YOU’RE A DOG

The Big Fella

They say a man’s heart is as big as his fist. I have no reason to dispute that, but in Ben’s case it begs the question. His heart must be the size of a bucket; I accept that.

I met him on the almost-leafy banks of the Yarra, on that almost-green promenade in Melbourne’s liquid heart. There’s something about Melbourne I’ve never liked—something hard. I feel most times like I’ve been bent by the wind, hung out to dry by the drought, leveled by the tough, flat surface of the city. Every leaf on every tree is edged in brown, every footpath a display of dust. It’s not pretty, but it’s home.

I’ve never been one for pretty anyway.

“You’re a dog,” he said—the first thing he said to me. “You’re an ugly motherfucker.”

He came right up to me—his enormous feet practically trod on mine—and his eyes widened. He brought his face close, getting an eyeful, then pulled back to look me up and down, head to toe, and cracked a smile.

“I can’t even stand to look at you,” he said and turned away, looked up the river to Prince’s Bridge, then twisted his torso back toward me and said it again. You’re a dog.

I didn’t take it badly. I’ve been broken, bent and trod on over the years—my face and body are crisscrossed with scars, I’m not pretty—but I was taken aback. I hadn’t met anyone this forward in years. I couldn’t help but stare after catching sight of him sprawled across the bluestone pillars on the water’s edge—his long legs stretched out across the promenade, the river at his back—and the next thing I knew he was in front of me, telling me what a dog I was and asking for my number.

His hair was shaggy, a lion’s mane, but his twentysomething face was keen edged, fine and dark. Whenever he spoke, he’d open his eyes wide and run them over the whole of my face, my body, nodding to confirm the truth of whatever he’d just said—but when he talked about what a dog I was he’d shake that shaggy head and turn away, look up or down the river and then look back at me, dark eyes ablaze. We exchanged the basics as he moved in and out of my space—coming in close, inspecting me, stepping back.

Buskers spruiked their shows in his shadow on the promenade, families with prams rolled past; the brown leaves of the plane trees crackled in the dry wind, and Ben circled me like a boxer in the ring.

He had my attention. He sized me up, He stepped back and balled his bucket-sized hands into fists. He landed two quick jabs on my chest. He came in close again, looking down at our toes, drawing my eyes down, his enormous toes and my trembling toes almost touching. He said, “Man, I’d love to go toe-to-toe with you.”

He gave me an eyes-wide nod and then turned on his heel, looming as he sauntered away on his chunky legs; shaggy headed, yes, but clean and crisp in his preppy jumper and his A&F shorts, walking light in his loafers, a pretty but gigantic young man who’d just called me a dog.

At home five minutes later, I mentioned nothing to Ivan, just double-checked my face in the mirror, to make sure I wasn’t that much of a dog. I couldn’t decide either way—I’d had a bottle broken in my face in a bar fight, and one of the scars from that night rambles right across my uneven nose. I inspected it and wondered about the meaning of toe-to-toe. In the bed or in the ring? It didn’t matter. I smiled at my image before—absently, distractedly—joining Ivan on the couch.

We fumbled around in front of the TV, and I squeezed a few big-hearted cuddles out of my Ivan, and he laid a strip of kisses across my chest, while the TV couples and comedy families squabbled and one-lined each other. We fell asleep at some point, intertwined and sweating wherever our skin touched, behind my knees and on my chest where his head rested. I woke up a little later, untwined myself and went for a swim.

In the Pool

When I’m in the pool everything liquefies, myself included. On solid ground I feel fairly square with the boundaries between myself and other objects in the world, but in the pool those straight lines fall away and everything collapses and I whirl through the water, digging the sound it makes as it percolates through my head. I take pleasure in stretching time and space: I’m infinite when I extend my arm again and again—I’m the universe.

That night I swam for over an hour in my endless bubble state, watching the navy-blue tile floor revolve below me and around me like a marble globe, while outside the sky darkened above the city and the orange clouds moved through me, inside and outside the building. It was good to be in the water then, with everything mixing together, with all the lines blurred, with the tiles and the city undulating past, rolling past without end, and me thinking of the giant boy with his giant hands, his heart the size of a bucket, his wide-eyed gaze.

My body was rubber when I pulled myself out of the water, into the dark.

Ivan was doing push-ups at the foot of the bed when I walked back into the apartment. He finished and looked at me, his chest and face galah-pink from pumping out a set. I smiled. “Have you always been such an ugly fucker, or is this something new?”

I didn’t ruffle his feathers—no one could, he was unruffle-able. He just laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re only just working that out.”

There’s something that separates Ivan and me, and it’s not just the quiet space between us, or the length of the hall, or even where I end and he begins. Sometimes we’re so close—I’ll be inside him, or he’ll be inside me—and I’ll be free-falling without a net.

Right Fist

I sat on the sofa in front of the TV with the sound turned down. I looked at my hands: one held the TV remote; the other cupped my balls through my tracksuit pants. Ivan was in bed. Watching porn in semidarkness is like moving through water: time stretches out and nearly slows to a stop; my right fist becomes the universe; lines and boundaries blur when I’m bathing in the blue TV light.

I’m only interested in the beginning—the very beginning—of the encounter: the first flicker of possibility, the first glance, the first moment one man begins to lean his head toward the other’s, the unbuttoning of the top button. I shoved my hand into the waistband of my tracksuit, watching the men on the screen as they caught each other’s eyes, gave each other a second glance. I rocked my cock in my right fist while the other fist rocked the remote, pausing, replaying in slow motion, pausing, replaying, pausing, replaying; recalling the exact moment earlier in the day when I first caught sight of Ben, with his long legs like tree trunks, his arms like tree branches: that exact moment when one guy first moves toward the other.

In the morning, Ivan woke me with his regular routine. He grinned over the ironing board, nodding toward my right arm, immobilized by my waistband, and asked, “How you going there, champ?”

“I could use a hand,” I said.

“Looks like you’re doing all right there by yourself.”

I watched him from the black hole of the sofa that had swallowed me overnight. The rain that morning was heavy—it darkened the sky, and the apartment and the rest of the world—and since I never liked working in other people’s gardens in such rain, I decided to reschedule all my work.

“I could use a hand,” I said again, nodding toward my crotch, right hand still thrust down the front of my pants.

“How do I look?” he asked and turned so I could get a look at his arse in his suit pants, then turned again to face me. He looked great, with sexy close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and his Paul Newman eyes. His chest pressed tight against the light blue fabric of his shirt as he tied his tie.

“You’re a bit too sexy, I think.”

“That’s always going to be a problem. Not much we can do about it.”

We both smiled, and Ivan gave my cock and balls a squeeze and me a kiss before he headed out the door.

I lay on the sofa listening to the rain fall before eventually pulling my hand off my cock, and then I set out candles on the altar, crossed my fingers and toes and prayed to the stars and the universe that Big Ben would give me a call, invite me round to his place, fuck me silly and then punch me in the head.

He called as soon as I lit the last candle, and the clouds cleared and the sun broke through.

I’m not sure why I said yes, when my real life proclivities—just like my porno predilections—tend toward the very first movements, toward intention and nothing more.

Pause

I floated up Spencer Street in the rain, uphill, upstream in the downpour, aware of my surroundings, of the lines laid out across the landscape of the city—tracks, footpaths—of the flashing orange lights on the green and yellow trams, of the colossal oversized-egg-carton roof of Southern Cross Station, of the umbrella-wielding mobs. I kept inside my own private rectangle, upright on solid ground, watching the lines intersect and diverge, diverge and intersect. Serpent trams hissed and rattled.

Ben lived at the top of a tower at the bottom of Latrobe Street. I looked at my ugly face in the mirror as I went up in the lift, smiled at the devil in it and at my crooked nose. You’d think I’d recognize the guy I saw, but he was always an interesting stranger with a confused look.

Big Ben answered the door in baggy sweatpants, shirtless, with a serious case of bed head that suited the young, thick, brute. He was about as wide and thick as I was tall, and a good foot and a half taller. We sat on his balcony while he smoked a cigarette that almost disappeared in a hand the size of a dinner plate. It looked like a little redhead matchstick.

The rain had stopped, but his balcony was wet. While he smoked, I tended his potted plants, a veritable garden—herbs and tomatoes, flowering shrubs, poinsettias and even a couple of frangipani. I couldn’t help but do the gardening thing.

The sky had turned purple, the temperature had risen and something was brewing in the sky. I leaned on the air-conditioning unit next to Ben’s giant body while he watched me, cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, and wished I could push pause at that exact moment. He breathed out the cigarette smoke, which hung in the air like a cloud far above my head. I watched it circle and storm like the clouds just beyond the balcony rail, then saw the big fella begin to lean his dark scruffy face toward mine.

I’m not sure when it started, this pulling back, this desire to stop everything at just that moment. It’s much more beautiful, though—the pending moment. So I looked at his thick lips, breathed in the air (rainfall, frangipani, cigarette smoke, recent sleep, a young man’s breath, neck sweat), negotiated his unshaven jawline with my eyes (big as a sisal doormat as it got closer), saw out of the corner of my eye his big hand flick a cigarette over the balcony rail before starting on its way toward my waist or my crotch, saw his lips opening, saw the tip of his thick tongue, breathed his recent sleep scent again and sensed my cock stirring in my jocks. I watched it all and felt it inside me, smelled it, saw him moving in slow motion, his red lips, the red ember of his cigarette tumbling over the side of the balcony.

I think it’s safer to stop there and somehow more satisfying. It always has been, in my life. There’s no free-fall that way, only solid ground, and it all felt very solid just then, in the big man’s grasp, on that balcony in the sky. I paused for one more beat, watched the purple clouds moving behind Ben’s shaggy brown mane, and then the storm started. He landed a kiss and we breathed the same air, his mouth tasted like sex, and I felt it inside me and at the tip of my cock, and then the cyclone started.

I swear to god that’s exactly what happened. His bucket-sized heart beating against my chest, my own heart filled like a bucket, my cock knocked against his through my jocks and jeans and his tracksuit pants.

Left Fist

And then Ben punched me in the head just like I thought he would, the big giant. I saw a flash of light and my head exploded. I should’ve known not to climb up into the giant’s lair looking for the golden egg when I knew he wanted to go toe-to-toe with me, to tell me what an ugly fucker I was. Now why’d I have to go and do that? I thought as my knees buckled.

It was another pause moment, the bright white light, the sound of something popping, and the brief flash of pain before my body collapsed and blood flowed. I thought of Ivan, his big chest under his blue-striped tie, his blue eyes; thought of the time I got hit by a cricket bat at school; thought of my own fear of everything, of my inability to get really close to another man; and then the blood poured more, a lot of it, and I tasted it, and Big Ben caught me in his full-size arms.

Only a few minutes later, I woke up in Ben’s bed, inside his arms, my startled head against his slab of a chest, my neck cradled by his tender left hand. He was a gentle nurse, cleaning up my bloody head, my angry eye. Ouch. It was only then, looking up at his chunky head as he looked after me, that I started to work out what had happened—he’d saved the hailstone that had clocked me, and he showed it to me before chucking it out the window.

“Won’t be needing that,” he said, winking at me.

Big Ben had a heart the size of a bucket, and he was filling me up with love. He tended my wound and we had a tender fuck and the big fella pumped me full of big love, while the rain continued to fall.

Outside the city was in chaos, we heard nothing but sirens and alarms. Ben was gazing at me sideways with a curious look on his face.

“And I thought you were a dog before!” he said, giving me the once-over, pausing at the damage. “You’re a sexy fucker, and those bruises just help to make you look better. You got some character, you ugly bastard.”

I laughed, kept laughing while I dressed, looking at my purple face in the mirror. Ben caught my eye a couple of times and winked.

“Sexy,” he said.

I was still wobbly, and the world was blurry, so Ben offered to walk me home. Feeling tenderized, I said yes.

Heart

We had to splash through knee-high water part of the way, under cataracts and around broken glass, and at one point the big fella threw me over his shoulder like a rag doll while he waded through waist-high water up Clarendon Street. A kayaker passed us by just then, and we gave each other a wink and a smile, appreciating the other’s choice of transportation.

It looked like the drought was over, and I was pleased to see Melbourne this way, liquid, underwater, softer.

We waded through thigh-high water just to get into the lobby of my building. The lift was out, so we climbed seven flights of stairs to my apartment. My balcony garden was destroyed, my terra-cotta pots broken and scattered, soil twirled in an eddy, mixed with a world of brilliant white hailstones and thousands of bright, shredded emerald leaves.

“It’s a mess, but it’s kind of beautiful, innit?” Ben said, watching the mess swirl in the wind.

He left me with my bucket on the balcony, to salvage my plants.

Ivan found me on the couch later, nursing my throbbing head.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he asked as soon as he came in the door, shoes and socks off, pants rolled up to his knees.

“God gave me a big punch in the head.”

“What the fuck?”

“A hailstone the size of your fist clocked me.”

He’s a doll, my Ivan, and he fell straight onto the couch where he could hold me in his arms and plant a kiss on my damaged head, inspecting it up close.

“You’re going to have a serious black eye.”

I told him it was killing me and he insisted on the hospital, but I was more obstinate than he was and instead we curled up on the sofa. He told me that I should probably get stitches, and that I would probably have another scar to add to the map of ruin across my forehead, cheeks, chin.

“No one can say you don’t have a lot of character written all over your face,” he said.

“Good thing you’ve still got your movie-star looks,” I said, and pushed myself farther into him.

We stayed like that, pouring love back and forth while the rain landed outside, until night fell.

I eventually asked Ivan to turn the television on, with the sound down. Lying in the blue TV light, I was comforted by the sound of the rainfall and even the sirens outside. Ivan’s face looked serene and beautiful in the muted light, and I took pleasure in watching it until I fell asleep in his arms.

The Big Fella

The next time I saw Ben, he was bigger and shaggier than ever, and he circled me just like before. The rays of his smile fell upon my heart, filling me with delight. We were on the banks of the Yarra, as before, though the river was thicker and muddier this time, after all the rains. He circled in close to get a look at my face, at the purple- and mustard-colored bruise surrounding my eye.

“Sexy,” he said, then turned his head to look upriver, before turning back to look at me with a big gap-tooth smile, his unkempt lion’s mane surrounding his head like sunshine. He seemed more shy this time, but really pleased to see me. I liked the attention. We stopped like that in the cool autumn breeze, sharing space, smiling, enjoying the sight of each other while breathing the same air.

I took it all in: his cigarette smell, the green leaves on the trees, the muddy river, the buskers, the shape of his smile, the size of his hands, the clouds swirling behind his head.

“So we going to go another round?” he asked, looking sheepish, turning his gaze toward the painted Prince’s Bridge, purple in the evening light.

“Absolutely, champ,” I said, feeling good, as though I was underwater.

“That’s good,” he said, looking me up and down. “Gee, you’re an ugly fucker aren’t you?”

“You can’t even stand to look at me, can you?”

He laughed, his thick lips parting slowly as leaned his shaggy head down toward mine.