By the time I looked back over the balcony, all I caught was a flash of tanned muscles and the top of his close cropped dark head as he strode through his front gate. I noted that he wasn’t balding. We were both so excited by this fleeting glimpse, we felt compelled to rush next door, introduce ourselves and welcome him to the neighbourhood. However, by the time we had both decided what to wear and spruced ourselves up, he was gone. The silver Mini had departed. It was deflating but also made us feel quite ridiculous, poised there uselessly at our front gate. We wandered back inside and slumped onto the couches, aimless and bored. ‘I suppose there’s plenty of time to introduce ourselves,’ said Blake unconvincingly after a long silence.
For the rest of the day, I was on high alert for the return of the Mini or some sounds of life from next door. But Richard had disappeared for the day. When I went out to the gym in the early evening, there was no sign of the car. When I returned, his house was in darkness. However, Strauss came over that night to watch ‘Queer Eye’ with us and proved to be quite an authority on our new neighbour. ‘I hear Rick the Prick has bought into your street,’ he remarked casually, as I poured him a drink.
Blake and I glanced at one another nervously. We didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Why do you call him that?’ I asked. ‘Not easy to get along with?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ Strauss replied. ‘He’s famous for the size of his cock.’
‘You make it sound enormous,’ Blake chortled.
I sighed. I didn’t much care for conversations on this particular subject—or for my boyfriend to betray too much interest in such conversations.
‘Oh it is,’ Strauss assured him.
‘You haven’t been there,’ I sneered a little nastily, though I was really only stating the obvious.
The guy was way out of Strauss’ league. ‘No, I haven’t, but I have seen it, with my own eyes, in a certain steam room out Kensington way. It was flaccid at the time, but it was long, thick and absolutely luscious, lolling there on his upper thigh.’ Strauss gave a little shudder of pleasure at the memory. ‘But then, when it’s erect, my oh my. You know, it has been described as the Hope Diamond of Penises. Big, beautiful, rock hard and everyone wants it in their ring.’
‘Is he on Gaydar?’ asked Blake quickly. ‘With photos? Of it?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Strauss said with a sigh. ‘Everyone’s on Gaydar.’
‘We’re not,’ I retorted.
‘Hmm,’ said Strauss, raising his eyebrows and implying, I supposed, that perhaps we should be.
I regretted confiding in him recently that I found sex with Blake boring unless there was a special guest star along for the ride.
‘Are you on it?’ asked Blake, surprised.
‘Of course,’ said Strauss. ‘You have to be on it if you’re single. It’s obligatory. Not that my message box ever overwhelms me with offers, but I enjoy prowling about. You learn the most astonishing things about people you know. You wouldn’t believe the photos some people post or peccadillos they freely admit to.’
That piqued my interest. ‘Really? Like what and who are we talking about?’
‘Let’s get back to Rick,’ Blake interrupted. ‘What else do you know about him apart from his dimensions?’
‘Well, he’s been around forever. He was an Albury barman back in the late eighties. Those barmen were legendary for their looks, and he was the pick of them, which is a considerable compliment. But even now, fifteen years later, he still looks magnificent.’
‘So, he serves drinks and looks good with his shirt off,’ I sniped.
‘Darling, those are assets that should not be sniffed at. He went to New York for three years and made enough money in tips as a go-go dancer to buy an apartment in The Horizon. Now he’s sold that and bought next door.’
‘I don’t see how you could possibly buy an apartment on what you made in tips,’ I argued.
‘Well, probably the average Joe couldn’t, but Rick’s got the face, the body, an exotic accent and of course the bulge. Naturally all those Manhattan queens wanted to stuff fistfuls of dollars into his posing pouch.’
‘It sounds like a mild form of prostitution,’ I countered.
‘It’s a tipping culture over there,’ Strauss replied airily. ‘You tip the taxis, the bartenders, the maids. What’s the big deal about tipping a gorgeous man when he thrusts his enormous crotch in your face? I’d open my wallet in a heartbeat.’
‘But he couldn’t do that here, could he?’ asked Blake.
‘Oh no, now he’s a fitness instructor.’
‘Which gym?’ Blake asked quickly.
‘He works at a few of them, but don’t imagine you can get in with him. His waiting list is like his cock—enormous! Of course none of his clients want to give him up. Having him run his hands over them, having him loom over them as they bench press and they lie there, looking up into that astounding view. Then when he sends them off to shower, they’re electric with anticipation, hoping, praying that he might come into the changing room and strip down to his jock strap. Or that they’ll experience the ultimate nirvana, Rick without a stitch on and next to them in the adjoining shower stall.’
‘You seem to have quite the grand obsession with him,’ I pointed out.
Strauss shrugged. ‘I’m not immune to his charms, but the reason I’m so well informed is that my friend Sasha is utterly obsessed with him. He almost got to have sex with him after Sleaze Ball a few years back. They teamed up in that last hour on the dance floor, then, when the party ended, jumped on the Sleaze bus to head back to Darlinghurst. They were sitting up the back of the bus, holding hands, when some twenty-year-old blond honey in chaps drifts along the aisle. All the seats were taken. She looks about hopefully. Rick offers his knee and the brazen hussy jumps in his lap. That was the end of poor Sasha. Rick let go of his hand and ran it over the blond’s long legs. Sasha will never get over it. To have come that close and then to have had it snatched away. It was devastating.’
‘So? He likes blonds?’ I enquired, my interest piqued.
‘According to Sasha, Rick doesn’t have a type. He likes all sorts of guys, though what he doesn’t seem to do is boyfriends, or at least not for long. Perhaps they get possessive and obsessive, though who could blame them? Now are we watching this programme or not? And do I have to refresh my own glass?’
Strauss thrust his wine glass at Blake, snatched up the remote and took the volume off mute. He loved ‘Queer Eye’. He’d been working as a make-up artist for the past eight years and fancied himself as the Australian Kyan Douglas. I chatted and laughed along with him throughout the show, but my mind was still on Rick.
It was intriguing that he was abandoning glamorous high-rise living to move next door to us. Surry Hills was certainly not the suburbs but nor did it boast dazzling harbour views and celebrity neighbours. Such a change seemed to indicate a desire to retreat from ‘the scene’ and settle down. Rick was nearing forty. He was thinking of his future. Number Eight was a rather large house for a single guy to live in alone.
The ads came on and Blake disappeared upstairs to the bathroom. ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ said Strauss sternly, ‘and it would be a mistake.’
I pretended not to know what he was talking about.
‘You have a fatal attraction to the ‘boy-next-door’,’ he persisted. ‘Surely you learnt your lesson last time.’
He was referring to Ant. We’d all been neighbours, the three of us, and Strauss had been privy to some of the stunts I’d pulled in my efforts to seduce Ant. ‘I am merely curious to meet Rick,’ I protested. ‘And who wouldn’t be after that very big build-up you gave him?’
Strauss started to say something but was interrupted by Blake who came clattering down the stairs, shouting at me. ‘What now?’ I snapped.
‘The renovations,’ Blake gasped, his face horrified. ‘He’s not going to like that, or us, once we start work.’
A sinking feeling came over me. Those blo
ody renovations. They were already the bane of my life and they hadn’t even started yet. Just getting them approved had been such an ordeal. Though it wasn’t the council who’d been the problem—it was the neighbours. They’d all rushed off to inspect the plans at the first opportunity, and then come to see us, offering their unsolicited advice. The fact that the plans had been drawn up by a highly regarded architect did not deter them in the slightest. They knew better. They watched ‘The Block’. It was a mistake to turn the kitchen around. We were mad to move the bathroom wall when all we were gaining was one square metre of space. And why were we shifting the fuse box to the opposite side of the veranda when its present location had served adequately for more than fifty years? But ultimately it was well-intentioned advice, not outright objection.
That is, except for our neighbour Sal, who didn’t even live next door to us, but two doors west. He woke us up one Sunday morning, dressed in his church-going best, demanding to know why we were shifting the upstairs north-facing window. Did we want a better view of what went on in his backyard? ‘That sounds intriguing,’ I quipped, which was a mistake.
He gave me a dark look, turned on his heel and left. The next thing we knew, he’d lodged an official objection and was trying to win support from others along the street. His actions aroused my curiosity. What exactly did go on in his backyard that he was so intent on concealing. Al fresco sex? Naked sunbathing? Dope plants? So one afternoon I investigated: ventured out onto our roof with a pair of binoculars and peered in his direction. My timing was unfortunate as he was outside at the time and caught me in the act. He swore and threw a parsnip at me which revealed that he had a vegetable garden of sorts happening back there. Though even Nigella would have been hard pressed to transform this particular parsnip into anything remotely edible.
Eventually, his objection to council was over-ruled, so we could officially ignore him. He retaliated by ignoring us, cutting us dead in the street, and telling our neighbours that we were peeping toms. Then, just as we started getting the builders in for quotes, another obstacle arose. Rachel told us she was selling and begged us to hold off on the renovations until she’d sold. ‘Please. It’ll drive my price down.’
We’d wanted to get stage one of the work done while we were overseas, but Rachel was our friend. What’s more she’d just spent weeks restoring our reputation on the street. Sal’s accusations had stirred Eleanor to recall that she had once witnessed either Blake or I flaunting ourselves naked on our balcony in the middle of the night.
‘Perhaps Blake was doing his Tai Chi out there?’ I suggested smoothly.
‘At 2am? Naked?’ Rachel laughed. ‘Oh no hon, and apparently there was nothing slow and graceful about these moves. One of you was having window sex with someone, and ever since Eleanor told me, I’ve been trying to work out who it could possibly have been on the other side of the street.’
For a moment, I considered confiding in Rachel, but then thought better of it. She had a mouth on her. ‘It must have been a house guest. Some people have no idea how to behave,’ I said primly.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. It had been a house guest, except he’d been staying across the road at the Hamilton’s. I couldn’t sleep and was out on the balcony, smoking a joint, when I spotted him. He was drunkenly getting ready for bed, lights on, curtains forgotten … then he saw me and paused, frozen there in his underwear. There were no other lights on in the street. I was drunk and stoned and careless of the consequences. I opened up the curtains behind me, so some light spilled out onto the balcony. The man’s gaze became even more intent. Even from that distance, I could see there was something going on in his briefs. Slowly, I began to undress and the man’s hand slipped down inside his underwear as he watched me …
‘Stephen?’ Blake insisted, jabbing me to pay attention. ‘What are we going to do about the renovations? We can’t postpone them again.’
‘Employ some sexy tradesmen,’ Strauss suggested. ‘A queen will forgive anything—noisy power tools, dust, gaping cracks in the walls—if they’re created by some butch number in King Gee shorts with his shirt off.’
‘It’s the builders’ workmanship that has to be perfect,’ I said firmly, ‘not their pecs.’
‘Hmm, I’m sure you can find some middle ground. Building sites are absolutely teeming with hunks. Why do you think queens spend all of Saturday racing around those half-complete off-the-plan developments? It’s not only the fittings and fixtures they’re drooling over. Even I enjoy it. Clambering around in a hard hat and pretending to understand plans. It’s heavenly.’
I left them to their discussion of tradesmen and went to retrieve a fresh bottle of champagne from the fridge. As I opened the bottle, I cursed the fact that the renovations weren’t already complete, so that Rick could be impressed by our glamorous new home rather than inconvenienced. Then suddenly a new inspiration struck me. What if we installed one of those elegant lap pools in the backyard? We could offer to let Rick use the pool ‘anytime’ to make up for the inconvenience he’d had to endure. Naturally, it would be a clothing optional pool! If it hadn’t been so dark, I would’ve dashed outside with the tape measure to mark out the location. Instead, I resolved to ring the architect first thing tomorrow and instruct him to jettison Blake’s ridiculous organic vegetable patch and incorporate my lap pool tout de suite.
I returned to the living room, topped up everyone’s champagne, then casually remarked that a lap pool in the backyard would be such an asset for keeping in shape, and a much better use of the space than a vegetable patch.
‘It’s going to be a pottager garden,’ Blake said sharply. ‘I already have some of the seeds on order from Russia.’
Strauss choked on his champagne. ‘Russia?’
‘They’re very special potatoes,’ Blake snapped at him, before turning his fury on me. ‘This is my house too. That’s what you keep telling me. But every time I try to express my individuality, you block me.’
It was always slightly shocking when Blake attacked me. In my mind, he was still the sweet, malleable young thing from Canberra—I found it hard to take his outbursts seriously. Though recently when I’d protested that it was out of character for him to be a bitch, he’d snapped back that he’d ‘had a good teacher’. At first, I thought he was referring to Damon. After all, he was the biggest bitch in town. Later, I realised he was referring to me.
Over the past six months, he’d been noticeably more antagonistic. I put it down to the looming renovations. Sometimes, if he really worked himself up into a state, he could get destructive—once he ripped up one of the architect’s drawings. Though generally with Blake, once he’d let off steam, five minutes later, he was conciliatory. Occasionally, I bent him over and fucked him hard for being ‘a bad boy’. God knows, after nearly four years, we needed something like that to spice up our sex lives.
But that night was different. He had never attacked me in front of a friend before and it was embarrassing for Strauss and me. I tried to laugh it off but that only seemed to provoke him. I wondered if he was drunk. We had got through the first bottle of champagne rather quickly. ‘You need to do more than swim a few laps to get back into shape. Swim the Great Lakes would be more like it,’ he said viciously.
That riled me. Blake knew I was sensitive about my weight and this jibe wasn’t merely teasing—it was nasty. Strauss could see I was irritated and that things would degenerate, so he tried to intercede. ‘Remember Sydney is in the middle of a water crisis, so perhaps neither of your schemes is particularly practical. We need to conserve water or else, heaven forbid, they might close down the saunas. Now that’s what I’d call a water crisis.’
It was an unfortunate allusion. ‘Speaking of which Stephen,’ said Blake haughtily, ‘why did I find a discount pass to Bodyline in your black pants when I wore them last week?’
‘It must’ve been in there for years,’ I muttered.
‘There was a use-by date on it from last month.’
We eye
d one another in silence. Blake’s face was a mask of cold fury, but I felt equally incensed—how dare he confront me now, in front of Strauss?
‘Time for me to say adieu I think,’ Strauss announced, standing up, grabbing his man bag and making a bee line for the door.
I tried to insist that there was no need to leave, that we could watch the rest of the TV show, but even as I said that, Blake stormed upstairs. I wondered what he was up to. Strauss watched him depart, one eyebrow raised quizzically. ‘Hmm,’ he remarked. ‘No darling, I think you definitely need to sort out your explanation, go upstairs and soothe him. I’ll take myself off.’
Strauss opened the front door and stepped outside. As I followed him, still insisting it wasn’t necessary, above our heads I heard Blake fling open the French doors that led onto the balcony. What on earth was he up to? Our movement had triggered the light sensor. It illuminated Strauss and I poised there on the doorstep and also the silver Mini parked outside our house. To my horror, I could see someone getting out of the driver’s seat. The person straightened up and looked at us over the top of the car. It was Rick. I recognised him immediately as someone I’d admired at dance parties and the gym over the years. His eyes met mine for only a moment, but it was long enough for me to detect a flicker of something there—surprise, curiosity, desire, perhaps all three? I was about to step forward and introduce myself, when suddenly, something fell from above and landed on the pavement between us, startling all three of us. It was an article of clothing but I stared at the garment for some moments before I recognised it.
It was the incriminating pair of black trousers. Blake had tossed them off the balcony.
Rick walked around the side of his car, cradling a carton to his chest with one arm, and stared at the trousers. Then he shot Strauss and me a quizzical look. I was about to pass this off as some laundry that had blown off the balcony, when upstairs Blake began chanting ‘Slut! Slut! Slut! Slut! Slut!’ as he stamped around in our bedroom. Rick’s gaze jerked up to the balcony, his expression bemused. Then abruptly he started, stepped backwards and stumbled, tripping on the edge of the gutter. He saved himself from falling but he dropped his box. I rushed forward to help, but Rick was already picking the box up again. ‘It’s okay,’ he said somewhat brusquely.