The closest I had was Jason from Glenroy. Not that that is the same place, of course, but in my mind. I laughed to myself, am I an inner suburb snob? I hadn't thought about Jason in ages.
I met him in the city, on one of those endless city visits that sixteen year olds seem to always do. Bourke Street. He had that look in his eyes, hungry, he held my gaze too long. I was attracted to it, and him, straight away. He seemed such a straight boy and kind of tough, I wondered if it was some weird game he was playing, you know where in the end he’d beat me up, but he kept looking and then he followed me to The Causeway.
I stood down The Causeway a bit pretending to window shop, or something like that.
He walked up next to me and said, "Do you know somewhere to go?"
I felt nervous, but I knew I wasn't imagining it then. It was suddenly real, not a game anymore. No one was going to get beaten up.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Centrepoint. Do you know it?”
“Nah.”
I led him there. Up the escalators. Into the public dunny. The place was relatively empty, which I was pleased about, I thought this one might scare easily. There was a cubicle, I motioned with a flick of my head for him to follow me in, which he did.
He was hot and we did filthy things together in that bog. Jason and I met there a few times after that. The guys used to line the walls, when they felt safe, they used to look over the doors. There would be people looking through every crack, as I fucked Jason in the arse, sometimes they would speak, “Oh yeah, that’s the way,” but not often, usually it was a silent affair.
They'd scatter as soon as someone new came through the door, to every corner, looking away. Then, when they saw the ‘new comer’ was one of us, it would start again. Someone would move into position. The new guy would step forward to look over at the guys in the cubicle, who were back at it first, prove your "stripes," prove you were one of us.
It was the first time I went home with someone, from Centrepoint. Rocco he was scared of getting caught in there.
“The cops come there, mate, I can’t afford for them to take my name and address.”
It was a hell of a trip, to his place in Niddrie, so he could feel safe getting his big dick sucked, while his parents were at work. It could have been one of the first times I had left the safe confines of my own suburb and my mother's bosom. Ha ha. The safe confines of the CBD. In the holidays, it didn't matter how long it took when I was in the CBD. I’d say to mum, “I’m going into town to meet the guys.”
She thought I meant my friends. And for some reason, going to the CBD was perfectly acceptable.
Rocco said he had a girlfriend afterwards and kind of insisted, kind of unnecessarily, that I had to go. I didn’t want to stay. And I went. It took me hours to get to Rocco’s place and then back to the city, where it only took minutes with Rocco when we got to his place.
When I'd got my licence, I ventured out to Jason’s place, as one of the first things I did. As a horny eighteen year old, driving across town for a shag. It became apparent that there was a lot I didn't know, as I found my way through a multitude of suburbs that I never knew even existed. They seemed to be going for miles. I'd never seen these streets before. It was a foreign land. Thank the universe for the Melways or I would never have got laid.
I'd just left school. It was school holidays. Jason was really keen. It was the first time we did it in a bed, Jason’s bed. He was keen, not nervous at all. He really liked it in his arse. He was ready for it by the time I got there.
It was funny to think that there was a whole group of people who I would never mix with, never meet. The other side of town, so to speak. People I would never know. Strangers in my own city, who lived in Keilor Park Drive.
It was a saying my buddies and I used to say, if there was a place the whereabouts of which we didn’t know. We’d say, “It is somewhere past Keilor.”
Past Keilor, I thought, as the sign approached. I thought of Rocco and his big uncut todger he liked oral for, and I thought of Jason and his sweet arse and his need for anal. Two tough Northen Suburbs boys who liked to get it on with guys.
I thought of my mates, and how we’d all carol in unison when someone asked where Viewbank, or Greenvale, or Gladstone Park was, “It is somewhere past Keilor.” (I’m sure we must have picked that up from some adult, but I have no idea who)
And here I was, somewhere past Keilor. One day, I would turn off to Keilor Park Drive and I would drive along it. I would drive its entire length just because I could, just so I could say I had. But not today.
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