I wake up to the sound of crying. It’s kind of a surprise when I realise the sound isn’t coming from me.
I shift in the hotel bed and blink against the sunlight. Dad’s on the foot of Doug’s bed, his fat, brown thighs spread out like pancakes against the bedspread. He’s holding a box of tissues and looking out the window as Doug sobs beside him. Doug’s doubled over, his back twisted into a curve as his body shakes.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘Is everyone okay?’
‘Orright, that’s enough,’ Dad says to Doug, thrusting the tissue box into Doug’s lap and folding his tattooed arms. He glances up at me. He’s red-faced and his eyes are bloodshot; he must’ve taken full advantage of the hotel’s mini bar.
‘What happened?’
‘One of Doug’s cricket mates killed himself,’ Dad says.
‘Oh. Jesus.’ I flop back on the pillow a bit. ‘Who?’
‘Matty Jones. Star batsman for Northampton.’
Electric heat rushes to my cheeks. Charlie’s boyfriend topped himself. I’m pretty sure only three people in the world knew he was gay, and I’m one of them.
‘Oh.’ I take a breath, but it doesn’t get any more air into my lungs. ‘Fuck. Why?’
Dad unfolds the weekend newspaper from the nightstand, smoothing a rough hand over the front page. ‘No one knows.’
Doug blows his nose hard, then pivots to face me. I haven’t seen him cry since he dislocated his shoulder. His eyes are puffy; the acne on his face red and angry. He’s ugly.
‘Apparently he was, like, depressed, but nobody knew,’ Doug says, wiping his nose with aggression. ‘Fuck, poor Matty. I wish I knew. I coulda helped him.’
‘Silly kid,’ Dad grunts, flicking through the sporting pages. ‘Selfish. What about the parents?’
‘He couldn’t help it, Dad!’ Doug cries. ‘He was so fucked up, mentally, he thought that was the only way out.’ He scratches his eczema. ‘Kade, do you think Zeke and Charlie are alright?’
Adrenaline rushes to my brain. ‘How the hell would I know?’
‘Because of what happened at the wedding last night. I think Zeke’s got issues with his family. And Charlie’s had a hard time since he was outed, right?’
My heart is pounding. They’re going to hear it and its guilty, unstoppable beat.
‘I try not to get too close,’ I say. ‘Don’t want Charlie Goth getting the wrong idea.’
Dad snorts, a cheeky smile spreading over his leathered face.
Doug’s face falls. ‘Does that seriously bother you?’
I shrug. ‘You’d always be on guard, wouldn’t you?’
‘One of the city councillors is a horse’s hoof,’ Dad says suddenly. ‘He got interviewed for some magazine and actually came out and said it. Said he knew he was gay when he used to look at all his mates’ hairy legs in the change room and get a stiffy.’ Dad screws up his face in revulsion. ‘Can you imagine? Having your mate perve on you? And getting turned on by this?’ He twists his fingers through a thicket of his own grizzled leg hair and pulls on it lightly. ‘Gross.’
‘Yuck,’ I say.
‘You can’t trust ’em,’ Dad goes on. ‘It’s like they stopped growing into men. They got halfway there. They got the look of a man, but there’s no grunt in ’em. No horsepower. Like a shiny new V8, then you pop the hood and there’s just empty space where a motor should be. Something off about ’em.’
Doug shakes his head, shuffles in his suitcase and produces a pack of smokes and a pastel-blue Bic lighter.
‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘I’m not that bothered by it. I just want to help them. It can’t be easy being like that. I don’t want Charlie or Zeke to do what Matty did, that’s all.’ He shakes a cigarette loose from the pack and points it at Dad. ‘I’m going outside for a ciggie. Don’t care what you say.’
Dad lets him go. ‘He’s had a shock. One smoke won’t kill him. Stupid kid.’
I get up to pee, but as I pad across the hotel’s grey carpet, Dad cries out behind me, ‘Christ, Kade. Your back.’
Shit. I forgot about Zeke clawing at my back last night. Before I can turn around, Dad’s on his feet and claps his hands on my shoulders, spinning me around to face him. He’s got a sly grin on, like he just drunk-drove through a booze bus stop without getting pulled over.
‘Doug told me,’ he says. ‘Hooked up with some bird last night, ay?’
‘Yeah. Waitress.’
Dad’s grin broadens. He peers over my shoulder at the scratch marks Zeke left. ‘She was a bit wild, ay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Franger?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Don’t wanna knock some bird up now and ruin your life.’ He claps my shoulder again. ‘I ever tell you about how important honour is when it comes to sex?’
‘Nup.’ This is the most we’ve ever spoken about sex. I wonder what he knows.
‘You get on ’er, and you stay on ’er,’ Dad booms. He cracks up.
I laugh with him. It’s not that funny. But I laugh really hard.
Dad jabs his thumb at the newspaper on the foot of Doug’s bed as he goes to leave. ‘Have a read of that,’ he says. ‘They’ve profiled the new full-forward for the Demons. Reckon you could be just like him in a couple of years. Similar build. Big hands.’
‘I’ll check it out,’ I say. ‘Did I tell you I got twelve goals the other day?’
Dad doesn’t look impressed. ‘Doug did. But it was a scratch match in PE class, son. You can’t count that. What’s your best score in a real game?’
‘7-2.’
‘That’s impressive enough on its own. You make that happen again when they come looking for draft picks, you’ll shit it in.’ He rubs his nose. ‘Buffet’s open. Meet us down there.’
As soon as he shuts the door, I take the paper with me to the hotel dunny and spread it out on the white tiles between my bare feet. I can’t read a single word about this new full-forward. All I can think of is Matt. Matt is dead. He couldn’t hack it either. He looked like he had it all together but he didn’t. He was even more messed up than me. And being gay killed him. The thought cycles in my brain and spirals upwards, like a waterspout rising from the ocean. I think about how I finally had proper sex with a guy last night. I crossed the invisible line. I’m gay now, aren’t I? Will it kill me, too?
I think about kissing Zeke. How I’d tasted his blood in my mouth. Oh God. His gay blood.
And suddenly, my heart is racing. My throat dries up and closes over. My head spins.
It’s happening.
I’m dying.
The Geraldton Regional Hospital is a two minute sprint from the Mercurial Winds Hotel. Mum, Dad and Doug are at the buffet with Robbie’s parents, talking about the boring wedding. If I’m quick enough, they’ll never know I was gone.
A nurse triages me. I get grilled for why I’m in the Emergency Department. I get grilled for why I’m there without a parent or guardian. I refuse to give my parents’ names or phone numbers to the nurse. I think they’re gonna kick me out, but they eventually agree to put me in the queue. I think it helps that I keep saying I can’t breathe.
I watch old cartoons on a silent black TV set mounted on the wall. People get called through and nearly half an hour goes by before some grim cream-coloured doors slide open and a woman calls, ‘Kade?’
The nurse is a brunette, stocky and tired, early thirties. Her hair is deliberately bunched up at the back of her head but stray hairs spill onto her pale face. She has an Irish accent. She takes me into a tiny consulting room. The walls are all the same grim cream colour as the rest of the hospital. Everything smells like lemon disinfectant.
‘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.
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.