Queermance Anthology, Volume 2

by Queermance Anthology- Volume 2 [MM-FF] (retail) (epub)

  Then there was her partner. Significantly shorter than the woman, he was obviously disfigured by a cleft palate that had been poorly repaired. His nose had been flattened and distorted, his lips twisted into a permanent sneer. In addition, his eyes were positioned too far apart which gave his face a flat, almost reptilian appearance.

  Thom continued to voice his opinion about their appearance as I continued working.

  While not cruel enough to label them circus freaks in my head, I had to agree with Thom’s assessment that they were unattractive.

  I looked away from the man and back to the woman only to lock gazes with her. I’d been caught staring. With a shrug, I turned back to the customer and handed over his beer. Making his change at the register, I could hear Thom still prattling on about how having the couple in the club spoiled the am-bi-ence. His voice was getting louder and the couple would soon be able to hear his cutting jibes which, I thought, would be unnecessarily cruel.

  ‘Enough, Thom,’ I said as I handed the customer his change. ‘Not everyone can be as beautiful as you.’

  Thom preened at my flattery and leaned over the bar for a kiss.

  Later that night, Thom and I stepped outside into a cool Melbourne spring night, the air feeling crisp after the closed atmosphere of the club and redolent with the smell of flowering jasmine. Thom hugged my arm and snuggled up against me as we walked to the car.

  ‘They shouldn’t even come to our clubs,’ Thom muttered as I unlocked the car with the remote.

  ‘Who shouldn’t?’ I asked, not really paying attention.

  ‘The circus freaks! There are het places all over the joint but they insist on coming to the one gay club in the area! They should just stay at home and stop forcing their ugliness on the world.’

  I closed his door after he’d settled into the passenger seat and walked around to the driver’s side. Although originally attracted to Thom by his physical beauty, I had to admit that his shallow outlook and constant need for accolades and reassurance - and his almost constant need for adoration - was wearing thin.

  Thom was still grumbling about the couple as I started the engine and my sharp ‘Enough!’ left the atmosphere heavy with tension. He pouted the entire ten-minute drive home. God, I was getting too old for this shit. Why did everything have to be a goddamn drama with Thom?

  Later that night as Thom slept in a post orgasmic stupor, my ears still ringing with his ‘Fuck me harder, daddy!’ screamed at completion, I wondered when I’d become so apathetic about my life. Not so long ago, I would have been happy to be seen with the cutest boy at the club, happy to have made him scream and know that I’d get to do it again in the morning. But now, as the curtains fluttered in the draft created by the open window, I found myself feeling hollow and dissatisfied. Restless, but too enervated to do anything.

  Bucky gave me a wave as I entered the gym in the dark of pre-dawn. Putting down his cleaning cloth, he wandered over to me, threading his way through machines designed to hone and tone the human form.

  ‘Morning, sunshine!’ he trilled.

  Bucky’s voice always came as a shock. Barrel-chested and bandy-legged, he resembled a small ape, a description made more appropriate when you saw the thick body hair that adorned every inch of skin except his head. One expected a deep and throaty rumble from him, but instead he spoke with a breathy, girly voice. I was always reminded of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, Mr President when he talked.

  ‘Hey, Bucky,’ I replied as I signed in at the unattended desk.

  ‘Let me know if you need help,’ Bucky offered with a lewd wink and high-pitched giggle.

  Normally I’d flirt back. I’d been coming to the gym for years, and Bucky had made it abundantly clear on that he’d gladly “polish my knob”, as he so crudely put it. Instead, I trudged toward the change rooms.

  I stared at my body in the full-length mirrors of the echoing changing room, flexing my muscles and dispassionately watching my reflection. Maturity had altered me, but I could be objective enough to admit that I was still a very attractive man. I’d kept fit, so the thickening of age had given me a body bulky with muscle rather than fat.

  I was startled out of my rumination by a squeak behind me.

  ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that Thom is a lucky boy,’ Bucky said as he fanned his flushed face with a hairy hand, his erection tenting his shorts.

  In that moment, my ennui morphed into crushing despair. Was this a mid-life crisis? When had my carefree, laissez-faire attitude turned into numb apathy?

  ‘Oh, possum!’ Bucky’s heated appraisal turned into a look of concern. ‘What you need is one of my Screaming Virgins and a shoulder to cry on.’ Flapping his hands to shoo me along, he turned the sign on the door from “Open” to “Fuck off, I’m busy”, and then chivvied me up the stairs to his small flat above the gym.

  ‘Why do you call this a Screaming Virgin?’ I asked Bucky as I sipped the violently orange concoction.

  ‘Darling,’ said with a flutter of eyelashes, ‘how many people do you think I’d lure up here if I said “Come and have a carrot juice”?’

  I nodded at his flawless logic and, clinking my glass with his, took a mouthful of the frothy juice.

  When I put my glass down and glanced up at the man sitting across from me, I could see that Bucky, the outrageous flirt had been replaced by Bucky, the concerned friend.

  ‘Wanna talk?’ he asked in a voice much deeper than his usual affectation.

  After a deep breath to steady myself, I began speaking. I’m not sure if what I said was coherent or rational, but it was cathartic to voice the anxieties and fears, to tell someone about the formless feeling of apathy that had invaded my life. Bucky didn’t interrupt, he just sat and listened. Finally, when my ability to articulate my general feeling of malaise had run out, we sat in companionable silence and finished our drinks.

  ‘Well, fuck a duck, Possum,’ Bucky exclaimed as he cleared the table of our glasses and carried them to the sink. ‘What you need,’ he continued as he briskly rinsed the glasses, ‘is a raison d’��tre.’

  ‘A what?’ I asked in confusion.

  ‘A raison d’��tre. A life purpose! You, Possum, need to find your passion!’ Bucky declared with the look of an evangelical Christian seeing Christ.

  ‘Well thanks for the advice, Oprah,’ I snarked in reply, pausing only when I saw the hurt in Bucky’s face.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said with a frown. ‘You can’t keep fucking every pretty bottom that throws himself at your feet and expect to be happy.’ With a look of horror, Bucky covered his mouth and, with a coquettish twist and flourish, said, ‘I can’t believe I just said that!’

  I had to laugh at his antics but I still didn’t know what exactly he was trying to say.

  Bucky was becoming frustrated with his failure to communicate his message. Waving his hands, he said a few, aborted syllables before finally finding the right words to form a complete sentence.

  ‘Imagine yourself in another twenty years, Possum. When you’re peeing in an adult nappy and having your arse wiped by some poor bugger on minimum wage, what do you want your legacy to have been?’

  I was about to give a smart-alecky, scathing reply when I hesitated. Bucky was serious. Was this really the problem with my life? My gaze moved from one item in the room to another as I tried to think of the thing I could do or be to get me out of the depressive rut my life had become. A sense of panic slowly built as each idea I had was contemplated and discarded. Climb Mt Everest? No. Find the cure for cancer? Nice idea, but unlikely unless it was hiding in a beer barrel. End world hunger? Fat chance of that. Each idea, while nobler than the last, also became more unrealistic and unattainable.

  Mind skittering from one notion to the next, I suddenly remembered something from the night before: the odd couple that had drawn my attention every time there was a lull at the bar. I’d found myself watching them interact. One particular incident came to mind. The woman had cupped her partner
’s face with her palm and leant down to lay the softest of kisses on his mouth. Radiant and suffused with love, his distorted face had been beautiful in that moment. Her love had made the ugly disappear. As I watched them from behind the bar, I’d felt a yearning to belong to something as special as their relationship appeared to be.

  And then I knew. ‘I want to make someone happy.’ Saying it out loud, the truth of the statement made me feel calm and centred.

  Bucky gave a cheerleader-esque jump before plopping onto my lap. With a seductive pout and fluttering lashes, he squirmed atop my groin. ‘How can I help with that?’

  With a laugh and hug, I dumped Bucky on the floor as I stood. ‘Thanks, mate,’ I said over his squeal as I strode toward the stairs leading down into the gym. I felt renewed. I had a sense of purpose.

  No more would I waste time on the superficial, I vowed to myself with evangelical fervour. I was going to find that one person who needed me to be their everything. I was going to be a better person.

  Elated, I exited the gym and took a deep breath of the misty air.

  TWO

  I woke up in pain. A light flashed in my eyes and I felt hands, not my own, doing things to my body.

  I woke up in pain. A masked face, hair hidden under a paper cap, peered down at me. A rubber mask was placed over my mouth and nose; the air cold and astringent as I breathed.

  I woke up in pain.

  I woke up in pain.

  I woke up in darkness. There was someone holding my hand but in my disorientation, the remembered, formless fear of childhood night terrors swamped me and I started to cry.

  I woke up in darkness but I could tell that there was something covering my eyes and beyond the barrier, there was light. It made itself known as a faint glow at the edge of my vision.

  I woke up to darkness, but it was not absolute. Diffuse light from near the floor let me see the room. A chair. A door slightly ajar. A woman curled up on an armchair near the bed.

  ‘Mum?’

  The woman stirred and I could tell it wasn’t my mum. This person was tall. Hair flowing down past narrow shoulders, she leant across the bed and clicked a switch lying near my hand. An overhead lamp flickered to life and I saw her. The woman from the club. I squinted and blinked in the sudden brightness. I watched as her gaze flickered across my prone form before she looked me in the eye. Her face grave, she asked, ‘How are you feeling, Mr Wilson?’ Her voice was surprisingly deep.

  ‘Scared.’

  Gently brushing my hair from my forehead, she gave me a reassuring smile. ‘You’re perfectly safe now. You were in an accident and gave us all a fright, but you’re going to be fine.’

  I processed the information as she fussed with a machine out of my sight. Once satisfied with what she was looking at, she smiled down at me again. ‘Try to get some more sleep, Mr Wilson.’ I closed my eyes and felt her hand brush my forehead again as I let the darkness claim me.

  The sound of sobbing woke me.

  ‘Oh my god,’ wailed the prostrate form draped across the bed beside me.

  ‘Thom?’

  Thom jumped to his feet and started pacing in the confined space beside my bed. ‘Jesus, you nearly died, babe. We were all so worried.’ His voice was getting louder with each short statement. His moves more agitated. ‘I’ve had to deal with so much shit.’

  Holding out my hand, I waited until he’d put his in mine before drawing him back to the bed. ‘I’m going to be okay? Can you tell me what happened?’

  Thom stared at a point over my shoulder. His bottom lip quivered but I noticed his eyes were surprisingly dry.

  ‘Thom?’

  Before he could reply, the tiny room was invaded. Two men and a woman dressed in white coats moved to the side of the bed opposite Thom, and the woman from the club stood at the end of the bed and flicked through a file hanging there.

  The older of the two men started to talk and I tried to focus on what he was saying.

  ‘Mr Wilson, I’m Dr Anderson. I’m one of the doctors looking after you.’

  I offered my hand to shake and the doctor gave me a brisk up-down before quickly disengaging his grasp.

  ‘Can you tell us what you last remember?’ the second male doctor asked.

  I closed my eyes and thought hard. I could remember Thom pouting in the car. Had we argued? Movement at the end of the bed caught my eye and I suddenly heard ‘circus freak’ in my mind, the tone snide and definitely Thom.

  ‘Um��� I remember going home from work on Thursday night?’

  The three doctors all nodded and looked down to write on the screens of their tablets. This time the female doctor started to talk. Did they practice the routine so that everyone got a chance to talk?

  ‘Mr Wilson, about ten days ago you were struck by a car that had mounted the footpath outside���’ she glanced briefly at her notes before continuing, ‘���outside Bucky’s Gym. You were violently propelled through the glass at the front of the building and sustained serious lacerations and internal injuries.’ She continued to list the damage and the heroic efforts of the medical staff, but I couldn’t really process any more information.

  I got the gist though. I’d nearly died. I’d been very lucky. My body would never work properly again. With each account of injury and prognosis for recovery, I’d become more panicked. Tendons severed, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, plastic surgery. The list went on and on, and through it all, Thom’s face remained stoic and unresponsive.

  Eventually they left, their litany of trauma and pessimism finally over. Once it was the two of us again, I could breathe. However, Thom’s inability to look me in the eye during the recitation meant I wasn’t yet breathing normally.

  ‘Am I ugly now?’ I whispered. ‘Is that why you won’t look at me?’

  Thom reared back and finally looked me in the eye. I couldn’t see disgust though, only anger.

  ‘Christ,’ he spat out. ‘It’s all about you, you, you. Do you know what I’ve been through? Every day I’ve had to come up here and sit beside you as you moan and cry. And then,’ by now he was pacing again, ‘And then you wake up and it’s all about you! Not once have you asked about how I-‘

  The slam of the door being violently pushed open interrupted Thom’s rant. She was standing there and I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a uniform. Not like the other nurses, but similar. And she was pissed off. Her fury was evident in her snapping eyes and tense posture. The way she stared at Thom with her lip curled in derision made it clear who she was angry at. I watched as she worked to calm herself down before speaking.

  ‘I’m sorry, but official visiting hours are now over.’

  Thom flounced out of the room with nary a backward glance, leaving me in stunned silence. Without looking at me, the woman straightened her uniform and headed out of the room again. She paused at the door, her back to me, and I heard her voice. ‘I’m sorry if I’m overstepping the boundaries, but you deserve so much better than him.’

  Thom must have agreed because he never returned.

  THREE

  You know that saying “In life we never lose friends, we only learn who our true ones are”? Well, the next three months certainly taught me the truth of that statement. Bucky came in for every single therapy session so that Cameron - the physio - could teach him how to help me with my exercises when I was discharged.

  The woman, Steph, the Charge Nurse of the acute care ward, became my rock. She and her partner Muffin (don’t ask) stepped into the gap left when Thom abandoned ship. I often thought back to that first time I saw them at the club and how alien their appearance had seemed. Now, I saw their beauty, their capacity to care, their capacity to share their connection with a person in need, with me. Their generosity was humbling. Every day I had clean undies and pyjamas thanks to them.

  My Mum never showed. Apparently nearly dying was retribution for my gayness. Stupid bitch.

  My boss from the club visited. I’d have a job to go to when I fi
nally got out of rehab.

  ‘Morning, sunshine!’

  I was already waiting for Bucky when he bounced into my room. I glared at the chair he was pushing. ‘I thought I was getting discharged with crutches?’

  Ignoring the whine in my voice, Bucky manoeuvred the wheelchair beside the bed before cocking his hip and squinting at me.

  ‘Listen precious, if you want to get out of this rehab centre, you will sit your perky arse down in this fucking chair and be appreciative,’ he snarled. Bucky took a calming breath and as I meekly made the transfer from bed to chair, happy-go-lucky Bucky re-emerged.

  ‘Okay Possum, let’s get you home.’

  Bucky was his usual outrageous self as he wheeled me out of the rehab centre. I’m fairly sure Cameron got his phone number when he came to say goodbye. The other patients waved as I was whisked past the therapy room until we were finally in the chill air of the carpark.

  ‘I missed summer,’ I said through chattering teeth.

  ‘Fuck a duck, Possum, you hate Melbourne in summer! We all thought you were just too tight to get air-conditioning and this whole drama was just a poorly planned ploy to avoid the heat!’

  The laughter helped me cope with the vulnerability of needing Bucky’s help to get into the car. Eventually, and with much unnecessary groping from Bucky, I was in with the seat belt clasped.

  ‘Thank you Bucky.’ I meant for more than just getting me in the car. The squeeze on my shoulder told me that he knew what I meant.

  The drive was exhilarating and frightening. I’d always been the one to drive, the person in control. The last few months had rearranged the foundation I based my self-belief upon. I was mortal. I was fragile. I was no longer perfect.