Mum and Dad were a little suspicious at first, but warmed to the idea, and so a Sunday lunch was organised. We sat outside in beautiful spring weather feasting on smoked trout, stuffed mushrooms and a green salad. Brenton was an absolute charmer, witty, engaging. Mum laughed so hard at times that I thought she’d wet her pants, and even Dad loosened up. Brenton then gave me my cue.
I made my way into the house with the plates, put them in the dishwasher and stood at the sink trying to look like I wasn’t watching.
Mum’s laughing face became solemn. She was tense, her shoulders up around her ears. She looked tired. All I could see of Dad was his back. It was rigid. Mum wiped away the odd tear. Dad’s hand reached out and patted hers. I couldn’t believe my sexuality could cause so much pain.
I wasn’t sure when to go back out, but figured it was better to take too long than not long enough. I turned the percolator down. Just my luck, it started to vomit almost straight away and the kitchen was filled with the heady aroma of coffee. I loaded the tray. ‘Is it okay to come out now?’ I called. Brenton consulted Mum and Dad and waved me over.
They looked embarrassed until Dad toasted me with coffee. ‘We love you, son.’ Brenton’s wink reassured me that everything was okay. We walked him out to his car and waved him goodbye. ‘He’s a very special man,’ Dad mused.
A few days later I sat in Brenton’s office. ‘I believe your parents’ reaction is based in love. Your mother believes that only bad things can come of this and she’s genuinely concerned for you. I told her I believed that whatever you and John do, you will do it with dignity.’ I was impressed. ‘Your father thinks you shouldn’t make a decision just yet. He’s worried that you’re closing off your options. I’m inclined to agree. But that doesn’t invalidate your present feelings for John.’
He had something else to say. ‘Your mother is concerned about John staying over. It might take them some time to get used to the idea. These are new things for them. And I think they’re blaming themselves. Give them time and don’t push too hard.’
I still felt anxious but knew I had Brenton and John to help me through this.
To say goodbye to us, the school threw a Valete dinner. Before it the headmaster said Mass in the school chapel. John and I sat together, our parents with us. It was a chance to introduce them. The dads shook hands, the mums waved to each other.
John had been selected to read the lesson and was quite nervous. His legs were bouncing in anticipation. He shuffled out of the pew and climbed up to the lectern. Someone behind us started whispering. I had a strong urge to turn and ask him to be quiet while my boyfriend was reading. When John returned I patted his thigh to congratulate him and then realised what that must have looked like.
In the Great Hall were long trestle tables covered in white damask. A large buffet was laid. I looked round the tables and sadness washed over me. I probably wouldn’t see these guys again. I recalled the crushes I’d had, devastating and more often than not unrequited – Rhys and all the rest. The next news I’d hear would be that they’d married so-and-so, a good Catholic girl.
The meal was followed by a prize-giving. The winners had already been sent to a bookshop to choose their prizes. I had won the politics prize and chose The Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, hoping to find some more gay references.
The book had the school emblem embossed on its cover. I was nursing it on the way home when out of the blue Dad said that John’s mother was very striking. Perhaps my attraction to John is inherited from my father.
The worst was yet to come: the Higher School Certificate, the exams that could determine the rest of our lives. We had two weeks to study. I made up a timetable, trying to convince myself that since school was a six-hour day, I could get by on the same timetable at home. However, I soon realised I’d need to work longer than that if I was to revise everything. And worst of all, there was going to be little or no time to see John. We spoke to each other every day and met on Saturday afternoon but it was hard to relax. Gotta go. Gotta revise valency.
But eventually it was all over and the holidays were here.
In the last few months of school John and I had hung round with a new group of guys, Da Boyz. Biscuit, Eric – from John’s football team, lean like a marathon runner – and Rick, tall and strongly built with glasses and a wicked sense of humour. Da Boyz were going on holiday to Eric’s family shack at Kallista in the Dandenongs. It would be a chance to drink, share war stories about our exams and bask in our new freedom.
The others decided to cycle the whole thirty-two kilometres from Melbourne, but John and I took the train part of the way, realising only when we got to Belgrave that the hardest ride was ahead. At every bend the road got steeper and cliffs dropped further. I hopped off my bike and walked up the next hill. John had stopped quite a way in front of me. With hands on hips and an evil smile he yelled that perhaps we should stop for a cigarette.
‘I’m giving up, okay? I have to stop for a sec,’ I wheezed.
The road eased off a bit but my legs and lungs were yelling at me to stop.
At last we arrived at a small village. The air was cool and moist with a heady smell of rotting vegetation, but the house was on a hill bathed in sunlight. It stood before us, a weatherboard castle. I let my bike crash to the ground, followed closely by my weary bod. John, smug about his superior fitness, went to find the fuse-box. Jesus, I’ve got to find a couch.
The interior was open and airy. A mock fireplace held fake logs that looked like grilled steak. On the mantelpiece, the window-sills, and in a small display cabinet were endless knick-knacks – glass animals, Snow White and three dwarfs, a vase decorated with a painting of Hanging Rock – probably relics Eric’s mother couldn’t bear to part with but was too embarrassed to have in her swanky Balwyn residence.
In the olds’ bedroom I plunged onto the marshmallow mattress. I wonder how many of Eric’s brothers and sisters were conceived on this bed? I was in heaven. On the dresser was a bottle of baby shampoo which wasn’t clear yellow but an opaque blue-green. Time for some scientific investigation. I clicked the lid open and took a cautious sniff. Avocado moisturiser. Does his mother buy it in vats and decant it? This could be handy if things get a bit sexy.
‘The fuse-box was hard to find.’ I turned to see a sweaty John taking off his T-shirt. He wiped his face and armpits with it and threw it to the floor, then crawled onto the bed beside me. We lay there on our backs, hands behind our heads, smiling at each other. I could feel the heat from his body even though we weren’t touching.
‘Hi, spunk,’ I mouthed. John leant on one elbow, put his hand on my chest and kissed me very gently. Things were getting a bit sexy. Nuzzling noses in sweaty jocks. Slow release of hardened cocks. The smell of workers on the docks. I leapt off the bed towards the avocado moisturiser, my hard-on bouncing joyfully against my stomach as I crossed the room with my shorts around my ankles.
The squirty sound of the stream of avocado. Hands full of cock and moisturiser and soon to be spilling over with our offspring. ‘Ye-e-es. Oh, yes.’
We lay in a blissful coma, me with my shoes and socks still on and John’s head on my chest, his arm across my body and his warm breath caressing me, and the sticky chlorine smell of our spoof mixed with the avocado moisturiser.
‘Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey!’ Rick put his head around the door. ‘Oops, sorry!’ He pulled the door to, but we could hear whispering and laughing.
I was embarrassed. Putting shorts on over my shoes wasn’t as easy as having John tear them off. ‘Relax, Tim. They don’t care.’
I cared. The top button of my shorts popped and rolled into the black hole under the bed. I laughed and bounced back beside my little lustbucket. ‘I suddenly realise how Catholic I sound.’
‘You are a Catholic.’
‘So are you!’
‘It’s not an insult, Tim.’
I became aware of a burning sensation around my dick and balls. Then I found John was in agony too.
‘What was in that bottle?’ he wanted to know.
‘Moisturiser. Wasn’t it?’
‘It’s not yours?’ John asked as calmly as he could.
‘No, it was here. I’ll ask Eric.’
I grabbed John’s T-shirt from the floor, wiped the spoof and the green slime off my stomach, and ventured out.
Da Boyz sat on the lounge in total silence. Then they broke into a round of applause and stomped their feet. ‘Bravo, bravo!’ How do you maintain dignity in the face of such humiliation? I drew Eric into the kitchen. It was bare except for a tray of Ratsak on the bench. ‘What was in the bottle on the dresser?’ I said under my breath. ‘It’s a baby-shampoo bottle but it has some green stuff in it.’
‘Anti-dandruff shampoo. Joy buys it in bulk at some discount chemist and then decants it.’
I called John. There was another standing ovation as he crossed the lounge. ‘Thanks, guys.’ I took him by the hand and led him to the bathroom where we flopped our bits into the basin and drowned them. They were getting a major workout this particular day.
‘You’re only supposed to leave it on your head for five minutes,’ John said. ‘We were probably asleep for half an hour. Maybe longer. Maybe we should ring the poisons information people.’
‘And say what?’
‘I don’t know,’ John snapped. ‘You’re the expert on everything.’
Time heals all things, even scrotums. Over the following days we saw the soft pink flesh of our bits turn dark brown and grow tough as leather. It was like when you leave a sausage uncovered in the fridge for a few days. And then we peeled! Huge tracts of penis dandruff, incredibly itchy. The desire to help the peeling process along was almost overwhelming. It was a gruelling test of restraint and a waste of three days of love-making.
Pepe brought her friends Prue and Kate up for a picnic. They and Da Boyz checked each other out like dogs meeting in the street. As we sat out in the backyard under the trees and the Hills Hoist, chewing on makeshift sandwiches, I described our collision with the shampoo to intense laughter. My head was in John’s lap, my favourite place in the world. This was where I belonged, part of a gang, a gang that included my boyfriend.
The next day when Da Boyz took a walk through the bush, our shirts off so we could work on our suntans, Biscuit tapping the ground with a stick to scare off the snakes, that sense of belonging was there too.
John had been spotted by a talent scout and asked to train with the Essendon Under Nineteens. It meant that he might one day play for the Essendon seniors, which would be a dream come true. Training started in summer, so John had to leave Kallista early. Rick also had to be back in Melbourne, so Eric, Biscuit and I figured we’d share the same room. We dragged a mattress from the other bedroom and placed it between two beds for a kind of slumber party.
‘What’s the most bizarre sexual thing you’ve heard of?’ someone asked.
‘A guy who cored an orange and used it to wank with,’ came the reply.
‘Farm boys get the poddy calves to suck them off,’ Eric said. ‘Poor calf’s waiting for milk but gets a mouth full of spoof.’
I felt safe in the dark, safe to open up. ‘I’ve got something I want to ask. We all wank, right? Well, how do you do it? I sort of pump the bed, like I’m fucking it.’
‘Making little baby beds,’ Biscuit joked.
‘That’s kind of like what I do,’ Eric said. ‘Leave my jocks on and then put a flannel down the front and pump it.’
‘Don’t you share your bedroom with two brothers?’
‘I can come without making any noise.’
Biscuit said, ‘I rub the head of my cock with my thumb and finger really fast until I come.’ He added quietly, ‘I think I might do it now.’ Silence. We all did it. Biscuit’s way must have been efficient because he came really fast. I found it horny to be in a room full of boys wanking, so it didn’t take me long either.
‘C’mon Eric, you can do it,’ Biscuit teased.
‘Shut up, will you.’ And then he came, but not as quietly as he’d said. It wasn’t exactly a circle jerk but it was a ritual moment in our friendship.
PART TWO
Out in the World
Chapter FIVE
Young Gays
John went to college to train as a chiropractor. Most of the Xavier guys wanted to go to Melbourne University and be lawyers or doctors. I chose science at Monash, partly because of its history of student activism.
During the Vietnam War there had been large student demos and a sit-in in the chancellor’s office that took days to break. There were still remnants of that radicalism: the Wholefood Restaurant run by the anarchist collective, a small café thick with dope smoke; and the Community Research Action Centre, a collective of the political left, including the Trotskyites, the Gaysoc, and the anti-uranium lobby.
If this wasn’t enough to keep you from your studies there was an array of activities, film clubs, band nights and, the biggest hook for me, student theatre. Its office was a hotbed of ideas and gossip that was always far more interesting than physics, and so my studies began to suffer.
There were lots of good-looking men, some available, some gay. I started to feel I wanted to broaden my horizons, to explore my sexuality. Perhaps I was missing out on something because I had been with the same guy for two years. But I felt I lacked experience. If I did go to bed with someone, would I know what to do? Would he laugh at me, even run away in horror, if I did something I liked doing with John? This feeling kept me from straying too far, but it didn’t stop the crushes or the flirting.
Grandma was no longer using her car, so, as I was about to get my licence, Dad approached her about giving it to me. The car was sent over from Adelaide by motorail, and Dad and I went into town to collect it – a pale blue Morris Major Elite with white trim. It was like a Noddy car, but with flash wings on the back like retro rockets. Noddy, I think that’d be a good name.
A week later I bounced in through the kitchen door and found Mum talking to Tom, a boy I had known since demanding an invitation to his seventh birthday. We had become intellectual sparring partners, arguing about who made the universe (Tom was an atheist). We were extremely competitive and sometimes our arguments became fights. But our families became quite close, even spending vacations together. I held up my driving licence with a conqueror’s grin. Mum and Tom congratulated me. I offered to take him for a drive.
Tom was in a talkative mood, rambling on about the different styles of his lecturers. Approaching a stop sign, I put my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake and we catapulted through the intersection, narrowly missing a car that swerved to avoid us.
Tom went on as though nothing had happened. ‘My English professor, who I’m sure is gay –’ I interrupted to ask how he knew that. ‘He shares a room at college with another man and he’s obsessive about Oscar Wilde.’
‘I’m gay.’ I let the words sit in the air.
‘How funny. I think I am too.’
We both laughed. But we didn’t do the ‘How long have you known, how’s it been for you?’ number. For some reason I felt embarrassed, naked, exposed. After a silence Tom spoke. ‘Actually, I quite like your friend John.’
I burst out laughing. ‘John is my boyfriend.’ He looked despondent.
I rang John to tell him my great news and arranged to pick him up at Princes Bridge. ‘See you there, Peter Brock,’ he laughed.
I could see John waiting, neatly dressed. I tooted, and his face lit up at the sight of me driving. He got in and patted the dashboard. ‘Hello, Noddy.’
I drove us to Point Ormond. I guessed from the number of parked cars that it was probably a lovers’ lane. We sat holding hands, looking over the bay sparkling under the moon. Now we could be alone together whenever we wanted, without parents breathing down our necks. John leant over and kissed me. He tried to move closer but bumped his knee on the gearstick. I leant down to kiss it better but found the gearstick in my chest. We climbed into the back seat a
nd sat there kissing, our tongues mingling. John suggested we lie down. That wasn’t easy either. Our knees and feet were squashed up against the window. Then John kneed me in the balls. We’d have to open the door. But not there.
We drove around looking for a secluded place to open the door and finally, in Port Melbourne, found a huge street lined with big factories and not a single car or person in sight. We hopped into the back, opened the door on the gutter side and lay down with our legs hanging out the side. It was still difficult but at least we were lying together comfortably, face to face. Slowly jeans came undone, jocks slid down, and we pulled each other off.
‘I wonder what Grandma would say if she knew what we were doing in her car?’
Mum and Dad had relaxed their stand on John staying over, as long as he slept in the front room. So we’d wait until everyone was asleep, then he’d sneak down to my room and we’d get naked and sexy.
On this night John was writhing on my bed as I sucked his cock. I loved having him in my control, in my face. This had become a regular part of our lovemaking.
‘Stop. I’m going to come.’ I crawled up to be near him. ‘That was great but I want you inside me.’
‘You want to suck me?’
‘I want you to screw me,’ he said in my ear. I was very turned on by the prospect but it clashed with deep feelings that anal sex was unnatural, dirty.
‘Please,’ John implored. He turned onto his stomach and presented his arse to me. I nudged his sphincter with my cock but it wasn’t going to open. ‘Keep trying.’ I kept nudging until my cock felt it was about to break in half. Suddenly I was in. John caught his breath. ‘Gentle. Gentle.’
‘Can I go in further?’
‘Slowly.’ He caught his breath again. I wasn’t enjoying the pain. I started to caress him and kiss the back of his neck. I took one of his earlobes into my mouth and chewed on it. Suddenly I was a lot further in. I could feel his pulse through his warm moist rectum.