So, Where Do We Start

So, where do we start? I met Matt when he and I were employed to be barmen in a new bar opening up.

We were the barmen. We’d got the jobs through who we knew and not really what we knew. I was a friend of the owners PA. and was recommended by her. The owner trusted her judgement implicitly.

Matt was a the son of the owner’s best friend, and the owner owed his best friend a favour.

We were both told to turn up by the owner midweek to help with the setup, and get familiar with the lay out for the opening on that weekend.

There was also Mark who was going to be the third barmen, but Matt and I were going to be the main guys.

We hadn’t met before the Wednesday we were called in.

As it turned out, I was attracted to Matt the moment I met him. He was a good looking, masculine, guy who was funny, who seemed to like me.

Steve the owner seemed to know who I was the moment I walked in, I guess, because Matt had got there before me and had, of course, introduced himself.

The bar was a mess, it was absolute, it was pandemonium, all hands on deck, all systems go. Matt and I said to each other, “This is never going to open on Saturday.”

But they pulled off a miracle, and it did open. Our first Saturday night was frantic, we learned everything on the job, we were crap at the beginning, but we got good at it quickly.

The bar closed at midnight, because the owners didn’t want to work later than that, which was good. It was open Thursday to Sunday nights. Matt lived around the corner from me with his sister in North Fitzroy, as it turned out, so we hung out a lot after work.

Matt was dating some girl when we started working together, but he split up with her pretty quickly after we started working in the bar together.

We wore black trousers and a white shirt and a black waistcoat changing into them before work and changing out of them after work. I used to perve on Matt in his jocks as he got changed.

“You coming over to my joint?” he’d ask after we finished.

“Yeah,” I’d say.

Matt’s sister worked a job that required her to travel interstate a lot, so it was often just Matt and I back at his place in Batman Street, before I’d head home to my place around the corner.

Sometimes we’d smoke pot. Sometimes we’d suck on nitrous capsules. Mostly we’d drink coffee and eat and rave on and unwind from the bar before I’d head home.

We were both going to uni during the day, we were both in our last year.

I found I missed Matt on the nights the bar wasn’t open.

This went on for 6 months, until the end of the first semester, when the two of us went out drinking at a late night bar celebrating passing everything, celebrating we only had 6 months to go.

Matt’s sister was interstate when we rolled home to Matt’s place blind drunk. We both collapsed into his bed when we had sex together for the first time. 

In the morning, Matt was snoring the sleep of the dead. I got up and got dressed and headed off to my place without waking him.

Thursday night at work was the first time I saw him, or spoke to him. 

We were a little strange with each other, it was true. I’m not sure what you’d call it. I wanted him to say it was okay, that we were okay, but he was unusually quiet. I wanted to say the same thing to him, but I was nervous.

Then about 15 minutes into working, as he was preparing some drinks for a customer, he turned to me and said, “Why did you leave?”

“Why did I leave?”

Matt put the drinks on the bar.

“Yes. Why did you leave?”

Matt took the money and headed to the register.

I served my own customers. I prepared those drinks.

“I don’t know. I thought it would be weird if I didn’t.”

Matt served the next customers at the bar.

“And then you didn’t call?”

I put my customer’s drinks on the bar.

“I was waiting for you to call.”

My next customers wanted coffees. I went to the coffee machine.

“I was waiting for you to call,” said Matt.

I frothed the milk for the coffee as the coffees poured.

“I should have called,” I said.

Matt walked past me with drinks for his next customers.

“I should have called,” said Matt.

I put the coffees on the bar. I took their money to the register. I walked back to serve.

“Are we okay?” I asked.

Matt pulled stubbies of beer from the fridge.

“I’m okay,” said Matt. “Are you okay?”

Matt put the beers on the bar. My customer wanted two bloody Mary’s.

“Yes, I’m okay,” I said.

“All I wanted to know is that we’re okay,” said Matt.

Matt served his next customers. He made cocktails.

My next customers wanted cocktails too.

Matt looked at me with his cheeky smile. “I want to do it again.” 

“Pass me the Cointreau,” I said.

“Only if you say you want to do it again too.”

“I want to do it again,” I said.

Matt smiled.

After that, our nights together after work, when Matt’s sister was interstate for work, Matt and I would have sex Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at his place, every night after work for the rest of the year, before I went home to my place.