Yeah The Boys, page 1
ABOUT THE BOOK
A bold, propulsive novel about male friendship and masculinity, set in the world of Holden Sheppard’s bestselling debut Invisible Boys.
Seven years after escaping their rural hometown, the boys – Charlie, Zeke and Hammer – are back, though not as we left them.
Charlie’s fighting spirit has faded as he’s struggled to make it as a punk musician in Perth. The opening of a new gay bar by Curtis and Ahmed, an older gay couple who have become Charlie’s mentors, offers him a different way to make his mark – but the bar’s opponents have other ideas.
Zeke is lost. He knows what he stands against – the closeted life and conventional success his strict Italian parents demanded of him – but doesn’t know what he stands for. He surprises himself by joining a gay footy team: is it the mistake his friends think it is, or will playing footy finally give him what he’s always wanted?
Hammer has it all – fame and fortune as a star football player – or so he thinks. He’s still closeted, and can’t stand the AFL stuffing diversity initiatives like Pride Round down everyone’s throats, especially his. But when he opens his mouth, he ignites a furore that throws all the boys’ lives into chaos.
Unapologetic and unforgettable, this is the story of three boys finding their way back to each other, and finding their own ways to become men.
Also by Holden Sheppard
Invisible Boys
The Brink
King of Dirt
For Adam and Josh
ZEKE
It is a universal truth, acknowledged by no one, that gay men are meant to be so grateful for the straight people who don’t actively want to murder us that we ought to sit down, shut up and be the kind of faggot they want us to be.
I should know. I tried to please everyone, walking a tightrope for the world’s approval, and that’s how I ended up here: in a literal toilet, barefoot, bruised, bleeding and, most unbearably of all, alone.
Here’s the thing: some straighties are super chill, but on any given day you stumble fucklong into someone with a fixed idea about what gay men should be.
We’re meant to be married and mortgaged, with two adopted kids and a fluffy Cocker Spaniel, for the moderate conservatives who tolerate us as long as we’re clean and (w)holesome – living proof even deviants obsessed with buggery can be redeemed by a collared Tarocash shirt and Sunday mass in a broad-minded parish.
We’re meant to be wounded victim poster-boys for outrage addicts masquerading as allies, who like to use us as human battering rams for advancing their activism campaign du jour. We are brilliant little clockwork toys: pull the string on our backs to hear one of six nauseating pre-recorded phrases like ‘it gets better’ and ‘love is love’!
We’re meant to be camp, witty ‘yasss, queen’ bunny rabbits for a certain subset of toxic straight women who see homos as about as useful, interchangeable and capable of self-actualisation as a Gucci clutch purse.
And we’re meant to be as beige as possible for the straight guys who will deign to talk to us about shared interests as long as we don’t make it too obvious we’re not proper, fully functional males with a red-blooded thirst for tits.
Nobody talks about how it is humanly impossible to be all these at once, but we’re expected to try, to prevent whoever is in front of us from turning their back on us (gay kryptonite, fatal). It’s not even their fault. If we didn’t have to contend with those who sometimes do want to literally murder us, we could ignore them. But we need the nice ones, so we become hypervigilant approval monsters. When we’re given the choice between death or disapproval, never underestimate our willingness to choose death.
Why? Because nobody, and this is the real issue, wants to accept us for who we really are:
Horny.
Dirty.
Male-fucking.
MEN.
Men we are, and men we were, and men we always will be. From the first homosexual caveman, Ug, who shoved his club up the clacker of his buddy Grug, to the gay pirates, to Brokeback Mountain. From me and Charlie and Hammer to some future poofter named Zoltan zipping around New Sydney on his hoverboard in the year 3000, dodging killer AI robots in his quest to trawl for some hot tradie man-arse at the cyber-mall.
It will never change. We are who we are. We are who the world is disgusted by and who the world does not want us to be. We pretend not to be ourselves even among those who claim to love us. We contort ourselves into publicly pre-approved, psychologically unsound pretzel shapes to be spared total social opprobrium from the rest of the tribe.
Or we die.
Which is how this was always going to end, when the three of us collided with the world. It was foretold. Inexorable. A maverick can’t break out of the box and expect to survive. It was always going to end exactly like this.
With one of our hearts no longer beating.
FOUR WEEKS EARLIER
1
STANZA BUIA
ZEKE
It’s not until I see him naked that I realise we know each other.
Kissing a complete stranger in the dark room of the bathhouse isn’t unusual for me. The first time, years ago, felt like I’d blindly walked into a grungy Eastern European erotica movie, the kind that used to play on SBS after ten o’clock when I was a kid. The dark room is pitch black, a horny sensory deprivation experience, designed so the wisdom of your eyes deserts you and you’re left with the dumb, myopic throb of your cock as your compass.
My first visit to this exact dark room at Perth Steam Works, when I was nineteen, was transcendent. I felt the thump of lyricless doof-doof vibrate through my body. The man who kissed me back was twenty years older than me, big grizzly bear, coarse whiskers scraping my bare cheeks as his face mashed mine. His sweat was intoxicating. My bare arse stuck to the vinyl of the seat as I sucked his cock. That was the first of dozens of visits to the sauna. It’s my favourite place in the world.
So, today is not a new experience. I had a four-hour gap between my shift in the call centre and the pick-up time for my graduation regalia, so I came here to kill time by rooting like a wild animal. I brought fresh amyl and my well-worn neoprene cock ring. I parked my Nissan out front and paid nine dollars for parking, since I knew I’d be in here a while. I climbed the concrete steps, the air dank and moist. I said hello to the muscle jock named Johnny on the front desk (I have previously had my fist elbow-deep inside him), paid twenty-five bucks for entry (worth it), slid the rubber band with my locker key onto my bicep (flabby, since I’ve never set foot in a gym in my life), and wrapped my clean white towel around my waist (how many guys have sprogged over the cotton fibres currently touching the head of my dick?).
Some guys use a bathhouse when they’re closeted or sloshed or can’t host, though most guys my age would prefer to browse Grindr on the couch until they find a good prospect. But me, I’ve always loved the thrill of the sauna. You never know what you’re going to get, it’s always anonymous and uninhibited, and it’s guaranteed to be no-strings – no annoying follow-up messages begging for a second round. You come in, you cum, you go. Simple.
Today, I lurk in the dark room without luck. It’s a quiet Wednesday arvo and the few guys who wander in bustle past me. I’m considering going into the better-lit corridors and standing on a corner to advertise myself, like a gigolo, but that makes me self-conscious. I’m a bit fat. Maybe the better word is stocky. A fuckbuddy once described me as ‘a hairy Red Rooster cheesy nugget in human form’. My wog genes are strong: at twenty-four, not only are the dark curls on my head still as thick and oily as when I was a teenager, but my chest and belly are covered in a dense black rug. Even my shoulders are starting to sprout curls, like the guy who owns Spudshed. The upside: the fur hides my man boobs, which flattened out a lot after puberty but never disappeared completely the way I hoped. And lots of guys are turned on by body hair, so I am weirdly successful in terms of belt-notches. A sasquatch lothario.
But still, if I can avoid showing my body in the light, I will.
Before I give up on the dark room, a lean, twink-looking figure silhouettes himself against the entry, his chin sharp and pointed, like he can make out just enough of me to be interested. I’m not typically into guys my own age, but my balls need to shoot, so when the skinny guy merges with the darkness around me and his cold hands touch my warm chest, I go with it. We start making out. He tastes like mint – he’s got a chewy rolling around in his gob and I actively have to direct my tongue to avoid it as I probe his mouth. Gross.
‘Wanna get a cubicle?’ he asks, breaking away.
I tell him I do.
He leads me into the corridor, his back to me. He has scruffy brown hair and a tattoo spilling from his ribs onto his back – some lyrics in fine calligraphy I can’t fully make out as my eyes adjust, accompanied by a crown.
He finds a cubicle, leads me in and latches the door.
We drop our towels. His gaze falls on my boner and he gives a satisfied smirk, then roams north, across my pelt of belly hair, up to my face.
And we both recognise each other at the same time.
‘Holy shit!’ he cries. ‘Zeke – fucking – Calogero!’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I say. ‘Charlie Roth.’
It’s not just seeing Charlie Roth for the first time in seven years that shocks me. It’s the first time we’re seeing each other naked. We were never lovers.
Only friends, until we weren’t.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Charlie says, gawking at my body. ‘Wow. What are the odds?’
&nb sp; ‘Probably good odds, to be honest,’ I say, crossing my arms over my chest. ‘I come here a lot.’
‘Wild,’ Charlie says. ‘I almost never come here – only did cos I got ghosted by a selfish prick on Scruff and needed to get off.’
Charlie mirrors me by crossing his arms across his body. It’s an insanely redundant gesture of modesty given we’re both buck naked. Charlie’s penis is soft but plump – more of a shower than a grower. He doesn’t have a single pube, which always weirds me out and is why I usually avoid guys into manscaping. His balls are waxed and smaller than mine.
While I’ve been scoping out his body, he’s been checking me out, too, and neither of us has reached for our towel. My big veiny cazzo is hanging out. If this had happened seven years ago, we would have covered up immediately. We were too close as mates to ever hook up. But so much time has passed – without any words between us – that I don’t know what the rules are. The world of man-on-man sex is a lawless place: you can hate a guy, run into him in a sauna, screw each other’s brains out, then never acknowledge each other ever again.
I’m not saying it’s healthy, but it is what it is.
And I’m not saying I hate Charlie Roth. Anymore. Maybe I never did. Maybe we were just mad at each other and we let it get out of control.
Suffice it to say I have no clue how this interaction is meant to proceed.
Charlie barrels through my confusion. ‘Always figured you’d be cut, dude.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Aren’t Italians always circumcised? Thought I saw that in a movie once.’
‘Dunno about other Italians, but I’m Sicilian,’ I say. ‘Either way, I’m uncut.’
‘I can see that, dude. Giant balls too. Good for you.’
I am weirdly proud of my nuts. They’re my best asset. Big, meaty, hairy nads that hang low and swing as I plough a guy. Charlie complimenting me feels nice, like a détente between Cold War superpowers, but him praising my nutsack, specifically, makes my skin crawl.
‘We’re not gonna fuck,’ I say.
Charlie snorts, his face creasing with laughter. I spot the familiar black industrial piercing at the top of his ear, but it’s now accompanied by an eyebrow piercing and a nose ring that weren’t there when I knew him.
‘Of course we’re not, you clown,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t see a thing in that dark room or I never woulda kissed ya. It’d be like fucking my own brother. So wrong.’
My shoulders relax. He called me his brother.
‘So … you’re not mad at me anymore?’ I ask, and it’s the most vulnerable thing I’ve done in this sauna, much more than standing naked in front of him.
Charlie’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. His eyes find mine. They are kind. It makes me tear up, him looking at me gently again. ‘No, Zeke,’ Charlie says softly. ‘I’m not mad at you anymore.’
I could cry, but I don’t want him to hug me while we’re naked.
‘I’m not mad at you anymore, either,’ I say hoarsely.
Charlie smiles. ‘Well, that was worth the twenty-five bucks alone, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘How about we pause being rampant sluts for a minute and catch up. Wanna drink, dude?’
When I was sixteen, Charlie Roth was more than my friend: he was my hero.
He saved my life.
We both grew up four hours north of Perth, in a hot windy coastal town called Geraldton, where you feel like the only homo in the village even when you know you’re not. My Catholic parents found out I was gay at my brother’s wedding. My dad hit me. My mother was mortified. They both wanted to disown me. I was expected to go back into the closet to make them happy even though it would’ve killed me. Being a mild-mannered Clark Kent nerd, I was going to do it.
But then, a miracle. Charlie Roth, outed troublemaker, announced he was bailing, upping sticks to the big smoke. I felt abandoned – my lifeline was being ripped away – until I did something totally unhinged.
I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go with him.
We hopped on a bus to Perth: two starry-eyed country boys dreaming of big-city liberation. That snap decision defined my life – for better and for worse.
At first, it was everything we dreamed of. We stayed in a grungy, dirt-cheap hostel in Northbridge called Francis Street Backpackers, living off a couple of grand Charlie would much rather not have inherited. It was like we were overseas on a backpacking holiday. We slept in a six-bed dorm: me on the bottom bunk and Charlie on the top. The carpets were sticky and the whole building reeked of morning-after puke and mi goreng noodles. Charlie and I befriended people from all over the world: Brazilians, Germans, South Koreans, Americans. They’d buy us grog from the bottle-o on Lake Street and we’d hang out in the hostel beer garden getting wasted on Foster’s (they thought it was an Aussie beer) and kicking hacky sacks and throwing frisbees. We smoked cigarettes and weed. We hooked up with other backpackers, and strangers, and did everything we’d ever craved to do now we had the horny freedom of the city.
The Francis Street era was golden: the best fun I’ve ever had. The real Zeke emerged from his cocoon. I’d always played Good Catholic Boy, but in that hostel, I was unapologetically myself: a red-blooded man who wanted nothing but pleasure. I felt like the Beat poets of the 1960s. I was Jack Kerouac waking up every day in a hedonistic haze I was too young for, but never overwhelmed by: my best mate was right beside me.
It lasted three months.
My parents had been trying to get me back home: the outrage I did to their authority by running away was thermonuclear. My mother even reported me as a missing person. The Gero cops called me, and I had to convince them I was safe and escaping my homophobic parents which, weirdly, the grizzled Gero sergeant seemed to understand. The old me would have been worried about not graduating, but in that hostel, the old me was a dead me. I dismembered myself to come to Perth – a mouse ripping off its own feet to escape a trap.
But burnout life was only fun until the money ran out, and the reality of living as emancipated minors hit us like a frisbee to the face. A fog lifted. Hostel life was expensive, long term: we’d need jobs, a share house. The dream lost its lustre: trawling Seek for entry-level jobs was depressing, especially with our nearly blank resumes. I don’t think Jack Kerouac had to lower himself to that level.
And then, the kicker: my dad got cancer.
That was it. No matter how much I hated my dad, I didn’t want him to die. I told Charlie I had to go home to see him. The Gays in the Big Smoke Dream was dead.
Charlie and I had the worst fight of our lives. A screaming match. A total shitfight. We both went for the jugular. Charlie called me a traitor. I called him hypocritical for not realising how important it was for me to see my dad since he’d lost his own dad, years earlier, and his boyfriend, only months back.
I told Charlie I’d come back once I saw my dad but he called me a liar and said I was abandoning him. He said if I went back to my family I wouldn’t come back to him.
The worst part was he was right.
There’s ambient music playing in the sauna’s lounge area, much softer than the cruising-area doof-doof. Two grey-haired daddy types are having a quiet beer, but otherwise the place is deserted. Muscle Boy Johnny is behind the bar. The collar of his black polo shirt is popped – he’s a Pommie boy from Essex and either popped collars are still cool there, or he’s just a wanker – and his shirt sleeves are rolled up, tattooed biceps straining against them. If I hadn’t run into him in the sauna’s mirror room one night, I’d think he was a rough dom top, but he’s a hungry bottom.
‘What’ll it be, lads?’ Muscle Boy Johnny asks. He doesn’t look me in the eye. He hasn’t since I had his torso on my hand like a puppet. I’m not sure if he’s embarrassed or if he wants me to do it again. I would.
‘Heineken, mate,’ Charlie says.
‘Could I get a vodka soda with lime, please?’ I ask.
Charlie snorts. ‘The most classically homosexual drink,’ he says. ‘White spirit and soda water, so you don’t drink too many calories before Pride.’
I gesture at my chubby, hairy chest. ‘And as you can see, it’s working great.’
