Tigers on the Run

by Sean Kennedy

  “If?” I asked. “Am I under probation? I bet Dec isn’t being subjected to a probationary period.”

  Roger looked aghast. “No!”

  “No, I’m not under probation, or no, Dec isn’t?”

  “Both!”

  “Okay, if it makes you feel better, I solemnly promise that I won’t die young if you don’t.”

  He smiled and stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

  “Can I be the cool godfather who buys them alcohol when they’re underage?”

  “Please don’t make me regret this.”

  “Fine. I’ll just make sure they know all about safe sex. And maybe buy them that book Where Did I Come From? just before an important family function so they have lots of embarrassing questions to ask.”

  “I really am going to regret this.”

  “Don’t worry. Dec will more than balance me out.”

  “He better. But you are okay with being a godfather?”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t be?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Rog.”

  “Just the other night, you looked uncomfortable.”

  “That’s my natural state. Some people have resting bitch face. I have resting uncomfortable face.”

  “Come on, Si,” he mimicked me.

  “Okay,” I admitted. “Fran put me a bit on edge with all the godfather talk, and the unhappy family talk.”

  “That?” Roger asked, relieved. “That’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  “Well, it’s not nothing, but in the grand scheme of things it’s nothing.”

  “That sounds obtuse, even for you.”

  “Look, our families are trying to get us to do things their way. What they don’t seem to get is that Fran and I want to do things our own way, especially when it comes to the kids. We may have relented with a lot of our wedding stuff, but we’re not with Frankie and Georgina.”

  Roger was leaving me behind, finally entering the world of maturity and worldliness. It was beautiful to see, but also frightening—like the Roger I had always known and loved was gone, replaced by a new and supposedly improved model. Maybe improved for Fran and his family with her, not so much for his best friend since childhood—who he had always acted like a kid with.

  “I guess you’re not exactly being traditional, having Dec and I as godfathers, and no godmother.”

  Roger shrugged. “We want our kids to have the best.”

  I suddenly found the floor very interesting. I think if I had looked at him right now I would have cried. That would have been very unbecoming, and ruinous to my reputation.

  “And if that means we don’t have what they think is a proper christening—if it’s a naming ceremony in our backyard—and we’re doing that because we don’t want to have it in a church where they’ll look down upon our best friends and godfathers to our children, then fuck it.”

  “Roger, can I give you a hug?” I asked, trying not to let my voice quaver.

  He stood up and held out his arms. “Come here, baby.”

  As I hugged him, he slapped my back in the manly way a couple of times. “You know, you’ve gotten way more touchy-feely over the years.” The slaps ended, and he hugged me tighter.

  “Blame Dec,” I said.

  “He does good work,” said Roger.

  Chapter 3

  THERE ARE some people who are in your life forever, and there is nothing you can do about it no matter how much you try to cut them out.

  When I think that Jasper Brunswick has been part of my life longer than Dec has, well, it just makes me want to vomit pea soup and do the backwards spider-walk down the stairs.

  Jasper was Freddy Krueger. Jason Voorhees. Michael Myers. Mick Taylor from Wolf Creek with an even more annoying laugh. Jasper Brunswick always endlessly came back for yet another turn at stabbing me and leaving me for dead. I am the last girl—okay, guy—in my own horror flick, and I’m always returning for the sequel because I signed a really sucky contract when I was too young to know any better.

  It always comes back to Jasper Brunswick. He had written about Dec when he was still closeted, adding to the pressure to force him to come out. A couple of years later he wrote a book full of lies with Dec’s old boyfriend, Greg Heyward.

  And he had found a new way back into my life, although at the time I was completely unaware. I should have seen the signs, but it had started so slowly and innocuously (at least, for Jasper) that it was too late for me to prevent it. In fact, it seemed completely unbelievable that he reemerged the way he did.

  On the day before the naming ceremony, I took Fran out for coffee as she was busting to get out of the house. Roger had also been given the day off and was helping his brother install decking. Both Fran and I knew that Roger’s version of help would mainly be standing around and providing beer whenever his brother’s can was empty. The kids were with their grandparents.

  We met on Brunswick Street as Fran also wanted to check out some of the shops for decorations for livening up the backyard. The outdoor section of the Black Cat Café was one of our favourites, and luckily there was a spare table. As we sat underneath the canopy of branches that had grown over the fence, I read the latest issue of the Reach Out, which I had snagged from the display, and Fran was annoyed because it was captivating my attention.

  “You’re meant to be talking to me,” she said.

  “Just give me a minute. I want to see what deep thoughts the Proust of Melbourne town is imparting this week.”

  “I don’t know why you keep reading him. Why do you do it to yourself?”

  “Know thine enemy.”

  “I think you know Jasper Brunswick well enough by now.”

  “Well, it’s also pretty fucking funny, too. He always outdoes himself in trollishness.”

  “I think you’re a masochist.”

  I waved at her to zip it. “Listen to this.

  “We’ve all had one. They seemed to tick the right boxes, and it makes us blind to all their faults. Even when we’re exposed to their dickish behaviour time and time again, we continue to make excuses for them. The world of the closet and the heteronormativity that surrounds us can exacerbate it, because we are given a whole new set of (at times justifiable) reasons to let them get away with it.

  “I can’t tell my family or friends about us.”

  “All that matters is you and me.”

  “It’s nobody else’s business.”

  “Just because I let you suck my cock every now and again, it doesn’t mean we’re boyfriends.”

  I stumbled over that last line; I knew the meaning behind it. It was one of Greg Heyward’s bon mots, thrown at Jasper at the Midsumma Festival where he and I had toppled over the bridge across the Yarra.

  “Ouch,” Fran mused. “Harsh.”

  She wasn’t privy to that little tale. It had seemed cruel to share Jasper’s pain, even if he liked causing it.

  “Okay, that last one was a little more extreme—and comes from personal experience. I had what I thought was a partner, but I was fooling myself. First off, he needed my help with a project. He could have gotten anybody he wanted for assistance, but he chose me and I thought that meant something. Secondly, and the most major thing of all, he was just out of the closet and loving all the attention and the new experiences that were coming to him. To quote a certain animated musical, he had found a whole new world he felt he missed out on before. He was probably going through a delayed ‘adolescence’ as a lot of us do when we’re opening up our true selves. He felt that gave him a license to fuck around. I didn’t.”

  It was getting far too uncomfortable now; this was a subject I was entirely familiar with.

  “He’s talking about Greg Heyward!” Fran chewed on the straw in her iced coffee.

  “Seems like it.”

  “But that was, like, two years ago!”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s either really obsessed, or holds a grudge.”
/>   “A little from column A, a little from column B. You can’t really blame him, though.”

  Fran’s eyes widened. “Did I just hear you right? Were you defending Jasper Brunswick?”

  Sadly, it sounded that way. “Look, he really got fucked over by the guy.”

  “Oh.” Social Worker Fran took over Friend Fran. “You’re transferring Dec and what happened between him and Greg onto Jasper.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said defensively, thereby proving her point. “But, thanks anyway, Freud.”

  “It’s understandable. They both went through the same kind of experience with Heyward.”

  “We’re here to laugh at Jasper, not empathise with him.

  “Maybe I could have understood his perspective a little more if, like I said, I hadn’t been under the impression that he was fully mine. It did, however, take me a long time to get to the stage where I could let him go.

  “I’m not naming names, although I’ve had no problem with doing so in the past. This recent history, however, is still too raw. You can probably guess for yourself who it is if you know anything about my life—both personal and professional. And seeing I write a column as part of my living, I’ve probably put far more out there than I’ve ever wanted to.

  “And it’s not like I can’t say I wasn’t warned, even though my saviour came in a most unlikely form. I’m not going to name names in that case, either, because his ego is usually monstrous enough without me stoking the fire.”

  “Aww, he’s talking about you,” Fran said.

  “I doubt it.” I didn’t.

  “He loves any opportunity to dig at you in the press. But he’s also complimenting you in a way. It’s just bizarre!”

  It was that.

  “What does it take for us to finally recognise those irreconcilable flaws in the people we love?

  “And what does it take us to accept that these may be more than flaws? They are, in fact, signs that we should get as far away from this person as we possibly can.

  “So when do we stop making excuses for them?

  “And when do we feel free and secure enough to move on?”

  I shuddered.

  “What?” Fran asked.

  “Move on.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “That means Jasper Brunswick is actively on the prowl for a boyfriend.”

  “I think you’re safe, believe me.”

  “Yeah, but is the rest of Melbourne?”

  “I’m sure Melbourne can fend for itself.”

  “And that was how the apocalypse began,” I said, doom-laden.

  “Simon,” Fran warned. “That’s enough talk of Jasper Brunswick for today.”

  “But—”

  Fran whacked her palm upon the table. “Don’t start!”

  “I’m only saying—”

  “No!”

  “I—”

  “I mean it!”

  “Fr—”

  “No.”

  “Aa—”

  “No!”

  But I was going to explode anyway, and Fran just had to ride it out.

  “I had to let him go?” I mimicked, and even I knew I was doing it rather mercilessly. “Talk about rewriting history!”

  Fran tore the paper out of my hands and studied me closely. “And yet two minutes ago you were being far more understanding of it all.”

  “Delayed reaction.” I glared at her from over the rim of my coffee cup as I refuelled myself for the next stage of ranting. “I think that out of all people, Declan excepted, I have the right to be as bitter and twisted as I want to be when it comes to Jon Brown.”

  “Oh, we’re back to calling him Jon Brown again?”

  “Fine, Jasper Brunswick. Whatever he’s calling himself this week.”

  “He’s been calling himself Jasper Brunswick for at least the last six years.”

  I ignored her. “And look at what he wrote about me! ‘Monstrous ego’!”

  “You’re so vain, you probably think that column’s about you.”

  I threw the leftover crust from my sourdough toast at her. “There’s no probably about it.”

  “He also said you were a saviour. Are you going to get a messiah complex now?”

  “Dec would say I already had one.” I had to jump in and say it before she did.

  “And he’d be right.” She refilled our water glasses. “Anyway, Jasper did the right thing in the end, didn’t he?”

  “What, recanting his accusation that I deliberately threw him in the Yarra?”

  “You have to admit, you enjoyed it a little bit.”

  “Seeing I ended up in the drink as well, not really.”

  Fran giggled at the memory. “The way you looked, coming out of the water!”

  The memory was still too recent for me to find much humour in it.

  “Anyway, Jasper didn’t have to recant, but he did it.”

  “Okay, we should nominate him for the Nobel Acting in Accordance with the Standard Definition of Human Decency Prize.”

  “You always get so verbose when you’re snarky.”

  “Says the woman using the word ‘verbose’. And speaking of verbose, I doubt Jasper Brunswick was able to come up with the word ‘heteronormativity’ all on his own.”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re meant to be getting me out of the house, not depressing me. Do you want another coffee?”

  I slumped back in my chair, defeated. “Dumb question.”

  Fran sighed, and got up to order another round. I was left staring at the Reach Out. I opened it back to Jasper’s column and began rereading. In the aftermath of the Greg Heyward saga, Jasper’s star had increased, but he didn’t seem any happier than that person on the bridge I had—accidentally—broken the arm of and almost—accidentally—drowned.

  “Poor bastard,” I murmured.

  “What?” Fran sat back down across the table and looked at me expectantly.

  “Nothing.”

  Feeling sympathy for Jasper Brunswick was something I would have to take to the grave with me. Anger felt so much better.

  “THIS IS just going to end up really boring, isn’t it?” Fran asked me as she paid for the bulk package of Chinese lanterns.

  “Lanterns are nice,” I said. “It’s not like this is an event for haut monde.”

  “You’re talking about the most special day for my children,” she warned.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I said quickly. “I just meant your guests aren’t the cream of society. And I’m including myself among them! Chinese lanterns are fine.”

  “Yes, they’re fine. But not brilliant.”

  “Save the brilliance for something the kids will actually remember. If you try to bust out Chinese lanterns for their twenty-first, I promise I’ll stop you.”

  Fran clutched her chest. “Twenty-first? Oh, god, I can’t imagine them being twenty-one.”

  “Yeah, especially as we’ll be in our fifties.”

  “Stop it!”

  “We’re growing old.”

  “Says the man who still acts like he’s sixteen.”

  “Says the woman who is married to a man who still acts like he’s thirteen,” I countered.

  “Must be why you’re best friends.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Fran?”

  “What?”

  “The Chinese lanterns are really cute.”

  AND THEY were. The naming ceremony itself was during the day, but by the time dinner had been served, night was falling. Everybody was hanging around in the backyard, drinking, socialising (and, of course, still eating) under the multicoloured lights swaying in the slight breeze.

  The ceremony had gone without a hitch. I had imagined some family members giving Dec and me the evil eye as we stood beside Roger and Fran, pledging to help “raise” their children throughout their lives. The celebrant talked about the importance of love in all forms, and I overheard one of Roger’s aunts whispering how “wonderfully politically correct” everything was.

  Afterwards the
babies were handed around like prize trophies, with everybody wanting their turn. Dec and I were also the subject of attention, both for the novelty of being the first gay godparents they had ever met, and also because of the star power of Declan Tyler™, football god. Well, ex-football god—but that never diminished any footballer’s reputation in the eyes of the AFL fan.

  While Dec was cornered by a very enthusiastic cousin of Fran’s, I managed to escape and found Abe, Dec’s best friend and the other ex-football god in my life, stretched out on a deck chair next to a honeysuckle bush.

  “Where’s Lisa?” I asked, taking the seat next to him.

  “Chasing the babies, I think.” He grinned, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Really?” Lisa and Abe always talked about how they weren’t the parental type.

  He immediately guessed what I was thinking. “Neither of us dislike kids. They can be fun to be around. We just like being able to give them back to their parents and being able to go home and drink a few bottles of wine without worry.”

  “So you guys never talked about having kids?” I asked.

  “Of course we talked about it.”

  “And you never wanted to have any?”

  Abe stared at me for a long moment, as if he was wondering if this would lead to a joke or a trap. “For a bit.”

  “Really?” This was new information.

  “Yeah, I mean, I thought I did. But I guess it was just the expectation, you know? Everybody expects you to have kids when you’ve been with someone for a while, whether you’re married or not.”

  “Not if you’re gay.”

  Abe smiled. “Give it time. That won’t escape even the gays, soon enough. I bet people are already looking at you and Dec wondering if you’re going to have one. Shit, if Fran and Roger cark it you’ll have two ready-made.”

  I wanted to laugh, but it was a sobering thought—most of all because it involved the death of two of my best friends. “So you didn’t really want them?”

  Abe shrugged. “No. I just thought I had to. And that’s what Lisa thought. In fact, we were both thinking the other wanted it.”

  “Would you have had kids if she wanted them?”