by David Burton
I soon felt the familiar sting of fear. What if this fling was not yet flung? What if Dani and I actually began a relationship?
But the question had a convenient point of resolution. I was moving to Brisbane soon, with Amber. Uni was finishing and my untidy life was being packed into my even untidier hatchback. Dani was finishing her degree too, but I drew a clear line.
We would not continue after I moved.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but the move felt like an appropriate point for me to withdraw and reassess. And so I was to drop Dani at her parents’ house for the Christmas holidays, and then continue, with my final load of boxes, to my new house in Brisbane. By my own rules, it was to be the last time Dani and I would see each other.
I had also created other neat little rules. While our layers of clothing had gradually come off, my virginity was still very much intact. That was a threshold that I was not prepared to trip over.
I was gay. Right?
I had spent the last three years building an identity based on my sexuality. To have it demolished would be disastrous.
Who was I if I wasn’t Gay Dave? Just ‘Dave’? What did that even mean?!
Crazy Drama Dave was long dead, and Gay Dave was facing death threats from a free-spirited hippie woman. I couldn’t allow this to happen. I had rules. Dani and I would end. And I would find Gay Dave alive and well in Brisbane.
The only issue was we were sharing a car for the final trip. And it was raining. Loading the last of my boxes had left us both soaking wet. We rushed into the car, our clothes squelching. The windows instantly fogged up. We both shed a few layers.
Suddenly, the car seemed very small. And Dani seemed very close. And my heart seemed to be beating very fast.
I started the car.
It was a ninety-minute drive. Just ninety minutes. That’s all I had to do. Just turn the music up and get us to Brisbane, wave her goodbye, maybe a quick kiss, and then I would go back to being the person I knew how to be.
Dani had other ideas.
And, to be honest, so did I.
‘Turn here,’ she said. We were only a few minutes from her parents’ place. ‘And here,’ she said again.
We were driving away from houses, towards a park.
‘Stop here,’ she said, and she got out of the car. She flew her hands open, welcoming the rain.
I followed her.
Around us, the trees and grass glistened a clean and shiny green. Our lips met, cold and slippery.
We found ourselves in the back of the car. It happened quickly. We still had most of our clothes on. We made a brief, clumsy attempt to find condoms. There were none.
But it happened.
My mind went into white noise.
I couldn’t think, or even feel, I was absent, forcing my eyes away from hers, facing elsewhere, immersing my head into nothing. I wanted it to happen, but my body was filled with anxiety.
It was over within a minute.
I was no longer a virgin.
The air seemed to vanish out of the car. I wasn’t sure if Dani was pleased, or disappointed, or perhaps as confused as I was. We sat in silence, the rain hammering gently on the car roof.
‘I should take you home,’ I said.
She nodded and smiled gently. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
I dropped her off at her parents’ place and drove to Amber and our neat little Brisbane home.
It should’ve been that simple, I suppose. Some part of my brain was certain that we would never see each other again.
Except we hadn’t used protection.
16
Lost and Found
And now I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind.
We hadn’t used protection.
I suppose I had thought of it in the middle of it all. I was too afraid, too filled with every emotion on the planet, to stop and actually think. I didn’t want to be crap, I didn’t want to disappoint her, I didn’t want to… not have sex.
Dammit. I had wanted it. Somehow. Weirdly.
I didn’t sleep that night. And I rang Dani the next morning.
‘You’re thinking too much,’ she said. I could hear her smile over the phone.
My mind couldn’t let it go. I asked her if she’d take the morning-after pill.
There was a long silence.
I said, ‘I’ll buy it, I’ll bring it over, whatever. I’d just really like you to take it.’
Another pause. A sigh. ‘Yeah, okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll take it if it makes you feel better.’
This was a girl I’d planned on saying goodbye to only twelve hours earlier. Now I was calling her, embarrassed, asking her to take something that would have a huge effect on her body.
It wasn’t one of my greatest moments.
That afternoon I turned up at Dani’s place with the foil packet in my hand. I left it in a pot plant by the side of her house, and I texted her when I was driving away. You know, because I was being really brave about it.
I couldn’t sleep again that night. It was nearly midnight. I was watching TV. In the dark, I saw the shape of her car pull up. She came to the door.
‘I need food to take it,’ she said. ‘I need food.’
I found an apple and gave it to her. I got a glass, filled it with water, and put it in her hand.
‘Thank you,’ I said, as she put the tiny thing into her mouth and swallowed it, chasing it with water.
That was it, apparently. It was done now.
She’d really taken it. It was over.
I walked her outside, down our dusty driveway. We hugged goodbye, and she got in the car.
‘I’ll see you around, Dave,’ she said.
She turned the key.
Nothing happened.
Again.
A faint, whining murmur from the car. And then nothing.
Her car was stuffed.
One awkward call to RACQ later, we were sitting on the bonnet of her car, staring up into the stars.
The air was mild. It was a Brisbane summer: the days were unbearably hot and the evenings pleasantly still. Our busy suburban street was stone quiet.
‘It’s all a bit sad, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The pill. The whole thing. It’s just…quick.’
I wasn’t sure what I was saying. Or thinking. Suddenly life was unreal. Had I just killed something? And with Gay Dave gone, who was I?
‘Did you want me to be pregnant?’ she asked. I didn’t know how to answer the question.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’
Yes, I’d thought about it. A future with a child and Dani by my side. Some grand vision where I could be straight, happy and live a ‘normal’ life. I’d finally be a normal guy. My old dream came echoing back to me. But somehow life wasn’t that simple anymore.
‘It’s just funny what doors you end up closing,’ I said, quietly
. I knew I probably wasn’t making any sense. ‘Are you angry at me?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘No. Well, yes. I think I’m just hurt. I don’t know. You worry a lot, Dave. You think way too much. And I think I’ve caught it off you.’
I really liked Dani. I realised that as I was staring up at the stars, with the cold deadness of the car underneath me. I really liked her. But being with Dani meant I wasn’t the man I thought I was. Only twelve hours ago I’d hopped in the car intending to drive away from this confusing relationship and start anew. And I think Dani knew that.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but it felt feeble.
A yellow RACQ ute came rolling up the street.
We pretended to be a happy couple for a minute for the sake of the mechanic. The car rumbled to life easily with a quick heart start to the battery, and the yellow ute disappeared down the street. Dani got back in the car.
It was over. Again.
As easily as a gulp of water, or a quick kiss in the rain, or a question without an answer hanging in the still night, Dani drove off.
Apparently, I had my wish fulfilled.
It was three years since I had come out to my family, and I was spinning out of control. I was miserable. I’d let a perfectly good relationship slip away because of my clumsiness. Yet again, I’d managed to hurt the feelings of a woman I really cared about.
Was I gay? Straight? Who the hell was I? Being unemployed in the big bad city didn’t help. My relationship with my family was distant and I had nobody to blame but myself. But I kept pushing them away.
I was exhausted. It felt as if I had been running for years. Dani was right, I spent way too much time thinking, and it had only ever gotten me into trouble. Gay Dave was a lie. I had made a complete fool of myself. Captain Gay? I felt as if I had let my community down. I’d been with a girl.
After all this time, I’d finally had sex. But it hadn’t been the pleasing rush of romance that I had expected. It hadn’t fulfilled me.
Suddenly, my life looked very different. I had very little. I became lost in my own mind, disappearing quickly into darkness. I felt a despairing void open up and take me in.
I was so tired of running. So tired of constantly feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I hated being this needy, weak, pathetic little man. How sweet it would be to not have this pain anymore. How easy and light would my soul be, if freed from this constant trouble?
From the void, a seductive question came. It crept up so slowly it seemed nothing less than normal.
What if I died?
Familiar dark daydreams came back to me. I could see it, clear as anything: my own body, pleasingly crushed under the weight of six feet of soil resting heavily on my chest. I would lie there in the warm wet darkness, gradually losing air, feeling my brain slowly loosen its tight and worried grip on reality, and I would pass. Like air. Like nothing.
It seemed a sensible solution.
I didn’t dare say a word to anyone. If I asked for help it would only cause people concern, and I didn’t want any attention on me. I wasn’t worth a second glance, and, besides, telling people would mean questions that I didn’t want to answer. Questions like: ‘What do you mean you’re not gay?’ or ‘How could you treat all of those women like that? They wanted to kill themselves because of you!’ and ‘You’ve really fucked a lot of people over, haven’t you?’
Even my relationship with Amber, something that felt robust, suddenly seemed under threat. I hadn’t told her about the morning-after pill and sex episode. Amber had grown increasingly silent on the subject of Dani. Amber, a beautifully grounded being, didn’t trust Dani’s free-spirited energy to take care of my fragile heart. If I told Amber what was happening, I would have to admit that I had real feelings for Dani. The idea of admitting that to Amber caused my brain to go into overdrive. I was sure I would lose my best friend.
But I couldn’t get my mind off Dani. Dreams and thoughts persisted. The images of death and dying increased. I began to fear washing the dishes. I didn’t trust myself with the knives. I kept seeing their naked steely allure underneath a pile of soapy bubbles. How easy it would be to clutch my hand around one…swear it was a mistake…let the dark red blood ribbon out into the warm water.
I stood at the sink one afternoon, realising I had been thinking about this for some time. The window above the sink faced onto the neighbours’ backyard. They hadn’t mown their grass in months. Dry and yellow, it almost looked, absurdly, like a field of wheat. The wind moved it gently, and the blades swayed as one. It was staggeringly beautiful, and the surreal moment of clarity brought tears to my eyes. I sobbed on the kitchen floor for three hours.
Then I finished the dishes, had a shower and carried on as normal, welcoming Amber home when she walked through the door.
I felt as if I had given up a romantic relationship before it had even begun. I needed to be with Dani. The conversation we had around her broken-down car kept playing over in my mind. It was suddenly so obvious. I should never have let her drive away.
I messaged Dani and we arranged to meet for coffee. She told me about her new boyfriend. I put on my best happy face. This beautiful new man was tall, muscular and tanned from the outdoors. He was unworried about life, and apparently as relaxed and carefree as she was. They had such fun together, she said.
I hugged her goodbye. We laughed. And I got back in the car.
I had visions of my car in a field, my own corpse, cold and pale inside it. Or my body lying face down in long grass, the wind gently caressing my back, the warm earth against my chest, a stab wound in my heart from a knife that I hold loosely in my outstretched hand.
I make a plan. I will go back home and get pills. And a knife. I will drive somewhere and come to a brutal and quick end. I will lie in my own field of wheat, and feel myself vanish into the earth. I will be free. Finally.
I pull up and I curse when I see Amber’s car in the driveway. This will call for stealth. I will have to grab pills discreetly and go straight back to the car. In and out. Don’t answer any questions. Just go.
I get out of the car and catch something in the corner of my eye. On my messy back seat is a scrap of paper with a phone number. I had written it down months ago, when I asked Mum for my old psychologist’s number. I had been planning on calling him for research for an upcoming play. It was Gary’s number.
I found myself picking it up and calling him from the driveway.
The number went to voicemail.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Gary? I think I need help.’
He called me back a short time later, and we booked an appointment for the following week.
I had stopped seeing Gary shortly after I started at university. I hadn’t really considered talking to Gary as an option before I saw the phone number on my car’s back seat. The promise of an appointment was a promise to stay alive, but I was scared to go and talk to him.
I found talking about my inner state incredibly difficult, especially with those closest to me. I was too scared to tell Amber that I was feeling uncontrollably sad and miserable because I didn’t want to let her down. I didn’t want to tell my family that I was feeling awful because I didn’t want to prove that their continual attempts
to help me were in fact incredibly well founded. I kept myself in misery for months purely to avoid confronting them.
I had strict stiff-upper-lip syndrome. I kept a smile on my face. I hoped that if I persisted with this for long enough, I would quash the intense feelings of despair that were threatening to end my life. I reached for alcohol and pot to help the repression. But the void only became larger. And I became further lost within it.
So why the defence? What’s so terrifying about therapy? The truth is that therapy can be scary.
Therapy is a mirror. It’s a reflective surface that your inner-state bounces off. You go in, sit down, and look at yourself head on.
For someone who doesn’t consider themselves worthy of walking the earth, this is like looking into the eyes of Satan himself. Make no mistake, I thought I was unlovable. I believed I had evidence to prove my point. I had covered who I was with a great performance for many years. Now, without Crazy Drama Dave or Gay Dave to lean upon, I was left the raw shell of a sad human being. Inside that shell was a dark void, containing one very small, very unhappy, very ugly human being. Why would I want to go to someone and pay them for helping me look at that?
To heal a broken arm, you have to examine the broken arm. You have to X-ray it, diagnose it and tell the story of how it got hurt. You can’t stick a cast on it and hope for the best. It may heal incorrectly, always carrying the cracks of the injury in its structure. I wouldn’t have been ashamed of doing all of that to get my arm fixed. Why did I feel that way about my brain?
In my sessions with Gary, I was undergoing a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. In CBT, the psychologist assists you with navigating your thoughts and emotions by helping you see the behaviour of your thoughts and how it affects you. This means, as I said, they will often act as a mirror, asking questions designed to help you dig deeper into your state of mind.
