Monday in the Office

 

Okay, I'm going to the office. It is Max, the temp's, last day, well, last Monday. I said I'd come into the office for her last day with me, not really sure why I said that. Maybe, it's because I don't consider that I have wasted enough of my time this week, I might as well waste some more by pointlessly going into the office. Maybe, it is that? Ha, ha, whine, whine.

No, I’m not going to shut up about it. It’s annoying. We know working from home is better in every way, but the muppets in charge don’t want us to. Grrrr!

Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday. Of course, it was cleaning day, being Sunday, my husband is a stickler for the cleaning on the Sunday.

Me? Not so much. I'll clean something if it looks dirty, but this scheduled, almost preemptive cleaning, nah, I have better things to do with my mind.

We walked Otto to Bunnings to get a new light bayonet for Charlie's bedroom, after his old one fell apart when he changed his blown light globe. How careful was he, I hear you ask, when he changed the light globe?

It is an interesting question.

It was almost a perfect Melbourne day, sunshine and bright blue sky.

Then the day just disappeared with both Sam and I saying that we don't want to work tomorrow.

It’s screens from there, as the weekend sadly winds to a close. Yes, of course, it should be a weekend every day, of course it should.

Sunny Saturday

I just waste the morning on the couch watching random YouTube channels, and then when it looks like I have done maximum time wasting I get to American sovereign citizens YouTube clips. They are just weird. It’s kinda hard to explain why they do what they do. I think it’s where America’s poor education system comes home to roost with what appears to be the stupidest people. I assume they are probably just poorly educated, in America's conservative led increasingly poor education system. Who believes the nonsense of sovereign citizens, it makes no sense whatsoever. Anyway, it’s kind of interesting to watch it because it’s, you know, like not being able to take your eyes off a car crash as you drive past. It is appealing in the sense that you just can’t understand there are people who act like this. They just talk shit, absolute shit, which they appear to wholeheartedly believe, which is the more mind-boggling aspect of the whole thing. Here is an ideology of complete nonsense that has been bought wholeheartedly by a significant number of the population. It’s just mind-boggling how this conspiracy theory rubbish is taken up by people. 

As we get closer to the middle of the day, Sam says, “come on let’s go and do shopping for the week,” which also means getting lunch afterwards. Sam is not a breakfast person, like I am, so he starts to get hungry as the day progresses, where I can just lie on the couch and waste my life at lightning speed. I have no problem with indulging in the waste of time Olympics, rightly or wrongly.

So, as we edge towards midday, Sam has made the call to leave the house. So, we get our shit together, harness up the dog, and we leave the house before midday.

It’s actually a gorgeous day outside, the sun is shining down absolutely beautifully, the sky is a radiant blue overhead, it couldn’t be a nicer day if it tried, well, if I’d been notified of winning $5 million in TattsLotto just before we left the house, then, I guess, it could be a nicer day.

The sun is lovely and warm in which to walk to the shops.

I stop of at The Salvos on our way just to have a sniff about. Sam continues on. I catch up when I am done. I get a couple of seasons of The Durrells, the two seasons that I don't have.

Otto and I sit outside the shopping centre, watching all the cute boys in tight track pants and, sexy men in snug fitting shorts walking into the shopping centre with their shopping bags ready to load up on whatever groceries their little heart’s desire.

Sam does the shopping. He comes back several times with full shopping bags dropping them off with us and taking away empty shopping bags to get more supplies for the week.

It’s kind of nice sitting there watching the world go by with Ottie sitting next to me watching the world go by too, his head and my head moving one way then the other in unison, like the open mouth clowns at the carnival, or those gay boys on the other side of the glory holes waiting for the dicks to slide into their gobs.

Saturday. Is it everyone’s favourite day? The day where you can do anything you like, and the promise of tomorrow is just to repeat the same lazy day. There is no other day in the week quite like it, quite as fabulous, Saturdays are gay because they are truly fabulous.

I hum a little tune and make up some words while I wait, while the world passes by.

Once the shopping is done, we’ll get some lunch.

Once the shopping is done, we’ll get some lunch.

Once the shopping is done, we’ll get some lunch.

Munch, munch, munch, munch, munch.

Once lunch is consumed, we’ll walk home.

Once lunch is consumed, we’ll walk home.

Once lunch has been consumed, we’ll walk home, in the glorious sunshine.

Once we are home, will be back on the couches with our feet up staring at our screens, once lunch is consumed

Once we’ve got home, we’ll be done

There’s a fat chick just inside the shopping centre doors with what looks like a Portuguese Water Dog that is whining, and yelping, and barking non-stop. Grrr. She has about as much control of that dog as she does over her diet, I think.

Once we’re done in the centre, we’re outside Minh Phat supermarket while Sam shops. We are out of the sun and in a bit of a breeze and suddenly the day isn’t quite so warm.

A handsome guy comes out of Minh Phat with a box in his hands in green shorts that show off his beefy butt beautifully.

There is a homeless guy sitting just along a bit with a sign asking for money, who is smoking. And, you know, I’m not trying to deny him anything in his life, but smoking is really expensive. And he is asking people to give him money. Just saying.

Ten minutes and Sam reappears

Next, we’re at the butcher in Victoria Street. Sam says his butcher boyfriend isn’t there, and the aunty who served him was a bitch as she wouldn’t give him any free bones like the guy always does.

As we walk down Victoria Street, there is a guy on his bike with his head leaning down on the handle bars, with his arse fully out of his jeans on full display to anyone walking down Victoria Street. It’s not a bad arse either, I have to say.

We’re at the pork roll shop, we’re getting them to take home. Otto and I are standing in the sun, whilst Sam gets the pork rolls, and hopefully a couple of sesame balls.

There is a dark haired straight boy in big, baggy shorts standing in front of me. I’d like to check out his sesame balls. Yeah, sure I would, no problem. He’s got a redheaded mate with him, we’d need to separate the two to get a piece of the cute one. Get his big baggy shorts off over his Birkenstocks, bend his knees until his ankles are around his ears, and then, er, give it all a good lick. Yeah, no problem.

He and his mate are staring at me and smiling, they are looking at Otto, I know that. I smile back at them. Yeah, mate, I have your dick in my mouth, I think. He smiles and nods.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

The sun is kind of nice. Not too hot. Just nice.

Ten minutes later, we’re off home.

Half an hour later and we’re home

The day is done. We’ve hunted and we’ve gathered. And now it is time to rest.

We eat our pork rolls. We eat our sesame balls.

Sam falls asleep on the couch.

I upload The Durrells to my movie collection.

Otto whines for his ball. Of the three bulldogs we've had, Otto is the biggest whiner.

What Happened To Everyone?

Nick Andrews never did get into Mikail Vigell's pants, as far as I know.

I came back from overseas with Rachel, after two years. I bought the house with Adam. That failed quickly. I lived on my own. Leah used to knock on my window late at night, particularly if she was drunk on a Saturday night. She’d get into my bed and we’d have sex. We always had unprotected sex, but that was okay as I always had safe sex with everyone else.

I never really thought anything too much about it. Leah liked being on top – of course, she did – sucking on her tits – I guess it helped that she had kind of boyish figure – with my dick inside her, it felt good.

She admitted to me years later that I was one of the few men who could make her orgasm with their dick. I always thought that was kind of a sad indictment on straight boys. I just thought it was kind of normal when she’d wrap her legs around me, and dig her nails into the flesh of my back and make those gasping/grunting noises, which all together could mess up my rhythm somewhat, but, apparently not. Girls? At least with boys you know, when they scream out and spray you with their cum.

My body count increased exponentially during this period. 

Much later, when asked what my body count was, I worked it out roughly to be, I reckon, very loosely – pun intended – 1000 guys and one girl. That is not a brag, just a fact, I think all of my gay friends would have roughly the same figure.

Truthfully, I have no idea. So, the simple calculation I am using is, one guy per week for 20 years. I can tell you that many, many, many weeks, there were a lot more than one. I remember the one month I, actually, added up the guys I’d had sex with, noted in my journal at the time, and there were 20. Of course, there were weeks where there were none. But, someone asked me what the number was, so I made an attempt at the number.

I met Anthony. He was elusive, at best. That didn’t last very long. He was more frustrating that fulfilling.

Leah would head overseas to London, where she was very successful.

Nick moved into my place living with me for a time.

Jill met the love of her life early on, who she intended to marry. She found out he was serially cheating on her and she broke it off, heart broken. She has never met anyone else.

David M eventually went to uni and got a degree. I didn’t see much of him by this stage. He changed and became really, really, unbearably pretentious. His whole family had it in them, kind of a collective chip on their shoulders about proving they we just as good as anyone else. I’m not really sure where that came from, as their family was just the same as any of our families.

Rachel lived around the corner from me. David and Rachel were always very close. They still are. Jill’s sister Elly moved in with Rachel. Elly met her handsome husband, Mark I.

Rachel married her perfect husband, Anton. She had four perfect children. She moved back interstate for a while to be near her mum to help raise the kids.

She moved back to Melbourne. She divorced her perfect husband, saying that perfection was, ultimately, boring. 

She then had a relationship with a Ferrari driving millionaire property developer.

She then had a relationship with a drunk who may, or may not, have killed her dog as the relationship crumbled.

She is currently single.

Elly and Mark I. would move to Sydney, (where all monster people end up) have two kids, being very successful doctors. 

Jill and I would joke that there were two types of doctors, the one who goes into medicine to heal themselves, and those who went into medicine to heal others. That’s all I’m saying.

Mark I. has now lived an extraordinary number of years being terminally ill with cancer.

Adam would eventually meet some guy later in life who, apparently, rode the rollercoaster of striking it rich, and losing it all, repeatedly. They’d get married and, apparently, live happily ever after, eventually retiring young down the beach, so, I guess, there was a striking it rich that stuck. I don’t know.

“They released white doves,” Rachel excitedly told me about their wedding.

“The things you see when you don’t have your flame thrower handy,” I replied.

Adam texts me every year on my birthday, as the only contact we ever have.

Side note, as Daniel wasn’t in our friendship circle, let me just say, he became a very successful hairdresser. I would see him on and off through the years, he and I always got along really well. I met a number of young gay guys along the way who had been apprentices who’d quake at the mention of Daniel Haddock’s name.

“Oh my god, I was scared of him,” they’d say.

“Daniel? Really? Scared of him.” I’d laugh. The idea seemed so funny.

“Christian Fletcher, how the hell are you?” I’d hear that unmistakable nasal voice in a Fitzroy street somewhere. (think Allan Carr, actually, complete with Adele’s laugh)

“Daniel.”

“Luv.”

“I meet people who are scared of you.”

“Oh nonsense,” he’d say. And then there would be that beautiful smile of his. When Daniel smiled, his face lit up. When Daniel laughed, all of him laughed.

The teacher at our school who got 20 years for molesting boys, who attempted it on me but stopped when I told him to, well, that whole investigation was, apparently, started by Daniel pressing charges of being raped repeatedly by Peter Morrison.

Apparently, Daniel couldn’t come to terms with it in the end, and he committed suicide.

I met Mark, which drew me away from all of those friends, which gave me all of my new gay mates, Perry and Kim and Tom and Shane and Fergus and Sebastian and David G and Lauri and Simon and Dean and Anthony would return as a friend.

I had a whole other gay life with Mark.

We bought a house together, which we renovated.

We had an open relationship, and we fucked every guy that came into our orbit.

The whole house there for a time, was full of guys and drugs and dance music.

Nick and his long term boyfriend, Liam, rented the house that Adam and I originally bought together, from me, after I had met Mark and we’d bought the other house together in Fitzroy, the house I still live in now.

Nick and Liam rented the house with Mark’s cousin, Andrew.

There was a dispute about the rent, Nick only wanted to pay half the rent, going on bedrooms used, where Andrew wanted to pay a third of the rent, as there were three of them, Andrew, Nick and Liam, living in the house. Andrew kept paying me a third of the rent, saying he’d pay the difference if it was decided to be half half. Nick and Liam stopped paying rent altogether, supposedly, until the rent situation was sorted out.

They never seemed to come to an agreement.

It came to a point where Mark and I were going to Europe for three months, so just before we left, I stepped in and said, 

“Since you guys can’t seem to come to an agreement, I will do it for you. There are three of you, you pay a third each.” 

So, Andrew was up to date. Nick and Liam had to find two thirds of the rent, I think by that stage, for over 12 months.

Mark and I left for Europe.

Nick and Liam moved out of the house the day after Mark and I left for OS. 

I have never seen Nick again, my oldest friend who I met in grade 4.

I sold my first house and Mark and I bought Bolago.

Leah eventually moved back to Sydney, where she held very high up executive positions on huge salaries. She became so full of herself, and so overbearing that the last time I saw her, I walked out afterwards knowing I was done with her.

I haven’t seen her, or spoken to her, for 10 years.

She has never tried to rescue the relationship.

She has been married to her gorgeous husband for many years.

Mark and I split up.

I met Sam which drew me away even more from everyone. You know, when you get a new partner, you tend to pair up.

Jill and Rachel and I remain friends.

The last time I saw David M, was at a dinner at Rachel’s place, he had cake samples with him for his upcoming marriage to his poisonous boyfriend, Harry de Wit. (or as I like to say, Harry Halfwit)

“Oh really, what kind of cake is it?” I asked.

“Really fucking expensive cake, that’s what kind of cake it is,” he replied.

“Oh David,” I’m sure I said exasperated with him. “Is it fruit cake, or mud cake, or what flavour?” I don’t care how much it cost.

David S’s parents would eventually move back to Melbourne from England and settle for good in Kew. David S tried to reintroduce himself into our friendship group, at one point, but it didn’t stick.

He is a semi famous, experimental artist. I still think about his pottery wall hanging of babies strapped together with leather thronging as a homage to abortion, or his grotesque 30 something centimetre figures of people called The Worst in Society, or his life size busts of paper mache screaming faces, or his collection of photos of guy's faces at the very point of ejaculation. (The collection includes all his male friends, and random strangers that he asked. He told me once, that he never had a guy turn him down, gay, or straight. He asked me to do it, and while I agreed to do it, I, actually, never did)

I really meant to keep in contact with him but, you know, life gets in the way.

No one knows about David M and I, in fact, I’m pretty sure that I have never written about it before. I have never told anyone, and I have no intension of telling anyone. Let’s hope no one finds this post, no one has ever found my blog – except a dentist I used to go to, he, so far has been the only one.

(for the astute amongst you, there are a couple of inconsequential, minor details in this piece that don’t completely make sense, that’s because I have altered them to protect my privacy. I learnt from the dentist, more than one unaltered fact can lead to discovery)

I have never spoken about it out of loyalty to Leah, I have never wanted her to find out. I never wanted it to alter her perception of our relationship. I wanted to preserve the way she thinks it was. She would never understand that I could do both, have both, be both. (That is a gay sensibility that straight people just don’t have)

But, you know, now that we no longer speak, and from all accounts will probably never speak again, I’m not so concerned about that any more.

And now when I look up, I see my perfect boyfriend, Sam. It took a while to find him, I had to road test so many along the way, but eventually I did find him. And he's lovely.

The Things You Think Of

 

This is just a random photo off the internet, I have no idea who these guys are, but it did make me smile.

Ah, gay guys.

But, then I realised that the dark haired guy reminded me of my school mate Nick Andrews.

Nick, (the dark haired guy) and another guy with whom we went to school, Mikail (the blond haired guy) who Nick had the hots for during school.

I haven't thought about all of that for a long time.

So smitten with Mikail was Nick that, privately, he made all sorts of passes at Mikail, none of which were returned. Mikail stayed calm and, as far as I could see, non-reactive to Nick’s overt attempts to get into his pants.

Nick was loud, and blokey and full of life.

Nick became a mechanic after we left school. He fitted right into the blokey world of the mechanic’s workshop. I hate saying this, but it is probably true, Nick probably did a lot of good out there in blokey land, as he was never quiet about being gay. He had this way of telling people he was gay, delivered as the quintessential straight, blokey lad.

“Yeah, I like guys, it’s true.”

We were both always mad on cars. I should have become a mechanic too, you know. It is what I should have done. I could so easily be restoring vintage VW Beetles right about now.

Nick was one of my four mates at school who all turned out to be gay. Five of us. Someone's mother, I think it was Leah's, years later, apparently was heard to say, "There was something in the water when those boys were growing up."

There was Adam. Oh Adam. Not the sharpest tool in the old tool shed. He would go on to deny he was gay well into his adult life, way beyond when the rest of us came out.

I was, actually, friends with Adam’s older brother Daniel, who really was, not to put too finer point on it, the school’s ‘raving’ queen. (both Daniel and Adam were gay, but oh so different) I’m not even sure how I became friends with Daniel now, he was quite a few years ahead of me at school. But, I liked him because he was smart and funny and, as far as I was concerned, a complete breath of fresh air. I’d say, he was my early window into a life I was going to have, but Daniel was, er, I don’t know. I want to say effeminate, and I wasn’t, and I guess that was true, but so less important as it wasn’t so much that, as I saw Daniel as brave, as he faced the world face on, taking no fucking prisoners, and I wasn’t. I think it was Daniel’s strength that I saw, more so than his homosexuality.

Daniel introduced me to Adam, when Adam came to the school two years after me, who was in my year, and asked me to look him while he got used to the school.

Adam and I bought a house together after we’d finished uni and headed out into the world. It was a financial decision, nothing more, we were just mates. Adam worked for a corporate bank and could get a really cheap loan, and I had come into some money from an old, cherished great aunt who had died. 

Unfortunately, Adam was retrenched almost the day after settlement getting 3 months to re-finance his cheap loan, and he just couldn’t do it. He crumbled, moved back to mum and dad, receiving advice from an ego-centric husband of a drag queen friend of his to do nothing, as he hadn’t even made a single mortgage payment, so the cheapest course of action was to just let the bank foreclose on the house.

Suffice to say, Adam and I did not remain friends.

There were the two David’s. David M & David S.

David S was loud and unapologetic for anything he did. He came to Australia in his mid teens, coming to our school halfway through high school. He had a loud English accent, so he was always the outsider, if you like.

His father was a big shot executive of some sort sent to Australia to sort out the company he worked for in Australia.

He and I became friends, all us boys became friends. He was smart and funny and outspoken and artistic and would go onto to be an eccentric artist, of sorts.

In year 11, his father’s Australian contract was up and the family was moving back to England, except for David who loved Australia and who did not want to return to England to live, so he didn’t. But, it meant he had to drop out of school after year 11 and get a job to support himself, which I kind of thought was mean of his parents, they could have supported him into year 12, but they wanted him to return to the UK with them. After his parent’s pleas for him to return with them to England failed, they set him up in an apartment attached to an old house, pretty much, in the suburb in which I lived.

David S embraced the gay lifestyle enthusiastically once his parents had left for the UK.

David was 17, left to fend for himself alone in Australia and while he coped, I guess, admirably, it was a hard, difficult life for a 17 year old.

I used to go and hang out with David once I’d left school and was at uni. He always wanted to take me to gay things that he was doing, and, you know, I should have, but I didn’t. I had a girlfriend by this stage and was keeping up my straight boy image. David never believed I was straight, not at all, and while he didn’t ever confront me directly on the issue, he was always telling me to go to gay events with him, all of which I turned down. Stupid me.

The last mate was David M. Ah, David M. Handsome David M. Okay, I guess you have been waiting to hear which one of my gay mates I had a thing with, that would be David M.

David left school after year 12 and got a job. He didn’t pursue uni directly after school, he got a job and worked in banking.

I had lost contact with my schoolboy boyfriend, Alex, after school had finished. I had a girlfriend, Leah, starting Xmas holidays at the beginning of last year of school, so I was seeing Alex and Leah at the same time for just over a year. I’d PM go to uni with Leah, first year. 

Life was going along swimmingly. I had a girlfriend, I was going to uni, I was straight and looking forward to my straight life with Leah, who, by the way, looked remarkably like Kylie Minogue and I was the envy of almost every guy we met along the way.

It must have been the beginning of summer at the end of the first year of uni. We all went to stay with some friend of Leah’s parents in Anglesea, a beach town down the coast. Our group of friends. As it was a friend of Leah’s parents, the girls were put in one room, and the boys were put in the other room, and David and I were set up in the lounge room to sleep.

I had always been attracted to David M, with his tall, dark and handsome good, looks, even if I denied it, even to myself.

Well, I guess, you have guessed, old mates David and I, a bit boozed up, lying on that beach house lounge room floor, had sex with each other for the first time, which, as hard as you may find this to believe, surprised both of us.

I remember it was kind of cold that night, and we got to telling each other that it was cold. That led us into a discussion about putting our hands between our legs to warm up, which led to us putting our hands between each other’s leg to warm up. Something like that. I haven’t thought about that forever.

It would be fair to say after that, that David become infatuated with me, which wasn’t so cool, with me being with Leah, but it did lead to David and I having a lot of sex.

So, again, I had a girlfriend and a boyfriend, with both of whom I was having sex.

David’s infatuation was always threatening to become a problem. He was never really cool about it, or good at hiding it. It kind of became obvious to people that David was, well, how would I say it, not really acting normally when it came to me.

This went on for a few years.

Let me just say, we were all friends, David M, his sister Alex, Adam’s best mate, Alex, (the only boy in the group, who would remain straight, and in fact marry David M’s sister, Alex) Nick, me, Leah, Leah’s best friend Cathy Austin, Shelly, who had a brief moment as Adam’s girlfriend (yes, I know), Rachel, Jill, and Jill’s sister, Elly, and David S, although David S would be the first one of the group to drift away.

We hung out down the beach a lot, down the Great Ocean Road. I remember we were all standing on the beach down the coast having just arrived down there one Xmas. We were checking out the water and the sun when David’s little brother, Scott, came running towards us to say hello in a pair of skimpy, pale blue speedos. I think we all had to roll our tongues back into out heads that day.

Rachel grew up interstate. She met us all one weekend, when we all decided to go interstate for a road trip. She would pack up all her things not too many months later and move to Melbourne.

Five, or so, years later, Rachel wanted to go to Europe travelling. She said to me that I should go with her. She’d finished uni, I’d finished uni and was just beginning to wonder what I was going to do with my life.

I had Leah to keep happy, and David to keep happy. You know, keeping up a healthy sex life with both a girl and a guy is difficult, especially when you have to keep one of them secret not only from the other one, not only from all your collective friends, but from the world. If everyone knew, I think it would, obviously, be much easier, but that wasn’t the case.

I don’t know now how much of a strain that was on me, or how much of that was impetus to take up Rachel’s offer, but I did take up her offer to travel with her.

I split up with David before I left. There were tears and declarations of love, from him. I, think, I was in escape mode.

I split up with Leah too. We had a long, serious discussion about the future and how neither of us knew what it would be, and how we shouldn’t put restrictions on each other when we are living in different parts of the world, sitting in her family home’s drive way in my sports car. We would just wait and see how we both felt about each other when I returned.

It was the only time Leah ever said anything about never wanting to hear that there was something between me and David. Oh, yes, she had said a lot about David, but it was always around David’s infatuation with me, never before anything about what I might have been seeing in David.

Anyway, two years in England sorted out my messy sex life back in Australia, bringing the whole thing to a close.

You know, it must have been a strain on me when I think about it, as I went from fucking Leah and David constantly, to living the life of a celibate for two years overseas.

Rachel and I based ourselves in London. We went and saw every live show in the West End that we could. We travelled a lot, as that was the point of what we were doing. And I never had sex with anyone for that whole time. 

I thought nothing of it, at the time, but now I look back on it, it does now seem kind of weird. I can’t remember how I felt, but looking back on it from where I am now, I think it was a relief, even if that just sounds kind of odd now.

I still wasn’t out as gay, of course, that took me a number of years yet.

So, what happened to everyone?

Wednesday Home Alone

I worked at home all day on my own, just me and Otto.

Sam took a sick day on Tuesday, but had to go to the office today, as all his colleagues were eager for him to help/answer questions, whatever.

Charlie left for wherever Charlie goes at 9am. Oh, yes, I should know, of course I should, but I don't. Charlie is very short on details for anything he is doing.

It was an easy day for me, despite having to pull everything together for the month.

I chatted to Max the temp, she likes to chat. She's nice though, don't get me wrong. We talked about our work history and family history.

Since I started early, I'd finished everything by about 2.30pm, so I took Otto for a walk, in the glorious sunshine under a cloudless blue sky.

As I have said many times before, you have got to love working from home.

We got back at 3.30pm and I signed out of work.

That was it, that was Wednesday. It's about the best you can hope for on a Wednesday.

Sam Is Home

Sam is home. Otto and I went to the airport at midday and picked him up.

(I started work early, and took a sick day for the rest of the day)

Sam bought me two different types of cake. See, what I mean about him being the perfect boyfriend.