I'm Not Really Here, page 27
‘You right, boys?’ Dad asks at the same time.
‘Yeah,’ I say. Harley nods.
‘What was Jack’s problem?’ Cherry asks. Harley looks to his feet.
‘Jack’s problem is someone finally stood up to him,’ I say. ‘He treats women like objects, like we’re still in the fifties or something. And he was teasing me and Harley about being together. He’s lucky Harley stepped in before I could break his nose.’
‘Oh.’ Cherry sighs.
Dad clears his throat. ‘Well, I reckon we get the hell out of here. Whaddyas reckon? Why don’t we all go for ice-cream?’ Dad says to Cherry. ‘Cool down a bit.’
‘Yeah, stuff this place. That new gelato shop is open till nine,’ Cherry says. She turns to the younger kids. ‘Is everyone keen for ice-cream?’
Zeke, Luke, Elaine and Maisie nod their heads like their lives depend on it.
‘Actually,’ Harley says to Cherry, ‘can me and Jonah hang out for a bit? Just us?’
‘Oh,’ Cherry says. ‘Fine with me. What about you, Fred?’
‘Yeah. Okay,’ Dad says.
‘Could I get your keys?’ Harley asks Cherry.
‘Where are you planning on going?’ Cherry asks back.
‘Just for a drive. Please? Text me when you’re ready to go and we’ll come right back.’
Cherry turns to Dad. ‘Will we all fit in your car, Fred?’
‘Yep,’ Dad nods.
Cherry takes her keys out and dangles them on the tip of her finger. The music is still playing inside the hall like nothing happened. I see Tegan, Zoey and Gordon exit the hall and start across the dirt for us.
‘You okay, Jonah?’ Tegan asks, nudging my arm.
‘Yeah, that was rough,’ Zoey says.
‘Jack is now a sexist, homophobic pig,’ Gordon adds.
‘You know what?’ I say. ‘I’m actually great. I’ll be okay.’
‘You sure?’ Tegan asks.
‘Yep.’
‘Are you all right, Harley?’ Tegan asks him.
‘Yeah,’ Harley says. ‘Like Jonah said, I feel great too.’
Tegan hugs me, then Zoey and Gordon join. Tegan’s hand leaves my shoulder, grabs Harley’s shirt and pulls him into the hug. It’s a group hug that is so warm, I might melt in their arms.
‘We’ll message ya,’ Tegan says to me as we break the hug.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
Me and Harley walk down to where Cherry’s car is parked. Harley fixes his Ps inside the windscreen and I climb into the passenger seat.
‘Your place?’ Harley asks, with a smile at the corner of his mouth that tells me exactly what he’s thinking.
‘Okay,’ I say.
We drive out of the showground. My heart is pounding harder and harder the closer we get to my house. Harley declared his love for me, and I declared my love for him; not just to each other, but to everyone. And now, we’re gonna do it – we’re gonna have sex. It’s gonna be so hot. It’s gonna be amazing. It’s gonna be perfect and sweaty and terrifying.
I was sure when we left the hall and kissed hard that this was exactly what I wanted to do, but I’m beginning to worry I won’t be any good at it.
We pull into my driveway and Harley shuts off the engine. Neither of us are talking as Harley follows me to the front door and inside. I wonder if he’s as nervous as I am. I wonder if his palms are as sweaty as mine, if his throat is as dry.
Inside, I pour myself a glass of water at the kitchen sink.
‘I’m really proud of you,’ I say.
‘I’m proud of you too,’ he says. ‘You stood up to Jack. I never would’ve been able to do that if you hadn’t done it first.’
Harley steps to me across the kitchen as I down the last of my water. He takes the glass from me and places it in the empty sink.
‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ he says.
‘Right.’
Harley takes my hand and leads me into the hallway. My legs feel like jelly as we step into my bedroom.
I close the door. Harley sits on the side of my bed, kicks off his black leather shoes and pulls off his bow tie, jacket and shirt. His body is so sexy, I can hardly stop the growth occurring in my pants.
I open my phone and tap on my music app. I start ‘All the Lovers’ by Kylie Minogue. I sit my phone on the desk with the speakers angled towards the bed.
‘Kylie?’ Harley smiles.
‘Yes. I have to lose my virginity to Kylie Minogue.’
I kick off my shoes and climb on top of him. I pull off my bow tie and fling it onto my desk. We fall back onto the bed and kiss, and it’s so hot, the breeze from the open window is doing nothing to quench us while Kylie sings.
‘Harley …’
‘Yeah?’
‘I don’t want to be apart from you again.’
‘Me neither,’ he says. ‘This is it. Me and you.’
‘You’re my boyfriend.’
‘You’re my boyfriend.’
He kisses my forehead. I lift my head and kiss him hard. His warm lips become one with mine.
Harley reaches for my shirt. He starts unbuttoning me.
‘No,’ I say, resting my hand over his.
Looking down at Harley, his brown eyes, it feels like every cell in my body is sending a message to my brain to tell me not to take off my shirt. They’re saying don’t do it, he’ll hate it, it’ll kill his boner.
Those voices have always been stronger than me, but not now. Harley wants me and I want him.
I rip my shirt open. Buttons take flight and I throw the shirt to the ground. I want him to see me – all of me.
Harley kisses my chest, slowly, before bringing his face back to mine.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he says. Our mouths meet again, our skin sticking together with the heat.
Harley’s lips move to my neck. My heart is racing and my fingers and toes tingle as his lips move down my body to my stomach. He unzips my pants and takes me in his mouth. It’s like a thousand bolts of electricity pulsing through my spine as my eyes slam shut and I surrender to the darkness.
I want this – I want to want this. He is here and he is so hot. He cares so much about me and I swear every time his mouth touches my body, it feels like acceptance, like love.
I want to be everything for him, but the lingering fear in my stomach makes my arms shake.
‘Stop,’ I say. ‘Wait.’
‘You okay?’ Harley asks.
‘I … I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry about what?’
‘I’m … I’m not ready,’ I say.
‘Oh. It’s okay,’ he says, rolling off me.
‘I thought I was. I want to be.’
‘There’s no rush.’
We lie next to each other, both of us catching our breath.
‘Can we try another time? Can we just lie here for now? I’m sorry.’
‘Jonah, stop saying sorry,’ Harley says. He shifts onto his side and looks into my eyes. He’s smiling. It’s a warm smile – a smile that says he hears what I’m saying. ‘I’ll never rush you into anything. Never. We have all the time in the world.’
‘So … it’s really okay?’ I ask.
‘Yes. I love you, silly bum.’
‘I love you too,’ I say. I reach for his chin. My hand steadies as I trace his lips. I glide my fingers along his cheeks, feel his stubble on the tips of my fingers, like I’m drawing shapes over his skin. ‘This is what I want. I want this.’
Harley smiles at me. He plants a kiss on my lips, then lays his arm over my body. I rest my palm over his wrist and hold it. His skin is warm. I feel his pulse racing. The beat slows down beneath my hand and we hold each other.
‘Tell me about your mum,’ Harley says.
‘What?’
‘Your mum,’ Harley says, and when he says mum, it’s like a twisting knot is forming in my stomach. ‘You haven’t told me anything about her.’
‘What do you want to know?’ I ask.
‘What was she like?’
I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about Mum, except Dad, and a little bit with Chloe – a stranger who doesn’t know me as a friend, as a brother. Chloe never knew Mum. She doesn’t know Dad. It’s not hard with her because she’s not part of my life that way. The invisible wall in my brain that goes up anytime anyone who knows me asks about Mum, it tells me to stop talking, because talking makes it real and I’m right back there again – a twelve-year-old boy walking into the backyard to find his mother facedown in the grass beside the half-empty clothes basket. She’s not moving. She’s impossibly still.
‘She … she always got her way,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know … like … when I first started playing footy, I had to wear black boots because black was her lucky colour. If Zeke or Luke were upset, she’d stay in their room with them all night even though my dad wanted her to come back to bed. Or sometimes she’d kick Dad out and let the twins sleep with her.’
Harley sniffles.
‘She knew me so well,’ I say. ‘She always knew the right thing to say.’
‘She sounds pretty special,’ Harley says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I’m thinking of Mum. ‘Whenever I was scared of doing something, she would tell me the only scary part is the start, that I just have to be brave for a few minutes.’
‘That’s what you told me,’ Harley says.
Harley hugs me, adjusts his position beside me and squeezes me tight. Kylie Minogue is still playing quietly from my phone; now it’s ‘Get Outta My Way’. I don’t want to be anywhere else but on this bed with Harley. I want to savour it. If I could place this perfect moment in time in a jar and preserve it, I would get the strongest jar in the world.
In this moment, I don’t feel fat anymore.
Harley’s phone dings with the message that Cherry is ready to be picked up. We both get dressed and I walk Harley out to the driveway.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Dad wanted me to invite you round for dinner, if you want. I asked you before, but we … you know.’
‘Yeah. I’d like that. Oh,’ Harley says. ‘My play is on in two weeks. Do you want to come?’
‘Of course I want to come.’
‘Cool. I’ll get you a ticket.’
Harley kisses me and we hug again.
‘I’ll text you when I get home,’ he says. ‘I love you.’ He tilts his head back and points his mouth at the cloudy sky above. ‘I LOVE JONAH KING!’ he shouts. His call echoes into the night and it makes my stomach flutter.
I giggle and hug him tighter.
‘I love you too,’ I say. I kiss him again and it’s all I want, to be able to kiss these lips forever. It’s like they were made as a perfect pair for mine.
As I watch Harley reverse out of the driveway and turn onto the street, I find myself thinking something strange: all the good things have come. I never thought they would.
I’m not really here. I’m remembering the day I was sure the good things would always be out of reach for me.
I’d arrived back at the caravan park after school. Dad was wiping away tears when I walked in, sitting on the couch staring at a piece of paper.
‘I don’t understand this,’ he said, holding it up. ‘It’s the coroner’s report. It doesn’t make any sense. It says her cause of death was congestive heart failure, but there’s heaps of medical lingo in here. Can you watch Zeke and Luke for me? I’m gonna take it to the doctor and get her to explain it to me.’
Dad stood up and stuffed the paper in his pocket. I didn’t even have time to respond before he was out the door. I sat on the couch and watched Zeke and Luke building toy train tracks.
Heart failure. I agreed with Dad – it didn’t make any sense. Mum had seemed healthy. I never heard her complain of chest pain or anything. I didn’t understand at all. Maybe when Dad got home, he could explain it to me better.
Zeke and Luke and I sat and watched TV. I cooked some chicken nuggets.
Dad didn’t come home to the caravan until late at night, smelling like alcohol was poured all over his body. He grabbed a can from the fridge and went outside, sat on the steps and was on the phone to Aunty Jo. Me, Zeke and Luke were watching The Simpsons on our shitty little TV and they were building Lego, but all I could concentrate on was Dad’s voice outside the door. He was telling Aunty Jo he couldn’t go back to work because he had to look after Zeke and Luke and he missed Mum so much that he felt like he wanted to die too. Zeke and Luke were too young to understand what was happening to us, and I didn’t want them to hear any of it, so I turned the TV up louder and joined in building Lego with them.
The next morning, I woke to the sound of Aunty Jo’s voice. When I staggered out of my room, she was in the small box of a living room with Dad, helping him pack up our stuff. It had been four months since Mum died.
And I knew what packing meant: it meant I couldn’t go around to Pete’s to play Mario Kart or hear him talk about high school or his job here, cleaning and maintaining things. It meant that I couldn’t smell him and hear him laugh or say my name. It meant I probably wouldn’t ever see him again and that felt like the worst possible thing that could happen right now.
‘Morning, son,’ Dad said. ‘I was just about to wake youse up. We’re gonna go live with Aunty Jo for a little while.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘It’ll be good,’ Aunty Jo said. ‘Why don’t you wake up your brothers and we’ll get to my house in time for lunch. I’ll get Uncle to pick us up a couple of roast chickens and we’ll have a big feed.’
‘I don’t want to move again,’ I said. The caravan park was shit, but at least Pete was there, and I could feel that tingling in my stomach when I was with him. I liked feeling that tingle. It was exciting and weird and I knew I could only feel it when I was with him.
‘Jonah, I need you to be a big guy right now,’ Dad said. ‘Wake up your brothers so we can get out of here.’
A big guy. All I’d been since Mum died was a big guy. Dad was heading out most nights, coming back drunk. Zeke and Luke were crying all the time, shitting their pants, breaking things, and I was putting them back together. I was going to school every day, pretending that my mother didn’t die and that we weren’t living in a caravan park. And I hadn’t cried at all, though I could feel the tears then, beginning to burn my eyes, and a lump growing in my throat. I thought I might begin to choke, so I did what Dad said to do.
I woke Zeke and Luke. We were all packed within an hour and walking from our caravan to the Holden Astra and trailer. At the carpark, Pete stepped out of the front door of his house, wearing his high school uniform – grey pants, a white shirt and a red tie, backpack over his shoulders. His shirt was untucked and his sleeves rolled up, but his mo was there, like always. I tried to re-create his smell and wondered if it would be weird for me to hug him. He was kind of like a friend, so I decided it would be fine.
I dropped my bag to the dirt and rushed to him. I wrapped my arms around him. I was tall enough to bury my head in his chest and I took in his smell again, the deodorant that made my stomach tingle.
‘We’re leaving,’ I said.
‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ he said. I wanted to tell him I would miss him, that I loved him, that I’d think of him every day. Instead, I said nothing more.
I let go, walked back to my bag and gave him a final wave. He waved back with a smile. When I joined Dad, Aunty Jo and Zeke and Luke at the cars, we were all packed and ready to go, except for my bag, which Aunty Jo took from me and put in her car.
Driving out of the caravan park felt like I was driving away from myself – from thinking of boys as pretty, from the tingling feeling in my stomach.
It was a long drive to Rushton’s north side where Aunty Jo lived. She had a spare room for me to share with Zeke and Luke, and Dad would sleep on the couch. We had two roast chickens and salads for lunch, and I wondered how long it would be until we moved again, until we had our own house.
All those thoughts were secondary, though, because I was also beginning to think that maybe I was gay.
41
Dad arrives home with Zeke, carrying Luke in his arms. He passes me in the kitchen as I pour myself a glass of water.
‘He fell asleep in the car,’ Dad whispers to me. He takes Luke into his bedroom and Zeke joins me in the kitchen.
‘What was that boy angry with you for?’ Zeke asks.
‘He was angry because me and Harley are … well … me and Harley are boyfriends.’
‘The boy was angry because you have a boyfriend?’ Zeke asks, cocking his head to the side.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s stupid,’ he says. I laugh as soon as he says the words. I laugh hard – so hard that I have to cover my mouth to stop the noise in case I wake up Luke. When I calm down, I tell Zeke he better get to bed. He leaves as Dad emerges from the hallway. They exchange goodnights, then Dad drops his keys on the kitchen bench and lets out a long sigh.
‘How you feelin’, Jonah?’ Dad asks. ‘After what happened?’
‘I’m okay. I’m fine. Better than fine, really.’
Dad leans against the kitchen bench. He looks to the empty space by his side and I know he’s about to say something wise.
‘When you told me you were gay,’ he begins, ‘I got really worried. Not because you were gay. You are who you are and you’re my son and I love you.’
‘I know, Dad.’
‘I … I was worried because this world … it’s a shit place. You fullas being Koori, I already knew that you’ll have to face all these people who’ll treat you like shit cause of who you are. When you told me you were gay, I worried even more, and I still do, every day … because there are a lot of people who don’t agree with people being gay, and men being with men. I know things have changed a lot today, but those people are still out there. Small-minded people, homophobic wastes of space, they’ll always be a part of your life, and it’ll be hard. I can’t protect you from it and I wish …’
Oh god. Dad’s crying. He’s choking up.
‘… I wish I could.’
He looks up to me. And now I’m gonna cry. I can feel that lump desperately trying to form in my throat.
