Spiritual

Brad feels like he's under spiritual attack, and has felt it for a while, he told people at the time of the breakdown.

"It's not just the big things, it's smaller, quieter things, internal things. You might think that it's about the robbery, and while that didn't help, that's not what's going on here," said Brad.

“What’s going on? asked Nell.

Brad and Nell had been friends since kindergarten.

“He's dealing with a lot of subtler issues,” said Nell.

"It's a trying time, but that can be a good thing,” said Brad’s mum. “When you overcome something, a sense of achievement can be a powerful tonic."

"I'm not going to run away from how I feel," said Brad. He leans in and whispers, "I might come away a stronger, better man."

“That’s the hope,” said Nell.

"But it hurts him, his spirit is vexed," said Nell.

"But that's where growth comes from," said Brad’s mum.

"Sometimes, darkness creeps in, and he wrestles against it,” said Nell. 

He talks about that a lot. It's exhausting, and it takes everything he's got.

“He's just so tired now, he's very low energy and feels he's grieving, or something,” said Nell

"Grieving for what? His ex-wife and kids?" said Brad’s mum.

“He married so young,” said Nell. “But, no, it’s not that.”

“Too young to know,” said Brad’s mum. “I tried to tell him.”

"It's very hard to explain, but something has happened recently, where he's not the guy that everyone knows," said Nell.

It is a hot night, Brad has already kicked the blanket off. He is just lying there in his jocks. Baggy whities to be exact. He slides his hand down his pants. He closes his eyes as his fingertips brush down over the stubble of his last trim.

If someone had installed cameras, what would they see? Contentment? Anxiety?

He plays with what’s in his pants. His breathing changes, it takes quite a few minutes, but it eventually changes. He pulls himself under the white cotton. He concentrates suddenly like nothing else exists. Then, he pulls a red, angry erection from his undies, pulling elastic down at the front. He spits in his hand and wrestles the monster all by himself on his bed. He spits on his hand again, and again. Just when it looks as though he is winning, it grows bigger and bigger. Finally, it inflates to be as big as he is when he screams out loud, his entire body spasms ridged, and he ejaculates in huge white sprays into the air like an enormous fountain and then his giant cock starts to beat him to death.

He wakes up climbing up the bed head trying to get away from the pounding phallus. Momentarily, he is terrified. He has cum in his undies. He is conflicted. He breaths hard, recoiling. The realisation it was a dream comes moments later.

He fell back to sleep.

The dreams continued. “They are nightmares, not dreams,” he said.

At least the sleep walking had stopped.

“The sleeping pills help, I think,” said Brad.

“How many are you taking?” asked Nell.

“Does it matter, as long as they work?”

5am in the park. Brad couldn’t quite remember how he got there. He knew well enough that he meant to go there, it was just the getting there he couldn’t remember.

A guy pulls up on the boulevard in a Porsche, gets out and walks into the shadows. Brad remembers where the new guy punctured the dark. Brad finds him just inside the canopy of shadows. Brad had got a good look at him in the light his car door shone, which was good because he couldn’t see a thing now. Just an outline, in front of him. This had to be the guy, there was nobody else around. They start kissing, square jaw, nice mouth, clearly, he likes it as much as Brad. They feel each other’s erections, and the next thing is,

“Do you want to go some other place?” he asks.

Porsche Boy whisks Brad to his place. Then it is up against walls, up against furniture, on all fours on the floor, Porsche Guy takes it like a champion, and he must have liked what he got because he wanted more, real soon, he made that abundantly clear.

Brad knew his modus de operandi was flip them over, hold them down and fuck them hard like a girl. Hold them tight, don’t let them squirm out of your grip. He knew there was more, he loved to lie with Porsche Guy and be soft and tender.

Brad came out to his family with Paolo, Porsche guy. 

“Mum, dad, I’m gay.”

“Is that why you left Nicky and the kids?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” said his father. “Why did you marry her then?”

“I guess, to make you happy.”

“We only want what makes you happy,” said his mum.

His family were pleased that he was happy. His mother hoped it would give Brad some stability, some peace.

It turned out Paolo was a water polo player, and Brad went to all his matches.

They had an end of season water polo breakup on Albert Park.

Paolo wasn’t immediately forgiving when he caught water polo buddy Lachlan hard and erect in Brad’s mouth, in the scrubby bits of the lake garden at 3am. “You should have seen the size of that thing?” says Brad.

But Paolo does forgive Brad, as he describes the girth of Lachlan’s cock as he is rock hard up Paolo’s arse. Brad promises Paolo Lachlan’s cock, and after a particularly messy, drunken New Year’s Eve Water Polo parties, Paolo got Lachlan’s monster unprotected cock up his arse, as Brad and Lachlan took turns fucking Paolo’s hot arse all New Year’s Day.

The water polo team went away together for New Year’s Eve in Lorne, down the coast.

The water polo team thought it would be great hijinks if they burst into Brad and Paolo’s bedroom in the morning.

“Let’s catch the poofs at it.” (That clearly wasn’t thought through)

They were confronted by Lachlan in bed with our two guys. Erect with his hand around it. Brad was wrapped in a doona. Paolo was the statue of David lying down. Lachlan was mass-outed to his entire water polo team, naked. Lachlan’s wife was surprised.

The team backed out as quick as they came in, after seeing brother Lachlan had clearly been up to the gay sex. The three of them had clearly been up to what the boys clearly understood. The guys had no problem with it, they had all been involved in two guys on a girl in the past, (or a couple of drunken water polo players found solace in each other), it was a boy’s water polo team for goodness sakes. They knew exactly what had happened.  The girls give it up to the water polo boys very easily, very easily all those muscular biceps, what’s a girl to do.

They were just shocked. “Beam me up, Scotty,” they all said, as they tumbled backwards on each other. Shocked that they’d stumbled into it.

 

Lachlan threw a rope over a roof beam and kicked the chair out from under him, not long after the team caught him “at it”.

Paolo took it very hard and blamed himself, and eventually went home to the country to reassess his life.

And Brad felt like everyone blamed him. Emotionally attacked by all involved, is what he felt, even if it wasn’t, necessarily, true, it was true for Brad.

Brad withdrew into his own shell, so to speak. He spent a lot of time alone, contemplating life. If the truth be known he was brooding on his lot.

Then he was out one night getting some fresh air, trying to walk off his angst, and he was mugged by a white guy in a hoodie, who had a really big knife.

“Give me your wallet and your phone,” said the guy brandishing the large knife about.

“What?” said Brad not quite believing that this was happening.

“You heard me! Give me your wallet and your phone. And is that a Rolex on your wrist?”

“What?” Brad repeated.

“Give me the watch too.”

“No.”

“Don’t think I won’t use this!”

“Oh, I don’t think anything,” said Brad. “Nothing at all! Not anymore.”

“What?” says the guy in the hoodie with the knife.

“I’m not giving you my wallet, I’m not giving you my phone, I’m not giving you my watch, I’m not giving you a god damn thing.”

The guy in the hoodie thrust the knife at Brad. “I’ll give you one more chance.”

“One more chance! One more chance!” screamed Brad. “That would be the fucken day. There is no such thing as one more chance. Everything gets taken from you, everything ends, and then there is nothing left! Nothing! It is all gone! Gone forever! Never to fucken come back. There are no more chances! None. Not second, not third! Not any fucken thing!” Brad fell to his knees crying. “Even if you are a good person, and you only want good things for those in your life,” Brad sobbed.

“Jesus!” The guy with the knife in the hoodie ran off.

An ambulance came, not that Brad remembered that so much. 

He remembered the weeks he spent in hospital.

He remembered his mother coming to visit him. “Darling, that was a terrible ordeal for anyone to go through,” said his mother.

“I’m the common denominator in it all.”

“Oh darling," said his mother. "If you want someone to blame, blame the priest who used to touch you.” 

“What? No! That's not it.”

“I think it was,” said his mother. 

“No!”

“Something upset you.”

“No. It wasn’t the touching. I liked Father Buck,” said Brad. “No, it was the desertion when he went back to his wife that upset me the most.”

“Oh darling.”

His friends didn’t come because he didn’t tell them. He spoke to a few of them on the phone, but surprisingly few, and he gave vague answers on the questions about what he was up to, and he got away with it.

Nell visited, of course.

“It is over now, and it will never happen again, so don’t worry,” said Nell.

“How can you be sure?” said Brad.

“Statistically,” said Nell. “It won’t. One mugging a life time. I promise..”

“I wanted too much…”

“Hush, now,” said Nell. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

Brad sought out counselling. Well, not so much sought it out, as was advised to seek some by his doctor.

“I thought it was the Africans you had to look out for,” said Brad to his councillor. “This guy could have been me?”

“I don’t know that racial stereotyping is really true of real life,” replied his councillor.

“So, what is true?”

“Sometimes bad things happen to nice people.” His councillor shrugged.

“What about karma?”

“Karma?” questioned his councillor.

“Aren’t you supposed to be repaid with good things, if you live a good life?”

“I think that is how karma is allegedly supposed to work, yes?” said his councillor.

“So, my karmic debt is still not paid for, you know?”

“Paolo leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Lachlan’s death?”

“Yes,” said Brad. “And my wife and kids?”

“Your guilt?”

“What do I have to do to clear it?” asked Brad.

“You think its karma?”

“Yes,” said Brad.

“I think we are going to have to do some more work around all of this?”

“The universe is never going to forgive me, now is it?” said Brad.

“I think we need to start couching all of this in reality, Brad.”

“The spirits are gunning for me, aren’t they?”

“No, they are not.”

There are two canvass chairs on a low terrace facing the sea. There is a table between the chairs, two cocktails with umbrellas are sitting on the table.

The sea gently rolls in onto the white sandy beach.

Brad reaches for his drink.

“You do know that none of this was your fault?” said Nell.

“I think I must take some…” said Brad

“None of it was your fault because you are a bad person,” said Nell.

“I’m glad we came down here,” said Brad. “It is relaxing.”

“It is not some cosmic punishment…”

“It’s hard not to think that.”

“You may have made some bad choices, that led to certain outcomes,” said Nell. “But that’s as much as it was your fault.”

“If I could only go back…”

“You are not a bad person,” said Nell.

“It’s hard not to…”

“You are not under some spiritual attack.”

“I hope that is true.”

“It is true.”

“Thanks Nell.”

“The universe isn’t coming for you,” said Nell.

“But Paolo and Lachlan and the guy with the knife…”

“That’s just life, babe.”

“The dreams and the nightmares?”

“Life,” said Nell. “That’s just life.”

Brad sipped his drink. “It’s not a life I like.”