576

Jason was right.  It was the fourth floor.  One of the flat’s doors was open.  From inside there came the staccato bursts of talk and static from police radios. They walked up to the door. Inside the flat there were three officers, in uniform. "Who are you?" one asked, alert and faintly hostile.

By tacit consent, the three of them left it to Jason to speak.

“We’re friends of the two men who live here.  Luigi and Cody.  He phoned us … “ Jason turned to the others “… half an hour ago?  I didn’t see the message at once.”

“Why not?”  The hostility was stronger now.

“Well, duh!  We were asleep.”  Jason gestured at the darkness beyond the flat’s walkway.

“Wait here,” ordered the policeman.

“They’re not goin’ to be quick enough,” whispered Keith.  “While they’re checkin’ up, Lou and Cody are getting further and further away.”

“What was the name of that policemen from Mt Macedon?” asked Esmé.  “If we could get hold of him, he could help!”

“Yeah.”  Keith frowned.  “Fuck!  What was his name?”

“Something beginning with an F?  No, it wasn’t …. It was ….”

“Colin! That’s his name.  But I don’t have his number.”

“Well, maybe the police here could get hold of him.”

“Fuck them!” growled Keith.  “Arseholes!  We’ll google the number.”  His face became intent. 

Jason looked at him and thought, God, I love him.  And then thought, How can I think of that at a time like this?  And that was immediately followed by What better time? What better time to think of love when someone you care for is in danger of his life?

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Episodes 1 to 500

564

Jason lay on the edge of the bed in Keith’s flat.  Next to him, between him and Keith, Esmé snored with a cat-like purr. 

After finishing the bottle of champagne at the restaurant, Keith had invited them both back to his flat for a nightcap.  He’d poured them small glasses of Cointreau and offered them tea.  No point in coffee: he didn’t have an espresso machine.  Cafés made coffee so much better than he could. 

They talked a little, but the real conversation was unspoken.  Each of them could sense the electricity in the air, the joint attraction which drew them together and linked them with wires of desire.  They were reluctant to end this suspended, magical interlude, where so much was promised, where the future seemed potentially so full, and the now so exciting.

Jason had always felt a little uneasy with women.  He had been able to have sex with his girlfriends but it had never been simple, or fun.  But Esmé had been a friend first.  After what she had suffered at the hands of her father, he felt that she needed to be loved and cared for.  He admired her prettiness, the way her eyes shone, the sweet curve of her neck and her breasts, her curly brown hair.

He looked across at Keith, whose face was solemn, and their eyes met and locked.  Then he leaned over and kissed Esmé on her lips.

They didn’t speak.  Taking her hand and reaching out for Keith’s, Jason tugged them through to the bedroom.

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Episodes 1 to 500

544

Luigi saw it in his face.  “He’ll be your friend too, you know.  He’s a top bloke.  He’s kind.  He’s been through pain and loss himself, and it’s made him … better.  I think before Brent killed himself, he was maybe a little arrogant.”  Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was that trace of arrogance which first drew me to him. My need to be humiliated by a straight manly bloke.  Well, he thought with determination, I’m putting that behind me. I’m going to make a success of my relationship with Cody.  I am.

Cody didn’t answer.  He knew Luigi was right.  Despite that, it seemed to him, somewhere in is darkest imaginings, that he was alone, that Philippa had left him, and that Luigi’s heart, whatever he said, was given to another.  I’ve totally screwed up my life, he thought bitterly.  A fuck up.  A failure. 

Luigi reached out brushed a finger across Cody’s lips, softly and gently.  His dark olive black eyes were warm and loving.  He didn’t speak, but all the same, Cody felt better.

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Episodes 1 to 500 (without pictures, 20 episodes per chapter)   

542

“And now to tell the others.”  Jason sighed.  “It’s going to be hard.  Like coming out.  Because I’ve been lying to them.”

“No you haven’t!” Eleanor was indignant.  “You don’t have to tell people everything about yourself!  You’re entitled to private things.  And if you set aside your money because you wanted it to not be significant in your life, then, why should you tell them about it?”

“Well, I did say, when I told them about Brent, that I was rich and that was part of what … so they do know that.  But the title … and all that family history, going back nine hundred years.  It’s … too much.”

“Well, I’ve always thought that business of assessing a family just by its male members was silly.  What about all the ordinary women who married into the family?  There must have been some.  I mean, when you go back far enough, all of us have hundreds of ancestors. You’ve probably got a few peasants in your ancestry! But don’t ignore the power of a title in Australia.  You will be newsworthy.  And some people will be hostile, just because you have a title.  You should be able to use it to get publicity, to persuade people to give your home money.  Anyway, I don’t think they’ll care.  It’s …” she coloured slightly and looked away, ‘it’s not as if they don’t know you, um, intimately.”

It was Jason’s turn to blush.  He cleared his throat.

Lucasta said, “Well, my dear, certainly I have some quite ordinary people in my family tree like the wife of my grandfather who was a dancer from Paris so useful to be able to dance I loved it with your grandfather and that was partly why I learned French you know which I love and I remember her quite well such a pretty elegant woman with a charming accent she used to call me darleeeng when I was little and tell me fairy tales in French but I think there were many who cut her and grandfather because of who she was so cruel and stupid really.  And here I am your grandmother and so proud of you my dear.”

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527

Jason smiled a little uncertainly at her, and asked, “Are you all right?”  His expression was kind and worried and, she would have sworn, entirely genuine and real.

She realised she had become introspective, and that perhaps her face had shown her thoughts.  “I was far away, there,” she replied.  “Sorry.”

“Oh well, that’s all right then.  I didn’t …. I don’t  … Keith is your friend too.”  His expression was sincere, real. 

“Friend?” she said wryly. 

“And more,” he said with a slow, warm grin which made his eyes shine with humour and liking.  All at once she was filled with affection for him.

She smiled back and for that moment it seemed as if there were just the two of them in the room.

My parents had a typical marriage, she thought, with a bitter burn in her heart.  Fat lot of use it did them.  Or me.  Maybe doing things differently would be better.  Maybe having Keith and Jason in her life was better than what her parents had.  She wondered whether her mother had loved her father when they first married, or whether it had just seemed the thing to do, to get married and ‘settled’.  He could be very charming.  Like so many psychopaths.

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Episodes 1 to 500 (without pictures, 20 episodes per chapter)   

496

Cody thought for a bit.  “I didn’t even know I was bi,” he said.  “Gay.  Whatever.  I had girlfriends.  I never had sex with a man.  I used to get crushes on guys at school.  I thought everybody did that.  Felt that.  That it was just an intense friendship.  And then at uni, there was this bloke, Camden.  We were friends.  I dunno about best friends, but close. I was over at his place and we were stoned and drunk.  Not drunk.  Tipsy.  Just the two of us.  And then he said to me, ‘have you ever been with a bloke?’ and I said ‘no’ but it was exciting.   I popped an instant rexie.  And then he said, ‘do you wanna?’ and I said yes.”

“What happened?”  Luigi was absurdly jealous of this man who had been Cody’s lover.  He had to struggle not to let his jealousy show. 

“We fucked whenever we could.  Well, I dunno.  We just used to pull each other’s wires.  And kiss.  That was the best bit.  It didn’t seem gay, you know.  I know that sounds stupid, but, ‘gay’ to us was oral sex.  Or anal.”

“And the kissing?”

“Yeah.”  Cody grinned, a little sadly.  “That should have alerted me.  It was so … good.”

“Are you still friends?”

Cody shook his head.  He looked away.

Luigi leaned over and kissed him his ear.

When Cody turned to look at him, his eyes were brimming.

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Episodes 1 to 480 (without pictures, 20 episodes per chapter)  

471

 Carol King , Old Woman in Window, Istria,

He looked at her for several heartbeats, his face serious.

“Ya do deserve better.  But maybe—‘strue, Ezz--maybe ya naid better’n me.  I’m pretty damaged.  Oi lived on the straits.  Oi whored to pay for everything.  Oi caught the big H.  Oi took drugs an’ stuff.”   There were some things he was never going to tell.  Never. To anybody.  Tom knew, because Tom had seen him that night, huddled in the doorway, an icy southerly scouring his bones.  Tom knew all right. He’d been in bad places himself.  Tom didn’t need to be told.  “Y’re a noice middle class girl.  Ya knaow, proper accent, educated, noice home …”

“… where my father raped me several times a week.  And beat me up.  A nice middle class home where the grounds were big enough to mean the neighbours couldn’t hear the screams …”

“Yep.  That’s it, exac’ly.  You naid someone who has no baggage, someone noice and normal and straight.”

It came to her in an epiphany that that was precisely what she didn’t need.  “No!” she wailed.  “What I need is someone like you!  ‘Cos you understand!”  

 A voice came from the window in the three-storey Victorian brick house which backed onto their building.

“Can youse two get on with it?  I main, ther’re paiple tryin’ to slaip here.  Take him home, darl, an’ fuck him silly.” 

As far as they could see, the speaker was a very old old lady wearing a shapeless grey dressing gown, her hair in curlers covered with a net.

“Not thet Oi daon’t moind a bit of a soap drama, ya knaow.  But Jaysus, a lady’s got ta slaip.  Moi beauty slaip, ya knaow.”

Keith stood up and bowed to her, and shouted back, “Ma’am, I apologise for disturbin’ your repose. We will take your advoice at once.”

Esmé giggled, suddenly and inexplicably happy.  She stuck her arm through his and said, “C’mon.  Let’s go to your flat.”

As they left the little courtyard, Keith turned and waved, but the old lady had gone.

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Episodes 1 to 460 (without pictures, 20 episodes per chapter) 

466

“Men … well … wai’re a bit sluttish, ya knaow.  We loik a lot of sex, and wai aren’t always too pa’ticular about how we get it.  Some men prefer it without ties, with strangers.  I dunno.  Oi had that when Oi was on the straits.  Oi got enough fuckin’  with paiple who didn’t care about mai.  Paiple who despised me.  They thought that because Oi naided the money Oi was a nothin’.  But sex is noice.  Very noice.” He smiled suddenly, quickly and endearingly. “ And if ya can do it with someone you loike … someone you love … then it’s seriously good.  Aiven a nice blaoke ya pick up in the pub.  Long as he doesn’t look down on ya.  Long as there’s somethin’ there.  Some spark.  Though Oi’m getting’s a bit sick of that too, if ya wanna knaow.  Oi love Tom.  And Oi reckon Oi’m getting’ half in love with you, Esmé.  But Oi naid … fuck it, Ezz, Oi naid men in moi loife.  Oi daon’t wanna hurt ya, and Oi’m sorry Oi have.  But Oi could never be one hundred per cent straight.  Never.  No matter how much you main to me.  If Oi promised ya Oi would, Oi would be lyin’.”

Esmé looked at him for many heartbeats.  “I don’t know, Keith.  I can’t.  I … I need time to think.”

Keith looked bleak.

Esmé reached down and slapped his cheek lightly. 

“Stop it.”  She felt much happier than she had before.  I’m getting half in love with you. But the more rational part of herself argued forcibly for normality—a boyfriend who was straight, who loved only her, who wouldn’t pick up men in pubs.  Like they’re all queuing up, she thought cynically.  “I said I’d think about it.”

“Can wai go on bein’ friends?”  Keith looked so anxious she almost gave in right there.

“Maybe.  We’ll see.  Now drink up your coffee and go away!”

“Oi haven’t got any!  Honestly, the service in this place!”

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Episodes 1 to 460 (without pictures, 20 episodes per chapter) 

458

The wine was delicious, and felt just right for a chilly autumn night.

Jason wondered what the two women had been talking about.  It was obvious they had become friends, close friends.  He envied that.  Women seemed to be able to do that, to drop the barriers to intimacy, so much easier than men.  It had taken weeks for him and Keith to become friends.  And maybe, if he hadn’t been grieving about Brent’s suicide, he himself might never have let his barriers down and so got close to Keith.  The sex helped.   But only if you already liked each other.  Well.  Maybe not.  He and Luigi were friends.  And lovers. 

They talked about neutral subjects and then both women rose and headed off to bed.

As she bade them goodnight, Eleanor said, with a slight quirk in her eyebrows, that there were more bottles of wine in the pantry in the kitchen and they were welcome to it if they wanted.

“Thank you!” replied Jason.  “Good night.  See you in the morning.”

“Good night Jason dear so nice to be here and now at last I will be able to sleep properly this jet lag business so barbarous bring back the Queen Mary I say.”

After this surprisingly short speech, Lucasta too headed off up the stairs to the bedroom.

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter  

428

Cody slipped a cock jacket onto Luigi’s boner and kissed it again.  He slathered it generously with lube and then lowered himself onto it, his head thrown back, his gaze on the ceiling.  Luigi loved the tight warmth of Cody’s body.  He’d always loved it, from their first time.  And it had always pleased him that Cody was prepared to let Luigi fuck him.  Luigi was used to straight-acting men who were of the opinion that bottoming was proof that you weren’t a real man.  With them, Luigi was always the one who had to act the “woman’s part”.  He didn’t mind the bottoming—he liked that.  But he realised now how much he hated the implicit assumptions behind it.  “The passive partner”  Fuck that!  What he liked about bottoming was the pleasure he brought to the man who was fucking him, even more than the pleasure he got himself.  He loved tightening his arse at just the right moment, pushing his partner over the edge, watching his eyes darken as he came.

 And all at once he knew that that was part of what drew him to Jason and Keith, that even when they were role-playing in bed, it wasn’t about some kind of poisonous self-hating internalised homophobia.  It was about love.  Maybe not la grande passion.  Not ‘in love’.  But a sort of fierce affection and friendship.  All the clichés of modern society were about love, het love, wedding dresses and rings and bridal showers.  But the love they had for each other was much more substantial.  It was a love which was neither blind nor self-deceiving but still intense and profound.

He wasn’t sure about what he had with Cody, though.  He had been in love with Cody.  But were they really friends?  Did they really trust and accept each other?  Would their love survive the loss of passion?  Luigi’s relationship with Richard had been passionless.  They had comfort fucks once or twice a week.  But they had all the same loved each other genuinely and totally, and though Luigi had often lusted after strange men, because he’d felt the absence of passion, towards the end, when Richard and he had become a couple, he’d not indulged his desires.  After Richard had died he’d gone back to the hunt, lust—and, now, he acknowledged to himself—also the need to connect driving him to the ultimately empty, sometimes dangerous, pursuit of a chimera.

Never again, he swore.  I have Keith and Jason and, Goddess willing, Cody too.  

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

420

On the tram ride home, Luke didn’t speak, but instead stared out of the window at the passing city.  When they got home, he said,

“Nice bloke, your Keith.”   He seemed a little melancholy.  You might get someone to love, even if he is gay, but I won’t get anybody ever, was the subtext.

“Not mine, Luke.”

“He likes you.”

Esmé shrugged.  “He’s gay,” she said.  “He’s a friend.”

Luke had watched how Keith had looked at Esmé, and he wasn’t so sure.  But he didn’t want to raise her hopes so he let the subject drop.

“Are you working tonight?” he asked.

“No.  Well, I have an assignment.”

“How does pizza and a beer and a DVD sound to you?”

“Which DVD?”

“I dunno.  I bought some new gay movies from Amazon.”

“Do you think I’m turning into a fag hag?” Esmé had read that term just that morning and it had terribly depressed her.

“That’s a horrible word, Ezz.  Just because you have two gay friends.” 

One of whom gets a hard-on when he dances with me.  “Yes, but, I’ll prolly never get a man, you know.”  She sensed Luke’s sadness and all at once she shared it.

“Why ever not?”

So Esmé finally told him.  It felt as if a wound was torn open and scraped with salt.  But afterwards—though there was still a throbbing ache—for the first time since it had happened, she believed that she would be OK.  Things would get better.

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

417

“Tell you what,” offered Luke.  I’ve got a recital on Sunday arvo at the Conservatorium.  Bring him along.  Might as well meet Mr Right.”

Esmé punched him on the shoulder.  “He is not Mr Right!  He’s just a friend.”

Luke smiled in a knowing, superior way which made her want to smack him.

“You are such a pain, Luke Spencer.  I’ve a good mind not to come at all.  Or come and throw rotten tomatoes.”  They both knew this was an empty threat.  She always went to his concerts, and always applauded vigorously.

“There’re some off tomatoes there, if you need any,” Luke pointed out, gesturing to a plate on the sink. 

“Yuck.”  They were disgusting.  Blackened with pale grey-green mould growing over them.

“Thing is, you’re going to have to carry them in a plastic container because they’re falling apart.  And throwing them could be difficult.  Newton’s third law, and all that.”

She looked at him darkly.  “You don’t impress, you know.  I’ve met smooth-talking men before.  Shallow things, they are.  All baff and bombast.”

“So it’s settled, then?”

Esmé reached for the tomatoes.  “Why wait until Sunday?” she asked rhetorically.

Luke grinned and fled.

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

413

“Doing this helps,” she said, her voice trembling a little.  She turned sideways on the bench and drew her knees up put her arms round them.  She didn’t want him to touch her.  Not yet.  “My father …” Despite her will, she had to swallow hard to keep talking.  “He … used … he used to ….”  She said the last few words in a rush, almost gabbling them.  Get it out, get it out, don’t hide any more ran through her head.

“I suppose he told you he loved you?”

She nodded, unable to speak.

He took her hand and held it.

“Moi dad threw me out.  When he found out Oi was gay.  I lived on the streyts for a whoile.  That’s when Oi got it.”  He looked down at his feet.  The languid dreamy clarinet lead of Night and Day drifted out of the warm night air.  “They tell ya to wear a condom, but Oi didn’t always have the money.  And some blaokes prefer, ya knaow, ta do it without.  They insist.”  He turned to look at her.  “Everybody has scars.  Jus’ …  sometimes, they’re invisible.”

 “He was supposed to love me, to cherish me, to care for me.  Instead he … ”

“Yeah.”

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter

409

He’d come in at about 11 pm just as the café was closing. 

“Sorry, we’re closing,” she’d said, automatically.

“Gao on!  It’s not quite 11 yet!”

“Well, the coffee machine’s been shut down.”  She stared at him blandly.

He bowed.  “O esteemed princess!  Howzabout a cup of grayn tay, then all you’ll have to do is rinse out the cup afterwards?  And we c’n have a sip of this!”  He reached inside his jacket and removed a small bottle of brandy.

“Where’d you get that?” she exclaimed.  As soon as she’d spoken, she thought how silly she was.  He’d prolly bought it at a bottle shop.  There was one down the road, open until 10.  Or he’d bought it earlier, the day before perhaps.  Why should he have obtained it lately?

“I pinched it,” he said calmly.

“Where from?”

“Nex’ door.  I work there.”

“Are you gay?”  She cursed herself for letting the question slip out.  Just because The Lord Grey was a gay pub.

“Who wants to knaow?” he asked, drily, withdrawing a little.

“Why,” she said, suddenly feeling oddly happy, “The Countess Esmeralda at your service.  Come this way, Prince Charming.  Green tea on its way.”

She made some for him and herself, and sat down opposite him.

“The answer’s ‘yes’,” he said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes I’m gay.  And you?”

“Oh.  No.  I don’t know.  My best friend’s gay.  But I prefer men, I think.”  She thought of her father and wondered.  But then, her mother hadn’t exactly been an icon for womanhood.

“That’s what I feel too,” he said, grinning.

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Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter