The next morning, I tried to ring Blake to tell him, but couldn’t get hold of him. He often turned his phone off if he was busy at work or had meetings. When I tried again from Melbourne airport, he still wasn’t answering. I thought of sending a text, but then it occurred to me how surprised he would be if I just turned up. Then I could take him out somewhere nice for dinner.
When the taxi dropped me outside our house, I found it in darkness. It hadn’t occurred to me that Blake might have plans. Usually, he liked to spend Friday night at home as he was so wiped out from the week at work. We tended to have dinner out somewhere local and grab a DVD. I checked my watch. It was almost eight. I walked inside and noticed he had started packing a few things away in readiness for the renovations. I figured he had probably gone for dinner on Crown Street with Damon or someone. I decided to ring him, find out where he was, but not let on that I was back; then turn up and surprise him.
As I headed out the door, I dialled Blake’s number, noticing as I passed by that Rick was home. Suddenly, I heard the sound of Blake’s phone. His ring tone was distinctive and it was weird to hear it when I was actually calling him. Of course he had to be nearby, though there was no sign of him. Then I thought to terminate the call. After a few moments the ringing stopped. It was Blake’s phone, though now that it had stopped, I wasn’t sure where the sound had been coming from. Could it have been from Rick’s? His door was open. I redialled Blake’s number, then turned and walked back to Rick’s. The ringing started up, confirming the phone as Blake’s. It was definitely coming from inside Rick’s house. I marched up to the front door and was about to yell out or press the doorbell, when something odd struck me: Blake was showing no inclination to answer my call. Blake’s message began in my ear as the ringing inside the house ceased.
I could hear Rick’s voice quite distinctly. ‘Are you going to call him back?’ he asked.
It was a question I was rather interested in hearing the answer to. But then a car drove past and drowned out Blake’s reply. By the time it had moved out of earshot, all I heard was laughter from down the hall.
I was affronted that Blake hadn’t taken my call, not once, but twice, and also startled to discover him at Rick’s place. He hadn’t mentioned anything on the phone about being invited. Though he had said he was trying to smooth things over, so perhaps that explained it. Nevertheless, I still felt irritated, excluded and jealous that Rick hadn’t waited until I got back before returning the neighbourly hospitality. I pressed against the security gate but it was locked which was a shame. I’d planned to sneak down the hall and startle them both out of their skins. I pressed the doorbell instead. ‘Hello,’ I called out.
The music was turned down and I heard whispering. ‘It’s Stephen,’ I called again. ‘I’ve come to reclaim my missing boyfriend.’
A startled looking Rick appeared at the end of the hall, but he didn’t approach. He hovered by the staircase, looking awkward. ‘H-Hey Stephen, you’re looking for Blake? He’s not here.’
I laughed. ‘Yes he is. I just heard his phone ringing down there.’
Rick stared at me, then glanced to the side, where I knew Blake must be sitting out of view. I distinctly heard him hiss something at Rick. ‘No, you’re mistaken. I guess my friend must have the same phone as Blake. Sorry.’
The situation was weird. Perhaps I would have accepted Rick’s explanation if his manner hadn’t been so odd. Why hadn’t he simply walked down the hall to talk to me, instead of hanging back so awkwardly? I knew something wasn’t right. But obviously, Blake wasn’t there or he’d have sprung out to talk to me. Unless he was sulking over my perceived infidelities in Melbourne? ‘How come you’re home tonight?’ Rick suddenly asked. ‘I thought you weren’t due back until eight o’clock on Sunday.’
That startled me. I hadn’t seen the guy in almost a month, yet he knew the specifics of my return flight down to the hour. That spelt it out: something was going on. His body language, his reluctance to engage with me properly, it seemed obvious he was hiding something. Blake. It had to be him sitting down there in Rick’s dining room. I pressed against the door. I wanted to barge down there and demand to know what was going on.
‘I came back early because I missed my boyfriend,’ I said loudly, ‘but I’m beginning to think the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. It looks like he’s been up to no good while I’ve been gone.’
I thought that remark would propel Blake out into the hallway but it didn’t. Instead, a silence drew out and I began to feel the first knot of dread. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ shrugged Rick, not meeting my eye.
I was beginning to catch on. I had caught Blake and Rick together. Blake was hiding. Rick was awkward. It seemed pretty plain something sexual had gone on between them, unbelievable and incongruous though that was. But with me out of the way, it seemed Blake had seized the opportunity and thrown himself at Rick.
Then Rick said something nonsensical. ‘So you’ve been home, but did you actually go upstairs?’
It was such a strange question. ‘What?’ I asked confused. ‘Upstairs? No.’
‘Go home then and see what’s upstairs in the bedroom,’ said Rick in a soothing voice, as if talking to a child.
‘What are you talking about? What’s happened upstairs? Did the builders start early?’
Panic started to rise in me. Something was horribly wrong. What had Blake done upstairs? Had one of his temper tantrums and trashed the place? I was about to tear back home and investigate, when my mobile beeped. I had a message. Automatically, I retrieved my phone and punched the buttons. The message was from Blake.
The sight of his name made me go cold. What was so terrible, so troubling, that he would send me a message, instead of walking five metres down the hall to talk to me face to face?
Blake: Stephen Ive moved out
At first I thought he was referring to the renovations. After all, we were both going to be moving out and over to Strauss’s place. Then his words began to sink in. It was singular. He had moved out. I remembered the packing up that had been done. I had noticed that it was his stuff that was gone but I’d just assumed he was being his usual petty self, shunning my possessions to ensure that I did my share of the work.
My phone beeped again.
‘Come and talk to my face you weaselly chicken shit,’ I yelled down the hall.
Rick started as if he had been slapped. Then he began to confer quietly, so I couldn’t hear, with the unseen Blake. Rick gave me a nervous glance, then also stepped out of view. With nothing else to do I opened Blake’s next message.
Blake: U werent sposed 2 find out like this. Theres a letter on yr bed explaining
So that was why they wanted me to go upstairs. I re-read the text. He’d said ‘your bed’, not ‘our bed’. Blake was being very precise, very blunt in his choice of words. Rick popped his head out, no doubt to check if I was still there, then withdrew again. The phone beeped in my hand making me jump. I opened the message.
Blake: I wont talk 2 u cos u always lie and manipulate me
Rick stepped back out into the hallway. ‘It’s probably best if you go home Stephen,’ he said nervously.
I was about to snipe a sarcastic retort back, when suddenly I saw something which made the remark shrivel on my tongue. Seeing it there was like being struck. I took a step backwards in retreat. But after a few moments of absorbing what I’d seen, I understood.
There was a new picture hanging along Rick’s hallway. It had not been there when I’d called by to introduce myself a month ago. It was a print of Caravaggio’s Bacchus and Blake had bought it when we were in Italy together. That this was Blake’s picture was indisputable. He had been very particular about how that print was framed when we got home.
Evidently, my boyfriend had been ‘smoothing things over with Rick’ for weeks. He hadn’t simply had sex with Rick without me. This wasn’t a mere fling. This was something far more serious and consequential. If he was seeking refuge from me, he would go to D
amon’s, not move in with someone we barely knew … except clearly, Blake did know him, intimately, adulterously. He had bloody well moved in with him. It seemed impossible, but the evidence was irrefutable. It was hanging there on the wall, even in a rather similar position to the one it had occupied in my house.
Such a drastic act could not have been orchestrated in the three days that I’d been away. Those three days had simply permitted Blake to decamp. They must have been having an affair for weeks! Perhaps ever since that morning they’d had coffee together, while I was upstairs, insensible, asleep; and I had been half-asleep ever since not to realise something had been going on. My own vanity and expectations had blinded me to their subterfuge.
But Rick had been flirting with me! I felt so indignant. What had that been about? Had he only been responding automatically or politely to all of my innuendo? Or had it been some sort of test, to see if I was unfaithful and unworthy of Blake? Was that how he justified stealing my boyfriend? One thing I did know for certain about their ‘liaison’ was who was on top and that undeniable fact stung me the most. Blake had not just left me for a guy with a bigger dick, but for a guy with an enormous dick. I remembered the look on his face when Strauss had described Rick’s cock: ‘the Hope Diamond of Penises’— how curious he’d been. He’d asked if there were pictures of it on Gaydar. But he’d done more than see it. He’d tried it out for size and decided I no longer measured up.
Recalling that moment made something else cross my mind: what did Blake know about Gaydar anyway? Was he on it? Such a possibility had never crossed my mind. But now I realised my mistake. I had an idea, an ideal of Blake in my mind—sweet, amenable, slightly naïve— that was completely outdated. He had changed and though I’d noticed, I’d ignored it at my own peril.
It was a horrible realisation but it seemed undeniable that my Blake had secrets, even sexual secrets, that I knew nothing of.
The phone beeped again.
Blake: Go away
That command was cold and blunt. I couldn’t believe Blake could be so callous. Had Rick snatched the phone and typed that message? Blake could never have said such a thing to me face-to-face but that was the beauty of modern communications—it permitted such exquisite cruelty.
I didn’t want to go next door. It would be just like the hotel suite in Melbourne which had felt too big for me on my own. My house loomed there beside me: cold, dark and even emptier now. My legs felt suddenly weak and though I clutched at the bars of the security door, everything just seemed so overwhelming. I crumpled down onto my knees and began to cry.
I felt like Greer Garson or Joan Fontaine stooped there weeping, adultery having undone my charmed domestic world, when slowly another more unwelcome association began to form in my mind. I’d had fantasies about kneeling in this exact position on Rick’s doorstep, clutching at the bars. That night I’d shown ‘Roman Holiday’, I’d fantasised about finding Rick lurking in his hallway, his jeans round his ankles, his cock poking out from his boxer shorts, hard and splendid. He would come towards me and I would sink to my knees on his doorstep and suck him through the bars of his security door. The futility of this utterly misguided fantasy made my sobs come even harder.
I was vaguely aware of Rick’s urgent whispers to Blake, though he seemed more concerned about what the neighbours would think than about my state of mind. ‘H-He’s an actor,’ I heard Blake assert, though his voice wavered with emotion. ‘It’s just another performance.’
That unkind remark only encouraged me to raise the volume, which in turn led Eleanor to venture out from her house and call over to me, asking if I was alright. ‘No, I’m not alright,’ I snapped tearfully. ‘Blake’s left me for this … for this … horse-hung ageing gym bunny.’
It was too much information for Eleanor who scuttled away, though I noticed she went to Harriet’s house, not her own, no doubt to share this shocking news. But Eleanor had distracted me and Rick seized the opportunity. Suddenly, I heard a thud and then the click of a lock. I turned back but it was too late. Rick’s front door had been closed against me.
8
Chapter Seven
Stephen,
Attached is something of yours [the Bodyline loyalty coupon, taped back together] which I retrieved from the rubbish bin and reassembled. Your explanation for it was so far–fetched, I was curious. So I rang the phone number on the back and wasn’t that surprised when ‘Gabriel’ answered rather than Shaun. He mistook me for you so we had quite an interesting conversation, though it sounds as though you told him as much bullshit as you’ve been telling me lately. Are you some sort of compulsive liar? Still, I gather you told him you were single. That was extremely intuitive, because guess what? You are. I’m leaving you. I’m not so bothered about the actual sex. It’s the lying and deception that I won’t tolerate. If I can’t trust you, I can’t be with you. I also know that Gabriel is not an isolated incident. There have been a lot of dodgy explanations about your whereabouts recently. I don’t want to see or talk to you. Don’t even text or e–mail me. I want nothing to do with you. My decision is not open to discussion, so don’t even start.
Blake
Even after reading Blake’s note, I found it hard to believe that he had actually dumped me. Surely this note was the written equivalent of him throwing things, something which allowed him to let off steam and wound me. Yes, he was at Rick’s or with Rick, but perhaps that was just an especially cruel way to retaliate; have sex with the neighbour so he could really rub my face in his own infidelity. But as I sat there on our bed, I began to notice everything that was missing from the room: his Herb Ritts print, the pedestal fan, his bedside table, two goose-down pillows. If this was merely a tantrum, would he have bothered to take so much stuff with him?
Then I noticed that the bedroom curtains were gone and that really startled me. Of all the things to take! But of course they would fit perfectly next door. Perhaps Rick had even encouraged Blake to take them. Admittedly, Blake had organised and paid for them, but it seemed a rather petty, vindictive act. He knew I wasn’t a morning person, that I needed to sleep in and those curtains were blackout. Their absence added a new gravity to the situation. Why would he bother taking down the curtains unless he was really serious? The room looked somehow forlorn without them, as well as out of balance now that his pillows and bedside table were missing. It made me wonder what else he had helped himself to in my absence. I hurried out to investigate the other rooms of the house.
Unfortunately, we had a lot of shared possessions. Prior to meeting Blake, I’d been very lethargic and indecisive about buying furniture and home wares. After he moved in, Blake had insisted on going halves on most purchases so that it would feel more like ‘our home’ rather than ‘Stephen’s house’. At first glance downstairs, he didn’t seem to have taken that much—the juicer, most of the cookbooks, some CDs and DVDs, the coffee table he liked, that Bacchus print. I was just thankful I’d come home early. He’d probably planned to ransack the place over the weekend.
But then I noticed there was a post-it note on the plasma TV. Ownership to be resolved it read. The Natuzzi couch, the DVD player and the De’Longhi espresso machine were similarly marked. I removed the post-its and attached them to the dining table that wobbled, the food processor which was cracked and the armchairs that needed re-upholstering. I sank down upon the Natuzzi. Stretching out reinforced my sense of ownership. Blake was not getting his hands on my Italian sofa. I turned on the TV, hoping for a distraction. There was nothing, but I’d set the video to tape some shows while I was away so I rewound and started to watch ‘Sex and the City’. At first it cheered me up, until I remembered that the girls, who had once revelled in their fabulous shopping and fucking single lifestyles, were all in couples. It was hardly affirming of my new status. I fast forwarded until I hit ‘Oz’, to find that Keller had betrayed his boyfriend Beecher to Schillinger the Nazi. Schillinger was now breaking Beecher’s legs. This suited my vengeful mood to perfection.
> But even Chris Meloni couldn’t distract me for long. My mind was frantic. The more I thought about it, the more probable it seemed that this was no tantrum. But if Blake was serious, we had to talk. It was ridiculous for him to try and insist that we not communicate. I pulled out my phone and sent him a text:
Stephen: We need 2 talk face 2 face. After nearly 4 years u can’t dismiss me with a note and a few text messages.
That note and those texts didn’t even sound like the Blake I knew. It was impossible that he could sound so distant so quickly. I don’t know how long I waited for his reply but it seemed like forever. I kept checking the phone or re-reading the messages he’d sent earlier. Finally, the waiting became so unbearable that I phoned him. It went to voice mail. I hesitated, then hung up. I needed to think through what I should say to him. I sent another text instead:
Stephen: U need 2 give me a chance 2 explain.
He owed me that, unless he didn’t want to hear a reasonable explanation. Perhaps he just wanted a pretext to leave me so that he could be with Rick the Prick; a pretext that painted me as the villain so he didn’t have to consider his own infidelity.
Blake and I had our problems, but to my mind, they weren’t serious. They weren’t unresolvable. We’d been fighting more over the past six months, but it was largely over domestic issues, fuelled by the stress of the impending renovations. I tended to think that the most important aspects of any relationship were sex, intimacy and communication and I thought we were doing okay in those areas.