Homefront Radio: The Sarge Opts Out (Masculinity Redefined) Part 3

Homefront Radio: The Sarge Opts Out (Masculinity Redefined) Part 3:

Start with Parts 1 and 2, if you haven't read them yet.

I know what you’re thinking: Boy meets boy, boy and boy do the do (with somewhat more finesse than Betty Boo). So, one of them is a bit on the butch side – it’s still not much of a grand revelation. Well, hold on, I’m getting there and to my point. (I do have one).

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now the errors I was making. Simply not asking questions was the biggest one. Being too scared of rocking the boat and ending things by simply clarifying what exactly we were doing together. I’m sure you can see what I should have asked and what should have raised questions in my mind.

Incidentally, they interviewed Larry McMurty, (screenwriter for Brokeback Mountain’ the other day), and asked him what he thought the point of the movie was.

His answer: “Life’s not for sissies.” Truer words were never spoken.

This has caused a bit of an outrage with some in the gay community, but I think they’re kind of missing the point.

He continues:

"You need strength; love is not easy. It's not easy if you find (it),
it's not easy if you don't find it. It's not easy if you find it but it
doesn't work out. It merely says the strong survive, but not
everybody is strong."

I actually agree. Being a man isn’t about obvious displays of masculinity – it’s about being strong, and never being too afraid of risking your situation for what you want. Otherwise you just float in an in-between netherworld of uncertainty, a fly trapped in amber.

Which was where things were with the Sarge. I’d get a phone call or run into him around town, then we’d go somewhere and have sex. (Incidentally, ‘The World’s Longest Footnote’ happens in here somewhere). We obviously have some kind of relationship, but three months later I can’t really say things have progressed beyond the ‘Intense Need For Sex With Each Other’ stage.

I’m starting to wonder what sex in a bed would be like, and really long for it. The luxury of being able to take your time, to not always be looking over your shoulder with fear of being discovered. I’m still not out, so taking him back to my place for sex was out of the question. He never suggests his place, which I rationalize as him living his obviously very straight life, and probably fear about his sexuality being discovered by his job. So we just meet and go for it, treading water for months.

I know I should be grateful and happy. I kind of have what I’ve been dreaming about. So why do I feel so unsatisfied? Is it because the meetings are always usually on his terms, when he wants it?

I’m out riding my mountain bike one day and from a distance see him entering a video shop. Knowing that approaching him obviously in public might make him nervous, I tell myself to keep on riding. Instead, I park near the shop and make a big show of pumping up my tyres, until he emerges, videos in hand.

I figure he’ll come over and talk to me if he wants to. I feel like this is another test of our relationship.

He looks at me and starts walking in the other direction. Stops. Pauses.

My breathing burns in my lungs.

Is he going to keep going? What is he thinking?

He finally turns and walks over and asks what I’m up to, to which I reply. “Just going for a ride”.

“Just got a movie,” he says.

“Cool.”

There’s a pause.

“Do you want to come and watch them mate?” He’s meaning ‘Come back to my place’.

Finally.

I nod, and he tells me to follow him, which I do, cursing the difficulty of trying to ride a bike whilst aroused.

He lives in one of the complexes of faux-terrace houses near the river. He’s gone ahead of me, so I can’t see where his car has gone, and am suddenly struck with the fear that he’s had second thoughts, but then he emerges out one of the series of identical doors and waves me in.

I’m very aware that I’m now entering his domain, and so looking around what’s just a plainly-furnished lounge room is a constant source of information and discovery, shading in the unknowns I have about him. I keep thinking “This is the chair he sits on. These are the books he reads”.

His karate uniform is tossed over the chair next to the couch. I note with some pride he’s a black belt. I imagine how intense he looks in action.

He’s very different in here. He no longer seems to meet my eyes except for occasional glances. He offers me some coffee and I follow him up into the kitchen and we make small talk, but things are really awkward, in a way they haven’t been for months.

Our world’s expanded, and we’re unsure of our place in it, and I realise our relationship can only progress if we break through this.

He has a computer on the kitchen bench, and I ask him what he does with it. He’s always seemed so meathead testosterone Neanderthal, but with hints of stronger intelligence that he seems embarrassed by, that when he admits he’s writing fiction, I want to punch the air in joy – he’s creative.

He tells me he’s in the middle of a military thriller. “Tom Clancy kind of stuff”.

I remember my 800 page Zombie opus, “Dead”, I wrote a couple of years previously, in a two-week daze of ‘Trying To Impress A Guy I Liked Who Was Into Horror Novels’, but wisely fail to mention it to him.

I don’t know if he’s a good writer, (hell, for all I know he’s as bad at it as I am), but that’s not important. He has a creative mind, and that’s made him even sexier to me.

We go back to the lounge room and I sit down on the couch and he sits at the other end away from me, and puts the movie on. I wonder why he’s not sitting next to me. We talk on and off, but I can tell the silences are getting longer as the movie goes on, which by this time I’m barely paying attention to, because I realise it’s going to end soon, and then I’ll probably be asked to leave.

Then the movie ends, and he flips the station to a rugby game. I can’t understand why he hasn’t cuddled up to me. Why didn’t I just say something? What if I’m refused?

I bite the bullet and lean back, with my arms open. “Get over here”.

And he’s there like a shot, lying back against my chest and I wrap my arms around him, and I suddenly realise that my entire concept of things between us has been completely, totally wrong. I saw this big, masculine brute of a man and thought he would be the one to care for and protect me and that he wanted to fill that role for me. But the second he sinks against my chest I realise finally that wasn’t how he viewed our relationship at all.

He wanted me to be his protector.

This incredibly masculine guy was looking for me to take the lead, and then I start to realise that gender roles really aren’t as clearly defined as I’d always thought.

His hands are wandering. I tell him we should just watch the game and talk. A couple of minutes later he does the same thing again. I lean back over the armrest to the chair next to me and grab the belt from his karate uniform, and tell him to sit up and put both hands behind his head.

He obeys in an instant.

I tie his hands, and then tell him to lie back down against my chest. Now he has to watch the game. I realise it’s going to be uncomfortable and his muscles are going to start hurting, but he’s at the peak of his fitness and i'm sure he’ll be able to take it.

He gives orders all day, so it suddenly makes sense that he’ll want to take orders in his civilian life. To not have to think about being in control all the time.

I’m surprised at how much this idea appeals to me.

It’s raining where the game on the screen is being played, and the guys are all wet, bending over in the grass and mud together.

“Gotta love footy,” I say.

“Yeah. Great game”.

“Fuck the game,” I continue with a snort. “I’m talking about big hot blokes bending over”.

He pauses, then says “Yeah, you’re right there”. And for a second I feel like I’ve really pulled away a barrier with him, and he’s admitting something to himself about how he perceives the game that he's denied before.

I wrap my arms around his hard chest, ignoring at how sexy he looks lying on top of me, and talk to him. Really talk. Our first real conversation where we share information about each other.

He tells me about his life with the army, and I realise just how much he’s done and how much he’s seen in so many different places, which makes me slightly ashamed to admit I haven’t ever been out of Australia.

“New Zealand is great, and it’s not that far,” he offers.

“Yeah, I’d like to get there one day.”

He tells me about traveling down there when he was younger.

“I didn’t have much money. Didn’t know where I’d go, just hit the road”.

While I admire his carefree spirit, I know that kind of idea is usually the fantasy of privileged college kids who haven’t experienced real poverty firsthand.

But he continues. “My first day out there I meet two Swedish Backpackers. Beautiful girls.”

“Travelling with Abba?” Trying to make him laugh, and failing.

“Nope, both blonde. It’s a stereotype, but bloody hell they really are beautiful women up that way”.

I’m a little confused here. Just what is he saying?

He then proceeds to tell me in graphic detail and with a lot of gusto exactly how the three of them spent their days together, after the two girls had argued over who was going to get him, until he told them there was more than enough of him to go around.

“By the time I got back on the plane to come home my balls were so damn sore I didn’t think I’d ever want sex again”.

I think “Ok, I guess he hadn’t quite admitted his sexuality yet,” but that doesn’t explain the impressive tent he has in his shorts from describing the acts.

He tells me more. The phrase ‘a charmed life’ pops into my head. I’m very aware of how much Easier things must be for him. How he’s just gone through life on his charm and with a cheeky grin, things just falling into his lap, and it will probably remain so until the end of his life. I see his future, and realise it’s unlikely I’ll be in it: a man like him will never be short of attention. How can he have not gone through the hell I’ve been through? The constant fear? How can our lives have been so different when we’re both gay?

I’m not say this as whining or being overly dramatic, just describing the difference. There’s a famous Australian memoir called “A Fortunate Life” by A.B. Facey, that they teach you in early high school, (of course when you’re too young to fully understand the emotional weight of what you’re reading). The title is a reference to how people might look at the sum of his life and see nothing but the hardship of his experience, (the Gallipoli sections is chilling reading), but how he sees himself as lucky to have simply lived the life that he had. That’s how I look at things: yeah life is hard, but why would someone ever get the impression it’s meant to be easy?

So, now I’m curious as to exactly what this man is. I ask him outright when he first had sex with a guy. He tells me an incredible story about being in New Guinea. Some squads had been sent up there to protect natives from the armed guerillas in the region. Weeks in the jungle. One night on watch with a younger guy it just happened.

He explained in further detail. “You’re isolated, you’re scared and you’re away from everyone and everything that’s familiar. You just want comfort”.

“Sounds like gay porn again”. He’s going to think it’s all I watch at this rate.

“It’s more than just comfort,” he continued. “It’s just a need for some kind of human touch. Contact. You want reassurance that you’re still alive. It’s hard for the younger recruits. Most of them are aware that there’s the possibility they’re going to die without ever being touched that way”. His voice is surprisingly vulnerable for such a big guy.

I think about the insanity of a world that expects you to kill someone before you’ve even made love to someone. I wonder how this isn’t considered monstrous, but the idea of two guys together is considered an atrocity. I think again at how different our lives have been.

After the game is finished, I untie his hands, then tell him we’re going to his bedroom. He leads the way up the stairs.

I like the austere quality to the room. He’s not one for unnecessary distractions. It’s simple and direct, like the man himself. This is intensely attractive to me.

We got at it. I tell him what to do and he obeys. After the foreplay is over, he tells me he needs some extra help before I do what I do to him, and there’s a small bottle in his top drawer. I reach over and pull it open, and am confronted with the sight of a stack of pornography.

Look, I’m a guy, this doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the type of pornography it is. Penthouse, Playboy. The ‘girls only’ stuff. I mentally file this under ‘keeping up his image’. It’s all pretense isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

I find the bottle. He puts it under his nose and inhales, and says it will make the sex ‘easier’. I have no idea what he’s on about, but he offers it to me and I sniff it, thinking I’ll go with the flow.

It’s like sniffing cleaning fluid. It obviously makes it easier on his end, but I just end up with a pounding headache that I try to get rid of by, well, pounding.

I leave in the early hours of the morning, once again, with the promise that “he’ll phone me”.

And so it goes for the next seven months or so. A sudden phone call, some time together, then sex. Usually a lot of sex. I even stupidly buy a mobile phone so he can contact me any time. I live for our time together. Everything in between is just waiting for him. It's the ghost of a life, and i'm only a fully-formed person when I can completely be myself.

Then there’s a stretch of seven weeks where I haven’t heard from him. I try and be strong, but I finally give in, and, having sworn to myself I wouldn’t ever turn up unannounced, I knock on his door one Saturday afternoon, angry over being treated this way.

He’s not as friendly as usual, but lets me in anyway.

“Haven’t heard from you in a while mate”.

“Been really busy,” he says. He seems uneasy for some reason. “I’m just about to head out”.

I figure if he wants orders he’s going to get them, and tell him to strip off. He’s not looking at my eyes, looking around the room like a trapped animal.

He mumbles and says he doesn’t have time. “I just had a wank with some porn, you won’t be able to get me going again”.

I take that as a challenge and show him in 30 seconds just exactly how much I can make him want me.

He’s looking sheepish now, standing there in all his obvious excitement. I tell him he’s never to leave me hanging for this long again, and then push him roughly over the couch and just take him there, no thought of going up to the bed. We usually take a long time over sex, but this time it’s quick and brutal, almost like I’m punishing him. After the fact, he’s mumbling that he really has to get ready and get on his way. I tell him to bloody call me during the week this time, and then leave.

But he doesn’t call. Another five weeks have passed and I’ve had enough of this stand-offish attitude. And yeah, I adore the man, and just want to take our relationship to the next level, or else it’s not a relationship at all. It’s just coupling. I’m very aware of what I’m risking but decide to do it anyway.

I knock. No answer. Maybe he’s not home. Probably for the best, considering how riled up my blood is at the moment.

Then finally, just as I’m turning away, I hear the door open, and I look up expecting to see the Sarge.

Instead there’s a pretty blonde woman standing there, heavily pregnant and, judging by her hair, deep in the “I’m so tired I don’t care what I look like anymore” phase.

I’m surprised, but rationalize. Must be a sister.

“Hey,” I say. “I was just looking for [Sarge]”.

“He’s not here,” she says.

I lie on my feet. “I’m just a mate of his from work”. It seemed good enough. At the time I could pass for military.

She seems a bit more at ease now. “You’re not at the War Games this weekend?”

Dammit. I extend the lie. “Ah, I forgot about that. I’m one of the companies not taking part. Ours are in a fortnight”

She nods and smiles, and says the words that shatter my world. “Well, I’m his Wife”.

Final part later, (which is more complicated than you probably think and will make you view some of what i've just written very differently), and then I’ll move on to some non-‘mo stuff for a while so the straight readers can stop cowering in the corner, hands over ears: "Make it stop, make it stop!"