how my lips felt fat and my throat felt stretched. It felt wonderful to have a dick in my gob again, I must admit. But it wasn’t enough. Now that I’d got started I had ants in my pants and I wanted one with the lot. I opened my eyes and nosed up this guy’s stomach and chest. He turned me around, bit on my shoulders and the back of my neck. Soon enough I felt the nudge of his dick and it was all on. I smiled and closed my eyes.
And so I was fucking again for the first time in, what? Three weeks? Four weeks? Maybe even five? For the first time since, when? Since Leo bent forward in front of me, swayed his back and widened out his stance, opening his hips out like a butterfly to take in every bit of me?
After a while my asshole tingled like my lips and for a moment there was nothing else in my head. At one point I found myself twisting from side to side on the end of this guy’s dick, my head back, eyes closed, smiling stupidly, like a blind man swaying to music. I know. Embarrassing.
After I’d showered, collected my clothes from the lockers and was changing, I noticed someone I recognised also changing back into his street clothes. I didn’t at first see his face, but I certainly recognised his thighs. It was Red Trunks. He saw me at the same moment I saw him. His eyes widened, then he looked away and his cheeks went steadily and very prettily red. I got a jerk of disappointment that I hadn’t found him in a cubicle back there instead of that other guy, which was totally unfair as my guy was hot and definitely a good fuck. But there you go, the grass is always greener.
—
By the way, I remember also that St Anthony is the Patron Saint of Lost Articles and Missing Persons.
—
I don’t quite understand why the story of the missing swimmer caught the public’s imagination so much, or whether it was the media’s imagination and the public just trailed behind obediently. News stories sometimes have a life of their own and it’s hard to know why. The story of the swimmer going missing from the public pool seemed just what people needed in that fuck-off dead time between Christmas and New Years Eve. It was mysterious, a mixture of soft and hard news, and somehow a perfect summer story. In short, the story wasn’t out of the news for a single day, living on through a press conference with tearful loved ones, a weekend of editorials, letters to the editor and profile pieces.
There was also an incredibly high number of sightings of the missing swimmer. Dozens of them. Not all could possibly have been him, but perhaps one or maybe even two of them were accurate. He was seen walking alone (fully clothed) through the park behind the pool that afternoon (a definite possibility not taking into consideration the fact he left his clothes in the pool with his friends). He was seen on the Malvern Road tram the afternoon after he went missing, looking disoriented and apparently mumbling to himself. He was also seen that afternoon in Chapel Street at a certain restaurant (possibly just an attempt to create advertising for the place). He was seen repeatedly afterwards at various clubs in Melbourne, as well as in Sydney at NYE celebrations, as if he was doing guest appearances like a Big Brother housemate or something. He was spotted at the Melbourne airport. At the Brisbane airport. At the Darwin airport. He was seen at St Kilda beach. At Sandringham beach. At the Brighton Sea Baths. At the Fitzroy Pool. At the Footscray Pool. At the Albert Park Pool. In fact, a number of males of around the right age who made the mistake of purchasing those green and white striped Speedos that summer must have been cursing their choice.
I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but one morning, I think it was the morning after I’d been out to blow off a little steam at the sauna, the missing swimmer was finally OUTed. I was wondering when it would come. I mean, it’s not that I’ve got a finely tuned gaydar or anything. I’m usually clueless. But even I was adding up the circumstantial evidence myself during the previous week and coming up with gay gay gay.
Firstly, Matt Gray disappeared from the Prahran pool so right away the odds are up. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this was case closed, but the odds are stacked a bit higher at that location than your usual one in ten. This was even hinted to Mr and Mrs Suburbia with ‘I saw him but he’s not my type’, quoted, remember, without further comment, in one of the first few articles about the missing swimmer.
Then there was the press conference that the family had done a day or two after he went missing. This was the usual deal, with the family pleading with the public at large, and with Matt if he was watching, to come home, be safe, etc, followed by a few questions. The footage was used very briefly on every major news broadcast that day but nothing very extraordinary was revealed, except perhaps for the fact that alongside Matt’s tearful Mum, stoic Dad and pretty but conventional looking sister (how Australian it all was) was a man who looked a little like the food guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, smartly groomed with rimless glasses. You know the type. This man could have been another member of the family, Matt’s brother perhaps, although he didn’t look anything like either Matt or the rest of the family. But I didn’t think he was another family member. It was something about the way he was referenced by name, Kevin, but never by relationship to the missing swimmer. Talking about the one in ten rule, I bet more than one in ten people watching the press conference asked the question, Who’s the guy on the end? But the implications were clear, Kevin was Matt’s partner.
Perhaps they didn’t know what to call him and so opted for calling him nothing at all. I can kind of understand the thinking behind that, but how horrible to reduce him to some kind of hired-mourner character. Surely if they weren’t comfortable with husband or boyfriend, they could have just gone with the non-threatening ‘partner’ or even, if they wanted to get a bit racy, ‘life partner’. Perhaps they didn’t want to highlight the fact that Matt was gay and that Kevin was his partner, because it was considered off the point, maybe, not really relevant; or perhaps because it seemed a little too sensational when they were dealing with very upset people. I suppose often the safest option for the media regarding gay relationships seems to be the don’t ask, don’t tell, no need to mention it mentality.
The point is I was already well and truly there when the headlines trumpeted that the missing swimmer was a poofter. And trumpet they did. What’s the point of outing a missing swimmer who has inexplicably caught the attention of the public, unless you can do it like this: GAY SWIMMER STILL MISSING. Pats on the back all round on a job well and subtly done guys. Is the story that he’s still missing, or is the story that he’s gay? The latter. Obviously. In fact, there was no new news about the disappearance at all. A police spokesperson said a few words along the lines that they were ‘following up a number of leads’ (unspecified) and appealed for anyone with any information about Matt’s disappearance to come forward. That was it. No, the point of the story seemed to be primarily that Matt was gay and that the well-groomed Queer Eye looking guy at the press conference was his partner. He was finally given that title, officially, in the article.
The interview, such as it was, with Kevin was quite a disappointment. For a start he didn’t have anything particularly gay to say, which I’m sure disappointed the journo just as it did the public. In fact, the life that Matt and Kevin appeared to live before Matt’s disappearance was hardly a Mardi Gras parade. Don’t get me wrong, I know not every gay life is all drag queens and rainbow flags, but that headline, you know, it kind of promised more. At least a glory hole or two.
Kevin came across in the article as a nice, simple, heartbroken man. He was quietly spoken, I presumed, his answers to the questions being considered and short. He was an engineer. He and Matt had been together for 15 years, had met at university, travelled together a little, then returned to Melbourne to ‘settle down’, mortgaged themselves to the eyeballs in a suburban dream/nightmare in the gay heartland of Prahran.
Matt was, Kevin said, hard-working and ‘law-abiding’. Yes, he really said that. So I guess Matt didn’t speed or, you know, jaywalk or anything. He was also, Kevin said, generally of a positive and easy-going nature. And of course he loved swimming his laps. He would
