‘How did you find these websites?’ Mum demands, her voice rising in pitch.
Tears are falling. ‘Why does that even matter?’
‘Did someone link you to them?’
‘No, Mum,’ I say, exasperated.
‘Did Charlie Roth tell you about any of these sites?’
‘No. Mum. I don’t have anything to do with him.’
‘So who told you about these websites?’
‘Nobody did,’ I whimper.
‘So you searched for them? Did you type in those words yourself?’
‘Mum. Stop it. Please. Let it go.’
I want to scream at her. She’s already got my carcass on the end of her lance, so why play with the corpse?
‘Have you been speaking to anyone online?’
‘Oh my God. No.’
‘Any men?’
‘No. God.’ Horror strikes me. ‘You can’t tell Dad about this.’
‘Too late,’ comes the gravelly growl from the hallway.
I cross my arms over the table and plunge my face into my arm hairs, tears falling onto the plastic table covering as my shoulders shake.
‘I’m not gay,’ I tell the terracotta tiles. ‘I’m not.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ Mum says. ‘All this rubbish at school must have just confused you.’
‘Bloody Roth kid,’ Dad snarls.
‘We aren’t trained to deal with this,’ Mum says, like I’m a new customer looking for a type of insurance her firm doesn’t sell. ‘You’re going to go and see Father Mulroney. Confession. And whatever he says to do for penance, you do it. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anything else we should know?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. Get to bed. We won’t speak of this again.’
I escape the room without looking at either of them. Lock my bedroom door. Light off. Slide under my Superman cover.
There are two new messages in the group chat I have with Jeremy and Pedro. Dudes, delete your browser history ASAP!!! Jeremy wrote an hour ago. Ze parents. Zey are onto us. And zey found the lesbian porn.
And the reply from Pedro: a modified GIF of Alfred from Batman saying, ‘Some parents just want to watch the world burn.’ Lesbian porn is vanilla, mate. I just had to explain to my mother what bukkake is. It’s too late for us but save yourself, Master Zeke!
I don’t reply. I can’t. I want to tell them how lucky they are, that I’d give anything for my parents to have found nothing but lesbian porn and bukkake videos in my history. Hell, Dad would probably be relieved that I was a proper red-blooded Italian boy. What my parents found was so much worse than just porn, and I’m not sure I can survive them knowing about it. I definitely couldn’t survive telling my mates. All I want is to delete the whole lot of it: the internet history, the priest, the group chat, even my damn parents.
I curl up into a ball in bed and imagine how much better it would feel to not exist.
5: Testosterone
Charlie
‘You can’t chuck a sickie every day, you know,’ Mum says as I bang the flywire door shut. ‘The school rang me again today. I know you didn’t go.’
‘I needed a mental health day,’ I mutter, kicking my skate shoes off.
Before I’m in her line of sight, Mum cackles from the lounge room. ‘How pooncy is that! Mental health day! They soften you kids up into whiny little girls these days.’
I march past the opening to the lounge, hoping to look busy enough or upset enough that they will leave me alone.
It’s naïve to think that will work.
‘C’mere, Chuckie!’ Fitzy calls, before letting out a massive beery burp.
I backtrack just enough to be able to see them both, their gross fat bodies spreading over the armchairs like toxic sludge. Mum’s ashtray is overflowing; she has a dart in her gob as she nods at me without taking her eyes off whatever trash show is on at five in the arvo. Beside her, Fitzy’s still got the microwave spread out on the pine coffee table, nuts and bolts and panels all over the place and a longneck of VB resting in the centre. The microwave’s been on the table for at least a week now.
‘I’m in a rush,’ I say. ‘Just came to get my guitar. We’ve got rehearsal at Hannah’s.’
‘Typical gay boy, hanging out with a bunch of girls,’ Fitzy says.
Mum laughs.
‘Hannah’s been in the band for ages,’ I say. ‘I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.’
‘Hang on a second,’ Fitzy says. ‘You can’t just disrespect your mother like that. You owe us an explanation as to where you’ve been all day. Not down at the wharf sucking sailor cock, I hope?’
He wheezes with laughter; Mum cackles along with him. You’d think after two days they’d start to think it was less funny to have a gay boy in the house, but it’s like they’re dogs with a new squeaky toy.
‘Down the wharf, ay?’ I say, raising my eyebrows. ‘Is that where you go to suck cock, Fitz? Thanks for the tip, man.’
His ugly, stubbled face purples and he crosses his thick, Bali-tattooed arms over his chest.
‘Don’t turn your sarcasm on me, you little shit,’ Fitzy says. ‘If you ask me, you’re a bit too cocky for a kid who just got outed as a poofter. You oughta have your tail between your legs.’ His eyes shine with the birth of a new joke. ‘Well, not that you really need what’s in between your legs anymore, anyway.’
Flames flutter through my chest; my fists curl. I set my feet apart and stare him down. I have something to prove here.
‘I’m still a man, Fitzy,’ I declare. ‘Every part of me that’s meant to be here is here.’
‘Except the part of you that’s meant to like tits,’ he jeers. ‘They must’ve screwed up at the factory and forgot to put that part in, huh?’
I scowl at him. ‘I’d rather be gay than a desperate, fat fuck like you that has to go after married women rather than find his own.’
‘That’s enough!’ Mum roars.
‘You’re dead, queer boy!’ Fitzy cries, picking up a screwdriver from the coffee table and struggling to his feet.
Adrenaline courses through me. ‘I’m only dead if you catch me, ya fat fuck!’ I shout, racing for the door and escaping to the street.
I bolt down the weedy, overgrown footpath on Mitchell Street, backpack bouncing and slamming into my spine. After a few seconds, I glance back. Fitzy isn’t chasing after me. Doubt he even made it out of the house. Probably wheezing at the front door right now blaming his ankles. Typical.
I slow to a walk, chuck my headphones on and blast a heavy Bush track. This is pretty much all I’ve done for the past two days: walk around, eat junk food, listen to music. I haven’t touched social media in two days and frankly I’m not sure I want to ever again. I made the mistake of logging in on Wednesday night, after Alicia Stratton posted her rant. Loads of homophobic shit from people in my mother’s generation, but that wasn’t what hurt the most. You expect that from dropkicks. What hurt was all the memes people from school had made about me being gay. I had my head photoshopped onto all kinds of weird shit for people to laugh at. That’s what I was. Not something to be hated for being gay, but something to mock. Something hilarious. Not even a human being anymore. Meme fodder.
A few people tried to message me. Most were just outright dickheads, sending me the memes ‘in case I’d missed them’. Some of the popular girls pretended to care, but they’d never spoken to me before and I knew they just wanted the inside scoop of what happened with Kevin Stratton. One of the stoners messaged me out of the blue saying he was sorry to hear what had happened and since I was now gay, did I know anyone who sold pingas.
I’d ignored them all. I couldn’t bear talking to any of them. What I wanted were my friends.
Hannah lives in Bluff Point, which is on the other side of the North West Coastal Highway. Bluff Point is nicer than Spalding in the way that one flat tyre is better than two. There’s a bottle shop that’s been shut for at least as long
as I’ve been alive, abandoned, its sign rusting year on year. The other shops are of the lick-of-paint-over-brown-brick variety. There’s a video shop still operating, people outside using the last public phone in the universe while their pyjama-clad kids run barefoot on the oil-stained asphalt.
The roller shutter of Hannah’s garage is down when I rock up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it closed. I never even knew it was painted green.
There’s no noise from the house, either. No discordant bass tuning. No Hannah swearing at her little brother. No whirr of the plastic pedestal fans that aren’t a patch on decent air con.
I knock. I’ve never knocked here.
The wooden door opens, but there’s no metallic click and no movement of the cream-painted security screen. The hallway’s shrouded in shadow.
‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Is that you, Hannah?’
‘I cancelled rehearsal.’
Hannah’s voice is hoarse, like a chain-smoker’s.
‘No you didn’t,’ I say. ‘You never messaged me.’
‘So you do have your phone.’ The voice is coming from beside the doorframe. She’s pressed against the wall, out of sight.
‘Of course. I never said I didn’t.’
‘So you could have messaged me.’
‘What?’
‘You are the biggest jerk, Charlie.’
‘What the hell did I do?’
‘I had to hear about it from my dipshit brother. He asked me if looking at me during rehearsal was what turned you gay. I thought he was just being a turd until I saw the stuff online.’
‘So you know.’
‘No, I’m the only person in Geraldton who doesn’t know Charlie Roth is a flaming homo.’
‘I’m not flaming.’
‘You might as well be. You’re a shit, Charlie. You didn’t message me. You didn’t even rock up to school.’
‘You could have messaged me. Works both ways.’
The metal latch finally clicks and the security screen swings open. Hannah barrels out onto the paved porch with a face like a Rottweiler who’s been chained up two feet away from a bowl of Chum.
She shoves me as hard as she can, and it’s so unexpected that I topple to the ground.
‘Pathetic!’ she declares, standing over me as I scramble to my feet. My elbow’s grazed. Blood.
‘What the fuck?’ I say.
‘I thought we were best friends, Charlie. How long have you known? Were you ever going to tell me?’
I stare back at her; her hazel eyes are bloodshot and bloodthirsty.
‘A couple of years,’ I say blankly, wiping my elbow on my tank top and getting up to my feet. It doesn’t hurt. I’m still numb. Have been for two days. ‘And no, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.’ I swallow. ‘I hadn’t even told myself, really.’
‘I feel so betrayed,’ she declares. ‘You’re a bad friend for not telling me.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You should be.’
Hannah scowls and hoists the sleeves of her black hoodie up a few inches. There’s only one reason girls wear jumpers in February, and Hannah is one of those girls. There’d have to be a dozen little red lines along her wrists.
A parabola of panic darts across my heart.
‘I thought you stopped that after the swimming carnival,’ I say.
‘Well, I started again, thanks to you. I never thought my best friend would make me feel so lonely.’
The wavelength of panic transforms into irritation. I can’t have this conversation with her for the twentieth time, and I really don’t care to talk about her problems when my brain is so overheated from my own shit.
‘Look, I’m the one who’s having a hard time. I just wanted to come over here and play some music and block everything else out, and I couldn’t even get my guitar because Fitzy was being a tool. Can you just open up the garage and we can jam? I can borrow your old Gibson.’
Hannah’s hands are on her wide hips. ‘No. I don’t want to be in the same room as you.’
‘Then just open the garage and let me play. I need this. Is Rocky coming for rehearsal?’
‘No. I told you, I cancelled it.’
‘You texted him, but not me?’
‘I just couldn’t handle talking to you!’ Hannah spits, grabbing a fistful of hair the colour of mould; the green she put in has faded badly.
A plume of lava rips through my guts, a dormant volcano remembering itself.
‘Hannah!’ I shout, poking my finger into her collarbone and pressing as hard as I can. ‘This. Isn’t. About. You! Stop being a shit friend. Me being gay has no impact on you at all.’
Blood returns to my arteries for the first time since Tuesday night.
Hannah backs away from me. In typical Hannah form, she’s gone from scowl to quivering lips and wet eyes.
‘How is it,’ she says slowly, ‘that I’m the one in spac maths, when you’re the thickest idiot in this whole town.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I think we should put Acid Rose on hiatus after our last two gigs are done.’
‘What? Because I’m gay?’
‘Because there are obviously trust issues between us.’
‘You can’t make decisions for the whole band. Rocky’s not here.’
‘He already agreed.’
I can barely feel my feet. All the blood in my body has rushed to my face. My band doesn’t want me. The only good thing left in my life – my only ticket out of this town – just imploded in an instant.
‘So I don’t get any say at all?’ I shout. I don’t plan to shout. It’s just what comes out.
‘Two on one,’ Hannah says. ‘You’re not the only one who can leave people out of the loop.’
She whirls around in a cloud of black hoodie and disappears back into the shadow of the house, slamming both doors behind her.
‘You suck!’ I yell.
I wait for a minute in case she comes back. She doesn’t.
I lean against the garage door, kicking it with my skate shoe. It sounds so thin and hollow. I lean down and try to get a grip on the bottom of the roller shutter, but as I scrabble for something to pull, I hear a loud cough. The attention-seeking kind of cough.
Hannah’s middle-aged neighbour across the street has his eyes trained on me as he waters his palms.
‘Better get on your bike, mate,’ he says. If he’s not a teacher, he’s nailed the vocal inflections.
Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do, Four Eyes? the voice in my head roars.
You don’t know anything about me or Hannah or what I’m going through, it shouts, just when I think it’s done.
Then I think he’s probably right that getting on a bike would be a good idea and better than trudging all the way into town on foot, so I sneak down the side of the house and nick Hannah’s bike.
‘Is that yours to take?’ the neighbour calls as I straddle the ripped seat and fit my headphones carefully over my black industrial piercing.
‘Nup,’ I say, grinning my head off at him. ‘What are you gonna do about it?’
I pull the finger at him and pedal as fast as I can back towards the Bluff Point shops.
I stop at the deli to grab an iced coffee from the fridge. The woman at the kiosk wears a red-and-blue apron over a navy polo shirt and her name badge is so faded it looks like it doesn’t even have a name on it anymore. I think about buying a pack of cigarettes. I know one day I’ll end up smoking but I never seem able to take that step. I end up asking for a lighter. I watch her face to see if she reacts. What does she think of me buying a lighter? Does she think I’m a smoker, or maybe that I’m smoking more than cigarettes? Most people at school think I’m a stoner, but I’m not. I saw where that got Dad. But the lady doesn’t say anything, just scans the lighter and glances at the clock on the wall as she waits for me to hand over the cash. There’s nothing on her weathered face other than a hard line where a smile used to be.
I walk the bike out into the car park and scull the iced coffee. Some deros are
having a shouting match over the road beside the public phone. I finish the coffee quick, chuck my headphones back on, and ride into town.
Chapman Road hugs the coast all the way into the centre of Geraldton, though a bit too closely: the erosion brings the waves almost up onto the faded bitumen. One day, a chunk of this road is going to fall into the ocean like it did up at Drummonds. Until it actually does though, nobody will do anything about it.
But everyone knows it’ll happen.
As I ride into town, the sun begins to set over the Indian Ocean: it’s like someone’s shining a torch through a broken egg yolk. I scroll from Nirvana to Hole to Spiderbait to Killing Heidi. All guitars and thrash and angst and pain.
Why isn’t anyone talking to me about what happened? It was seismic, but there’ve been no words. People either want to laugh like Fitzy and Mum. Or they flip out like Hannah. Or they just avoid me. Even school hasn’t tried to hassle me to see a counsellor. Even school doesn’t want to make sure I stay alive.
Everything in my life is falling apart, but suddenly I’m not sure any of it was together in the first place.
I ride past the revheads gathered in the Northgate car park and take my time touring around the boardwalk at the marina as twilight strikes. I see a couple of German tourists taking selfies near the museum and ask them if they want me to take a photo for them. They say no.
I wheel through Marine Terrace. It’s dead, except for some pissheads outside the Freo. I ride to the west end and grab some fish and chips from the take-away place near the Green Spot. The grassed area is immediately opposite the massive wheat silos that tower over the town like silent giants. There’s a Chinese ship docked at the wharf. I set up camp on a wooden picnic table and gorge myself on greasy gummy shark and beer-battered chips.
I remember the throwaway comment Fitzy made about me sucking sailor cock at the wharf. Does that really happen? There’s a couple of beats in town – one is a highway rest stop and the other is a toilet block in a park – but I’ve never heard anyone talk about the wharf as a place to hook up.
Maybe it is, though. Couldn’t hurt to find out.
I take as long as I can with my dinner, so it’s dark by the time I’m done. The tourists are long gone from the foreshore, evacuated to the warm orange lights of the bars and restaurants, or maybe the cinema. It’s deathly quiet now. It’s eerie to hear waves breaking in a city centre at night.
Invisible Boys Page 7
