Chapter 12

Chapter 12 Despite how confusing things had been between Steven and I, we continued to spend every non-working and non-sleeping hour together. It was a comfortable routine to have after all the other routines in my life had disappeared overnight. Amidst the many changes in my life, Steven had become my rock. But our relationship wasn't one sided. Steven was obviously enjoying what I had to offer - companionship that resembled a romantic relationship. While I had been sucking Steven into my life since the day he met me in the city after the night Lisa left me, he was starting to induct me into his world. He took me up to his office and showed me where he worked; he introduced me to a good single mother friend of his whose son and I got on like a house on fire; and now, he was inviting me to go to an engagement party for his work mate with him. I was more than happy to accept the invitation. After all, it wasn't as if I had other plans. The party was held at one of the most chic spot in the city with full view of the Brisbane River. I pulled out one of my favourite Hugo Boss shirts for the occasion. By the time I finished grooming myself, I was pretty damn happy with the result. In spite of looking a bit like a preppy university student, I was otherwise adequately sophisticated. My appearance obviously impressed Steven as well. As soon as he saw me, he commented on how smart I looked and his subtle way of finding every opportunity to physically touch me was not lost on me. When we walked into the dimly lit bar, we were arriving as a couple. A few people immediately greeted us and Steven quickly and gracefully introduced me as his "friend". Not one single person batted an eye at the fact that I was effectively attending the function as Steven's "date" - and that I was male, which led me to think that I Steven must have talked to them about me before tonight. We spotted Rosie, who was a good friend and colleague of Steven's and we settled down next to them at a chest high round table. Rosie looked as though she was in her mid-fifties while I reckoned her husband, Wayne, was marginally older. They both appeared genuinely delighted to meet me. There was no hint of awkwardness as they chatted with me about anything and everything. My extraverted self was in my element. Coupled with a bit of social polishing professional life had imparted upon me over the last ten years or so, I was the consummate social butterfly. My light hearted humour kept making everyone laugh and I could see how pleased Steven was to see me fitting in so effortlessly. He looked almost as if he was proud of me or something. Not long after, Samantha, the receptionist at Steven's office, showed up with her boyfriend, Dave. He came across quite comfortable with me, even though he was well aware that I was gay. In fact, I detected what might have been flirtation from him. As the night went on, we were more uninhibited because of the alcohol and he was really enjoying our company. At one stage, I was trying to prove to him that I could appear straight as a nail and attempted to demonstrate that by doing a cat walk for him. He laughed his head off, so did everyone else, as I self-deprecatingly indulged in some physical comedy. I was the centre of attention and everyone loved me. I even demonstrated, with David as my model, how to hit on another guy. It was a night of fun and laughter. I felt like I was doing an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

All the while, Steven was looking immensely satisfied as I stole glances at him every now and then. In some ways, I felt like I had passed some sort of test on whether I would make an acceptable partner for him. And obviously, I passed the test. For a split second, coming from my residual hetero-normative worldview, I felt like Steven's girlfriend who was paraded in front of his workmates for the first time and his view of my suitability as his beau was hinging on his workmates' approval of me. For the first time, I felt strangely excited, feminine, and weird all at the same time. *

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Staying true to my nature, Lisa and I used to take holidays in capital cities. Being the yuppie couple that we were, we would book ourselves into the most luxurious five star hotels in Sydney or Melbourne and enjoyed the pampering treatment of what these hotels had to offer. Lisa would use the state of the art gym facilities on site while I watched TV and worked on the non-fiction I was aspired to publish one day in bed. When she got back, we would order room service breakfast or go down to the hotel restaurant to enjoy their gourmet buffet breakfast. Contrary to common expectations of a young couple in their relaxed state, we never had sex. We would cuddle or hold hands in bed or out of bed but we always found excuses to avoid having sex. During the day, we would venture out to the city centre and spend hours and hours shopping. Much of our holiday spending money was spent on new designer labelled clothes. I would buy Hugo Boss or Ralph Lauren business shirts for work, together with Italian made silk ties that were as dear as the shirts themselves. I would also get a whole heap of leisure wear that were preppy but classically stylish. Acknowledging my good tastes and fashion sense in not just men's clothing, Lisa would ask me to help her find clothes that would suit her. She was constantly amazed by my "good eye for style" and relied heavily on my opinion for her wardrobe for the next season. In between our shopping expedition were countless stops at trendy coffee shops where we would have lunch or sweets with coffee. In the evening, we would go to expensive restaurants and sample gourmet degustation menus. Life was pretty damn good for us. We both knew something was missing. But the missing piece wasn't important. So what if we were seldom sexually intimate? Yes, there were moments of angst when Lisa would show disappointment when I avoided her initiation of intimacy but those moments were short lived and insignificant in comparison with the remaining elements that made up our lives together. We were almost perfect for each other and we figured most couples couldn't cross their hearts and say that. But that didn't mean my struggles to repress how I felt were easy. There were haphazard periods when my awareness of my true feelings were bubbling so close to the surface that were simply overwhelming. One of those periods happened on one of our Melbourne holidays. We were having dinner in this elegant hotel restaurant and because it was a Monday night, we were the only people dining there. I had been eyeing the baby grand piano at the corner of the restaurant since we were seated and I couldn't resist asking the waiter if I could play it. Naturally, they complied readily. After all, it wasn't as if I could alienate any of their patrons if I happened to be lousy. I played the piano for a while and attracted some attention, be it from the waiting

staff or hotel patrons who happened to walk by. When I finally sat down at our table again, she was beaming with pride. Every time we were attended by the waiting staff, they would comment on how good I was and asked me to play more. They would look enviously at Lisa, as if to say that she had landed herself a great catch. While she was enjoying the attention, she looked vindicated and affirmed in having me as a husband, as someone she could look up to and grow old with without the trappings and foibles of the stereotypical straight men. Ironically, I wasn't feeling my controlled self on that day. My homosexual feelings had been haunting me of late and my frustration for not being able to act on and express my sexuality was eating me up inside. Everywhere I turned, I saw attractive guys who kept doing unspeakable but tantalising things to me in my secret thoughts. It was torturous. But I kept thinking I could overcome these feelings. It wasn't as if I had never done that before. It was just another phase. If I stayed steadfast and vigilant, I could beat this “thing”. “You really should do something more with your music, you know,” Lisa commented encouragingly. She was one of the most nurturing people I knew. “Yeah, I know,” I nodded politely, “maybe that would make me feel better about my life.” No sooner had those words left my mouth than I regretted them. They just slipped out, which probably evidenced my perturbed state of mind. “Aren’t you happy with our lives, Ethan?” Lisa looked into my eyes with compassion and asked me attentively. Behind her genuine concern though, I could feel hurt and a profound sense of inadequacy. “No … I mean, yes, I am happy with our lives,” I uttered, knowing that those words wouldn’t have satisfied her, “…but I just feel…” As I was struggling to get my words out, Lisa reached across the table and touched my hand. She wasn’t being demanding or even inquisitive. She was simply showing that she cared. “…I feel as though a part of me is broken.” She nodded without trying to elicit more information from me. I could almost hear what she was thinking - he didn’t have a good childhood and his mother was physically abusive; he had never felt whole again as his innocence was ripped away from him; that was why he felt broken inside, as if a part of him was missing. In some ways, this train of thought gave me a convenient way out. In others, I felt even more frustrated, as if she had just slammed an agape door I was desperately trying to open shut again. My heart was thumping hard and I was on the verge to telling her more. “That’s okay. There is plenty of time for healing,” Lisa said calmly and decisively. Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable telling her more. *

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When you lived in a moralistic cocoon of the church and bound by marriage for a decade, the sense of liberation you feel when you come out is overwhelming. Ever since Lisa left me, I was not only forced to confront who I was; I was forced to make do and come up with a way of life that was dramatically different from my “previous life”. For

me, a byproduct of coming out was obsession. I was obsessed with anything and everything gay. The gayer the better was my motto. I was desperately wanting to make connections with “my people” as well. I thought I found some prospects when someone on IRC pointed me to this gay social tennis group who played at Yeronga every Tuesday night. For some reason, I thought people were going to be friendly but, far from it, they were quite cliquey. The group was mostly made up people in their thirties and forties, which I thought would be ideal for me. Finally, I found friends of my own age! Ironically, my baby face and small frame belied me – most people just assumed I was in my early twenties and didn’t make much effort in trying to connect with me. It was little wonder that I called Steven whenever I was waiting for my turn to play. I felt bored and ill belonged, even though I was usually quite adept at making friends with strangers. After three weeks of trying, I decided not to go back. In the mean time, I befriended a straight girl by the name of Katrina online. She was in her early twenties and came across very friendly and open. We started spending a fair bit of time chatting but I never told her about my marriage or my age. She introduced me to a few gay guys she befriended online. One of them was an elderly gentleman by the name of Calvin. While I was chatting with Calvin, who came across a little bit creepy, he told me about this gay coffee group he attended every Wednesday night. That piqued my interest and I made plans to join the group. When I saw Steven the next day, I coerced him into going to the coffee group with me. He was not terribly excited about the idea. From my vantage point, Steven was suffering from internalized homophobia. The thought of having coffee with “a bunch of fags”, according to him, was not exactly his idea of a good time. “But you could perv – so that’s gotta be good,” I tempted him. “Yeah but by the sounds of things, these guys sound old and crusty.” “That’s not nice! Besides, the guy you pointed out earlier today was old and crusty!” I teased him. “Fine, I’ll go.” Our first night with the group was at Three Monkeys at West End. Most of the guys there were friendly enough but because they already knew each other well, we were very much outsiders. Thankfully, there were two of us, so we had each other to fall back to. Calvin was a large man in his sixties. He came across creepy but friendly. I did wonder if the friendliness was some sort of bait he routinely used to lure his victims. He gave me a big hug when we got there. Reluctantly, he hugged Steven too, who hugged him back with the same measure of reluctance. “What did he have to hug me?” Steven later confided when we were out of everyone’s ear shot. “I don’t know,” I shrugged, “may be he likes you.” We met lots of people that night, including my first ever transsexual man – or woman. Whatever the correct designation was, this person used to be a man and had now become a woman after an operation. Everyone referred to Linda as a “she”, so I just followed suit. Linda was a funny woman. She was over fifty but had the sarcastic wit of a twenty year old drag queen. She was obviously quite large physically when she was a man,

which must have been a disconcerting bane of her existence in her gender transforming plan. “I usually get driven here by my friend, Anthony,” Linda was saying, “but he’s coming later tonight, so I just took the bus. Did you get driven here by your boyfriend?” “Boyfriend? Oh, you mean Steven? No, he’s not my boyfriend.” “Oh? I just assumed,” Linda looked a little flustered, as if she thought she had somehow offended me by making the assumption. Suddenly, a distraction came to her rescue, “There he is. He made it.” I turned and tried to follow Linda’s reliefed gaze. What I saw made my heart skip a beat – Anthony was quite cute. He was a little taller than I was but was not quite six feet. He had a medium build but what attracted me the most was his face. His glimmering blond hair was lighting up his face and his twinkling blue eyes. He was softly handsome without the rugged features and square jaw of a magazine model. “Hi, I’m Anthony,” he smiled at me curiously and held out his hands, which I shook. “Ethan,” I introduced myself, “and this is my friend, Steven.” I was wondering if I over-emphasised the phrase “my friend”. We made small talk for a while. I found myself quite attracted to Anthony. When he finally excused himself to chat with other people, Steven whispered into my ear: “Okay, I take it back.” “What are you talking about?” “They are not all old and crusty.” *

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Once upon a time, I was a good little church boy. I wouldn't call myself religious but I was certainly fervent about my beliefs, so much so that I read the driest theological texts from cover to cover, trying to consolidate my own set of positions on a myriad of theological issues. My best friend then, Toby, was just as fervent as I was about Christianity. In fact, his passion far exceeded mine to the extent that he gave up his "normal life" and went to study at a Bible College in Sydney for two years. Not surprisingly, that was where he found his future wife, who ultimately moved up to Brisbane with him. While Toby was away studying in Sydney, Lisa and I were living in his house. The idea was we would pay rent to help him pay his mortgage, so that he didn't have to sell his home. As we were both fresh university graduates who just started our careers with modest salaries, we shared the house with two other girls from our church. Lisa and I lived downstairs while the girls lived on the second floor. Our household epitomised our church centred lives. Our friends from church would drop in regularly for various reasons - some for social calls while others for prayer meetings and home groups. Lisa and I started a home group ourselves. I in particular had fairly fundamentalist and conservative theological views; I was dubious about our church's teachings as the charismatic movement and its experiential theology started spreading across Australian churches like a wild fire. Lisa and I decided to remain faithful to Scriptures, which formed the basis of our home group. We were blessed with a bunch of really nice guys and girls. We were all wide eyed

and innocent, wanting to serve and glorify our God with our lives. Most of us were in our early twenties, with the exception of Daniel, who was nineteen. He had one of the most gregarious personalities I knew. He loved to talk and his characteristically merry chuckle was infectious. We quickly became very good friends. Unlike the other home group members, Daniel would come over at a drop of a hat just so that he could spend time with Lisa and I. He clearly respected us a lot and became attached to us very quickly. There was something about Daniel that intrigued me. The more we opened our hearts to each other, the more I discovered that we shared a lot of similarities. I put that down to our personalities - we were probably both ENFPs under the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. But even so, we had a deeper connection, an innate understanding about an element of ourselves of which we were not even aware or could freely articulate. Like myself, Daniel was an extremely sensitive and emotional person. He had gone through some turbulent times in his life. His mum and dad had split up and he was living with his father in a town house nearby. They were obviously quite well off but Daniel's spirit had most certainly been deeply affected by his dysfunctional family. Lisa was delighted by how Daniel had taken to me. She was excited by the prospect that I could be a positive influence on Daniel's life and, at the same time, heartened by the possibility that I had finally found a close male friend. I had expressed in the past that I felt lonely because I didn't seem to have any close male friendships. That was why, to her, Daniel was a god send. I was dropping Daniel off one night. Very often, we would turned the ignition off outside his place and chat. As good and wholesome church boys, our conversation was never rude or unbecoming. We shared our insights on life, our hopes and fears, our theological view points, and encouraged each other in our "Christian walk". But on this night, Daniel was different. He came across perturbed and tense, which was uncharacteristic of him. I could tell something big was bothering him. "What's wrong, Dan?" I asked with genuine concern. "Nothing..." he tentatively replied, "it's just that ... well, I really want to live by faith and serve God, you know..." "That's wonderful. I admire and respect that a lot." "But," he faltered again, this time more abruptly, as if he was going through some sort of internal trauma, "I try very hard to be good but I just have this ... what was that Bible verse again ... thorn on my side." The phrase rang alarm bells in my head. I had heard someone use that many times in the past to describe this persistent habit and shameful behaviour that just would not go away. That was me. My homosexual feelings had been the thorn on my side that I had to constantly rage battle against. "It's like I have to keep fighting it but every time when I think I've won the war, it'd come back, stronger than before. I feel this thing is keeping me from having a good relationship with God." "I think I know what you're talking about, Dan," I surprised even myself when those words left me; I was letting my intuition run wild. "Really?" gasped Dan, "But I haven't really told you what it is." "I think God has shown me what you've been struggling with." Dan was speechless. He was studying my face, trying to work out if I indeed knew what

his deep dark secret was. "You feel as though what you feel so naturally is wrong," I looked away from him and gently uttered, "you feel like no matter how much you try, you are still attracted to what you try so hard not to be attracted to. But the worst thing is - you feel all alone and can't really tell anyone your secret." His face ashened somewhat, his expression blank. The fact was - it didn't take much for me to guess. Ever since the first day I met Daniel, I felt a sense of camaraderie with him. It took me a while to work out we were similar in many ways. In particular, we shared a subtle sensibility that one wouldn't often find in a male. Once I became aware of how attuned we were, I started taking note of the furtive but curious glances he took when say a cute boy walked into the church because I would be doing the same. Just as I would quickly camouflage my instinctive interest in what I was naturally attracted to, Daniel would do the same. "Have I been that obvious?" he finally abandoned the charade and asked. I was too specific to mean anything else. "No," I assured him gently, "I just know. I think the Lord showed it to me." That did it. Daniel burst into tears. My heart ached at the pain he was showing on every inch of his face. He looked so torn and broken. I tried to comfort him but he was inconsolable, so I let him cry. It felt like he cried and sobbed for days even though it was probably fifteen minutes in reality. "And you know what, Dan? I think everything happens for a reason. I think God put us into each other's lives because he knows we can love and help each other." "So you're okay with who..." he sobbed but retrieved his composure again, "...you still want to be my friend even though ... I'm who I am?" "Of course, Dan!" I said reassuringly, "You're the same person to me." "Thanks Ethan, you're such a blessing to me," Dan's eyes started to well up again, "I feel so ashamed. I know I can never be close to God as long as I keep sinning by being who I am. Why do you want to stay friends with me, Ethan? Isn't my sin repulsive to you?" A thousand thoughts ran through my mind in that instant. The loudest one came as an image of me throwing the first stone at - myself. "I love you, Dan. Nothing can change that. Besides, the Bible teaches us to love the sinner, hate the sin." It was at that very moment when I realised it wasn't only Daniel's sin that I hated. *

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I was surprised by Anthony’s text message. Yes, there was some flirting when Steven and I were having coffee with the gay social group but I didn’t want to overdo it, especially when Steven had expressed his interest in Anthony. It was fun chatting with you tonight. Can’t wait to see you again next week. As a new recruit to the gay world, I had not experienced any real romance yet. The closest I came to was Steven, which was hardly a real relationship. We were friends, mates; we were both lonely people who happened to have found comfort in each other, not to mention it had only been about two months since Lisa’s departure. It felt almost wrong to start anything so soon. But I would be lying if I had said I wasn’t excited by

Anthony’s message. I texted Anthony back, telling him how much I enjoyed meeting him as well. Enjoy your week and hopefully you won’t be hit on by too many boys… he texted back almost instantly. I played coy and said he didn’t have to worry because no one ever showed any interest in me. Within a minute, my phone announced that I had received another message from Anthony. I find that very hard to believe when you’re so damn cute… My heart skipped a few beats when I read this. If that wasn’t a come on, I didn’t know what was. To be fair, I had been hit on by various guys many times in a nightclub before but that was in a nightclub when these guys were fuelled by alcohol and only wanted a moment of passion. But to be hit on by someone sober in a setting outside a nightclub was a brand new thing to me. The last thing I thought of before I fell asleep that night were those baby blue eyes looking intently into mine. *

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Steven and I recently made friends with Peter on the internet. Peter was an enigmatic character – he owned part of the business he worked in and previously worked for a local TV station. Apparently, he suffered some kind of illness, which led to the amputation of one on his legs from the knee down.