Holding the Man Read online

  I lay back. He started undoing the buttons of my shirt. ‘Is this okay?’ I nodded. He undid my shirt all the way. ‘Hello, little bluebird.’ He popped the top button of my jeans, sat up and grasped a shoelace. ‘Can I take these off?’ I nodded and he took off my shoes, socks and, after making sure I was okay, my jeans.

  He took off his T-shirt and shorts. We lay there in our underwear. He caressed me. Wonder what he thinks of my body? What happens now? Geoff started to lick me all over. Before I knew it my hard-on was in his mouth and he was sucking me. Feels okay. Not as good as I thought. Those orange café-curtains are terrible. Wonder if anyone can see in?

  He sucked me for some time and eventually kissed my dick and lay back. Guess I’d better do him. I moved down the bed and pulled out his erect cock. My God, how am I going to get that in my mouth? I’m gonna choke. My jaw is aching. I gagged and dry-retched.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Geoff took a bottle of oil from the bedside table, squirted some in his hand and rubbed it into my hard-on. He kissed me with an open mouth. He rolled me onto my back and continued to stroke my cock. After not very many strokes, my semen splashed onto my belly. ‘There’s some tissues beside you,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want to come?’ I asked him.

  He said he didn’t need to come every time.

  ‘Is it because I can’t do it right?’

  Geoff drew on his cigarette. ‘It was nice just making you come.’

  I fumbled to get my jocks on and took a Marlboro from the kitchen table. A strange feeling came over me, a mixture of relief and hollowness. That wasn’t quite like I imagined. Something missing. ‘I hope I meet someone my own age,’ I mused. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you. But I’ll have more in common with a guy my age.’

  We sat in silence and drank our tea. I don’t think he was hurt, just unable to find anything to say.

  John in the Change-room

  In the white wonderland of the shower-room the warm water was welcome on my tired muscles. My calf smarted from the grazing it had copped as an opponent went for the ball at soccer.

  I turned off the water and limped through naked bodies into the change-room, its cold concrete heavy with the smell of crushed grass and mud. I grabbed my towel from the rack.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a football boot thrown against the wall. ‘Fucken one-eyed dickhead,’ said John, dragging his other boot off. I got dressed, trying not to stare. John’s voice cracked. ‘How can he call himself an umpire? I’d let go of the ball, but the jerk threw me to the ground. And do I get a free kick?’

  Father Wallbridge stood over him. ‘That’s no excuse for shoving him.’

  ‘Their ruck had been picking on me all through the match. Something just snapped.’

  ‘Let out your frustration in here, not on the field. John, you’re up for the Best and Fairest medal. You’re lucky you didn’t get a suspension.’

  Wally Wallbridge walked away. John leant forward on his knees and took a deep breath.

  Putting on my shoes and socks I watched him undress. He pulled his footy jumper over his head, revealing a muscular chest. He caught my eye and I tried to be supportive. ‘Sounds like it was pretty tough out there?’ He gave a half-hearted smile and slipped off his red jocks. His genitals peeked out from their black nest of pubic hair. He ambled towards the shower room, hooking his towel on the rack as his muscular bottom disappeared into the fog.

  John picks up his towel. I am watching the muscles working in his back and his hard round bum as he disappears into the land of fog. I can hear the taps squealing and the hard stream of water hitting the white tiles. I see him standing under the fall of the shower, his eyes closed, drinking in its warmth, his wet hair curling around his sweet face. He sees me and opens a hand to call me over to him. I step into the stream realising that I still have my pyjamas on …

  I woke to the reality of my bedroom. Darkness. Rain outside. What was I dreaming? John. I realised that I had a hard-on. Let me go back to sleep. I began rubbing my cock against the bed. In the shower with him, our bodies pressed against each other. No. I shouldn’t, not John.

  But my hard-on beckoned. It was not going to let me sleep until it had been satisfied. I snuck out of my bedroom holding my cock in case anyone was awake, crept into the dining-room where mum’s towers of magazines were kept, and searched out a Cleo.

  I lobbed the magazine onto the bed and went to my desk to get out my trusty come-rag, an old green T-shirt now covered in brown stains. It was not there. My erection started to wane. I would have to baptise a new T-shirt. I opened the drawer to find my come-rag neatly washed and folded on the top. Poor Mum must have found it and washed it. The realisation took some of the edge off my orgasm.

  It was a crisp winter morning. I had slept most of the way to school on the train and knew that to sit in the sun streaming through the window would be instant death, so I sat on the other side of the classroom. I was still tempted to catch some zeds before Mr Cameron arrived, but my attention was caught by John.

  He was mucking round with Derge Camilleri a few seats in front of me. He nudged Derge’s folder and books to the edge of the table. Derge grabbed them and tried to push John off his seat. John resisted, gripping the railing. He is so cute. Warm. Genuine. Untouched. I’d love a boyfriend like him.

  Mr Cameron dropped his books loudly on the desk. ‘Differential calculus. What is it? Joe?’

  ‘A formula that describes a rate of change.’

  Holding hands with John. Meeting him after school. Meeting at lunchtime. Studying together, I watch him and he lifts his eyes and catches me looking at him. We both laugh.

  ‘Conigrave? Acceleration or deceleration?’ I was lost. ‘Perhaps you could honour me with your concentration.’ I wasn’t even at the right chapter. I could see John’s neck as he made notes. He leans back and I wrap my arms around him. He turns and kisses me. I wake up beside him and lie there watching him sleep. He opens his eyes and smiles as he stretches.

  Pow! I was struck by a duster. My head spun in a cloud of chalk dust. ‘There you are, Conigrave, an example of deceleration.’ Mr Cameron smirked. I felt the blood rushing to my face as I brushed the chalk off my jumper.

  Chapter THREE

  Rhys’s Baby

  By Fifth Form the school recognised that we were adults and had the right to feed our addictions. First they set up a smokers’ room – a sandstone dungeon in the basement of the old hall, a better place than the unsanitary environment of the toilets where we might pick up the habit of loitering. But after a few weeks of their sons returning home in uniforms reeking of tobacco, parents put the boot into that idea. So the school created a coffee room. We met in one of the classrooms during breaks for biscuits, and coffee or tea at twenty cents a cup.

  This morning I was starving, even though I’d had breakfast. My stomach had been grumbling all through maths, and in biology even the slime moulds looked edible. I was tucking into my sixth Milk Coffee when Patrick Barrett piped up, ‘Hope you’re buying tomorrow’s biscuits.’

  ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re pregnant,’ Derge Camilleri chuckled. ‘Have you been having any morning sickness?’ He took my pulse.

  ‘No, Doc. I think I’d know if I was pregnant.’

  ‘Still, we’d better do the test. Give me your coffee.’ He picked up a sugar cube. ‘If this floats you’re not pregnant. But if it sinks …’ The cube sank into the coffee. Patrick, Derge and the onlookers cheered.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Rhys asked as he entered the room.

  ‘Conigrave’s pregnant.’

  ‘Tim, you told me you were on the pill.’

  ‘I hope you’re not angry. I’ll get rid of it if you want.’

  ‘Get rid of our baby? How could you suggest such a thing? We’ll go through this together and it’ll be a beautiful child.’ Rhys winked.

  ‘You guys are sick.’ Neil was disgusted.

  Next morning Derge handed me a pastizzi. ‘A p
resent from my mum. Remember you’re eating for two now.’

  In the middle-school library stood Mr O’Connell, our English teacher, a massive bulk of culture who wore an academic gown and swept his blond fringe continually.

  ‘Your book reports are due in three weeks, cretins. If you haven’t chosen a book, you see before you the largest collection of second-hand paperbacks in the Southern Hemisphere.’

  I was sharing a table with Patrick the stirrer, Marcello the spunk, Maltese Derge, Rhys and John. I sat opposite John. It was hard not to stare. He looked up from The Swiss Family Robinson. ‘Any good?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve just started it but I think it’s pretty good,’ he answered shyly.

  Derge leant against me and chuckled. ‘What about when they find that cave with the society of little robots?’ John looked bemused. He had never watched Lost in Space!

  Patrick was incredulous. ‘Danger, alien approaches,’ he said. Mr O’Connell was on his way over to our table.

  ‘I thought you boys were reading aloud but you’re just gossiping. Put your jaws to some use and tell me what edifying works you’re reading.’

  ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ said Marcello to Mr O’Connell’s approval.

  ‘Patrick Barrett?’ Nothing. ‘Get over to those shelves and find something.’ Derge held up The Exorcist. ‘Dear oh dear, if you must.’ Rhys proudly showed Hotel. ‘It’s like an airport bookshop. Find something else. Conigrave?’ I had Chariots of the Gods. ‘No, no, no! I will not have you reading that garbage.’

  ‘But I found it on the shelves here,’ I protested.

  ‘Find something else.’

  Amongst the paperbacks my eye caught a red cover with a cartoon of a curvaceous Mae West-type being fondled by a muscular sailor: Myra Breckinridge. I took it back to the table. This could be fun. Might curl a few of O’Connell’s hairs.

  As I went to sit down, Derge pulled my seat out from under me and I crashed to the floor. ‘My God, the baby!’ A chorus of three boys jumped to their feet. As Mr O’Connell looked up, a deathly hush fell on the group.

  ‘Do I understand that you are pregnant? That some miracle has occurred?’

  ‘It’s a joke, sir, a running joke.’

  ‘And you participate freely in this running joke?’ I nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘You’re an idiot, Conigrave. Not only do you make a mockery of one of the Lord’s greatest gifts but you degrade yourself with this pretence of otherness.’

  He shook his head in despair. ‘You make me sick. Sit down.’

  Myra Breckinridge turned out to be quite a horny story. But I couldn’t bear Mr O’Connell knowing I had enjoyed it, so I gave it a damning report: a mindless pornographic romp, I called it.

  I got fourteen out of twenty, but a large note was scrawled in red across the report: ‘Pornography is in the eye of the beholder. MB is much more than it appears; that is why it is a masterpiece.’

  Romeo and Juliet

  I was at the noticeboard outside the form-master’s office when Chook Hennessy the Ancient Greek teacher sidled up to me. ‘Auditions. Lunchtime today, 3C. Romeo and Juliet.’ He headed down the stairs, but stopped at the landing. ‘Real girls this year.’ He winked and scuttled away.

  I had often contemplated being an actor and would watch things on TV, repeating lines. Now I thought I’d give it a go.

  The doorway to 3C was crammed. I could barely see through the throng of grey jumpers. A wiry boy was on the platform giving his all.

  Chook was pacing, listening intently, murmuring lines and conducting the boy through his speech. Ash fell from his cigarette as his hands cut the air. His bottle-end glasses slid to the tip of his nose every time he squinted.

  ‘I think you’ll make a good Mercutio. Who wants to try out for Romeo?’ Two boys put their hands up: Pietro, a ‘boy-next-door’ from the year below me; and a very pimply boy, Jack. No harm in trying. But as I put up my hand a rush of panic descended on me.

  Pietro went first. Then a very nervous Jack, who stumbled along in a feeble monotone. Chook was frozen in horror. He dismissed Jack and butted his cigarette on the sole of his shoe. ‘Tim?’

  I managed as well as I could with Chook’s interruptions, his squinting and fidgeting with his glasses. There’s that feeling again. All the blood is in my hands and feet. I ploughed on. ‘That’ll do,’ called Chook. ‘I’m not sure. Let’s have a go at this scene. I’ll read Juliet. Go.’

  I took a deep breath.

  If I profane with my unworthiest hand

  This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,

  My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

  To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

  Chook lightened his voice, making it almost falsetto.

  Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much …

  There were sniggers in the room. Chook pushed his glasses back up his nose and eyeballed us angrily. ‘Hilarious. I’d like to see you lot do better. Pietro, I’d like you to play Romeo. Tim, you can be Paris. Jack, I don’t know, we’ll find you something. There are scripts here. Read it by the first rehearsal. The whole thing, please, not just your bits.’

  ‘Thou art thyself though, not a Montague.’ Pepe, a feisty young woman with short auburn hair, stood in the old pulpit that was to be her balcony. Chook acted the part along with her, muttering between sucks on his Benson and Hedges. ‘What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot …’ She stopped, distressed.

  Chook came to the rescue. ‘Nor foot, nor arm, nor face nor any other part …’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I think you would play the role very well, but I’m afraid you’re putting me off.’

  At the back of the theatre we boys tried not to laugh out loud. A boy at the other end of the row, one of Romeo’s gang, stood up cagily, checking out the Sacre Coeur girls on the stairs beside the stage. I’d been finding something about him remarkable. Now it hit me. He looks like John. I tried to observe him without anyone else noticing. Maybe he’s John’s brother. It’s the eyelashes. Gentle. Maybe I’m obsessed.

  Joe was reading. ‘Hey, Brainiac, what’s so interesting?’ Patrick leant over from the row behind him.

  ‘Something you wouldn’t understand. The Selfish Gene. It explains why specimens like you insist on reproducing yourselves.’

  ‘Have you laid eyes on that girl with the long straight hair?’

  Joe didn’t look up from his book.

  ‘She’s a nice specimen. How do you reckon she’d go in the reproduction stakes?’

  ‘Only one way to find out. Now go away.’

  By the end of rehearsal, the guys had decided which girls they were going to work on. They even had a few nervous encounters as they pressed sweaty palms with their partners in the ball scene. As Paris, I had to dance with Juliet. Each time we turned upstage my eyes searched out John’s brother, for he was indeed a Caleo. I am obsessed.

  The only person who made any real progress was Joe. A girl called Gina was Lady Capulet to his Capulet. As we tried to remember the steps of our galliard he said to her, loud enough for us to hear, ‘Gina, there’s more to get out of this scene. Would you like to work on it at my place this weekend?’ She thought that would be nice.

  Patrick muttered enviously, ‘How does he do it, men?’

  I waited for the train with the guys from the play. Someone called from down the platform. I turned to see Joe near the subway stairs, beckoning. I joined him. ‘I thought you might want an excuse to get away from that bunch of mental defectives,’ he said. ‘How do you think rehearsals are going? I don’t think they’re very challenging.’ I could see the train snaking its way along the track. I edged back towards the gang, but he asked me to ride with him.

  In the last carriage, Joe and I sat opposite each other on cracked and slashed mock-leather seats.

  ‘I read something in Science and Nature, a study of dolphins that showed they’re primarily homosexual.’ He looked at me as if gauging my reaction. ‘They swim in single-gender packs an
d a lot of their play is sexual. They only come together with the opposite sex to procreate.’

  He hesitated, then went on as if he had decided it was safe to continue. ‘To say that homosexuality is unnatural is ridiculous when clearly it occurs in nature.’ He’s testing me to see if I am. God, I hope he doesn’t like me. ‘But what evolutionary purpose does it serve?’ Maybe he’s trying to let me know that he’s gay?

  ‘I don’t know. Population control?’

  ‘It’s not as though the oceans are overcrowded with dolphins. Freud said that we are all born capable of sex with either gender. Do you think that’s true?’ I didn’t answer, distracted by the thoughts traversing my brain. He was watching me intently. ‘I’m sorry, I’m boring you.’

  ‘No. I’m just tired.’

  ‘You should try Royal Jelly. It’s full of vitamins and amino acids. I use it every day. It’s expensive but I can let you have a capsule.’

  We sat in silence until we arrived at his station. ‘See you at school tomorrow, man of wax.’ I didn’t understand. ‘Isn’t that what the nurse calls you?’

  I am sunbaking at the beach. There is another towel laid out parallel to mine but I don’t know whose it is. Someone stands at the water’s edge looking out to sea, a silhouette against the glare of the bay. Maybe it is John.

  The figure turns and waves. He comes to sit on the towel next to me. It is John. ‘Have you learnt your lines? I’ll hear them for you, if you like.’

  I turn over and realise I have an erection. I am nervous that he’ll notice. I cannot remember a single line. I panic. He’ll think I’m a liar. ‘Maybe we should do it later. I need a little more time.’

  He lies beside me and puts his hand gently on my erection. ‘Does this help?’ I am awash with intense feeling. I come.

  As I walked into geography class, I noticed that the desk beside John was free. He looked up at me with those big brown eyes and the dream suddenly felt real. I wonder if he had the same dream, if he dreamt that he was on a beach with me. Like astral travelling. I could still remember what it felt like to have his hand on my cock.