Dreams

My best mate at school always wanted to be a dashing ambulance driver, speeding through the city saving lives. I hear that he’s been driving RACV vans for the last fifteen years.

Raymond Andrews and I were mates from 6th grade. He was socially awkward, but loud and funny and I found him appealing, I guess. We had interests in the same things, many cars.

Raymond was playing his sax at the base of the stairs leading up to the 5th grade class rooms. The 5th grade class rooms from where I had just progressed down the stairs to 6th grade.

Ray was new to the school in 6th grade.

We became friends instantly, as I remember it. And we were mates all the way through school.

Ray had a habit of making up stories to make his life seem grander. He once said that his father drove a Jensen Interceptor, which was easily disprovable as Ray’s father used to drop him off at school in his Statesman.

There were other things he made up lies about, but, you know, that never really seemed to matter to me. Ray was larger than life, I didn’t care.

Funny. Ray was the one who admitted that he was smitten by a blue-eyed, blond-haired class mate, of Swedish heritage, in our year, Lucus Lindstrom. Ray used to pine after him. It was Lucus this and Lucus that, always Lucus.

“Isn’t he beautiful.”

“Lucious Lucus.”

“I want Lucus.”

No one would ever pick Ray as gay. (I was the only one who heard the Lucus talk) He played his sax and he was a star footy player. He played footy with Alex, my crush, who became my boyfriend in years 11 & 12. Ray and I were kind of the keeper of each other’s secrets. Not that I ever admitted to Ray about Alex.

As I said, Ray wanted to become an ambulance driver. He wanted to dash about the city at high speed. He always said he wanted to do that, it was his dream job. He wanted to pick up the boy nurses.

“Have those guys fall for me, then rip them out of their cute nurse uniforms, after a tough job.”

He liked guys smaller than him. “Just so I can bend them over,” he’d say.

Ray left school in year 11 and became an apprentice motor mechanic.

He went to work for Stillwells, because Bib was a buddy of Ray’s father. He had high speed Monaro’s. Ray took me around the boulevard at 100mph, I nearly shit myself.

I went to uni and became a finance guy. Ray never said anything about me when I went through my girlfriend stage.

Ray and I used to rally Ray’s Toyota Celica. Ray would drive, I’d navigate. It used to scare the shit out of me, I don’t know why I did it, I thought that was good for me at the time. They were night rallies mostly. I got good at check points and all that stuff. I remember dust and headlights.

Ray lived with me when I bought my first house, after I’d lived overseas and split up with my girlfriend. We used to hang out at gay bars playing pool on Sundays primarily. The great Sunday afternoon drinking session at the Laird.

Five, or so, years later, we fell out over money. Stupid, really. It was so unnecessary. 

I was back living in London. Ray had moved somewhere else, a while before I went to London, Prahran, I think. I’d left my house locked up. I hadn’t sorted anything with it before I left. My parents were dumbfounded with my behaviour. A friend was going to London, she asked me if I wanted to go? I couldn’t think of a reason not to? I just bought a ticket and went, it was one of the few spontaneous things I have done in my life.

“Josh, you really should have sorted something better than this?”

“Can you just go and check on it once in a while?”

“Yes, sure,” my dad said. “But, you know it’s not exactly in your mother, and my area.”

“You two are great.”

“Seriously, Josh, you should have done better.”

“I’ll buy you something nice on the continent.”

“You don’t even know when you are coming back?”

“No, I told you that.”

Ray and his boyfriend Liam had been asked to leave their rental, I think in Prahran, the owners wanted to move back in suddenly, of something. 

My strapping cousin Roly Gregson had just left his wife of a few years, and wanted to rent my room while he explored his... he was vague about it.

“Ah Josh, big favour,” said Roly. “

“Sure, anything, you know that?”

“I just need a place to crash while I sort myself out. Is your place free while you are overseas.”

“Yeah, sure, Roly.”

“Could I rent a room?”

“Ah, not exactly free, one of my old housemates wants to his old room with his boyfriend. You guys could rent the house together.”

“Yes, sure,” said Roly. “That sounds like something I’d be interested in.”

I’d spent my summers up at Roly’s farm. We shared a room, and pretty soon we shared a bed, and more. It’s true to say, I looked forward to my couple of weeks up the farm Xmas holidays because of Roly.

And funny thing, when I first bought my house, and I was there for the first night, no furniture, just a mattress on the floor and a bag of pot, Roly dropped in unexpectedly and I’d got him shit faced stoned and had sex with him again.

So fast forward 6 years, I was pretty sure what Roly finally wanted to sort out.

So, Roly, Ray and Liam moved into and agreed to rent my house.

I don’t need to tell you mum & dad were pleased about that.

Pretty soon after they moved in there was a problem. Roly thought they should all pay 1/3 each of the rent, as there were 3 of them. Ray and Liam thought they should pay half each as Ray and Liam shared a bedroom. I said I didn’t care, they could work it out.

Roly paid me 1/3 of the rent every week without fail, while they were all in dispute, saying if it was decided that they should pay half each he’d pay me the rest.

Ray and Liam stopped paying rent altogether saying they’d pay when the rent situation was sorted out.

So, as I am sure you can understand, I was having a great time in London, and the rent on the house in Carlton seemed like a lifetime away.

A couple of times I asked Roly, he said that no decision could be made, and it went on.

Finally, months later, I asked them if they had made a decision, they said no, they couldn’t come to a decision, so I said I would make the decision for them, there were 3 of them, they could pay a 1/3 each.

Ray and Liam moved out the next day. They never paid me any rent. And I never saw Ray again. We’d known each other for 20 years, and it came down to him paying me a couple of thousand dollars in rent, over which he ditched our friendship.

Roly lived there for a little while longer, I just charged him 1/3 of the rent. I don’t know if he ever ‘sort things out’? It wasn’t all that long before he met a girl called Robyn who became his girlfriend.

I never saw Roly again, either. Before I returned from London, he stepped in front of a grain truck on Dynon Road and was killed instantly, from all reports. My handsome, strapping, lovely cousin Roly. I’ll never know if that was him ‘sorting things out’ or if it was an accident. There was some talk about him wearing thongs which were broken after the accident. His mother clung to that as what caused him to get killed, those damn broken thongs.

Many years later, my boyfriend at the time and I ordered a pizza, and when the delivery boy turned up, it was Liam.

I ask him how he was?

He said fine.

I asked him how Ray was?

He said fine. Living in Prahran.

I asked him what Ray was doing.

He told me Ray was an RACV guy. You know, road side assist.