Behind the Moon (14 page)

He stewed in his unhappiness for a week, then he decided to force the issue. One night, after Mr and Mrs Kok had retired to bed and he and Jordie were in the study playing computer games, he leaned over and fastened his mouth on Jordie’s neck, his hand reaching for the other man’s thigh. Jordie squirmed and pushed him away, casting a swift, scared glance over his shoulder.

‘They’re asleep,’ Justin said impatiently.

‘The maids might still be awake.’

‘You know they’re not.’ He looked at Jordie’s sulking face and he felt angry, but he forced himself to say gently, ‘I’ve hardly spent any time with you at all on this trip. What’s the point in me coming to Malaysia if we’re not going to do things together?’

Jordie said, ‘I see you all the time in Sydney. My parents never get to see me. Of course I have to spend most of my time with them when I’m home. If you were Asian, you would understand.’

‘I
am
Asian,’ Justin said, and he was surprised at how hurt he felt by the accusation.

‘No you’re not. Not really. Asian-Australian, maybe.’

‘All right. If I’m not, I’m not. But what about now? You never let me do anything more than touch you. And you hardly touch me anymore. Don’t you want me?’

Jordie looked appalled. ‘How can you ask me to do those things when I’m here under my parents’ roof? My father would kill me if he knew.’

‘He doesn’t know. And everybody’s asleep.’

‘It’s his house. I can’t disrespect him like that.’

Justin shook his head. ‘You don’t want me, do you?’

‘I don’t want to have sex yet,’ Jordie said. ‘I’m not ready. I don’t know why you guys always want to have sex. Why can’t we just go on being friends?’

‘We’ve been friends for nearly a year,’ Justin pointed out. ‘It’s natural to take it to the next stage, don’t you think? I love you, Jordie, you know that. I want you.’

‘Now you’re pressuring me,’ Jordie complained. ‘You don’t understand my background. I come from a conservative Buddhist family, not like you westernised Chinese. My older sisters were both virgins until they got married. My parents didn’t bring us up to sleep around, you know. We’re not promiscuous.’

‘What are you saying? You want to wait until we get
married
?’

‘All you want from me is sex,’ Jordie said. He looked hurt. ‘If you really loved me, you wouldn’t do this to me.’

Justin cut short his six-week holiday in Malaysia and flew back to Sydney. There was never an official break-up with Jordie where they said the words like a magical incantation and did the post-mortem on the relationship, promising to be good friends. They just stopped contacting each other and allowed the relationship to wither. When the university semester started, they tried to avoid each other as much as possible. If they ran into each other in classes, they nodded and chatted superficially as though they had never been anything more than friendly acquaintances. The Malaysian flatmates ignored him. He suspected that Jordie had been telling tales. He swore to himself that he would never go out with an Asian again.

Justin was lonely. He longed to be in a relationship. He furtively bought gay magazines and responded to the classifieds. Nobody got back to him when he identified himself as Asian. He began to go to nightclubs in Darlinghurst. They were easier than bars, he figured, because they would be dark and his Asianness might be less obvious. The clubs were noisy and full of people. He would not have to undergo the humiliation of sitting on a bar stool by himself, nervous fingers clasped around a drink for god knew how long, sliding intermittent glances left and right, wondering whether anyone at all would come up to talk to him, because he was not attractive to other men and therefore not even worth the casual exchange of conversation. In the pulsing press of anonymous bodies gyrating in a nightclub he could pretend that he actually belonged to this community.

After a few weekends he was settled enough to start observing others. The first thing he needed to do, he realised, was to change his wardrobe. He got rid of the silk shirts he’d taken to wearing since he started going out with Jordie and he bought himself some tight white Bonds T-shirts and Armani jeans. He had his hair cut short and bought a set of electric clippers in anticipation of the day when he would have enough courage to shave his head. And then he went to the gym. He weight-trained four days a week and supplemented these sessions with aerobic exercises. He curled, kicked, squatted, crunched and lunged. He familiarised himself with barbell bench presses, dumbbell flies and cable crossovers. He jotted down all his exercises in a journal and recorded the six carb-rich meals he forced himself to eat each day. He waxed his legs and armpits but left his epicene chest alone. In winter his skin bubbled with goose-bumps and he looked like a plucked chicken. He went to the solarium, basted and roasted himself to a beautiful golden brown.

Fourteen months later he had an artificially tanned, gym-fit swimmer’s body which produced satisfactory contours under his tight T-shirt. He scored his first approach from a white guy shortly after. Mal was a PhD student researching the history of male prostitution in China. He was a Muscle Mary with bleached blond hair, brown doe’s eyes and the bulging mass-produced pectorals, flat stomach and tight six-pack of rigorous gym regimes. He was beautiful and, even more amazingly, he was friendly. He sat on an empty stool beside Justin. A short time later he was spouting Michel Foucault and informing Justin impressively that out of the twenty-four emperors of the Han dynasty in China, ten had had male lovers.

‘Wow,’ Justin said, mentally filing this information away for the time when he could actually use this tidbit of knowledge to prove conclusively to lamenting relatives that homosexuality was not a degenerate Western import into Asian society. In his mind, he constantly rehearsed endless conversations about his sexuality with his family and relatives. In reality, he had yet to rev up his courage to declare himself gay.

As he sat there and listened to Mal enthusing about the exquisite anal techniques of Asian queens recorded in nineteenth-century British colonial officers’ diaries, nodding his head intermittently to show his attention was riveted, he could not help fantasising about the future. Here was a white man who actually appreciated Asians! Good old Muscle Mal, who loved Chinese culture and possibly felt that smooth brown bodies compensated for the stereotypical small dick. Enchanted with each other’s company, they would leave the bar together and dine at a cosy restaurant nearby, proceeding back to Mal’s place after that for their first fuck. Such was the physicality of this world (or so Justin thought) that without the first-date fuck, the possibility of finding true love might be remote.

Eventually they would move in together. He would complete his architectural studies and work for a big prestigious company—or even become another Glenn Murcutt—while Mal got a job teaching at one of the universities. He would design a quirkily modern, Philippe Starck-like apartment for them, making sure it had a studio for himself and his drafting table, and plenty of storage and shelving space for Mal’s books. In the morning, Mal—who obviously wouldn’t need to get to university until after ten o’clock, since he was in the arts faculty—would wake him with a cup of green tea and breakfast in bed. In turn, he would try to get home in time to cook a healthy Asian dinner for Mal. Then they would cuddle up on the couch and watch—he didn’t know what gay historians might want to watch: ‘South Park’? ‘The Bill’? ‘ER’? ‘Four Corners’? He supposed he’d better start reading the newspapers and keeping up with current affairs. When they went out to one of Mal’s book launches or to cocktails celebrating the opening of a breathtaking building he had designed, people would remark on what a lovely cosmopolitan couple they made, so devoted to each other, so eminently suited, the architect and the historian.

He’d just got them to the point where they were exchanging commitment rings in the gardens of Vaucluse House when Mal’s monologue was interrupted by a short Chinese man in an ill-fitting double-breasted navy blue suit and cherry Doc Martens boots, shouldering a forestgreen backpack so big it made him look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

‘Mal, darling. So sorry I’m late. I was held up by a root canal,’ the Chinese man said. He smiled and flashed orthodontically straightened teeth at Mal, then flicked a poisonous glance at Justin.

Introductions were made but Justin barely heard. All he could take in was the implosion of his dreams. Mal slid off his stool and said goodbye. As they walked away, the Chinese man paused, turned back to Justin and hissed in an undertone, ‘Just fuck off and stay away from Mal. He’s mine.’

Justin understood. Gorgeous white gays who were willing to look twice at Asians were not so common that those Asian gays who had one could afford to have others cut in. He felt sad but bore no ill will towards the other man. He just hoped for Mal’s sake that the Chinese dentist would get a decent haircut and a new set of clothes.

Still, he had made this important discovery: they were out there, those white gays who were attracted to Asians. It was just a matter of finding those rice eaters. When he did, he would at last be happy.

Then, a few months later, he met Dirk at the Sydney International Piano Competition at the Opera House.

The Rice Queen

‘Along a lonesome, darkened path,’ she said, ‘for love of you I found my way to you.

Now we stand face to face—but who can tell we shan’t wake up and learn it was a dream?’

Nguyen Du,
The Tale of Kieu

Dirk Merkel was an investment banker who loved Bach, Brahms and Billie Holiday. In the mornings, he fiddled expertly with his Krupps espresso machine and ate his breakfast of rye bread, Emmenthal cheese and cold meats to the exquisite polyphony of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. On balmy summer evenings, when he came home from his high-rise office near Circular Quay, he poured himself a tequila—
reposado
or
anejo
, of course; no adolescent salt ’n’ lemon slammers and definitely no worm-infested mescals for him. He’d picked up the taste for it in Mexico City on a work trip a few years back, when he’d also realised he was gay. He sat on the wooden deck overlooking the backyard of his renovated Balmain worker’s cottage, slowly sipping his tequila to the sound of Billie mournfully singing ‘You go to my head’. He leaned back in his deckchair, closed his eyes and felt an alcoholic warmth seep through his capillaries. He was so alone. He leaked self-pity.

It was his custom to sit thus for at least half an hour before stirring himself to venture into his tidy kitchen. He knotted an apron neatly around his spreading waist and cooked a simple meal for himself, did the dishes and put on the Brahms before logging on to the internet to study stock reports, consider company performances, or trawl the net for gay chat-rooms. At precisely ten forty-five, he logged off and shut down the computer, silenced Brahms and switched off the lights.

He padded to the bathroom to clean his teeth with methodical thoroughness. He looked in the mirror and saw thin brown hair framing an average, pleasant face which was in fairly good condition, although the pores were cracking open wider and the skin was no longer so taut. He had to breathe in deeply to still the sense of panic that this was all he could expect of life and, quite frankly, it was a big disappointment. How could someone who had so much love inside him, who had such a need to tend to others, be all alone? But he was a disciplined man; he would not give in to the panic that licked at him. He turned away from the mirror, climbed into bed and read a book—Don DeLillo or Philip Roth or Saul Bellow; he was seriously into serious American literature—for half an hour. Then he switched on the humidifier, turned off the reading lamp and lay awake in the dark.

He used to have a family. Now he saw his two children every second weekend and they were so polite to him that it was unnatural. His ex-wife had kept the Baulkham Hills house, married a plumber, and his children were getting into the habit of calling their stepfather ‘Dad’. He tried to accept his life, such as it was. His weekends were occasionally varied by a visit to the opera or the symphony with the handful of married friends who had not divorced him along with his wife when they’d found out he was gay. (‘Poor Helena! How could he have done this to her!’) These days, however, melancholy was his most frequent companion in his middle-aged solitude.

Justin was late for the Sydney International Piano Competition. He’d taken the train from Strathfield to Circular Quay, but it had been delayed all the way because of track work. From Circular Quay station, he’d stormed along the footpath to the Opera House, bounding up the two long flights of steps to the Concert Hall. He was panting hard by the time he squeezed into his seat just before the performance started. He hadn’t had time to get a program so he didn’t know what he was listening to. Hesitantly, he leaned over to his neighbour and whispered the question.

‘Brahms Piano Concerto Number One,’ Dirk whispered back. They eyed each other for a moment in the dim light of the hall. Each liked what he saw: the older man neatly dressed in an expensive dark suit and tie, the younger man in an arty black skivvy tucked into black jeans, and boots. They eased back in their fuchsiacoloured seats and fixed their eyes on the stage where some impossibly young-looking Korean-Australian kid in gold-rimmed glasses and a spiky thatch of Kim Jong Il hair was pounding away on the Steinway grand.

They swapped opinions between performers and had a coffee together during the intermission. After the concert Justin took him to a bar and they had a drink. Dirk did not like the gay scene. It was too loud, too outrageous, for a conservative family man like him. He paid for the drinks and offered Justin a lift home. They ended up in the Balmain cottage. Dirk fixed some rose hip tea which they did not drink. Instead, they fell in towards each other like a collapsing tent, kissed, and took each other to bed.

‘I have to go home,’ Justin said just after one in the morning. ‘My parents will worry about me and wonder where I’ve been if I only turn up tomorrow morning.’

‘Do they know?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Dirk offered. He raised himself from the bed and shoved off the covers, swinging his legs to the floorboards.

‘No, don’t worry,’ Justin said. He pushed the older man back down on the bed and dragged the covers over him. ‘It’s too much trouble. I’ll call for a cab.’

When the taxi came, Justin made Dirk stay indoors. ‘It’s too cold out there,’ he said.

Dirk understood that Justin was not prepared to be openly gay even in front of a taxi driver. He accepted this and only said, ‘I’d like to see you again. If you want to.’

‘Yeah. That’d be great,’ Justin said. He did not sound particularly enthusiastic, but he kissed Dirk before he left and it felt as though he meant it.

Dirk had formed a habit of loving very early on in his life. He’d married when he was only twenty. He yearned to love again. He wanted to have someone to call during the day, making up an excuse like ‘Shall I buy takeaway tonight?’ or ‘Do we need milk?’, just so that he could hear the beloved’s voice. He wanted to come home and hear all about somebody else’s day; to celebrate triumphs with a pop of the champagne cork or to soothe away frustrations with a soft kiss and a back-rub. He wanted to walk past a shop window and see something that he simply had to get for his beloved. He wanted to plan something special for anniversaries and public holidays—weekends away in quaint bed-and-breakfasts, horse-riding excursions, chartering a private yacht. He wanted to lavish affection, to spend and spoil, to tend and adore. He needed to serve. He needed to love.

And then there was Justin. To think that this exotic oriental youth with his beautiful dark looks and welltoned body actually desired him! He was ripe for love and he fell helplessly.

They’d been going out for nearly four months when the Diana dinner occurred. Justin turned up on his doorstep, drunk and distraught, just after midnight. Dirk couldn’t work out what Justin was saying.

‘Fucking bastard. I loved him. He was my best friend,’ Justin sobbed against Dirk’s pyjama top. ‘To tell Bob and betray me like that. Fucking fucker.’

Dirk stood motionless in the hallway, his arms still around Justin. He felt tears forming in his eyes but he blinked them away. He’d always feared it was too good to be true. Those weekends that he spent with Peter and Anna—what had Justin been doing? There must be another lover, of course. A younger, gorgeous man with a tight, toned body who bore Justin company in the gay bars and nightclubs that his older lover was too staid to enjoy. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, steeling himself to deal with this betrayal.

‘Don’t take it so hard,’ he murmured, rocking Justin like a child. The shock of infidelity could not override his basic urge to comfort, to care. ‘It will be all right. We will make it all right somehow. Shh. Shh. Don’t cry anymore.’

He led Justin into his bedroom, pulled off his socks and shoes, undressed him and put him to bed. He tucked him in, kissed him gently on the forehead and said, ‘Get some sleep now. We will talk about this in the morning.’

He got up from the bed and walked to the door.

‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ Justin asked. He had raised himself up on one elbow.

Dirk stopped by the doorway and turned around. ‘I can’t, Justin. The children are here tonight. They are sleeping in the other bedroom.’

‘Oh shit, I didn’t realise. I thought they came last week.’

‘They did, but Helena and Frank had tickets to a show tonight so I offered to take the children since . . .’

‘Since I didn’t want you to come to dinner tonight,’ Justin said.

‘You didn’t want me to meet your family or friends,’ Dirk said.

‘No. I was ashamed of you. I was ashamed of myself. I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.’

‘Get some sleep,’ Dirk repeated. ‘You will feel better in the morning.’

He closed the door behind him and went to the living room. He plumped up a few cushions, lay down on the sofa and pulled a mohair throw-rug over himself. He woke up to the muted sound of cartoons and when he knuckled sleep out of his eyes, he saw that Peter and Anna were sitting on the floor watching television, leaning back against the sofa.

Anna looked up at him. ‘Oh. You’re awake. Shall I make you a cup of coffee, Dad?’

He sat up and smoothed down his hair. He could feel a bald spot forming. It was vaguely worrying. He tried not to rub it. ‘You two are up early,’ he said. He glanced towards the hall and looked back to the children. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m sleeping out here.’

‘There’s some guy in your bed,’ Peter said. He scrambled up and went to the kitchen to pour out a bowl of Coco Pops, which he brought back to the living room. He ate it dry, not bothering with milk. ‘We looked and stuff.’

‘Peter, you must have a proper breakfast,’ Dirk said, concerned. ‘I shall cook you something after I have showered.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘The man in my bedroom,’ Dirk began. ‘He is a good friend of mine. He was in trouble and he needed a place to stay.’

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Anna asked. She took in her father’s discomfiture and rolled her eyes. ‘It’s okay, Dad. We know about these things. So. Is he?’

‘He is a very good friend,’ Dirk repeated. He looked at his son. ‘Peter? How do you feel about this?’

‘About what? You being gay? Or the Chinese guy in your bed?’ Peter shoved a handful of Coco Pops in his mouth and crunched. He shrugged. ‘Free country. Your life.’

‘I don’t want to upset you,’ Dirk said.

His son shot him a considering look. ‘I’m not upset, Dad. I mean, yeah, if you asked me, I’d rather you weren’t—you know. It was nice when we were a family. But Mum’s got Frank now and he’s pretty cool. And I guess you can’t help it and stuff. Yeah.’

They tried so hard to be sophisticated and grown-up, his children. He wanted to gather them in his arms and hug them tightly to him but he was afraid of demanding something they might not be willing to give. He wasn’t sure whether he had any right to expect anything from them except civility. When he looked at them, he felt guilty for the divorce, guilty for not being a normal father to them, for forcing them to understand his difference. And then he felt guilty for regretting his homosexuality because this was something he had to be proud of, otherwise he would become just another victim. He could be no other than the man he was, and surely he need not apologise for that.

He rolled his shoulders and pushed remorse away. Then he got up to love them in a way they could easily accept: he made them pancakes for breakfast.

Later, after Helena had picked up the children, he sat out on the deck with Justin and heard about the Dead Diana Dinner. He appreciated the magnitude of what had happened and he understood Justin’s agitation, but all he could feel was overwhelming relief that he had not been betrayed. There was no other young lover. He reached out across the table and grasped Justin’s hand.

‘You still have me,’ Dirk said. ‘And you have a home here if you wish. You must know that I love you.’

Justin shook his head, unable to say anything for a moment. He could never have dreamed that anything good could come out of the Dead Diana Dinner. Yet here he was: accepted, wanted,
loved
, by a white man. He didn’t deserve it.

He grasped Dirk’s hand and said, ‘I love you too. I’ll do anything to make you happy.’