Bucky’s chatter kept me entertained, as always, and it wasn’t until we drove past the freeway exit where I lived that I realised I wasn’t going home.
‘Where’re we going?’
‘Steph and I decided that you couldn’t stay alone, so you’ll stay with them for a while.’ Bucky said, staring fixedly at the road out the windscreen, obviously anxious about my reaction to his news.
Although I was aching to be in my own space, to have the familiarity of my personal possessions around me, I was also relieved that I didn’t have to cope by myself. It was humbling to have friends like this and I was determined to be the kind of person who deserved them, because the old me, the perfect me, had been a person that I now barely recognised. He took things for granted and this new me knew better.
Eventually, Bucky pulled into the driveway of a neat bungalow. The exterior had been rendered and the sharp lines of its 70s design softened by creative planting.
I watched as the door opened. From the gloom of the interior, Steph and Muffin stepped into the wintery sun toward the car, smiling. The tableau they presented was welcoming and I fought against a sudden welling of tears. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I was coming home.
FOUR
‘You’re a sadist.’ I forced out between gritted teeth.
‘Suck it up, Princess.’ Bucky grunted as he tried to get my ankle next to my ear. ‘Cameron told me you needed to stretch these tendons and what Cameron wants, Cameron gets.’ Sweat dripped down his face.
‘Do you get laid if I can be turned into a human pretzel?’ I muttered when my leg was finally allowed to move back into its natural position.
‘Oh, honey! Are you jealous?’ My other leg was relentlessly forced to make its unnatural acquaintance with my ear.
‘Not jealous… ow, ow, ow, ow. Fucker!’ I whimpered as Bucky finally relented and stepped away from the bench. ‘I hate you.’
‘No you don’t, sweet cheeks.’ His gasping breaths reassured me that I wasn’t the only one getting a workout.
These sessions were hard for both of us, but with his sweat and my tears, I was now back at work part time and able to walk with leg braces and a cane. We’d had a celebration when we returned the chair to the rehab centre. Bucky had come over to join us as we drank cider and ate a fondue, an odd combination that Muffin had insisted on because Muffin had never eaten one before. There had been laughter and fun as we expanded the traditional fare to include the weird and the wonderful. Although some of the newly discovered flavour combinations were a success, we all agreed that donut and hot cheesy white wine sauce was just wrong.
Once we’d regained our breath and I’d reattached my leg braces, we moved on to the next part of our routine. No longer was Bucky an acquaintance: he’d become my friend, a part of the new family unit I was nurturing. We now went to the club after the therapy sessions for a couple of beers. I was surprised at how much my status at the club had changed. Once I’d been a demi-god. The lithe and beautiful had clamoured for my attention and getting a juicy bottom for the night had never been a problem. Now, I was ignored by the beautiful ones. A new flame was luring the moths and in the shadows, I’d found people with more qualities to admire than I’d ever known existed. Although I internally cringed at the shallow cur I’d once been, I was glad I’d found this secret behind the glam and glitter.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’
I looked across the table in surprise. I’d almost forgotten that I was here with Bucky.
‘What do you think of Steph and Muffin?’ I asked.
Bucky looked startled by my question but when he saw that I was serious, hesitated before answering quietly. ‘I think they both love you very much.’
And wasn’t that just a fucking drama.
After months of living with the couple, they’d eventually asked me to move in permanently. I’d been folded into their family seamlessly. But the dynamic was changing. At night, Muffin cast longing looks in my direction as he followed Steph into their room. And then there was Steph. I’d caught her heated gaze upon me more than once.
‘What am I gonna do Bucky? I’m gay. If I start anything with them, Steph is gonna get hurt and I just can’t do that to them.’
I could see the sympathy in my friend’s face. ‘Fuck a duck, Possum,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t envy you with this one.’
Any further conversation was cut short by the arrival of Steph and Muffin. Steph was still in her uniform and Muffin was wearing jeans and a polo as it’d been casual Friday in his office. I saw the glances thrown their way by some of the other patrons and it saddened me that they couldn’t see the beautiful people I loved instead of their physical imperfections.
Steph leant down to give me a kiss on the cheek and Muffin squirmed his way under my arm. He was happiest when being cuddled and I’d grown used to his need for physical closeness. Once he was settled, he looked up with puckered lips and I gave him the kiss he craved. I’d fallen in love with the both of them but I was terrified that love wasn’t going to be enough.
‘Well isn’t this sweet,’ said a snide voice.
I looked up at Thom after gently breaking off the kiss with Muffin. It shocked me to see how much disgust he displayed on his face. I was ashamed to think that I’d once been unable to see the venom that lurked below the beauty.
A bouncer headed over to intervene but before he reached us, I stood up and held my hand out to Steph and Muffin. ‘Excuse us,’ I said to Thom. ‘It’s time for me to take my family home.’
Thom’s expression turned from disgust to surprise as I draped my arms around the most important people in my life and turned my back on my past. As we walked away, I could hear Bucky hissing like an angry cat before he jogged over to join us, my cane being twirled like a baton as we left the club.
FIVE
Steph drove us home, the silence comfortable. Although nearly at the end of my recovery, I still couldn’t drive. The ability to flex my foot smoothly on a car peddle seemed to be a skill I couldn’t master, despite Cameron and Bucky’s concerted efforts to help me overcome the damage done to my tendons and muscles. I’d decided that I’d buy a modified car with my compensation payout - a car that I could drive and control with my hands. When I’d first understood the permanent disability I’d been left with, I’d plummeted into a depression so profound that the idea of ever laughing again seemed impossible. It was watching the dignified way Steph and Muffin lived in a world that judged on appearance, the way they ignored the comments and stares, the way they found the joy in every situation that finally helped me crawl out of my pit of despair.
Once home, I led my family to the couch and waited for Muffin to settle before starting the discussion.
‘You know I love you?’ I said, glancing between Muffin’s upturned face and Steph’s slightly averted one. ‘I want to be your everything,’ I continued, ‘but I don’t know how to do that. I’m gay. I’ve never even kissed a girl. I don’t know if love alone will be enough to overcome your gender.’ By now I was addressing Steph.
Steph and Muffin shared a long look before Steph stood and started leading Muffin down the hallway toward their bedroom. Before I could feel the sting of rejection, Muffin grabbed my hand and pulled me along behind him. Although anxious about my ability to perform sexually with Steph, I felt the first stirrings of arousal. It had been nearly a year since my accident, the longest I’d been celibate since I’d lost my virginity.
I hadn’t been invited into their room before. It was large and sparsely decorated but saved from austerity by the rich textures and colours used in the furnishing and decor. A large bed sat between two curtained windows and I tried to envision myself sharing that space with a woman. I corrected myself. I tried to envision myself there with Steph.
Unexpectedly, Steph led us not to the bed, but to a door to the side. Pausing, she flicked on the light and I saw that the entire room was a shower. The space would easily accommodate five or six people. She pressed a butt
on and the water started to flow from multiple shower heads. Only one seemed to produce droplets, the rest emitted a fine mist that seeped out the open door like a thick London fog.
Steph turned to Muffin and started undressing him. Once naked, he stepped down into the shower room and became an indistinct figure in the warm, fragrant mist. She then started undressing me.
‘Muffin’s gay too,’ she murmured as she unbuttoned my shirt.
I thought I was going to get a lecture on how I could overcome my gayness and perform sexually with her if I only tried hard enough, but what happened next surprised me.
‘I can be anything you need me to be.’ And with a downturned face, she stepped away from my naked body and started to strip.
Removing her shirt revealed small, round breasts. Removing her skirt revealed high-waisted briefs that looked tight and restrictive. Steph took a deep breath before hooking her thumbs in the waistband and peeling the underwear down. She stood there, naked and vulnerable as I stared, speechless. Where I expected to see smooth skin was a perfectly proportioned, although tiny, penis. Where the balls should have been was wrinkled skin that looked empty.
‘You’re a��� trans,’ I quickly paused to ensure I had the right term before continuing. ‘You’re transgender?’
Steph shook her head. ‘I was born Stephen. I’m a hermaphrodite.’
Before I could form a coherent response, a naked Muffin stood between us dripping on the carpet. ‘Please try?’
Humbled by their desire to have me be an even more integral part of their lives, I nodded, and Muffin scampered back into the heated steam.
I could see that my silence had hurt Steph, as she’d covered her vulnerability with her hands. Leaning forward, I gently pulled her hand away from her groin. Stepping closer, I ran my finger from the base of her penis to the tip, a journey of only a few inches but enough to satisfy my libido. ‘That’s a very pretty cock.’
Steph’s surprised laugh was overtaken by sobs as she leaned forward into my embrace.
‘You don’t need to change to be what I need,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘You’re perfect, just the way you are.’
BETTER WITH BACON
Matthew Lang
‘So what are your plans for the fourteenth?’ Patrick asked, taking a swig of beer before reaching for the Xbox controller.
‘If this is another chance to brag about your proposal to Li Ling, I’m going to puke,’ David warned as he turned the volume up on the TV. ‘I am and remain happy for you, but I still say proposing on Valentine’s day is barf-worthy. Tekken?’
‘She dumped me.’
David paused, his fingers hovering above the game cases on his shelf. ‘Okay,’ he said, sitting back. ‘Less happy for you now.’
Patrick and Li Ling had been high school sweethearts and David had known them for over half his life. Patrick had been his best mate since the incident with the tyre swing on grade four camp. The two boys had discovered broken bones together, just the first in a long string of discoveries, which included cars, porn, a mutual dislike of One Direction and a love of The Lord of the Rings. Admittedly, Patrick only came around to David’s line of thinking when the movies came out. Li Ling had been one of the only other Asians in primary school, but David never had much in common with her until, well, Patrick had asked her for help one day with his history homework and suddenly David and Li Ling had one thing in common: Patrick.
The three of them had gone to the formal together, along with David’s boyfriend du jour, and then on to schoolies on the Gold Coast before taking the long drive home, stopping at all the good and not so good beaches on the way back down south, until sunburn forced them out of the sun and into motel rooms with tubes of aloe vera gel. It was odd, but for so long, David hadn’t really thought of his friends as individuals. For so long it had been ‘Patrick and Li Ling’ or ‘Li Ling and Patrick’. For so long it had been ‘We’ll be over around eight’. We.
‘So, single boys night in, huh?’ David said, using his controller to load up Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. ‘Haven’t had one of those in a while.’
‘I don’t think I’ve had once since we were fifteen.’
‘That was a sleepover,’ David objected. ‘You want to play Lara?’
Patrick laughed. ‘Sure. I know you just want to play the hot guy.’
‘No, if I wanted that, I’d be playing Arkham.’
‘Which one?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Guess not,’ David said. ‘Question: Christian Bale or Joseph Gordon-Levitt?’
‘What?’
‘Who’s sexier?’
‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt,’ David said promptly. ‘Especially after Inception. He was never Batman though.’
‘No, he was Robin.’
‘True. Crap! Spear trap!’
‘Pay attention Zhang,’ Patrick said. ‘And you didn’t answer my question.’
‘What question?’
‘What are you doing on the fourteenth?’
‘Nothing. It’s a manufactured piece of commercial gimmickry designed to sell us crap we don’t need or want and all the restaurants put on crap set menus because realistically they don’t want to deal with lovestruck demanding couples with more money than food sense.’
‘Plus you’re single.’
‘Technically, I guess.’
‘Technically?’
‘You could say I’m seeing a lot of guys, just no one at boyfriend level.’
Patrick paused the game and turned to face his friend. ‘Okay, run that one by me again?’
‘You want me to translate that to heterospeak? Okay: I’m not seeing anyone special.’
‘Wow, I actually feel slightly offended,’ Patrick said.
‘Heterospeak?’
‘Kinda. I thought I spoke fluent David Zhang if not fluent gay.’
David laughed and cracked another bottle of Amstel. ‘I think there’s a rather large obstacle in your way of speaking fluent gay.’
‘You’ve kept me up to date despite my long relationship with a woman, haven’t you?’
‘Mostly.’
Patrick frowned. ‘Okay, back up and take it from the top-‘
‘Oh, I generally do,’ David said archly.
For a moment Patrick sat on the couch, unmoving. ‘Right. Yes. Okay. Truth time. How many guys would you have had sex with in the last… I don’t know, three months?’
‘I don’t know, probably about ten?’
‘Ten?’
‘With options on a few more, I don’t know. Apparently now that I’ve hit late twenties, everyone wants me.’
‘Or Australia’s just caught up to your sexy man bod.’
‘Um, thanks.’
‘And none of them special?’ Patrick asked, reaching for the bowl of wasabi peas.
‘I don’t think so,’ David said thoughtfully. ‘One of them was really nice, but he’s poly and I don’t think I am-‘
‘Just a bit of a man-slut?’
‘I prefer “unattached”, but pretty much. Then there’s another guy, but he seems more interested in sleeping with every other guy he can find and well, he’s a bit up himself, I guess. There’s a cute geek, but I don’t know if we’d be compatible away from a game console…’
‘And the other seven?’
‘Once-offs, too young, too old, one of them smoked. One was a hairdresser.’
‘What’s wrong with hairdressers?’
‘He didn’t understand what I do for a living.’
‘Dave, I don’t understand what you do for a living. I get that it’s got to do with repackaging debt and selling it to investors but that’s about it.’
‘Yeah, but you understand that’s possible and roughly how it works,’ David said. ‘Vic was amazingly cute, but… look, he doesn’t even understand credit cards. How am I supposed to explain derivative securities if he doesn’t get credit cards?’
‘You know, you are seriously picky, Dave. Anyone ever tell you that?
’ Patrick said, ‘Reload so you don’t die on spikes?’
‘Yes, you and yes, reload,’ David said. ‘And I’m not more picky, gay men just have more variables to work with.’
‘What, pitching and catching?’
‘For instance, yes. Fucksticks!’
‘You’re okay, you’re okay,’ Patrick said, ‘Just watch out for his-‘
‘Club?’ David asked with a sigh
‘Yeah, you gotta be ready when he starts swinging that around.’
David shot his friend a look. ‘Mister Gorman, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were flirting with me. Aren’t you supposed to be heartbroken and in need of ice-cream, alcohol or both?’
Patrick laughed, then, a higher pitched, slightly hysterical laugh. ‘Probably. I should be getting ratshit, but I can’t… I can’t bring myself to drink alone.’
David cracked open another beer and passed it over. ‘Well, I can help with that - you know, for maybe one more drink before I pass out.’
‘S’okay,’ Patrick said. ‘The drink probably isn’t that helpful, really.’
‘It’s always helped me.’
‘But you’ve always been you,’ Patrick said. ‘You’re Dave, you’re smart, stylish, and a crazy mud-runner who plants trees and grows his own chillies. The drink doesn’t matter because you wake up to you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m Patrick Gorman. The ex-boyfriend of Li Ling Teo. I trained as chef and couldn’t hack the kitchen. I’m a chippie. I help other people renovate their houses and… what? I used to go to Yum Cha each Sunday, and Tuesday was gelati night because Il Dolce Fredo is closed on Mondays. I’m the handyman everyone wants because their medical-trained minds can’t put up a shelf. It’s like… I’ve been Li Ling’s boyfriend for so long, I don’t know how to be me without her. I’m not sure who Patrick Gorman is now.’
‘He’s my best friend, and I thought he was awesome before he started dating girls,’ David said around a mouthful of spicy peas. ‘Just saying.’
Queermance Anthology, Volume 2 Page 10