Loving Jay (19 page)

Cameron interceded for me. “Now, now, Ben. No teasing Liam today. I have a big surprise for everyone instead. Now that John has finally arrived, I can unveil it.”

“Surprise?” Mum’s voice was hopeful as she turned toward Cameron with a bright smile. I could see where her mind was taking her—grandchildren, where else?—but Cameron soon dashed her hopes.

“Yep! I found it a couple of days ago and it’s great. We all need to go in the lounge room to see it, though.”

So we all trailed into the room and took twice as long as a class of first graders to all find a spot on the sofa or floor. Cameron was fiddling with his laptop—a cable ran from the machine into Mum and Dad’s brand-new super-size flat-screen TV. Once everyone had settled down, Cameron announced, “I got this a couple of days ago at work. It was a great laugh and it was doing the rounds over e-mail. Someone loaded it onto YouTube.”

“You what?” Dad asked.

“YouTube,” Dale answered. “It’s a site on the Internet where people can load their videos and everyone can see it.”

Dad was still confused so I said, “It’s just a short movie, Dad.”

I watched as Cameron pressed play on the laptop and the short clip began to play on the TV, complete with sound. The clip’s name was “Kung Fu Fighting.” It became immediately obvious to the younger generation in the room that the clip was recorded on someone’s mobile phone. The camera work was shaky and the resolution not the best. I tried to focus on what was happening on the screen. The person filming had been taking the shot over another’s shoulder, and that person’s ear and hair were visible on the screen until the camera moved a bit more, showing the subject of the filming.

“Hey!” said Anita. “Isn’t that your train station, Liam?”

It was and I came over all cold as I realized what the clip was about. My palms began to sweat and I felt dizzy, unable to get up and make Cameron turn the damn thing off, unable to do anything but stare at the oversized screen and the subject of my continued nightmares.

I heard the audio. The sound was tinny, the voices far away, but amazingly clear.

“You poofters are revolting.”

“You shouldn’t be putting your pricks where you do.”

I opened my eyes, not realizing they had fallen closed, and focused on the picture. Thug Number Three and Thug Number One were pushing Jay between them, laughing loudly as Thug Number Two watched.

“Please, don’t….” I heard Jay’s feeble voice coming through the speakers and my stomach turned over with nausea. Jay’s face was visible in the film, fear and distress obvious. I was immediately able to identify Jay, his bleached-blond hair shining like a beacon under the station’s lights, his hot pink shirt and skintight pants exactly the same as they were that awful night. He was the man I loved, and he was about to get hurt.

Memories warred with the present as the clip brought it all back. I could smell the chill in the air that mingled with the faint smell of stale cigarettes. I could feel the pain in my leg I was experiencing that night as I got off the train, and I could even hear the dull roar of the cars on the nearby freeway. The events on the TV were so accurate, yet somehow different. Suddenly I realized that it was because the camera was recording the incident from a different angle from what I remembered. The person who’d filmed it was standing ninety degrees to where I had been. They must have been standing at the bus stop. With a sinking feeling, I realized that if the camera was capturing it from a different angle, then I was about to appear on my parents’ TV.

Thug Number One once again swung Jay in a large arc and Jay once again smashed into the wall with a loud cry. His cry was echoed from near the camera by witnesses in the watching crowd as they exclaimed their horror and fear. I didn’t remember that bit, because in my memories I was already running.

And there I was.

“You fuckheads!” I didn’t remember yelling that, but I must have, because it was captured there on-screen as Thug Number Two viciously kicked Jay. I saw me running, suddenly appearing on the screen from the left, hardly limping at all on my bung leg, my jacket flapping as I charged at the men. I saw my shoulder go down and catch Number One in the solar plexus, actually lifting him off the ground and sending him crashing into Number Two before they both went sprawling on the pavement.

“You leave him the fuck alone!” I remembered yelling that.

I could feel my family’s surprise and it was Candice who said what they all must’ve been thinking, “Is that…?”

But the tape rolled on. Thug Number Three turned and growled, “Who the fuck do you think you are, motherfucker?” before swinging a wild roundhouse punch at me. The camera had captured a couple of yells and exclamations from the crowd as I leaned back out of range of the fist. I knew what was coming and I watched myself on the TV, standing calm and cool as Number Three’s leg came up, and I followed the upward movement with my arm, caught his ankle, and once again flipped him backward like I was a ninja master and he was a disposable extra in a movie.

The camera shook a bit but managed to capture his inelegant introduction to the concrete floor before swinging around to secure footage of Number One’s encounter with the vicious handbag lady and Number Two’s surprisingly easy apprehension by a man older than my father.

I heard some laughter in the watching audience, both on the screen and in real life, but I was too busy watching the top left of the TV where I could see my figure gathering Jay into a protective embrace, rocking him slightly. The recording spun around again, leaving our figures and showing flashing lights of an approaching vehicle. The police had arrived and two uniformed men rushed from the car, one chasing down Thug Number Three, who was attempting to flee, the other dashing to save Number One from concussion-by-Prada.

The screen froze and blurred as the camera stopped recording, and the witness brought an end to the worst night of my life. However, the silence in my parent’s lounge room was deafening. The timer on the bottom of the screen showed that the whole thing had taken forty-eight seconds. It seemed a lot longer to me.

It was Cameron who broke the stillness. “Cool, huh?”

“Was that Liam?”

“That was amazing!”

“Show it again.”

“Liam, why didn’t you tell us?”

“When did that happen?”

My family was all talking at once, asking and commenting, but I could feel the bile rising in my throat. I pushed Ben aside and raced from the room. I barely made it to the toilet bowl in time as my breakfast reappeared for further inspection. I vomited until there was nothing left, my stomach ached, and my mouth tasted worse than camel dung. Dale was waiting for me in the hallway with a concerned look on his face.

“You okay, mate?”

I nodded, but the nausea threatened to come back again as I heard the distant replay of my voice, “You leave him the fuck alone!” My family was watching Jay get attacked again and again.

“Tell ’em to turn it off, can you, Dale? That stuff gives me nightmares and I don’t want to have to hear it again.”

“Sure, mate.” He hurried back to the lounge, and I heard the tape stop abruptly. In the bathroom I rinsed my mouth out and splashed water on my face. I knew they were waiting to interrogate me and I was right—nine pairs of eyes swung my way as I entered the room. I tried to catalogue their expressions—surprise, admiration, concern, astonishment, alarm, amazement.

Mum rushed to my side, a mother hen clucking over her chick. “Oh, sweetie. Are you okay? Here, sit down. Anita, can you please get him some water? Cameron, move back and give him some air, can you? Liam, sweetie, do you need something to settle your stomach? Antacids or milk or food?”

“I’m okay, Mum.”

“Are you sure, sweetie? You look awfully pale.”

“No, Mum. I’ll be fine.” Anita returned with the requested water and an unnatural stillness returned to the room. I saw Dad whisper something to John, and Ben elbow Alison, but no one spoke. It was worse than Chinese water torture.

“What?” I finally burst out.

Mum simply rubbed my arm up and down, saying, “Nothing, sweetie. We are just all waiting for you to tell us about what happened. You didn’t say a thing. You saved that poor man all by yourself and didn’t bother to tell us at all. Although I am not sure that I was impressed with your language on that tape.”

Ben snorted. “Yeah, Liam. Next time watch your mouth, okay?”

Several people snickered and Mum shot a dirty look over my shoulder. “Oh, hush up, you! I want to know why you didn’t tell any of us, Liam.”

“Dale knew.” The words were out before I could think the better of it.

Candice swung around and glared at her hapless spouse. “You knew?”

Poor Dale backed up and put his hands out in defense. “Thanks, mate. Just drop me in it next time. Yes, I knew that Liam had been in a fight, but he didn’t want me to say anything. Of course, I didn’t know he’d taken out the guys with so much style. That was totally awesome, mate.”

But Candice wasn’t finished with him. “So when exactly did this happen that I don’t know about?”

“A couple of months back. You remember when I had to pick him up from the hospital that night?” Dale replied.

“Hospital?”

I closed my eyes as it was Dale’s turn to dump me in deep manure. Mum looked at me in alarm. “You had to go to hospital? Dale took you to the hospital?”

“No, Mum. The ambulance took me to the hospital. Dale just picked me up.”
Whoops! Note to self: engage the brain before speaking. We shouldn’t have mentioned the ambulance.

Mum’s voice rose in volume. “You needed an ambulance?”

“No, no. Jay needed an ambulance. I just went along for the ride. Didn’t you see the clip? Those idiots didn’t even touch me. I wasn’t hurt. It was just my leg. Just a couple of torn muscles, truly, Mum!”

Mum sank down onto the chair next to me. “I think you’d better start at the beginning, Liam.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”
Liar!
“The guy in the clip is my friend.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire! That guy in the clip is more than your friend. He is your world.
“His name is Jay and a while back in July I was coming out of the train station and I saw those jerks pushing him around. And you saw, Mum. I raced in there to help him, but they crashed him into the wall before I got there. He was hurt—he needed stitches and was concussed something bad. So I rode to the hospital with him.”

Mum was rubbing her head as if there were a pain behind her eyes. Maybe it was some sort of parent-child telepathy and she could tell I was lying. “So why didn’t you say anything?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want to make a fuss. Besides, you saw that clip. Jay got hurt because I didn’t get there in time.”

Candice had come up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “What do you mean, Liam? You rescued the guy.”

But I was already shaking my head. “No. He got hurt. If I hadn’t been a….” I spat the word out, “… cripple, I could’ve saved him.” The word
cripple
always tasted like ash on my tongue. Shame for not being a full man.

Her arm slid around me, warm and comforting. This is why I love her, even though she made a fool of me by dumping me for my brother. “I don’t understand. Why did your injury mean you couldn’t save him?”

I hung my head. It hurt to admit I wasn’t a “whole” man. It was awful because it was in no way any fault of my own. It had been a drunk driver running a red light.

“My leg had been hurting me that day,” I confessed. “So I was unable to walk as fast as everyone else. I had to stop and rest, meaning I wasn’t there when they started in on Jay. If I had been completely able-bodied, I could’ve stopped them before they hurt Jay.”

Mum sighed, “Oh, sweetie.”

I heard my dad from behind me, “That’s utter rot, son!”

Candice just squeezed me tight. “Have you thought that if you were two minutes earlier, then you would’ve been on the receiving end of a couple of punches instead? It would’ve been you in that ambulance on the stretcher. By coming late to the party you were able to take them all by surprise and take them all out without hurting yourself. I know you said your friend was hurt, but I bet you he was a lot less hurt than if you were lying on the ground bleeding while the three of them thumped and kicked him.”

I shrugged. John piped up from his corner. “Does this Jay guy blame you or something?”

I was quick to reassure them. “God, no. He thinks I’m some sort of superhero.”

“There you go, then.”

Dale was quick to follow with. “And you are, mate. You were bloomin’ excellent in that film! And you have me to thank for showing you those moves.”

My brothers all quickly jumped in, boasting they were the ones to show me my supposed Kung-Fu-Fighting skills, and I laughed. I felt reassured that I really couldn’t have done anything more for Jay on that night, and that even if it had been John or Cameron or Ben, the outcome would’ve been messy. My family was great and I was going to miss them when they found out what sort of friend Jay had become.

Of course, Dad ruined my happy buzz by remarking, “You ought to be careful what sort of friends you are making, Liam. That Jay looked like a downright poofter and if you are friends with him, people will think you are a fairy, too.”

“Dad!” Ben jumped in and beat me with his protest. “Don’t start this again.”

Thankfully Dad dropped the subject, although he frowned in my direction a few times over lunch, as if checking me for obvious signs of my descent into gaydom now I was friends with one. It seemed positively fateful then, that my phone buzzed loudly in my pocket just as Mum put dessert on the table. Sunday Roast could not be Sunday Roast without a large helping of apple pie, rhubarb crumble, or a slab of pavlova.

I pulled the phone from my pocket and glanced at the screen. “Jay Bell” leapt up at me and I scowled at the device. Jay knew I was with my family and that I wouldn’t be able to answer the phone and talk to him. I hit “Decline” with a feeling of guilt. What sort of boyfriend was I that I ignored him when he rang?

“Sorry,” I muttered to the room at large as I put my phone back in my pocket. It immediately began to buzz at me again. Jay’s name appeared and I stared at it with unease. What was up that Jay needed me at that very second?