bit ;) I wanted to ask you to play a romantic song on your guitar. I hope you keep making music and make it big one day.

  I’m leaving you a bunch of my stuff. The mixtape – can’t let my parents find it, but I could never ditch it. The green army man from my car – maybe he can protect you and when you look at him you can think of me. And some cash. Half my savings goes to my parents. The other half is for you. Maybe you can get a new scooter. Or a new guitar. Or a one-way ticket to America so you can get the hell out of here. Up to you. Make sure to take care of Zeke and Hammer though. You three should stick together.

  I left you some letters and shit I wrote too. Probably makes me look mental. I probably am. But I couldn’t leave them to be found and it felt wrong to burn them all to nothing. What I felt wasn’t nothing. Please don’t tell my parents about me, okay? If they knew, they wouldn’t even leave photos of me in the house. I want the photos and their prayers.

  I know I said I wish it could have been different, but I did some things with you that I’d never change in a gazillion years. Like meeting a boy at the wharf who actually told me his real name. I couldn’t stop thinking about you from the moment I first saw you, true story. I got to go to the drive-ins with a real hottie. Had a boy as my Valentine’s date. Cooked you a nice tea and kissed you goodnight. Got a mix tape made just for me. And I made love to you, only time in my life it was love and not sex and it was the best night of my whole life mate so thanks heaps.

  I don’t know what happens after. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. Maybe there’s nothing. Just silence. I secretly hope I’ll get reincarnated and one day you will too and we’ll get reborn somewhere we can be together.

  I never got to say this out loud and I never will, but I love you, Charlie.

  Matt xo

  26: Full-Forward

  Hammer

  It’s a stinking hot Sunday as Dad’s yellow BA Falcon zips down the highway at 130 k’s an hour. We’re nearly back in Greenough. The highway is long and straight and flat and I can see sheep grazing.

  I pick some Chiko Roll debris out of my teeth and scroll through my phone. Richelle’s added me back to Facebook and tagged me in a photo – one she took of us on the dancefloor at Robbie’s wedding. I smile and accept her request, but don’t comment on the photo. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, that’s what they say.

  Doug kicks my leg.

  ‘What?’ I snap.

  He holds up his earphones. ‘They broke. Can I borrow yours?’

  I rummage around in the backpack at my feet. The scent of leather and rum and spice clings to the clothes I wore to the wedding; it fills my nostrils, reminding me of the boy I’ve forbidden myself to think of by name.

  I shake my earphones free from beneath the clothes and chuck them over to D
oug.

  ‘Love road trips at this time of year,’ Dad mutters. ‘Look at that.’

  The yellow canola fields stretch for kilometres. I look for that patch of wild lupins – the blemish of purple that spoiled the yellow – but it never appears. The farmer must have weeded them out over the weekend, uprooted them and burned them on a bonfire.

  All that’s left is the uniform blanket of yellow that covers the land, unbroken and unblemished.

  Perfection, as far as the eye can see.

  27: Piedi del Topo

  Zeke

  Charlie rides into the Mercurial Winds car park on his pink, spray-painted scooter. I’m gripping onto him, one hand on his waist and the other clutching the guitar strap looped around his back.

  He deliberately parks across two bays and turns the motor off. It’s time for a goodbye I can’t bear to say. I get off the scooter and shake a few dead midgies from the curls of my hairline. It’s only mid-morning but it must be close to thirty-five. It’ll be stinking hot by noon.

  ‘What if you can’t get a ticket today?’ I ask Charlie. ‘Will you hang around a bit?’

  Charlie lifts the reflective green visor of his helmet. ‘Nup. I’m leaving today, one way or another.’

  I swallow. That was the only thing I could think of to delay him. To keep my only friend here with me.

  It’s so weird how much can change in a week. The night of the Summer Dance, there were four of us on the primary school’s roof: four gay boys, invisible to the rest of the world, but we saw each other. And seven days later, one of us was dead. One of us had locked himself in the closet. And one of us was leaving forever. I’m the last man standing, and I have to stand alone.

  A lump builds in my throat. ‘If I text you, you won’t leave me on “read”, will you?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah, dude,’ Charlie says. ‘We can text. I’ll let you know what the big smoke’s like.’

  ‘Can I call you?’

  ‘Don’t push it.’

  I laugh, but I don’t know if he’s being serious or not.

  Charlie taps me on the shoulder. ‘I gotta hustle, dude. Bus leaves in forty minutes.’