50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (14 page)

“No, a Thai,” he says.

He pauses, slips on a condom. I glance over my shoulder to make sure he's doing it properly, make sure he's not getting massage oil on it.

“This won't hurt a bit,” he says. It doesn't.

It's a surprise though, with no preparation at all – just a little prick as they say at the hospital. But it's fine: it feels warm and intimate, a kind of internal massage.

He continues to slither around on top and inside of me. He pummels my shoulder blades. I wonder if I won't actually fall asleep, wonder vaguely if he would be
upset.

“Good?” he asks occasionally.

“Um,” I murmur.

He pulls away, I watch him disappear into the kitchen. He returns with a glass of water.

“Sorry,” he says, sipping his water and simultaneously sliding a finger into my arse.

I groan.

He slips in another one.

I say, “Hey, careful!”

When he tries for a third, I protest and clench my buttocks, and he stops, laughs, removes them.

I relax and suddenly he's back inside me. Amazingly now though, he feels much bigger – huge in fact. I try to move up onto all fours, try to touch myself but Ben resists, holding me down. “No, lie down,” he orders.

His movements become more frantic, his breath against my back makes the hairs on my neck stand on end, and I am brought to a slow, aching orgasm.

I am amazed – for it's the first time I ever had an orgasm without involving my dick. I actually didn't know it was possible.

Ben judders to a groaning halt only seconds after, and collapses onto my back.

“Wow,” I say.

Ben laughs. “Good?”

I nod; I roll sideways. He lies on the bed beside me. “Yeah, quite impressive,” I say.

“Aha, it's not the ingredients, it's what you cook with them!” he laughs.

We lie side by side and smoke cigarettes. “I always do it that way,” he says. “Actually I have trouble coming otherwise; sometimes it shocks people though …”

I drag on my cigarette. “What's to be shocked at? It was wonderful.”

Ben smiles at me, runs a fingertip over my eyebrow.
“Not everyone likes it,” he says.

“What? Being fucked?” I ask. “I'm not always an aficionado myself.”

He frowns at me. “You
did
realise didn't you?”

I raise my cigarette to my mouth, then pause. “Realise what?”

Ben snorts.

“What?” I ask.

He laughs again.

“
What?
” I insist.

“Nothing,” he says. “Can you stay the night or?” I look at my watch, I had forgotten, it is three a.m.

“Shit. I have to get up in …” I count, “One, two, God! In three and a half hours!”

Ben watches me dress. “I'll call you when I get back,” he says.

I nod noncommittally. I'm thoroughly convinced that he won't, and more importantly I am protecting myself from any emotional engagement. I don't want to ruin my holidays thinking about an illusory relationship back in France.
Been there, done that
…

I pull on my pullover, open the front door.

“Happy Easter,” he says. He sniggers as he closes the door.

I frown as I walk away.
“Strange man,”
I think.

I slide between my sheets – they feel luxurious and crisp. My skin feels tingly and smooth. Sex often makes me feel that way, like a cat stretching in sunshine.

At six-thirty, I drag myself from my bed, sling the toothbrush and the razor into my pre-packed bag and stumble from the door into the cold morning air.

By eight-forty-five, I am halfway to Rome, the first stop.

At eleven-thirty, I am somewhere over Israel wondering if the guy with the beard is going to explode the aeroplane over Tel Aviv. Qantas are serving Chicken Satay and simultaneously showing
Chicken Run
. A sort of Easter
thang
I guess, but I'm glad to be a vegetarian.

I squeeze past the guy with the beard, push down past the trolley, still serving drinks, beat the queue to the toilets.

Travel always does this to me. Air travel, time differences, microscopic toilets, all hope of regularity is lost. My guts feel strange and in the tiny room, wedged between the fold down baby tray and the dolls-house sink, the relief is wonderful and immediate.

I wipe, I stand, I reach for the flush lever. I freeze.

Lying in the pan is an egg. A perfectly ordinary, intact, peeled, hard-boiled egg.

“What the hell?”
I think. It takes a while to realise where it has come from.

I pause, exhale and shake my head. I picture him laughing, saying, “
Happy Easter
.”

“Bastard!” I say.

An internationally renowned gay-fest, in the gayest and most beautiful city in the world, that's what the Qantas magazine says.

I arrive in Sydney with little time to spare, shell shocked by the journey. I call in to Oxford Street where I guess I can buy tickets for the party. The street is abuzz with beautiful bronzed boys, muscle-bound men, and plain old-fashioned, screaming queens.

“This,”
I think,
“is a bit more like it! Statistically much more chance of meeting Mr right.”
But how dreadful, to meet Mr Right on the other side of the world …

I stumble across the ticketing queue immediately and insert myself at the end of it. I am feeling woozy from jet lag and lack of sleep, but I am terrified that if I leave it until tomorrow, the day of the Mardi Gras, the tickets will be sold out. The queuing is good tempered, quiet conversation buzzing with expectation, foreign accents abound.

The sun is shining and I think,
“Maybe I could live here, if I did meet someone …”

Finally after thirty-four hours travel and two hours queuing, I get to the counter. I have a brief panic attack –
Will they take my Visa card or should I have taken out some cash?
But I needn't worry about my credit card.

“
Membership
card?” The guy smiles at me hand outstretched. His accent is thick, pure Ozzy.

I frown at him. “Membership card?”

The smile disappears; the man rolls his eyes and repeats, seemingly for the fiftieth time today, “You can't buy tickets to the party unless you're a member of Mardi Gras.”

I don't get it. The idea that the internationally renowned, international gay-fest is a member's only affair is more than my mind can grasp. “Member?” I repeat. “But that's insane, I live in
France
.”

I start to feel annoyed. That tired, feverish kind of annoyed that happens when you travel for two days to a party but can't get in.

“You should have joined before you came.” He shrugs bitchily.

“But I just queued for two hours!” I protest lamely. “Can I join now?”

“No, it takes a week. You should have done it over Internet mate,” the guy replies.

His voice goes up at the end of every sentence. Every line sounds like a question.

Do I detect that he is enjoying this or is it just jet-lag paranoia?

“Maybe you should tell people in the queue about that.” I am getting annoyed and I am feeling a little trembly. I know that I will have to leave before I explode.

“So there's like,
no way?
” It is my last, unconvincing, feeble attempt.

“Unless you ask a mate who's a member, they can buy three tickets each.”

I shake my head. “I live in France. I don't
have
any mates here.”

The guy shrugs; I shamble outside.

I announce to the crowd, shouting, burning calories, emptying angst, that if they aren't members there is, “No bloody point queuing.” A large group forms around me. Briefly I imagine us storming the ticket office but the group simply disperses groaning into Oxford Street.

I decide to convince someone, anyone, left in the queue, to buy an extra ticket for me. I shout to them all – no
answer. I shout
at
them all.

I am proud of my bravery, but they all just stare at their feet.

I make my way back to the hotel on a lethally driven, diesel-pumping bus. It speeds along, way over the speed limit, with little or no regard for red lights or standing passengers. It reminds me of Italian public transport. Actually the driver looks Italian.

At the hotel I read the glossy Sydney guidebook, thoughtfully provided. It opens with the following phrase:

Sydney, the penal colony with an early case of perpetual anxiety about its chances of survival has turned out not to be an introspective, insiders city like its southern sister Melbourne, known to Sydneysiders as “Bleak City”. As novelist Thomas Kenally said - Melbourne sometimes seems to be a secret to which you can obtain the code only if you are born into it or undergo a long initiation.

“Or have a membership card?” I think angrily.

I read on:
the word Melburnian, Kenally suggests, has a serious patrician resonance to it, whereas Sydneysider is a shack-dwelling beach combing sort of a word.

“How strange,”
I think,
“for a city to define itself primarily by what it is not.”

And how strange, for Sydney to be primarily not Melbourne. Melbourne, which always struck me as such a funky, charming city, in a skinny-cap crystal-healing kind of a way.

I drift into a deep, jet-lagged, angst-filled slumber.

The next morning, I awaken late and woozy. I pick up a second leaflet – this time a
gay
guide to Sydney – from the hotel desk and head off for coffee in a nearby café. This guide informs me that Sydney is, “the most beautiful city in the world.”
“What about Venice, and Paris, and Prague?”
I wonder. They're all supposed to be OK-ish.

The guide also explains about Sydney's efficient network of buses, boats and trams.
No rat-infested sewer trains in this city sweetie
, it proudly proclaims.

I'm starting to feel a little anti-Sydney, but I decide to fight it. I know from experience that it won't help my holiday experience
at all
.

Unfortunately that evening the efficient buses aren't running to Taylor Square because of the Mardi-Gras parade, so I take a taxi and get stuck in traffic diverted around the carnival trajectory.

I watch the counter climb and wonder how much that makes in French Francs, or even more complicated how much in the soon-to-be-introduced Euros.

As I get out to walk it, I wish there was a rat-infested sewer train.

Taylor square is throbbing; people are excitedly reserving their viewing positions. A huge advertising hoarding dominates the square – it shows a woman with her tits popping out of the top of a Wonderbra. The caption reads:
And you thought you were gay
.

It strikes me as sexist, patronising and homophobic.
I wonder what reaction would be to a poster showing a man's dick with the caption:
And you thought you were straight
.

Strange men are trying to sell me milk crates for anything from five to fifteen dollars. I reckon that they're impractical gifts and that I'll take back koala fridge magnets instead.

I go for a drink and chat to a couple of lesbians from Leeds in England. We drink too much. As the girls get louder they rope some cute Kiwis into our group.

Everyone is talking about Sydney. The girls agree with the Kiwis that Sydneysiders,
“have their heads up their arses.”

A sudden movement announces the beginning and we all rush outside. It has started and I finally understand the milk crate thing, but a little late.

We are faced with an impenetrable wall of backs, four people deep and three milk crates high.

We run up and down frantically, (a lot of people are doing this I notice), trying to peer through nooks and crannies, but I can see nothing.

After twenty minutes, I move over to a topless guy with Wonderbra pectorals. “Can I can stand on your crate for a few seconds,” I ask, desperate to know what's happening on the other side.

“Nope,” he says.

I turn to the guy next to him, who is looking down at me, smiling. He shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“The locals are friendly,” I say.

His smile fades. “What is your problem?” he asks.

I start to feel angry again. “My problem is flying for two fucking days to look at a row of backs,” I shout.

He shrugs. “Yeah, well sweetie, some of us had to walk minutes to get here,” he simpers. He turns back to watch whatever he's watching. I consider pushing him over and imagine the whole row falling like dominoes,
but just in time, an American girl next to him jumps down. “Here! Use mine!” she offers, grinning.

Kylie Minogue is blaring from one of the floats. Nah
nah na, nah nah nah nah nah
…

I smile at her and climb up. Thirty or forty men in red sequinned shorts are dancing in formation, showing their waxed bodies. They are followed by forty drag queens running around in a headless-chicken figure-of-eight movement. Aware of hogging my host's milk crates, I jump down.

“So?” she asks.

It all seems a little empty to me – a little content-less, but I can't put it into words, so I shrug.

“I know,” she says wrinkling her nose. “Once you've seen one butt in sequined shorts, you've seen them all.”

I thank her and wander off to a bar and drink another beer. I can feel it all sloshing around in my stomach. I speak to a Scottish girl who says she's been living here a year. I'm feeling a little drunk again.

I say, “I
was
thinking of coming and living here. The gay scene is supposed to be so cool.”

She laughs. “Aw for God's sake,” she says, her accent thicker than ever. The words whistle out of her mouth. “Don't come here for that! They're
so
up themselves!”