But Lou had that Calabrian skin that shone in the dark. He looked up at us and rubbed his neck.
“Did you get an SMS too?” he asked Hendo.
“Manco makes us do things. Weird dodgy shit.”
“Not gonna say shit to my boyfriend. I’m scared as...” said Lou. The sound of water was lapping at the bank. The river was munching on soil and it was the soundtrack to how we were feeling.
Heard twigs crack. Our eardrums sparked. Sound of footsteps coming toward us. We all turned to face the direction of the noise. Looked to the clearing, expecting something to come through the bushes. Footsteps getting louder. Hendo’s body became hard. I put one foot behind the other and raised my fists. The footsteps came closer still. More than one set of feet came at us, started running toward us. Hendo picked up a branch and held it up. Lou put a massive rock in his hand and stood behind me.
The craggy old man in a G-string and sneakers appeared out of the scrub. He saw us and started running. Just behind him was a twink, his face all scratched from twigs. “Cops,” said the twink, and ran off.
“Chill,” said Hendo. “They are powerless, just a buzzkill.”
We sat back down around the picnic table. Two officers strolled toward us. One a solid ranga, the other too much short-man syndrome.
“Gentlemen, how is your evening going?” said Constable Ranga. “We have had some complaints about antisocial behavior.”
“Au contraire. We are being extremely sociable,” replied Hendo. His voice was pearls hanging against cashmere. The officer had to step back and catch himself from the blow.
“We have taken your number plates down and we will be paying visits to your homes,” said Constable Ranga.
“Then by all means, violate as many legal statutes as you can,” Hendo countered.
The pair of cops puffed up their chests. Hendo stood up in front of us, putting himself in between us and the cops. He addressed the cops as their badge numbers. He pulled out a Nokia and made a call, covered his mouth as he whispered into the phone, and then handed it to Constable Ranga. The cop listened and nodded. Handed the phone back to Hendo. The cop looked over at his fellow officer, did a let’s-go gesture with his eyes. The other cop was puzzled but followed orders. They walked off. Lou, Hendo, and I folded our arms as they disappeared.
“What the hell was that, Hendo?” I asked. I rubbed the back of his neck and he told me to forget about it.
3
Lou invited us back to his duplex. The tattooed Turk he lived with was doing a night shift. Hendo walked into the house and looked around like it was a museum. He examined the secondhand IKEA sofa like it had a plaque on it. His hand lifted a Murano ashtray on the coffee table and held it up to the light, looking at the colored glint of the glass. He picked up the remote. The TV with endless channels kept him occupied. An average suburban house was a curiosity for Hendo. Meanwhile, any alone time with Lou and we’d reminisce. That no-good goo honeyed our mind hives.
I’d met Lou at a house party down the road from Bankstown Maccas. We were both teenlings. He was there with some fire-twirling twink and I was there with some straight boys. Me and my boys entered the house from the driveway. In the backyard people just stared at us. Some of my boys tried to talk shit with the girls and we got pushed out of the party. We were all stoned, all in Adidas. I sat on a car out front of the house and Lou passed me a flask. Same deal. Both wogs. He Italian, me Greek. Both out of place. His dad was Lucky Marcello, in jail for a hit on a business deal that went kerplunk. Mama and Nonna and a herd of older sisters kept him out of trouble.
For us there was a window for sex. The window closed and love cemented. I was happy for him. He got out. Found a man who kept him. His job was to clean and keep it tight. Barrels of protein powder accessorized his kitchen.
Lou wanted to complete the 2.5 gay dream with a puppy. Said something about a French bulldog. I told him about a childhood pet goat that I’d had. She was the color of the dirty sea foam, so we called her Afroditi.
Afroditi climbed trees. She’d get up there and sometimes couldn’t get down. Afroditi would find herself up in trees. She would holler in distress. Sounded like a toddler being murdered. Then me or Dad would have to find a way to get her. Sometimes I would get a ladder and wrestle her down. Sometimes I’d put her over my shoulders and hear her cry. One time my dad got fed up; he was sick of getting her down. We were standing in front of the olive tree and she was high in the branches. Dad ran into the house and came out holding his double-barreled shotgun. As he marched he put shells in the barrel. Cocked the gun. A failsafe way of getting her out of the tree. I ran and pushed the shotgun down just as he was about to shoot. The shot fired. My eardrums burst and the grass exploded below us.
4
Back in the day, peak Sydney was interchangeable with being gay. The highways from the suburbs into the city were like our own yellow-brick roads. Some nightclubs were tiny holes in the walls. The international superclub fad had kicked off, places that were three stories high, dedicated gay venues that played handbag house upstairs and underground electro downstairs. The City of Oz, with its emerald jealous streets and amyl nitrate scent, was — once — a playground for Dorothy’s friends.
Hendo, Lou, and I became a trinity. Summer Sunday-night dancing became ours. We hit the strip. One of the clubs was a chemical dungeon. Descend downstairs and everyone who was too ugly to fit into mainstream land, too drug-fucked to hold down a job, too loose to care, too chemically washed out, would come together. The four-four drum led a coven of people. Pozbears praising Dionysius in a sweat frenzy.
The most common phrase I heard was, Just go home, you’re trashed. Hendo or Lou would defend me. On long weekends, we would laugh at all the suits feigning bohemia before they went back to their office cubicles.
Sunday club bond was our breaking bread and Lou partitioned himself — his new suburban house husband life vs. his old chems club kid past. On Sunday nights, he’d pop by at six p.m. Straight-to-our-heads champagne and we’d drink it out of plastic flutes and jars. Allowing the ingredients of alcohol to prolong casual touches. Once Hendo placed a hand on Lou’s leg and Lou got up and mumbled something about his tatted Turk husband waiting for him at home.
They left me at times. Manco would call them in. He wanted a night. I wanted a room to myself and they’d go hesitantly. From the window, I would watch them go down the street. Two men who were boys walked off with heads bowed, making for the world they wanted to leave behind. They passed people in the street: happy couples, corporate gays, women with prams.
That night, I picked out Sharpies from Hendo’s sheet ball and curled up. Round midnight the bedsheet filth made me itch. I woke and Hendo and Lou hadn’t returned.
5
Hendo slept the big chemical coma. Someone once said that dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
Lou told me how it went down.
They’d both arrived at Manco’s building. Buzzer pressed, indecipherable static answer. Cheap foyer, up a mirrored elevator. Hendo and Lou were testifying to each other. “Something gotta change, something has to become new, I can’t do this.” They arrived at the apartment and inside were three fit-looking finance-sector bodies in their work uniforms. Manco handed them knee pads. Lou started to put them on. Hendo said the color didn’t suit him.
Hendo. Dry mouth. Feelings from zero to a hundred thanks to his IV habit. Riled up. Lou saw it, saw what was coming, and split Hendo and the host. Took Manco into the bathroom. Lou tried telling Manco how it was going down, that this was the last of their debt. But Manco wouldn’t hear it. He put a vial to his nose and snorted gelatinous confetti.