Tigerland

by Sean Kennedy

  “Two thousand if we take out Anna Crowley!” I grinned, thinking back to how much she had pissed me off when she was stalking us at the time of Dec’s outing.

  “Double team it with Peter van Niuewen, and it’s seven thousand,” Dec said, referring to his own personal journalist nemesis.

  “You’re on,” I said, and I pressed the tagger that would open our building’s garage door.

  They were smart. There were some undoubtedly camped outside our building’s foyer in case we left via there, but there were some waiting by the garage as well to check out any hapless tenant who could be Declan Tyler.

  As soon as the car lurched into the open air, they were upon us. Yelling through the closed windows, they ran alongside the SUV. Their questions were indecipherable, as I had turned up the stereo to eleven and Kate Bush was telling us that the hounds of love were haunting her. I barked along with the backing vocals, and managed to make Dec laugh. Once we were on the road, they gave up, and I turned the volume down so we could speak to each other again.

  “No points for you,” Dec said.

  “I am rather disappointed by that.”

  “You do know they’re going to have you on the news looking like a lunatic as you sing to the stereo, right?”

  “I’m fine with that. They might have captured you laughing, and that will be far better than making you look like you’re stressed out by whatshisface.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not calling him Voldemort.”

  “Oh, please. Voldemort would have him shitting himself in fear in two seconds flat.”

  “Another vivid image, thanks.”

  “It’s a curse to be blessed with such imagination.”

  Dec turned the heat down, as the windows were fogging up. “I’m going to have to make some statement sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, well do it in your own time and on your own terms.”

  “Okay, Jill.”

  “You’re going to have to start doing better comebacks than that. Don’t they teach you anything in media training in the big leagues?”

  “They’d be horrified if they heard what you advised. You know me, stay as quiet as possible and try not to look like a fuck-knuckle.”

  I couldn’t help but sigh. “That’s a worthy sword to throw yourself upon, but the loudest and the most vocal are usually the ones that get believed.”

  “Not always. Being this way has worked pretty well for me in the past.”

  I wanted to tell him it didn’t work that way for every situation, and it might not for this one. It all depended on whether Heyward had any other tricks up his sleeve on his Outapalooza tour.

  IT SEEMED the first parry from Heyward was a successful one. Our humble television station was all over the media as our exclusive vision of “the latest AFL gay bombshell” was shown on every television station, or the sound on every radio station, and jerky oft-copied video on thousands of web sites. And, “latest AFL gay bombshell?” Way to sensationalise it, guys, seeing the last “bombshell” was three years ago. London during the Blitz would have been happy with that long a wait between raids.

  I received a congratulatory e-mail from the CTV bosses, who deliberately ignored the elephant in the room that it was my partner who was being exploited by their very station. The episode was going to be re-aired again that afternoon in the hope of catching a larger local audience who wanted to see the interview in full rather than the snippets that the commercial stations were legally allowed to rebroadcast. A press release had already gone out announcing it.

  Oh, and a complaint had been put in about me by Filip Carver—Emcee Gee—for pulling him off the Heyward interview. Now that it was currently the biggest story in town (and likewise nationally) Filip was pissed that it was Suki who was getting a lot of media attention along with Lachie, when it should have been him. Because Suki and Lachie had been the ones in the footage where Heyward outed his relationship with Declan, Emcee Gee never even rated a mention.

  There was another e-mail, from the bosses and carbon copied to the HR department, that told me not to worry about Filip and that Emcee Gee’s ruffled feathers would be smoothed back down. I probably would have been in a little bit of trouble had the story not been such a hit.

  It seemed to be the one thing I had going for me.

  Coby was surfing the web for stories relating to CTV in order to be placed in our archives, and as I passed by his desk I saw myself grinning ludicrously from the desktop.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Coby knew it was too late to try and hide it, so he just swivelled his monitor around so I could see it more clearly.

  My eyes were immediately drawn to the pictures rather than the text. The first one was obviously from some sort of AFL black tie event, possibly even a Brownlow ceremony. Declan looked slightly younger than when I met him, with his hair spikier and that dreaded soul patch still in existence. And he was standing with Greg Heyward, both of them laughing at something, the camera catching them in some candid moment.

  The caption below read: “In happier times?”

  I hated that expression. It sounded like something out of a country and western song. In happier times, you and me and our dog in a pickup truck….

  The next photo was Dec and me, and the contrast between the two photos chosen couldn’t have been more obvious. The photo editor must have had a field day mocking this up so it could add some comedy to this lurid spectacle. In it Dec and I were at some function—judging by what we were wearing I would say it was probably something to do with his station, as we were dressed more formally—and I was staring moodily off into the distance while Dec glared at the camera. I knew he was actually caught in the midst of speaking to a journalist because this photo had been used before in a prominent women’s magazine a couple of years ago and analysed by a “body language expert” who concluded that Dec and I were close to breaking up and obviously very unhappy with each other. The day after the issue had released I spent two hours on the phone consoling my mother and trying to convince her that we were fine while Dec lay on the couch and laughed.

  “It seems the consensus is already in,” I told Coby. “Dec and Heyward are obviously a much better couple, and should get back together.”

  Coby minimised the window so I couldn’t look at the article any longer. “Simon, we work in the media. You know everything we do is bullshit.”

  “Don’t let the bosses hear you say that.”

  Coby fielded my calls all morning, respectfully declining requests for me to be interviewed or give a statement. I was waiting on hearing from Dec and the decision he would be making before I decided what course of action I had to take, if any. Coby’s phone was glued to his ear as he still tapped away on his computer keyboard, multitasking like there was no tomorrow. Nyssa had chosen her replacement well.

  I missed her. How her face would light up on Bog-off-to-the-Pub-Fridays, a tradition that had ended when we left the Triple FFF and became “real” professionals. Sure, we still went to the Napier after work to meet the others. There just wasn’t that clandestine mission of getting off work early and feeling like we were kids wagging school once again.

  At one point Coby came up to me, looking pale and drained. “I just spoke to your mum for half an hour.”

  “In that case, I promise you’ll get a generous raise this year.”

  “It took that long to convince her that Dec isn’t leaving you to go back to Greg. And even then, I think she still will only believe it when she hears it coming from you.”

  It was good to know that my mother had such faith in my ability to sustain a relationship I had already been in for five years. I would have to talk to her later and try to take the edge off her panic, although the thought of it made the evil little part of me say, “Maybe you should have told her Dec already has left me.”

  “Are you kidding? Then she would be here in person—”

  He had a point.

  “—and security’s already had to thr
ow out a couple of journos trying to sneak up here and pretending they actually work for CTV.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They really want to talk to you.”

  “What can I say? I’m pretty popular.”

  Coby rolled his eyes.

  I called him on it. “Yes, Coby? You had something to say?”

  His tone was all sugary obsequiousness. “Nothing, boss.”

  That was to be one of the many visits he would have to make to my office that day. I had set my mobile to divert to Coby’s line so nobody could trick me into answering for them. But it also meant that people I wanted to speak to, including my friends, couldn’t get hold of me directly.

  Just before lunch, my intercom sounded. “Declan’s on line two,” Coby said.

  Finally. I was wanting an update from him all morning.

  “There’s my boy,” I said, by way of greeting.

  “I’m your boy?” he asked, amused.

  “I just thought hello would be a bit boring.”

  “It’s a perfectly fine way to answer the phone.”

  “It’s boring and traditional.”

  “Must be why I like it then.”

  We were dancing around the obvious, and the pause that followed betrayed that truth. “How are you?” we both asked at the same time, and laughed. It was kind of like laughing in the face of a tidal wave, knowing you were about to be swamped anyway but deciding to go out with some sort of spark left within you.

  “You first,” I said.

  “Morning’s been absolute shit. Yours?”

  “Well, it’s been shit, but not absolute shit. My mother’s convinced you’ve left me for Heyward—”

  There was a bit of an intake of breath on the other end of the line, and I knew I shouldn’t have divulged that little bit of info—at least until we were face to face and could laugh about it. “Even after all this time, she thinks I could do that?”

  “Of course she doesn’t,” I said quickly. “She’s a mother. She’ll always think of the worst case scenario so that no matter what happens afterwards it will seem better in comparison.”

  “Oh, what, like I cheated on you with Heyward but you’ve decided to forgive me and take me back?”

  “That would never happen,” I said, forgetting that it could be misconstrued.

  “That you’d take me back?”

  “No, doofus, that you would cheat on me. Come on, Declan, this is a shit day. Pull it together.”

  Somehow, barking at him like his coach would have done on the field seemed to work for Declan, and he sounded a lot of better after that. “Anything else?”

  “Some journos tried to break into the building and make their way to my floor, but they only got as far as the lift before security stopped them.”

  “You’re lucky,” Dec said. “I work in a building full of them, remember?”

  “Not so easy for you, then.”

  “No. There was even one waiting in the toilets on the off chance I wandered in.”

  “That’s pretty seedy.”

  “Yep. I’ve pretty much been in legal meetings all morning.”

  “Legal? Why?”

  “Because the station bosses thought that if I wouldn’t willingly give them an exclusive, then they’d try to force it out of me through my contract.”

  “Bastards!” I wasn’t surprised. Our industry didn’t lend itself well to bringing out the best of humanity sometimes.

  “So I called Jill in, and she oh so politely showed them that nowhere in my contract could I be forced into one-on-one interviews like that. My contract relates to commentary on games and the related vision of that, and a number of scheduled appearances on their football panel shows. They can’t use it to get me to talk to them about Heyward.”

  “Brilliant. I love Jill.”

  “That’s not what you usually say.”

  “Only because she hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She just finds it difficult that you’re the one person who has the ability to sway me against her decisions besides myself.”

  That gave me a warm, squishy feeling inside. “Damn right.”

  “However, just to try and get everyone off our backs a little bit, I am going to release a press statement this afternoon.”

  “Do you think it will work?” I asked.

  “Probably not.”

  I think over time I have begun to infect Declan with my own cynicism. But then, he always was a realist.

  DECLAN’S statement was released to the media at two o’clock that afternoon:

  When Greg Heyward told me a number of years ago that he was ready to come out of the closet, I welcomed it, as it felt pretty lonely being the only out gay player of AFL. Although that did not happen at that time, I was quick to offer my congratulations to Heyward when he did so last week.

  I have always been a private person. Living in the public eye you learn to be, or you let it consume you. So I won’t be doing anything different from what I have done in the past. Yes, Greg Heyward and I were involved for just over a year before I left to go and play with the Devils in Tasmania. But any further details about that relationship will not be coming from me. It was private at the time, and for me it shall remain so.

  I still wish Greg nothing but the best for his future endeavours.

  It seemed a little dry to me, but I guess Dec didn’t want to appear as though he was still hung up on the past. He had probably had Jill hanging over his shoulder, telling him which words to remove and what to replace it with to seem more dispassionate.

  As if on cue, Coby stuck his head in the door. “Dec on line three.”

  “Thanks.” I picked up the receiver as Coby shut the door again.

  “Hey, did you see it?” Dec asked immediately.

  “Yep, just finished it. It came through to our office like any other press release.”

  “Sorry about that. I meant to send it to you earlier. We were just running out of time.”

  “I thought maybe my personalised copy was arriving by carrier pigeon, and it had gotten lost on the way.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  “It was a bit… brief.”

  “Well, it was meant to be.”

  “Not exactly full of detail, either.”

  “I didn’t want it to have detail.”

  “I just wonder if you really think it’s going to get them off your back. Especially if Heyward counters it with something else.”

  “He can do what he likes. This is my final word on the issue.”

  I remained silent, and I could tell it was frustrating him.

  “Just say it, Simon.”

  “I hope it is the final word you have to give. Really, I do. But after what Heyward did on my show, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has something else planned.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see then, huh?”

  I quelled the urge to push the issue, seeing as Dec had basically just admitted his press release in no way guaranteed the end of our forced involvement in Heyward’s Magical Outing Tour. The last thing we needed was us fighting, when both of us actually wanted to fight Heyward.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” Dec said.

  “Sure thing,” I replied.

  It’s not like we had to say I love you at the end of every phone call to prove that we did so, but that just kind of felt like the situation where it should have been said. Regretful, pissed off and a little hurt, and knowing that this was all due to someone outside our relationship who shouldn’t have the right to affect it so badly, I clicked over onto some of the news sites to see Dec’s press release starting to hit the webosphere.

  My eyes wandering, I saw an advert for the Great Ocean Road. The flash animation took us on a curvy path that then flew out over the Three Sisters, and I wished I could reach into the screen and be sucked in, to replace the surroundings of my office with the wild beauty of the Victorian coast.

  Better to be anywhere but here.

&nbs
p; I STILL had Dec’s car. He had said he’d walk home, as he really only had to cross the Webb Bridge and thought by the end of the day his path would pretty much be free of journalists.

  He was wrong, of course. Journalists work 24/7 and although Dec refused to comment any further, only saying that his press release gave them all the information he was willing to impart, he was still hounded both at work and on his walk home. I knew the footage of us leaving our apartment would be on the morning news, but I hoped that now they had him on camera and he was uncommunicative, it would pretty much be the end of their contact with us. At least until Heyward said something else, which I knew he would but Dec hoped against.

  He told me all this on the phone while I was still at work. He sounded a little shook up, which was rare.

  “I’m coming home now,” I told him.

  When people said good-bye as I passed their desks, I noticed not one of them could look me in the eye, as if I was blaming them for their involvement in what had happened on QueerSports the night before. I tried saying my good-byes as warmly as I could to show them I didn’t think that. At least Coby could look at me as he met me at the lift to grab any last-minute tasks that needed doing.

  “Look, Coby, when I’m gone try and tell them all that I in no way blame any of this on our show. Suki fell flat on her face trying to get away from me this afternoon. This was all Heyward’s problem.”

  Coby nodded. “They feel bad, that’s all.”

  “Good night, Coby. See you tomorrow.”

  The wet weather made driving home take far longer than it should. But finally I was getting out of the lift and unlocking our door.

  Dec jumped up from the couch, and when I saw him I dropped my laptop bag.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  In the short time between our conversation on the phone and my arriving home he had shaved his head into a number two buzz cut. He looked pretty much like Sigourney Weaver in Alien3. “Why did you do that?”

  “I felt like a change.”

  A psychologist would have a field day with this. “Okay.”