Homefront Radio: The Sarge Opts Out (Masculinity Redefined) Part 2

Homefront Radio: The Sarge Opts Out (Masculinity Redefined) Part 2:

This if my Brokeback Mountain riff, trying to explain closeted
gay relationships with much more depth than that movie. I
don't know if i'll succeed. Start with Part 1, if you haven't read it.

As such, I’m understandably shocked a couple of weeks later, when I’m sitting in my car, parked in the main street, shuffling through the bills I have to pay, when his face suddenly appears in the window.

There’s no hello this time. “Got a sec mate?”

Once again, all I can say is “Yeah”, ‘cause I’m shitting myself from nervousness.

He’s right to the point. “You got some time to *Bleep* my *Bleep*?”

Bleeping Hell! Do Smurfs Smurf in the Smurf? I can’t even begin to explain how surreal it is hearing that type of statement come out of the mouth of a guy who doesn’t even remotely fit any of the gay stereotypes people have, (even me, at the time).

I motion with my head and start the car. “Get in”.

The logical thing to do would be to ask what he’s after, and why he ignored me last time. You probably assume my little head was doing the thinking, (which, granted, a large proportion of it probably was), but my big head was running over thoughts like “don’t scare him off by talking about it – just see what happens”.

We go elsewhere along the river, this time it’s drizzling, but it’s warm – a touch of summer in the last gasps of Autumn. The sex is better than before, slower, more intense, to the extent that I’m starting to feel like I’m living in some dodgy erotic movie and keep looking around expecting Sharon Stone to be removing her bra behind me. (Actually, my movie would more likely be a low-budget knock off - Shannon Tweed removing her knickers).

After the sex, it’s obvious we’re going to have to talk since I’m going to have to drive him back to town and it’s far enough that any kind of awkward silence isn’t going to cut it. As we get in the car, through fear of driving back with only the sound of the clock ticking in my ear, very aware that Nothing Is Being Said, I blurt out “We don’t have to say anything if it makes you uncomfortable mate, just tell me where you want to be dropped off”.

The clock ticks by for a few more seconds, each stroke sounding like falling civilizations.

I start the engine, and as we pull out, he puts my hand on his crotch.

Hey, it’s not “marry me”, but it’s A Start.

We talk somewhat casually, not really mentioning what we’ve just done, and I’m struck again but how easy and relaxed talking during sex seems to be, and how the conversation is so natural and joking and just downright fun, like a jigsaw where the pieces just seem to click together with some unseen force guiding your hand, but the moment the act is over you take a step back and realise although it felt like it at the time, you weren’t even remotely making something that resembled the picture on the box after all.

We drive past those damn terrace houses, (see ‘Null Historical Society’), and he says to just drop him off around the corner, and there it is - the Time Limit on the rest of our relationship, from here to around the corner. That’s all the time I have to work with to extend it any further.

I guess it’s better to see the end of the relationship coming, so you can try to save it. Most people don’t have that luxury.

Gotta say something.

“You want to do this again?” I ask. Meaning ‘go at it like Bunnies’ but what I’m really trying to say is “Do you want to get to know me?”

The seconds tick by and I’m starting to pull over to the kerb where he motioned, and I’m waiting, waiting for the answer.

“Got a number?” It’s like the Hallelujah Chorus to my ears, with somewhat pervier ‘You’ve going to hell but it’s well worth it’ connotations.

I scribble it on some paper and hand it to him, and I’m glad to see he pockets it.

“I’ll call you,” he says, then marches off across the road, all muscle, testosterone and Man’s Man. I notice two teenage girls pass him and their heads turn around to check him out, giggling conspiratorially.

I drive off up the road. I resolve not to look in the rearview mirror as I drive away just in case I see him balling my number in his fist and tossing it into the gutter. I’m very aware it’s Sunday tomorrow. Maybe he’ll call and want to pass the afternoon.

He doesn’t call. I make excuses, which get increasingly desperate in the passing weeks, until I give up all hope.

Which is when he finally rings, like he’s got some inbuilt sensor as to when exactly I’m ready to try and move on. 11:30 at night, asking to meet me in a parking lot downtown.

I don’t say “You took your time” but head on down there to see him sitting on a bench, waiting for me.

He nods hello and says “Let’s go for a walk”.

We walk along the edge of the carpark and I get up the courage to say “I didn’t think you were going to call”.

“I’ve been over in Canberra mate, for work. I don’t have a lot of free time between being on duty”.

That’s Good Enough to my ears. All is forgiven.

“It must be hard,” I say, meaning ‘keeping up the pretense of being straight in the army’.

He doesn’t pick up on it and thinks I’m being smutty, cupping his crotch and saying “yeah it bloody is”, and so I accidentally initiate the sex, when I’d really wanted to talk for a while first.

We head for the bushes, but simply don’t make it into them, doing the deed just at the extreme of the car park’s lights, in the space between clarity and indistinctiveness. It’s a small town and we should be more careful, but whatever we have is overpowering and all common sense is forgotten when it hits us.

I’m very aware it’s not a bed, but it’s the best that I can hope for.

As he’s putting his clothes back on, he mutters “bloody hell!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m playing footy tomorrow.”

My watch says it’s now after 2. “Still time to get some sleep and you’ll fine”.

“Nah, it’s not the sleep. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk straight after that”. He laughs and the sight of him cracking up, wet with the sweat of exertion, even on such a cold night, all rumpled clothes and post-coital glow, is just too much for my stupid little heart, which has waited so long to just be *loved* by someone and had really resigned itself to the fact that if it hadn’t happened after 26 years it wasn’t ever going to happen. This stupid gay guy who’s been writing love songs since he was 15 without ever having experienced it himself, always thinking how great and how beautiful to be loved must be.

That’s when I fall in love.

I must be in love, right? Isn’t this the point of what we’re doing? Isn’t this what all the songs I’ve listened to mean? If wanting to hold your hand means he loves you yeah yeah yeah then doing what we’ve been doing must mean he *really* loves me.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” I punch him on the shoulder. “You’ll play great. I should come and watch the game”. Surely he’s comfortable with that. His mate’s would never suspect - the guy doesn’t have an inch of Gay in him, (at least not now the sex is over).

I smile, and half-jokingly say. “If you play well enough I’ll show you just how proud you’ve made me, but promise to keep the uniform on after”.

That cracks him up – I note to myself that humour seems to put him at ease about What We’re Doing.

“Sure, come on down”.

He trusts me enough to risk being seen in public with me.

I go and watch him play – it’s raining and the crowd is thin, but the game is a good one. He looks like the epitome of masculinity out there on the field, plowing through the other team with the ball, shaking off the men trying to tackle him. I have to laugh at the irony of the whole situation. I can see how his teammates respect him and know they can count on him, and I feel a twinge of jealousy to see that kind of bond between him and the other men, which, (although I played rugby in high school), is something I was always completely shut out of: The World of Men was something that was always closed to me. And for a second I almost hate the Sarge for it being so seemingly easy for him to inhabit that world with such obvious natural ease.

He makes a particularly good play and I watch as all the guys crowd around him, hugging him and slapping him on the back. What must that kind of acceptance feel like from other men? To not be looked at as an Other, somehow flawed, this freak of nature, less of a man because by some weird twist of fate I grew up not attracted to women.

I feel like I’ve stumbled across the only straight guy in existence who likes sex with men. Then I stupidly feel pride: this man, this ‘Real Man’, not a Pretend Man like me, wants me. Does being with a man like that means I’m somehow more of a man myself? Is this the ultimate expression of male acceptance?

I want him, and I want him bad.

I have to wait, for at the end of the game all the guys want to congratulate him and talk to him. I can understand - he's that kind of guy. I’m patient. I know they can’t compete with me in the adoring fan stakes. I go and wait in my car until the crowd disperses, and he comes around the stand, bag slung across his shoulder, looking like King Of The World, (and not that revoltingly boyish Titanic Dork who looks like his testicles still haven't dropped).

He gets in next to me with a cheeky grin, secure in the knowledge of how much I want him.

“Sorry to take you away from the best bit of the game,” I say, motioning towards his teammates heading towards the showers.

“It’s all good,” he says, shrugging it off. “It’s ‘look but don’t touch’, you can’t have the sergeant trying to sex up the new recruits”.

“Ah, it happens all the time, at least according to the pornos I’ve seen”.

He laughs. “Show me them sometime”.

“Be more fun to make our own mate”.

The riverbank is wet and muddy, and the rain’s really coming down, so we walk further along the path and to a run-down old building on the back acres of someone’s farm I’ve noticed on my walks before. It’d dark inside, full of hay and birds nestling in the rafters, with small pockets of light and rain falling through the roof, the steady patter of rain and the distant rumble of thunder is the soundtrack to our kissing.

We get into it, intense, heavy. I tell him to get that damn condom out of his wallet quick smart because I just want to *claim* him. And now.

“I don’t want the condom,” he says. “Just take me”.

I’m struck by sudden fear. It’s been drummed into me ever since I young enough to realise sex=death for a gay guy. I know I should use it.

“Take me,” he repeats.

“It’s not safe,” I whisper between kisses.

His eyes look directly into mine. Most of his face is in shadow but his eyes are framed in a pool of light, and they’re burning through me with such incredible sincerity. And in that frozen moment he says, “I’d never do anything to hurt you, baby”.

My heart backflips - he must love me. I don’t stop to think he could be Pinocchio. (Hell, he already has the wood part down pat).

I push him down onto the hay and show him just how much of a man I am.

More later.