Time to Upsize: The Indignities Book One

1

Prologue

Turning thirty is tricky. It’s one of those landmark events that triggers enormous amounts of contemplation—and not merely in the mirror. It can make the frivolous thoughtful and those who are single somewhat delusional. It can even cause you to heed the preachings of your parents about settling down and you find yourself embracing burdensome responsibilities such as mortgages and marriage. Heavens, in this susceptible state, you might even give fleeting thought to moderation—or even monogamy.

If you’re gay, turning thirty heralds the unsavoury fact that your days of classifying yourself as ‘a boy’ are numbered. The harsh reality is you’re ‘a man’, that word you always associated with your father, your teachers, or that sexy, shirtless butch lingering in the shadows at Manacle. It’s utterly incomprehensible. How can you possibly be a man when you’ve had all your chest hair permanently removed by laser?

I am the youngest in my set of friends and, I daresay, the vainest. ‘It’ll be bad for you Stephen,’ Strauss predicted. ‘Mark my words.’

But that remark only steeled my resolve to observe and learn as my friends blundered through their birthdays. So that when my turn came, I could rise to the occasion with a little more dignity and a lot more common sense.

Nevertheless, I was there for them: to discuss avoidance tactics (moisturisers, make-up, or botox?), help evaluate their accomplishments and ambitions or lack thereof and, of course, to plan the party. I saw them through their anguished reassessments and subsequent plans to embark on some ill-advised, impulsive scheme. My cautionary advice went unheeded. We lived in a world of reality television and had absorbed the dubious wisdom of life-changing makeovers as a way to redecorate discontent with our lives. Brimming with the desperate optimism of fast-fading youth, my friends embarked on their ‘fresh starts’.

2

Chapter One

To: antsinyourpants@xtra.co.nz 

From: speard@bigpond.net.au 

Subject: Happy Birthday

Dear Ant,
  Happy Birthday! Sorry that I can’t be with you to celebrate. Remember the first time I went to one of your birthday dinners and all the guests were trade, except me! Have you unwrapped your present yet? Hint: it’s for use in the bedroom and is totally hot! Love  Stephen. xxx 

My ex, Ant, was the first to turn thirty and the first to embark on a fresh start. But after throwing in his ‘fatuous Sydney lifestyle’ and moving back to New Zealand, the only thing he found fresh was the climate. That’s why I sent the electric blanket for his birthday.

Of course the real agenda behind his relocation, though he tried to play it down, was a boy. Sexually, Ant is absolutely ruled by ‘his type’: they must be blond, blue-eyed, smooth and tanned. But after more than ten years in Sydney, he also yearned for a blond who was unaffected, an innocent without all the attitude. Then, several months before his thirtieth birthday he discovered a boy who not only fulfilled all his physical criteria, but was also only nineteen and presumably unsullied. However, there were a couple of major drawbacks. Ant had ‘met’ this youth on the internet, and there was no immediate prospect of a face-to-face meeting as he lived in Queenstown, New Zealand.

His name was Iain. Allegedly, he lived and worked on his father’s farm, was completely straight-acting, totally closeted, and immensely curious. Ant showed me his photograph and I gushed obligingly, though, personally, he did nothing for me. He was just a skinny blond boy, badly dressed in rugby shorts and a singlet, and posed against—of all things—a tractor.

‘Isn’t he butch,’ cooed Ant gleefully.

I couldn’t really concur with that. He was too pretty. ‘Yes well, the tractor is a very butch accessory,’ I admitted, ‘but as for Iain …’

‘If you’re going to be snide, then I’m not going to talk to you about him,’ said Ant snootily, and he didn’t.

When I enquired, I was rebuffed. Though occasionally Ant couldn’t contain himself and let things slip. He was so excited when Iain e- mailed photographs without the shorts and singlet—he had to show me. Another time, when I complained that Ant’s landline was always engaged, he confided that he and Iain were constantly on MSN Messenger having cyber sex. I was genuinely curious as to what they did but Ant became prickly about answering any questions. Finally, he admitted that he was the only one with a webcam but that Iain was going to buy one ‘as soon as the wool cheque came in’.

‘Then everything will be revealed,’ I remarked archly.

It was plain to me that the reason Iain didn’t have a webcam was because he bore no resemblance to ‘his photographs’. But when I suggested this, Ant insisted it was impossible. ‘Iain is the most genuine guy I’ve met in ten years.’

That offended me! After all Ant and I had been boyfriends back in ’96 and ’97 and to be compared unfavourably to an internet phantom was insulting in the extreme. But I held my tongue and merely observed with mounting disapproval as Ant became more and more enthralled by this Iain.

What really made me comprehend the seriousness of Ant’s intent  was when he upgraded his mobile to one that would send overseas text messages. Ant was notoriously stingy, particularly when it came to paying for expensive mobile calls. The fact that he’d outlaid cash for a new phone and was actually using it to make calls, rather than just receive them, was highly uncharacteristic. It couldn’t be love, rather some grand folly brought on by the prospect of turning thirty.

I wasn’t surprised when Ant announced he was going to New Zealand. But then he floored me by elaborating that he was moving there permanently. He declared that he’d always had this romantic notion of one day moving back there to live, buying a little cottage in the country, and making a home with his ideal guy. I was sceptical. We had after all been boyfriends for some time and this bucolic fantasy had never been outlined to me. ‘It sounds more like a retirement plan,’ I joked, ‘though admittedly, you are turning thirty.’

‘Yes,’ Ant declared, ‘exactly, I’m going to be thirty and it’s made me think a lot about what’s important. I’m getting older and then there’s my status. I don’t want to look back with regret that I failed to seize my chance.’

‘To do what? Fuck Iain in the shearing shed? I retorted.

‘Iain’s not the reason I’m moving. I have no expectations of Iain,’ he insisted.

I wanted to ask if he’d told Iain about ‘his status’, but I refrained. Ant could be prickly about that subject. But I couldn’t imagine that a closeted country boy would handle such a revelation particularly well. Or that their pie-in-the-sky romance could survive that potentially deflating dose of reality.

However, a few days later Ant informed me triumphantly that he’d ‘come out’ to Iain as HIV positive and that Iain had proven to be incredibly supportive. ‘He cried,’ Ant informed me in awe.

‘He cried on MSN Messenger? Is there an emoticon for that?’

‘He told me he was crying,’ said Ant testily. ‘Then he said it didn’t matter. You see, not everyone is so hung up about it.’

That barb was aimed at me and was a little unfair. There had been other problems in our relationship besides the lurking knowledge of Ant’s HIV status. But it hurt me and I was a little distant during those final weeks as Ant prepared to leave Sydney. Though after he’d gone, I missed him terribly. He was the friend I spoke to and relied on the most. Of course, I was immensely curious as to how things were going with Iain in New Zealand. I sent a text the day after he left, and then an e-mail the next, but received no reply to either. Finally, on the third day I phoned Ant, but he was extremely cagey. I hung up, sensing disaster. A few days later, I phoned again and this time, Ant broke down and confided the full catastrophe. He’d been in Queenstown for a week but still hadn’t met Iain. He had failed to turn up at the airport to meet Ant’s plane. When Ant phoned his mobile to see where he was and when they could meet, Iain hurriedly hung up. His phone was turned off for the rest of that day. Ant sent numerous expensive texts but received no reply. The next day, when Ant went to ring Iain, the number was disconnected. Iain had also disappeared off Gaydar and MSN. Ant had no other way of finding him.

‘Something freaked him out. Maybe it was the HIV thing or maybe he was just too closeted to actually meet me? Perhaps he never took me seriously when I said I was coming.’

‘But you told him?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Ant slowly, ‘but thinking about it, I guess it was always in the context of sexual fantasy. It was like I’m coming over there to fuck you.’

It seemed redundant to suggest that ‘Iain’ was a fraud or a fiction: that someone had swiped those photos from somewhere and made use of them. Ant had to be thinking that already. ‘Did he ever buy that webcam? Did you ever get to see him online?’ I asked.

‘No, he had all these excuses. The wool cheque was late, then his computer crashed and he couldn’t afford a new one, and he had to use an internet café.’

It was plain that Ant had been duped and I consoled him as best I could. I assumed he would retreat back to Sydney, but he insisted he was staying put. ‘This is home now,’ Ant said grimly. ‘I’m going to try and make this work.’

What choice did he have? He’d given up his job, moved out of his apartment, shipped all his stuff across the Tasman and taken a lease on a cottage in Queenstown for six months.

I called him every few days for those first weeks, and though he didn’t say it directly, I knew he hadn’t given up on Iain entirely. He still hoped Iain would get over his nerves and resurface. ‘You know, there’s every chance I’ll simply run into him one day,’ he confided. ‘Queenstown’s not a very big place.’

I didn’t point out that if he did run into Iain, he probably wouldn’t know it: that the person behind ‘Iain’ was probably twice or even thrice his age and weight, and looked nothing like those photographs.

Ant buckled down and tried to make the best of things. He got work as a personal trainer at a gym and in the process of searching for Iain under a new profile on Gaydar, found himself besieged with messages. He was the hot new guy in town. Everyone within a hundred kilometres wanted to date him, do him, or drive him around various Lord of the Rings film locations. Yet despite its promising name, eligible gay men proved to be somewhat scarce in Queenstown, and guys who fulfilled Ant’s strict criteria were even scarcer. The tourists, especially the North Europeans, were the best bets. But more often than not, they travelled as couples. The stunning Nordic youth who Ant got so excited about initially would turn out to be accompanied by a considerably older gent who was paying for the trip. Still, if a threesome was proposed, Ant went along with it—who knew when the next opportunity would present itself? Occasionally, he’d strike a solitary Dutch or German boy and have a passionate three- or four-day affair, in between day trips to Milford Sound and bungy jumping. They would tell him in their endearing accents how lucky he was to live in such an idyllic place. But for all their praise and reputed envy, when Ant encouraged them to extend their trip and stay on with him, they declined or thought he was joking. The boy from Munich was incredulous. ‘I have a schedule,’ he insisted, waving his itinerary in Ant’s face. ‘It is not possible for there to be deviations.’

And so they left, with a cheerful ‘Wiedersehen’, continuing on to Auckland or Sydney, and Ant understood. They wanted a different type of beauty: shirtless, ecstatic, twirling on a dance floor in Darlinghurst. It wasn’t until he had moved away from it that he discovered he missed it too.

My best girlfriend Blair was also the victim of a long distance relationship gone wrong; though at least hers had some basis in physical reality. Dwaine was from London but was on holiday in Sydney for two weeks. Once Blair met him, they spent every night together. I was introduced to him and was impressed. He was black, handsome, good company, had aspirations to be a songwriter, and was apparently a sensational lover. Only his career path seemed somewhat murky. Blair, however, didn’t care about that as she had her own tribulations in that department. After their time together ended and he flew out, they maintained their intimacy through phone calls and the internet. He kept encouraging her to follow him to London and after a particularly bad day at work, in one of those mad ‘turning thirty’ moments, Blair bought a plane ticket.

‘You know I’ve always wanted to live in London,’ she said.

I raised my eyebrows. It was the first I had heard of it.

‘Well, I guess it’s been more of a dream,’ she said, and that word should have triggered alarm bells. Ant had had a dream too. ‘But you know what I’m like with money. Some weeks I don’t even have enough for the train, let alone money for a trip to London. But now, thanks to Nana, I’m set.’

Blair’s grandmother had recently offered her thirty thousand dollars to use as a deposit for an apartment. Nana wanted Blair out of Kings Cross and into somewhere nice, preferably Pymble, which was where she lived. ‘Nana wants you living next door, not halfway across the world,’ I pointed out.

‘True, but she also wants me married with children, and this is my most likely prospect in years. She wouldn’t want me to let him slip away.’

I had met Blair’s grandmother. She held some very firm, conservative views. ‘She might if she knew her great-grandchildren would be black.’

That gave Blair a moment’s pause. ‘You know, her eyesight’s not so great now. By the time I actually have a baby, she may not see well enough to even notice.’

All I could do was laugh. Blair’s reasoning was in itself so short- sighted. ‘Okay, but you have to tell her what you’re planning. She did give you that money for a particular purpose.’

Blair looked dubious. ‘I suppose,’ she conceded. I doubted that she would follow through.

However, two days later, she bounded back to see me. ‘I have Nana’s blessing,’ she chortled. ‘I told her I wanted to go to London and visit the royal palaces, see the trooping of the colour blah blah blah. Nana’s such a royalist and visiting London is something she’s always wanted to do. So I’m going to go and take lots of photos for her.’

Blair was giddy with excitement, but it was a strain to pretend I was pleased for her. When I subtly mentioned Ant as an example of how dramatic life changes could end badly, Blair took offence. ‘This is nothing like Ant’s situation. I’m not chasing some internet impostor. This is a man I have a strong connection with and someone who reciprocates my feelings. If I don’t pursue it, I’d always