Taking Over the World

7:45a.m.

My eyes crack open and everything is hazy. It is morning. My head is thick, a foggy cloud has settled behind my eyes in the night. It doesn’t feel as though it is going to shift any time soon. I wonder where I am. I contemplate headache tablets.

7:46a.m.

The sheets feel nice; they could almost be my Egyptian cotton. I snuggle down. I’m in good hands.

7:47a.m.

Oh my god, it is my own bed and these are my sheets. It has taken me how long to realise? I drag myself up on to one arm and survey the room. I see that I’m not alone, although I have no memory of that particular fact. He has his back to me and I gaze over his shoulder to see his face. “Phew,” I exhale audibly. Not bad. I congratulate myself and wonder what his name is?

I wake the stranger and tell him I am late for work, so I won't be able to have breakfast with him. I apologise as I help him look for his underwear.

I remember the material of his boxer shorts tearing as I ripped them off him last night. I remember his arse. My single memory; I hope more will come back to me as I search. I find the torn boxers at the end of a pile of clothes, strewn from the door to the edge of the bed. We must have been good.

His boxers are fucked, though one leg is nearly ripped off them.

I loan him a pair of briefs, an old pair just in case I never see him again.

He looks good in them as he stands in front of me pulling on his shirt.

8:00 a.m

His name still eludes me, “See you,” I say. We kiss. His lips are soft. His stubble is sharp. “I’ll give you a call,” I say, as I usher him out the door. My bare feet are cold on the doorstep.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “That would be cool,” and he smiles. He has a nice smile. He gives me that morning-after look, when there is an awkward moment of silence. That look is somewhere between submissive and nervous, angelic and scared.

His jeans look good on him as I watch him walk away.

8:01 a.m

I fold the piece of paper with his telephone number on it and put it in the wooden box on the mantelpiece, where I keep all of my phone numbers. They are all together, but I rarely call any of them, too many men, too little time. They are just trophies, memento’s. Once I got them all out and counted them. There was fifty-five.

His name is Mathew. It is written on the scrap of paper that has his phone number on it. I try to remember how many Mathew’s I have slept with.

I can’t.

8:02 a.m

I remember my new loofa as I step into the shower. I remind myself again why I live alone, as I pick up the loofa from exactly where I left it, in exactly the same condition that I left it in.

I remember that I live alone when I reach for my Lime body- wash, as I gaze down I see that the soap scum is now forming layers on the tiles.

8:20 a.m

Pinstriped or plain suit, what sort of day is it? I decide to go with my new the three-button black, as it is the only suit that will go with the only shirt that is clean and ironed.

I make a mental note to get the phone number of whoever does Nick’s laundry.

8:30 a.m

I make a high protein breakfast while watching the “Today show”. I wonder if the stories I've heard about Tracy Grimshaw are true. Maybe?

I’m cross with myself for not going to the gym, yesterday. It’s now been three days.

I brush the cat fur off my suit for a second time, when I forget and sit back down again to contemplate Tracy’s sexuality.

Apparently, she has “Dyke icon” status.

9:00 a.m

I climb into my MX-5 and decide against the Gucci sunglasses. I’m trying not to look too much like that guy I saw the other day with his perfect sun tan, his perfect, matching, tipped hair and his perfect, black, SLK. I think his hair and his skin were exactly the same colour. He made me laugh spontaneously, out loud, as I glanced over at him, when he pulled up next to me at the lights. What a cliché?

And then my best friend Jason laughed when I told him the story and he said that I owned a girl’s car, too. I disagreed with him, but it has stayed on my mind since.

Perhaps I should get a new car?

9:30 a.m

I stroll into the office. I’m impressed with myself. I’m practically on time.

9:31 a.m

I close the door to my office and the phone is already ringing. I hesitate before I pick it up. Am I up to talking yet? It’s my drinking buddy Nick. He laughs about the guy who spent the night at my place and the fact that I couldn’t remember his name. “Hate that,” says Nick. “It would be much easier if we all had name tags or the same name, or no names at all, for fucks sake.”

“Fuck cards,” I say. “Standard issue, required to be given out before anyone gets... horny.” My head is still foggy.

“Issued at birth, “ Nick says.

“And you simply match the face to the ID,” I say.

“But you can’t even remember meeting him,” Nick points out, with his sarcastic laugh. It’s still too early for me for Nick’s, sarcastic, laugh. “So you wouldn’t remember the card even if he had given it to you, stupid.”

Nick is very competitive and his humour can border on being rude when he gets going. Translation: when he’s being witty than me. “No card would help you, too many brain cells gone on the night.”

I tell him that the word is that his boyfriend is sleeping around. But quickly add, “It‘s probably not true, as I only heard it third hand and from a very unreliable source.”

All my sources are unreliable, but only with keeping secrets.

9:45 am

I see that all my clients plans are back from the draftsmen, a day early. I suspected that I was going to have to spend the good part of today chasing up those plans.

I feel a bit woozy. I am still stoned from my late night with what’s his name.

10:15 am

I leave the office, telling my secretary that I am “meeting a client for lunch.” I pretend not to notice her roll her eyes and I just stop myself from reminding her that I am the boss in this situation. (although I haven’t yet made partner status).

I must be more hung over than I think.

10:30 am

I head to my hairdresser for my weekly appointment. I think I need colour too. It always makes me feel better, the morning after, when I’m feeling plain. Just sitting in the chair for an hour, doing nothing recharges me. I close my eyes and think about blue clouds and floating in mid air.

I purchase P.P.S. “Goop.” I have no idea how that is different to all the other products lined up in my bathroom, but if Tony recommends it...

11:30 am

I run into my personal trainer at the gym. I question him about Human Growth Hormone. I’ve been reading the reports about the Olympic games. Party season is about to begin, after all. Why should I be concerned about some mild liver damage, when I know it would make me look better?

I spend thirty minutes on the treadmill and thirty minutes on the machines; being intermittently disturbed by friends on my mobile phone. I prepare a mental-schedule of which men I want to sleep with and those who want to sleep with me. I try to organise the list alphabetically, but with the phone ringing constantly, who can think.

12:30 p.m.

I have a ten-minute top up on my tan in the fly buzzer, as Jason calls it. I reassure myself that solariums are safer then the ozone, depleted sun. I schedule a waxing in time for Saturday night’s party, where I know I will end up shirtless.

12:45 p.m.

I pay my trainer for the anabolic steroids, and half listen to his warnings and schedule a workout in two days.

I shower. The mildew has still not been wiped from the shower recess. I think about the Tinea I have just battled and defeated. I make a mental note to bring it up with the guy on the desk, or change gyms. I am still contemplating my options as my friend Nick’s boyfriend, Mark, enters the change rooms.

I decide on my first option.

I take ten minutes hunting for a mystery item that is lost somewhere in my gym bag, as I check out Nick’s boyfriend undressing with attitude. His hands run down his flat torso and slide under the elastic waistband of his briefs. He slides them down, all the time gazing down at himself, swaying his hips just slightly. As though the music is playing and he is the star in his very own peep show. He has a nice tiger tattoo on his arse and a highly defined tan line around the top of each leg and around his waist. He has a fine covering of black hair that extends from the top of the back of each thigh and disappears up the crack in his firm, round, white, arse. He bends over to pick up his shorts, from his sports bag, almost on queue.

I immediately regret turning him down at that bar, last week, when he was drunk and wanting it. Oh, best friend’s cute boyfriend’s...sisterly obligation, it’s a grey area, that’s for sure.

1:15 p.m.

I meet a guy for lunch from Manline, the telephone chat line. The only facts I know about him are his height, weight and cock size. The waiter recognises me from a bar, we give each other the “secret” look, and I laugh to myself with the thought of it. I am whisked past the heterosexual couples who have been waiting patiently for a table, for thirty minutes. I smile all the way to my table. We’re taking over the world, I think to myself.

He arrives a few minutes later. He looks nice, as he approaches the table with the waiter, kind of thirties matinee idol, but with shaggy hair.

Well...that’s the image I’m going with.

He is wearing a suit; he has come straight from work. “I’ve got the afternoon off, I’m not due back in the office until tomorrow,” he says, as we drink our first glass of wine. I like him already.

His name is Luke. He’s an accountant. He seems smart. He’s had two serious boyfriends and a couple of not so serious ones. He has a “not so serious” one happening at present. I interpret “not so serious” as those it’s okay to cheat on.

He’s not as big as he said he was, I suddenly realise, in between sips of wine.

He had a girlfriend before he discovered his true sexuality, but he never went down on her. Which he is still relieved about, especially since it still seems to be a fairly strict yardstick, today, of the true quality of a young mans, particular, gay gene.

One of his parents is still alive, who he visits most weekends. He travelled around Europe last year, with his best friend, Rita. And he had twisted testicles as a child, which had to be operated on.

Jesus! I’m continually amazed by what you find out about a person when you actually have a conversation before sex.

2:30 p.m.

“Coffee at my place,” he says. I soon find out people lie on phone lines.

It’s an awful moment when you’ve just got your hand inside some guy’s jocks and you realise it’s all over for you.

“I’m sorry, I’m too stoned,” I say. I make a mental note to always have a joint before sex so the excuses, at least, ring true to me.

I’m out of there in ten minutes making a mental note to give up phone chat lines once and for all.

3:45 p.m.

I meet Jason for coffee and cake at Gluttony. We are both late.

We discuss IVF rights for Lesbians and single mothers.

“And you know what really gives me the shits,” says Jason. “This crap about the homosexual agenda.”

“Yeah, who came up with that?” I say, puffing on a Styvie.

“Like we all got together and drew up a plan,” he says, passing me the ashtray.”

“It’s just a nice face for bigotry and for the Christians to hide behind with their hate,” I say.

Jason laughs. “Like poof’s could get up early enough to be that organised?”

“It shit’s me that the Christian right can still event new terms like the whole “equal rights not special rights” campaign to mask their sad views.”

“Oh it’s all the lies they tell,” says Jason. “Recruitment, special rights, protect the children...”

“Well, what about the gay children.” I say, beginning to feel the effect of my four, or was it five, glasses of red at lunch. “And what about their children and the Christian values they have stuffed down their throats from birth?”

“We should assume control,” says Jason with that sparkle appearing in his eye. “Of government, of the states, of local council.” He thumps his fist on the table. “There’s enough of us in all those jobs, now, to stage a coup. We should get an agenda, we should unite, we should show them all.”

“Destroy all Christian marriages,” I say.

“Recruit the children,” says Jason

“Only the gay ones, of course. We wouldn’t want to be hypocrites,” I say

“Fuck it, recruit them all. Kindergarten through to year twelve.” Jason thumps both his fists on the table. “Recruit them all into our amoral, filthy lifestyle.” The waiter appears beside Jason and asks if everything is all right.

I sip my coffee to stifle a laugh.

“Secure control of the media,” Jason whispers. “Isn’t one of those media moguls son’s gay?”

“Television has practically taken care of itself,” I say. “Even I’m sick of how many gay characters there are now.”

“You will have to molest the innocent children and I will give AIDS to as many people as I can,” says Jason, almost sounding triumphant. “See if we can get “The Pissed Christ” back. It can feature at a pornographic “art” exhibition that will be subliminally satanic and it’ll turn people away from Jesus without them ever realising why. They’ll burn in hell forever.”

4:10 p.m.

Time permitting, we will solve all of society’s evils and the world will be a much nicer place. We will have, dancing girls and dancing boys and we will, no doubt, look like we are having way too much fun in the process.

I’m still laughing as I leave the café. I decide to head home; there’s no use going back to the office for only an hour.

5:00p.m.

I take a power-nap. I apply cucumber gel and draw the curtains and rest from the stress of world conquest and from being so fabulous.

The trams clunk, clunk rhythmically at the end of the street. Like the noise of a branch, with a rope-swing rocking below it, back and forwards, back and forwards. I’m in a beautiful forest; there’s a wood nymph, dressed in…

The joint is making me woozy and dazed…

6:30 p.m.

I open a fabulous new bottle of Merlot and pick at the remains of the macrobiotic food containers, which litter the inside of my fridge. I contemplate an energy drink, but with the wineglass in the other hand, I decide maybe not.

6:45 P.M.

I bake Special K for the weekend, which I get from my friendly vet. He was very formal and professional, when I first started to visit his surgery. That was until I dropped that I was going to Mardi Gras, one time when I was there with my cat. He shrieked and seemed to change physically, before my very eyes, when he realised we were in the same club, as he put it. Now he hugs and kisses me whenever I see him and offers to get me Special K, whenever I want it. As he feels me up during the consultation, on the white laminae, scrubbed very clean.

It’s not my favourite drug, but hey, when the cupboard is bare, what can you do?

My cat wasn’t even sick, last Thursday, when we went.

I bake it as per Nick’s instructions, scribbled on the back of a business card, when we were both in a sex-on-premises venue, late one Sunday morning, when the trade was bad.

I test the recipe. You only need the tinniest amount, I remind myself.

I make a mental note to quantify “tiny.”

7:00 P.M

I toss the empty wine bottle into the recycling bin and go to Saba. I need new shirts, my solution to the washing problem. I’m feeling a little unsteady on my feet. The decor seems a bit surreal. I’m not sure if I’m amused or dizzy. I feel both. The only other shopper in the place seems to have six arms.

7:40 P.M.

I snap out of my stupor, close my mouth and stop lecherously eyeing off the boy behind the counter, who is wearing tight jeans and a singlet torn all the way down to his navel. I begin to shop.

The racks are a blur of black and the hangers make a click, click sound, as I slide them across the chrome rack, like a drag queen’s heels on concrete.

8:30 p.m.

I have dinner with bitchy friends, at a restaurant we will all be “over” before it gets popular. They are all chatting and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, when I get there. I am late.

Our orphan dinner club, for boys without partners. The foot-loose and fancy-free, the confirmed bachelors and the recently divorced. Mostly they are the recently divorced. We are all squeezing in a meal between working late, hitting the gym and heading out to a bar. When we realise we have forgotten the time, once again, it’s like last call at a singles night.

10:30 p.m.

I decide on night-cap at a local bar, which mostly involves trying to avoid alcoholic queens who can't navigate a crowd with a lit cigarette in one hand and a Stoli in the other.

“Queens who still smoke are so last century,” says Nick, just as I reach into my jacket for my cigarettes. I make a mental note to at least try to make an attempt to stop on the weekend.

“They spend half their life at the gym and yet they still smoke,” says Nick. “I just don’t get it?”

“No, me either,” I say, but mostly I don’t get his point.

The bar is busy and smoky. The pool table is booked for the next few hours. The lighting is dim. The walls are painted black. Nick and I separate, no use looking as though you have a boyfriend in tow.

June Allyson is there, of course. An older gay man, who is always to be seen out in the bars, on any night I, or any of my friends, choose to go out drinking.

“She practically lives here. Dirty old bitch,” says Nick.

We call him June Allyson because he has white hair cut into a bob. He is always wearing a pin-striped shirt, normally blue and white. He always has a half filled glass in his hand, as he swans around the bar with a vacant expression, chatting to anyone who is unfortunate enough to make eye contact with him.

“He gives me the creeps,” I say, as I lick the beer froth from my top lip.

12:00 a.m.

“Joint at your place?” he says. He is John, the six foot two, mountain of a carpenter I met at the same bar, last week. He says he works out every second day and chuckles when he says everything about him is big.

I scull what is left of my beer. I remember that my sheets aren’t exactly clean.

“How about your place, I say. “My flat mate’s got friends over.”

12.30 a.m.

I find out, yet again, that men lie in bars, too.