Growing Up Queer in Australia

by Benjamin Law

  ‘You should come up to Maslin Beach sometime. I try to go up as much as I can. The other boaters at Maslin love it. They love Bent, they think it’s real clever, man,’ he laughed. And then he grabbed me and kissed me aggressively. His kiss was hard. He slammed his face into mine like I slammed that banana into my arse all those years ago, but I didn’t jump out of my skin as much as I wanted to. And his tongue was rough, yeah, rough, and he was really forceful with it, like he was trying to snake his way down into my stomach so he could exfoliate me from the inside out, and then he threw me on the bed and as I hit the mattress I felt it collapse in on itself, but it didn’t bounce or spring back up, no, it just sort of rippled out underneath me and he must have caught my look of surprise because he laughed and said, ‘It’s a waterbed. I told you I love boating. I’m always the captain of the ship.’

  ‘I’ve never been on a waterbed before.’

  ‘You’re so fucken sexy,’ he said, ‘you really raise my mast.’ Which I found confusing, because Bent wasn’t a sailboat. It had a motor that could make it go real fast. Surely a true boater would know the difference. As he kissed me again and set about pumicing the back of my throat with his tongue, and then bent me over to fuck me, I thought about all the people down at Maslin, most likely all true boaters, and wondered whether this guy was a laughing-stock to them. And as he started thrusting in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, I started to rock back and forth, and the bed started to rock with me, ripple and wobble and turn in on itself and my stomach turned and I started to get seasick like my dad.

  ‘Oh mate, I’m gonna cum soon,’ he said. ‘Get me the lube.’

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked, trying not to vomit.

  ‘On the starboard bedside table.’

  ‘Starboard?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s the opposite of port-side.’

  ‘I don’t know what that mea—’

  ‘Starboard. When facing the front of the boat, the helm, starboard means right-hand side, sailor. You should know that. Everyone should know the fundamentals of sailing and boat maintenance before getting on a ship!’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and I crawled to the bedside table and got the lube and crawled back and lay down while he jacked himself off. After he was finished and he’d shot his load, he laughed and said, ‘Job well done, boys,’ as he looked down at the small sticky puddle of cum on his stomach. I realised that I wasn’t one of the boys at all and that he was talking to his sperm. I wondered if he knew that they couldn’t hear him. I wondered if he knew that we weren’t on a boat.

  I didn’t cum and he didn’t seem to mind. I got dressed and when he opened the door to let me out, or ‘disembark’ as he called it, it was raining and I remembered that Ms Back said that rain usually symbolised crying, at least when there were men involved.

  ‘Wow, it’s raining,’ he said. ‘Would you look at that.’

  ‘I didn’t really come here to talk about the weather,’ I said. And I sat in my car and didn’t cry as the rain fell around me.

  *

  ‘Are we catching up this week?’ I texted my boyfriend, a few days after the Oreo incident.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I thought we could watch a movie.’

  ‘Which one?’

  He sent me a link to Interview with the Vampire and I laughed until I cried.

  *

  ‘How do you know that you love me?’ my boyfriend asked.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You asked me how I know that I love you. How do you know that you love me?’

  ‘Sometimes I call you when I know you can’t answer,’ I said, ‘just so I can listen to your voicemail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a symbol, I think. Like in a movie or a book.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Loving you. Needing you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I always think that’s really fucking annoying when you do it. I’m usually in a meeting and I find it very distracting.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to stop doing it?’

  ‘Stop doing what? Calling me, or loving me?’

  ‘Either. Both. I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Stop calling me. Keep loving me.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think it matters how. Just that it happens.’

  *

  ‘Is this going to be an issue?’ my mother asked the doctor.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘shouldn’t be. So long as he doesn’t watch anything he gets too involved in.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘His mind will probably wander and he’ll stress himself out,’ he said. And then he said, ‘YOU’LL BE FINE!’ to me, making sure I could hear.

  *

  ‘You know it ends in tragedy, right?’ I asked my friend, shouting over the noise of the bar.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Call Me by Your Name. It ends badly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I know. I just stop watching before it all goes bad.’

  ‘What if you get too caught up and forget to stop watching?’

  ‘Deal with it . . . It’s still worth it in the end. You want another beer?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m alright.’ And I took another sip.

  Ah!

  How Not to Quench Your Thirst

  Jean Velasco

  2004 – Dry Vermouth

  The only drink available at the fundraising event is dry ginger ale with vermouth, served in large plastic cups that need to be held with both hands. It’s sickly and warm, but we order another round anyway. My friends and I shuffle to the edge of the party, far from the overbearing jazz band, and stand awkwardly with our heels sinking into the grass. As a shortcut to the formal dress code, I’m wearing all black, but still feel conspicuous. I down the vermouth in long gulps, in preparation for my imminent departure from college anonymity.

  While I wait in the bar queue for a refill, an older student shouts at me, ‘Before this night is over, your hair is on the ground.’

  I flinch, but secretly hope he’s right. My hair is long, mousy brown, untameable. I have no desire to keep it. The bartender tells me I’ve sold myself cheap, compared to other girls in previous years.

  Around nightfall, fundraising efforts plateau a few hundred dollars short of the target, and I worry I’m not high-profile enough to raise the necessary money. But it turns out I was wrong to underestimate the spending capacity of drunk, privileged youth. Donations and drink sales spike as people get thirsty for the main event. Someone colours in the fundraising thermometer poster until the red hits my name, and suddenly I’m being led to the centre of the pavilion.

  They sit me on a plastic chair at the same level as the crowd, and a horde of black-tie zombies leans in, fighting to get closer to the spectacle.

  Someone puts my hair in a rough braid, and they take turns at sawing with ineffective scissors. Bristly bits stick to my sweat, in my ears and down my cleavage. My cheeks burn, and I imagine a rash creeping up from my chest, curling around my neck and spreading like red mould across my face. Lost for words and appropriate facial expressions, I keep drinking. When I finally hear the buzz of the razor, it has a calming effect.

  Afterwards, I have trouble breaking free. Everybody wants to touch me, to rub my scalp. It takes effort to push past the blur of grasping people and escape to the sanctuary of my dorm.

  There, I spend a long time in the shower, shaken by the intensity of the crowd. My head is hyper-sensitive, and I sway under the water, feeling every tiny drop as it splashes against skin that has not been this bare since I was born.

  Next, I study myself in the mirror. Without make-up, I look pale, puffy, blotchy – the usual string of ugly adjectives that accompany close inspection.

  But stepping back?

  I love it. I look like a boy. If only my face was thinner, but this is better than expected.

  With a little foundation, I
’m ready to go back out there.

  When I re-join the party, people comment on the nice shape of my skull. It’s a strange compliment, that I accept with a selfconscious smile. Someone I don’t know tells me encouragingly, ‘You should have done that years ago.’

  I’m only nineteen and not sure about ‘years ago’. But in a way, they’re right. Thank god I have done this, I feel so much closer now. To what, I have no idea.

  1992 – Sprite lemonade

  We’re at the Vickick Pie Night, and I’m wearing my Essendon jumper with an incongruent white ribbon in my ponytail. The jumper is woollen, and I don’t like how the sewn-on sash makes my torso feel asymmetrical and heavy in comparison to my bare arms.

  Our club is aligned with St Kilda, which means the hall is decorated with red, white and black balloons. The floor is littered with food wrappers and semicircles of dried grass that have fallen from studded football boots. I can’t see anyone from my team, so I run around with my little brother, popping all the white balloons to leave the red and black ones, until some grown-ups tell us off.

  The best thing about pie night is the free pies, and soft drink, which we’re not allowed at home. After stuffing ourselves silly, we loiter by the trophy table, unsure what to do. Some big kids are playing kick-to-kick outside, but we’re supposed to stay in the hall.

  When the speeches start, we go back to our parents. Regardless of whether I sit or stand, I can’t see what’s happening. So I crouch down, gazing abstractly at the crowd, half-listening to the MC’s football jargon and clapping when everybody else does.

  As he announces the Grade 2 prizes, Mum gives me an excited prod, but I’m confused. He’s talking about a boy called Tom, and as far as I can remember there’s no Tom in my team.

  Then I hear my name being called, and people usher me towards the stage. When I climb onto the platform, the looming MC shakes my hand and presents me with the Coach’s Award. It’s a gold replica of a footballer taking a specky, mounted on a faux-granite block that’s surprisingly light. I stand where they tell me to, clutching my trophy and trying to keep down the pie-and-lemonade reflux. Next to me appears Scotty, the co-winner, who gives me a massive smile. He’s the nicest boy in Grade 2 and I have a slight crush on his freckles, even though he’s Carlton.

  In the car on the way home, I inspect the generic engraving carefully. Scotty is the coach’s son, so it occurs to me the competition might have been rigged. If that was the case, maybe I won the prize because I’m the only girl, and not in spite of it.

  My parents don’t agree. They rave proudly, saying how sweet I looked in football gear with a ribbon in my hair. They quote the MC, repeating that thing about me not being a Tom-boy.

  I don’t know what a Tom-boy is, but one thing is clear: it is a good thing that I’m not one.

  1999 – Diet Coke

  In Materials Technology, we’re supposed to be learning how to sew. Nobody ever makes anything more complicated than a calico bag, so the class is treated as a bludge period. The workbenches are covered in fashion magazines and Diet Coke cans from the vending machine, a visual analogy of our collective fifteen-year-old preoccupations.

  The girls I ‘sit with’ are scheming about dumping Lorena from our ‘group’. She’s a ‘fat bitch’ for reasons that I’m yet to grasp, but I don’t say anything to defend her.

  I’m more interested in what’s happening at the opposite table. The popular girls are talking about boys, out of the teacher’s earshot but loud enough for the rest of us to hear. To me, the conversation seems incredibly explicit, and I’m once again conscious of being sheltered, raised in a bubble, the only student without the internet, or even a computer at home. The girls are describing things I’ve never heard of, but I get the idea and find myself blushing. One of them catches me watching her and calls me on it. I mumble a complaint about the heat in the art department, which makes no sense as I’m wearing the winter school jumper. It’s an oversized, prickly thing, the same crimson as my face.

  2004 – Sweat

  It’s a Saturday evening and we’re flat out as usual. I work at one of the dodgiest Italian restaurants on Lygon Street, where they add flour thickener to the pesto, among other unforgiveable kitchen shortcuts. The staff are more authentic – a fleet of greying Italian waiters, and then me. We all wear white shirts, black vests and long aprons. My hair is an overgrown buzzcut that I try to offset with dangly earrings.

  Tonight, there’s a middle-aged gay couple in my section and they’re being very friendly, despite the mediocre entrée. When their medium steaks turns out to be rare, I take them back to the kitchen. Chef Tony stops what he’s doing to glare across the counter at the offending customers, and mutters something inaudible. He commands me to wait at the pass, sweating under the heat lamps, while he shoves the steaks in the microwave for a full two minutes. When I take the shrivelled things back out to the table, the couple are gracious. Later, one of them gives me a fifty-dollar tip, folding it into my palm with a kind smile.

  On the other side of the restaurant, there’s a group of women who keep trying to catch my eye. Ponytail Tony is supposed to be looking after them, but I end up taking over their table.

  Even though the night is winding down, I don’t have time for chitchat, and I try not to get too caught up with them. Young Tony, the owner’s son, is always watching, and these women don’t exactly scream VIP.

  After their bill has been settled with a modest tip, one of them asks if I could recommend somewhere to kick on, as they’re from out of town.

  I have no idea what to answer – my social life is limited to grimy pubs within a small radius of campus. These women are at least ten years older: that’s to say, real adults. I load a tray with glasses while racking my brains for a bar that doesn’t serve beer in plastic jugs. Impatient, the same woman asks where I’ll be going out later, which leaves me even more stumped. Why would she want to know where I party?

  Then the knowing smiles and snickering click. With a shaved head, I no longer draw the attention of conventional sleazebags. But I figure these women are either flirting or making fun of me. I mumble something about asking my colleagues, but they tell me to forget it.

  After they’ve left, I polish glasses as efficiently as possible, wondering if anyone noticed the exchange. Young Tony hands over my cash envelope with what I perceive as a smirk. Chef Tony yells at me to pick up my staff meal. I’m not hungry but I take it anyway so as not to offend him.

  During the walk back to campus, the foil takeaway container of soft, disposable food weighs heavily in my backpack and on my mind.

  In the small hours of Sunday morning, the college flats are dead quiet. The other students are out, or at home in the country. After throwing up all the pasta, I lie in bed thinking about the lesbians – I’m pretty sure that’s what they were – and wonder if I blew an opportunity. I’ve no idea what I was supposed to do differently.

  2014 – Ginebra con tónica

  It’s a weeknight in Chueca, Madrid’s infamous gay neighbourhood.

  I’m drinking free-poured gin and tonics with an old friend from college, who happens to be passing through Spain. About a decade ago he drunkenly came out to me when we were walking home one night, before doing the same, far more eloquently, to a standing ovation in front of the entire student body. He’s a successful lawyer now, and while he has barely aged and his humour is just as sharp and irreverent, there is a heaviness to him that wasn’t there before. Life out of the closet isn’t necessarily any easier, I think, as we order yet another round. I know that I’m projecting, but he does the same to me.

  My friend is describing Madrid Pride, which I missed because I live in another Spanish city. He raves about the drag queens, the beautiful, near-naked men and the emotion of the parade. But then his smile disappears, and he makes an observation which apparently implicates me.

  ‘Who is waving the bi flag, Jean?’ His tone is almost accusing, as if bisexual visibility is somehow my responsibility
.

  It’s a valid point, further exemplified by the fact that I’ve never come out to him, or, as far as I remember, given him any reason to suspect. I wonder why gay men are so quick to point out my sexuality, while gay women are so quick to doubt it.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask, before divulging my current conundrum. I’m smitten with my Spanish teacher, a heterosexual woman who is eager to be friends, and has offered for me to live with her during the summer.

  My friend gets distracted by Grindr and struggles to balance on his chair as he hears me out. But when I finish my preformulated confession, he looks up from his phone, and asks with an offhand smile, ‘What took you so long?’

  2009 – Salt water

  I’m in bed again, though it’s barely lunchtime. The curtains are drawn, the waste-paper basket is overflowing with tissues, and I’ve covered the mirror with a towel. Next to me, my phone is charging on the table. Every now and then the screen lights up, a fluorescent square of jellyfish blue. I let the calls ring out on ‘silent’ and messages go unopened.

  About an hour ago I called in sick. The conversation was easier than expected, my supervisor sounded genuinely concerned. Feeling guilty, I remind myself the symptoms are legitimate. Sore throat, blocked sinuses and lethargic, aching bones. It’s amazing how the head and heart and body are all connected. I turn the phone upside down and set the alarm for late this afternoon.

  When I wake up, it’s not to the alarm but to the sound of my housemate’s key in the front door. She wasn’t supposed to be home today, but then again neither was I.

  Hopefully she’s just quickly dropping in and doesn’t notice my presence or the food I stole from her shelf. Frozen stiff, I follow her footsteps as they circle the kitchen, then go to and from the bathroom and her bedroom. I hear running water, a flushing toilet, and the sound of high heels on floorboards. Maybe she has a date. I pray it goes well, for my sake. The front door clicks and I let out the breath I was holding.