Hendo was sitting cross-legged on the bed. His room was filled with skid-marked sheets, piles of clothes, Sharpies, and used condoms. “Come somewhere,” I said. He found a baggie in the sheets and turned it inside out. His tongue rolled into the plastic, lapped up the shards. I jumped up and down on the mattress. “Come with me!” I said. Coins we lost in the blankets rained down on the floor. “It’ll be fun! Fun! Fun!” Two hands on his shoulders, facing him directly. “I used to go there as a kid,” I said, shaking him back and forth.
Before this time at Hendo’s I lived with my dad. I came home late once. Next morning he woke me up by screaming at me for leaving the lights on. So I told him I was a faggot. He kicked me out. I packed up a gym bag of clothes, left the house, and slept on couches of people I knew. Ended up crashing mostly with Hendo. We always ran out of things to do.
Hendo sat in the passenger’s side of my car smoking joints. I drove us in and out of the tunnels and yelled out, “Shotty, shotty, shotty!” He inverted the roach. His head went directly in front of mine. Blew smoke in my mouth.
Back in the day you could get from the inner city to western Sydney in thirty minutes.
I drove down Georges River Road, pulled into a rest stop. Hatchbacks lined up against utes. Next to the parking lot was some scrub. Just beyond it was the shit-colored brown of the Georges River.
Back in the day “a beat” was a three-dimensional version of an online gay sex app. Suss suburban kweens on the down-low congregated around parks.
Hendo and I got out of the car, walked past some trucks. We stepped on condoms. Fingernail-sized pebbles crunched under our soles. We swatted at our ears every time we heard the buzz of mosquitoes. At the edge of the car park, we looked down at the river and saw the outline of two guys sitting on some rocks. We took a path into the bushes. Burrs got stuck to the hairs on my legs.
“Used to know this retail queen that did blue-collar drag,” I said to Hendo as we walked among the trees. “Nights he would put on steel-cap boots and work shorts and come down here.” When the sounds of cars passing took a break, faint noises of grunts and slurps floated through the brambles.
Men slowed down to pass us. They did the up-down eye scan. Some of them wore too-clean steel-cap boots. Hendo tried to read them. He’d just see a Leb with the angry sands of the desert running through his eyes. I would pay attention to the Lebanese boy with his femme-esque tapered eyebrows. To Hendo an islander in a Dickies T was maybe a shifty cunt, but I’d see a coconut kid who wore big bro’s hand-me-downs, soppy brown eyes looking for the love of an absent daddy.
My fingers traced the squiggle indents on the bark of a crooked gum. Hendo walked ahead. Some overly worked pecs with chicken legs caught Hendo’s eyes; he tailgated the guy to the bank of the river. Left me alone. I walked out of the scrub onto the embankment next to the road. I found an old log and sat on it and emptied my mind onto the oncoming cars.
A few cigarettes later Hendo called out to me. I turned around, watched him approach through clumps of grass.
“I have some terrible news,” he said.
“What? D’ya get more of the HIV again?” I asked.
“No, worse. He was a sub-bottom that presented masc clone.”
Hendo’s Nokia went beep. He covered his face with his hands. The Nokia went beep again. He showed me the message: 8===) now.
The gay vampire behind the text message was Manco. A Bram Stoker dream with fangs that dripped pure amphetemine base. Failed actor. Never in that wannabe Hollywood way. Television too vulgar for a straw hat — wearing private school boy. At a time when he should have been getting passed over to play the dad in sitcoms he became “that dealer dude.”
Manco bandwagoned the drug scene just before the early noughties, just before the outlaw motorcycle gangs took over the club drug trade. It was the bikies and their chrome-mounted skirmishes that made it hard to access a good-quality MDMA. Pills were getting cut with a smacky-type chemical. Instead of inspirational energy you’d get rolling eyes, a desire to park it, cross your legs on the floor while your neck became jelly. Little pills of Mercedes and doves and the blue LVs gone. Poorer customers like Hendo just injected speed. Coke, although off-the-planet expensive in Sydney, was not affected price-wise, proving once again that nothing affects the rich.
Manco kept good clients. Corporate gay drones and the aggressive young blond ladies in public relations. But the truth about dealers is melancholic. Its illegality creates informal friendships. The kind of upwardly mobile queens who can afford designer chems don’t have time for some dropkick peddler.
Manco dealt with the yearns by keeping boys. Boys like Hendo. Money poor, drug needy. Cap in hand. Sure! But you can pay me back. You got no collateral. Hendo racked up a debt and then got called in on orgies as payback.
“I don’t know what to do. He is ruining sex and my nightclub experience.” Hendo rubbed his biceps. Leaned his big head onto me. In front of us cars went down the highway and I patted his arm.
2
Today I can’t remember what Hendo looks like. Then I start with the biohazard tattoo on his arm and there he is. Sitting next to me in my passenger seat. Lifting his sleeve to show me it. His head folds up and down every time he speaks. Skin around his eyes have pavement cracks. Massive pores but always too dry. But I can hear Hendo’s voice saying to me, “You are beau-ti-ful.”
During those times, men told me a shitty story about myself. They looked at my Mediterranean skin and too-black hair and thought I was something I wasn’t. They would sidle up next to me at bars and ask, “Lost your girlfriend?” or introduce themselves with the elegant, “I really like wog boys.” Bolder men would say, “Please rape me.” Masculine projection was a fatigue. So I’ll always remember Hendo leaning his head onto my shoulder, laughing at my jokes, and telling me I was beautiful.
I turned into Deepwater Reserve just as Hendo passed me the pipe. No streetlights, just a road in a tunnel of trees. High beams lit up a guy walking out of the bush. He was in his fifties, craggy bod, wearing a G-string. Skin like ash. Thin old skeleton with loose flanks of flesh hanging from his sides.
We parked amongst some other cars and got out. Hendo and I walked toward the bank of the river. Across the clearing, we saw an ember of a cigarette glowing. It looked like an alien light from far away, so we went to check out if the dude was fuckable. A young man was sitting on a picnic table with his feet on the seat. His chest was folded over his knees and a pink singlet fell off his hairy skinny bod. He looked up when he heard us coming. The galaxy-black eyes of Lou Marcello.
Hendo knew Lou, they’d killed a million brain cells together and they also used to fuck. But Lou fell in love in the way only lost boys can. Nervous desire. Talking about monogamy but constantly cheating. When they were together, Lou was once rolling around on the grass of a public park, his eyes falling into the back of his head. He latched his hands onto Hendo’s calves. “Infect me... infect me...” Hendo kept walking, while Lou’s hands dragged at his calf. “Fuck off, you boring bug chaser,” said Hendo as he moved away.
Lou changed after that night. Wore a gold cross around his neck. Decided to shack up with some Turk who had tattoos. They moved in together and played happy families until Lou would show up with an “I walked into a door” bruise. They stayed together. Lou found that familiar suburban purgatory.