When I heard people raving about Heated Rivalry, a TV show about two male sporting rivals having a secret sexual relationship, I immediately heard dialogue in my head along the lines of

‘Suck my dick’

‘No, you suck my dick’

‘No, you suck my dick’

‘No, you suck my dick’

‘No YOU’

‘NO YOU’

When I heard straight men on TikTok telling me they watched the show and were remotely titillated by the mix of sexual chemistry and sporting rivalry I began to wonder if I should set aside a day and few old t-shirts, to binge Heated Rivalry.

Life being what it is, I only managed to find some time on a plane from Brisbane to Singapore to watch it. I had to angle the laptop to ensure the Indian family behind me didn’t have to watch two men locking hockey sticks. I tilted my vodka in my drink holder to make room, until it trickled down on to my backspace and I was forced to switch over to my smart phone. The Russian guy Ilya Rozanov plays ice hockey for the Boston Raiders and Shane Hollander plays ice hockey for the Montreal Metros, both are the best goal shooters in the league, perhaps the best in the world. By episode 2 I couldn’t quite believe it when I heard the two cock crossed lovers in the midst of a naked standoff say…

‘Suck my dick’

‘No, you suck my dick’

‘No, you suck my dick’

‘No YOU’

‘NO YOU’

If you’re a connoisseur of gay film and TV you will know that while ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ is spoken quite loudly in real life these days, it seems that the only way to wring tension out of a gay male story line in film and TV is to have one or both parties in turmoil about coming out. Heated Rivalry is no exception. Facial expressions in reaction to getting a blow job are a mix of self-loathing and pubescent ecstasy. Maybe it’s all the ice hockey that increases their testosterone but the men in this show seem to really enjoy blow jobs.

The women characters do all the right things enabling the fragile homosexuals to find their true colours and fuck in peace, finally. Again, if you’re a connoisseur of gay film and TV, you’ll know that women characters are often one-dimensional agony aunts who act as guardians of the fragile homosexual heart. They usually have no needs other than to make sure their boy gets his boy and that their shopping afternoons continue without the downer of a moany gay.   

The men in Heated Rivalry have chiselled physiques and bowling ball bums. But being sizzling hot doesn’t mean these dudes are shallow, no they want love like the next ice hockey champion. What’s new however about Heated Rivalry is the exploration of the fuck buddy relationship.

I’ve had a few male friends over the years claim to have had sex with the same person for years without strings. They usually describe it as a very fulfilling mutually beneficial relationship. A win win.

The term is quite gender specific when you think about it, because only men would emphasise the “fuck” the “buddy” and take all the emotion out of it. But not in an attempt to downplay it or even make it sound less romantic but because fuck buddy is a language code understood by men, not necessarily preferred, but understood.

But even fuck buddy has lost its relevance. It belongs to a by-gone era, probably 1970s and 1980s when “buddy” was not just your mate but a small bottle of Coke-a-Cola too. It’s hard not to think of a moustache when you say fuck buddy and I can hear Fleetwood Mac on the record player. I think these days they call it “friends with benefits” which sounds down right dull.

So Heated Rivalry stops short of fully exploring the fuck buddy relationship because Ilya and Shane eventually fall in love and have dinner with the parents. I’m not sure the rules of storytelling allow a full exploration of the fuck buddy relationship because nothing is at stake. There needs to be that question hanging over the protagonists’ heads. Will they or won’t they fall in love? And if it was a thorough exploration of the fuck buddy relationship over a long period of time, the only question hanging over the protagonists’ heads would be “will they or won’t they continue to have sex with each other as their bodies droop and shrivel”. Because is it not the emotion of love that mutes the disgust watching your lover sag in all the crucial places? Or perhaps it’s the fact you never dampened the spark by calling it a relationship or heaven forbid a commitment.

Is it possible to write a story about a fuck buddy relationship and make people care about the characters? Or is the story doomed to always play out like a porno, even with the most compelling script in the world? And if the second series of Heated Rivalry (being made as we speak) was simply a further deep dive into a sexual relationship between two sport stars would we get bored? Is falling in and falling out of love essential to good story telling?

And what about that stranger that rides a horse into town? The most told story in human history. What if he fucked the saloon boy behind the bar, up against the cactus and over the trough, but afterwards they had fascinating conversations about the towns folk and married the sheriff’s daughters to cover their tracks? What if that was it? What if no one fell in love but their sexual connection just got more and more intense? Would we care or would we regret buying popcorn?

Heated Rivalry comes from Canada. It recently won 13 Canadian Screen Awards at the scripted television ceremony, no less. When you think about it, only Canadians could make a sordid fuck fest a really nice experience. Binge it now with your sporting buddy but not on a plane.

Heated rivalry is available on Sky TV and NOW.

I remember in my 20s, kissing beautiful strangers and thinking ‘please be dumb’.

You’ve heard of doom scrolling (looking at traumatic content obsessively) but what about the compulsion to scroll through content hating it, but finding yourself unable to stop? What about this then? It’s the new guilty pleasure TV. The same way we watched The Brady Bunch in the 80s, and wished the kids would get cancer.

Hate scrolling. It’s toxic if expressed, a joy if enjoyed privately. Hate scrolling. It is hate too. Scary raw poorly managed hate.

It’s about me. Wanting them. Wanting what they have. Wanting to be beautiful. Wanting not to be me. But strangely if I had their shiny faces, eyelashes like feathers, lips like carved liver, I’d put it all to waste. I’m clumsy with beauty. And my own would be a calamity.

I want confirmation the world has some balance and some justice. If it appears someone is beautiful and also blessed with intellect, I need to know that they are flawed in some way. Otherwise I have to face the most awful truth, that some human beings have everything all at once.

I remember in my 20s, kissing beautiful strangers and thinking ‘please be dumb’.

I don’t think you can be beautiful and intelligent.

I often watch beautiful actors being interviewed and I can see their intellect has been cultivated in a mirror like gaining 20 extra pounds to play a bloated alcoholic, not proper intellect earned through years of rigorous learning. It’s law like physics. You can’t be beautiful and smart. It’s not the beautiful peoples’ fault either. Their beauty does the talking, while their brain lays dormant. In a room full of people they always seem to find a position where onlookers can admire them unobstructed, while the intellectual is always blocked by a head nodding or shoulders leaning in. The intellectual is often found lining up outside the loo too, reminding people of their position in the line up. Beautiful people don’t wait for the loo because they can always see when it’s free from the position they hold, up there. We allow them to perch in this position almost knowing subconsciously that the view should remain unobstructed, because everyone deserves a look.

Popular opinion states that beautiful people are intimidating so the crowd naturally parts when they float in, leaving them to perch in the ideal position for admiration. But this is not true. Crowds usher in beauty and hang it like art. It’s good for all of us to share and facilitate each other’s appreciation of beauty because it makes us feel good. Unlike the intellectual who will inevitably remind you (in the line up for the loo or in the kitchen scooping up hummus with a crisp, or leaning over a balcony flicking a cigarette) of something ugly, at some point. They can’t help themselves. When the beauty and the intellectual meet in a room, it can go either way. Mutual appreciation or long devastating silences where each thinks the other is playing some sort of game. Paranoia sets in. The beauty decides to go shopping in the morning and the intellectual decides to take drugs. Like physics, this is law.

In my life I’ve had the pleasure of loving a few beautiful men paid and unpaid, and after a while noticed a fascinating phenomena. As each beauty lost their hair or acquired a beer belly, they each picked up a book or enrolled in a course. As their beauty faded, their intellect flickered. Beauty and brains can never find a home together. The human body simply cannot contain both simultaneously.

An old man said to me once “when that square jaw of yours disappears into your neck, you might find time to read the classics”.

It’s true, you’re not as easily impressed after 50. Your appreciation is set at a lower frequency.

When you reach your mid 50s, the list of things you don’t want to do gets longer. Because you’ve done it a million times already or you figure your time is limited so you chose to only do what you really want to do, which is usually stay in and growl disapprovingly at the tele. On this tele, I watch people getting excited by live performance and I wonder why. I was one of them once, I loved going to see live music. Now whenever I’m in front of band, it feels contrived, like I’m pretending to enjoy it. Tapping my foot, nodding like I’m experiencing the music on a profound level, when in reality I can’t wait for them to stop, so I can fuck off home. I find crowds not claustrophobic but an unnecessary cluster of human flesh. I hate seeing young people enjoying themselves.

“Perhaps your depressed”, my partner says. Of course I’m depressed. Everyone is, depression is the new black. I’m convinced the serotonin I so liberally destroyed in the 1990s has now depleted permanently. The testosterone that made it impossible to go without daily self pleasuring has faded except if I happen to brush passed it while adjusting my hernia. Sure I still get the brain horn but not the full body compulsion to have it. And the truth is, sex without love is like avocado without salt. Most of you will know what I mean. Okay shut up.

I remember the moment I snuck into my first nightclub at 16. I felt something change. I moved from child to teenager. I remember choosing to drink my coffee black. I moved from suburban to urban. These moments marked a change. So too having zero interest in sex, it signified moving from youngish to older, and the end of self-inflicted sexual slavery.

The unexpected side effect of diminishing sex drive was the draining of joy from my body. As spermatogenesis fizzled like fireworks in the rain so did the brains ability to produce serotonin. I still feel joy but not JOY. My 62 year old friend describes his excitement these days as “a low hum not high pitched”. I love this. It’s true, you’re not as easily impressed after 50. Your appreciation is set at a lower frequency. But one must not let this slide into cynicism, bitterness and contempt, as compatible as these vices are when you’re old.

I had tickets to the coolest gig in town recently, I walked in and asked the bar attendant what time the gig started, the bar attendant said 9pm. It was 6pm. I said ‘fuck that’ and walked out. A beer cost nearly 10 pounds, say I drink 1 beer every 10 minutes, I was looking at 120 pounds to wait around with a bunch of desperate wankers silently justifying the expense to themselves. As I walked out the bouncer said ‘do you want a stamp so you can come back?’ I said ‘no’ and shook his hand, to make sure he didn’t take my early exit to heart. ‘Sorry’ he said. I said ‘don’t be sorry’. 30 years ago they were clutching my testicles to throw me out and now they are apologising for not keeping me in. I didn’t want my pitiful inertia reflect on him so I said ‘it’s my back’. I thought if he responds with ‘I can get you a chair’ I’m gonna have to pretend to pass out.

I mean, have you ever heard a bouncer say sorry to anyone about anything?

I must not, I must not, I must not let this slide into cynicism, bitterness and contempt.

I must accept my new role as an excitement voyeur and smile my way through the crowd or leave early or don’t go at all.

Say no, without explanation.

“Do you want to go…?”

“No”.

Hear that low hum? That’s the resounding satisfaction of saying no without the explanation. Feels good doesn’t it, old person?

Hairdressers are always right. If you stare into someone’s scalp long enough you can see what their thinking.

I was convinced, like everyone else who signed up to Guardian Soulmates in 2004 that I was diving into a pool of sexy lefties with angular jaws and SPLASH a man in red Speedos with three PhDs would swim into my arms. I wouldn’t notice his red Speedos at first, I’d notice his eyelids blinking thoughtfully because Guardian Soulmates was not about objectifying the body, it was about intellectual distention. But like so many of us, our smug higher education faces stayed forever popping up in slow rotation (dial-up speed) never getting beyond the first message. ‘Read any good books lately?’ Because there’s nothing like ‘looking for love’ to slow down any engagement between two gay men, usually to a grinding halt. It means waiting a few days until the first date and in that time you’ve blown your load and with it any romantic notions. I always laughed heartily at the men who wasted their 500 word limit whining about the gay man’s inability to defer pleasure. These were the same men who fantasised out-loud about a long-term monogamous relationship before ejaculating and after couldn’t get their jeans on fast enough. I used to thoroughly enjoy stepping out on the terrace and booing them as they ran off down the street. It wasn’t that I was looking for a long-term monogamous relationship necessarily, I just wanted to extend their embarrassment. A wise fuck buddy of mine would say to me before having sex “I will probably tell you I love you when I’m about to cum, just ignore it, I don’t mean it”.

I found my husband on Guardian Soulmates, no I don’t mean met my husband I mean found my husband. We were 5 years into our 10 year marriage and I was told by a mutual friend that she’d seen my husband on Guardian Soulmates. I reinstated my profile immediately and there he was. He hadn’t logged on for 5 years thankfully but what struck me was his profile picture. He was bent over a sofa in a pink cowboy hat looking over his shoulder at the camera, mouth agape. I laughed and laughed and went straight to him for an explanation. He said ‘oh yeah I forgot about Guardian Soulmates’. I said ‘what’s with the pink cowboy hat?’ He said ‘no one takes Guardian Soulmates seriously do they?’ I was a little embarrassed because I took it seriously. Well not that seriously. I saw it as a dating site for those with integrity, serious in their search for love. In other words I felt superior because I wasn’t using Gay.com, Gaydar, Squirt, Gay Romeo, BBRT, Fitlads, Manhunt, Grindr, Scruff. The sordid transactional sex sites. Sure I had a profile on each of these platforms but was not taking them seriously. I logged on occasionally to see “who was around” or when I was feeling horny which was only about 3 times a day. Not taking it seriously.

I recently found the below in my Yahoo inbox. Where I keep all correspondence before 2008. Even writing “Yahoo” ages me. Does anyone use Yahoo anymore? Just me and your nana, I’m guessing. Anyway I found this profile blurb for Guardian Soulmates in drafts. An attempt to describe myself. Something, that before dating apps was a thing, you lived out in real life rather than described in less than 100 words. I estimate it was around 2005 and I was determined to divert potential suitors attention away from my red Speedos.

“I’m a writer. Stories creep about inside me and I cast them out in fits of prose. I have strong opinions about curtains but that’s about as gay as I get these days. I take an intense interest in people which often gets mistaken for friendship. I’m never in the right place at the right time but who is? I demand authenticity in people and yet mock earnestness. I sometimes wonder if I fall in love with everyone I meet or I’ve never been in love. A famous writer told me once “think of the thing you are most ashamed of and write about that””

A wise hairdresser said to me once, when I asked for hair like Marcus Schenkenberg.

“I’m a hairdresser doll not a plastic surgeon”

That’s how I feel about Guardian Soulmates, looking back. It wasn’t Guardian Soulmates fault I was single. It was me. Who’d want to shack up with this contrarian? “I sometimes wonder if I fall in love with everyone I meet or I’ve never been in love” as seen above. What was I thinking? Contrary wasn’t sexy for Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker or Noel Coward so why did I think it would work for me? I could have just written “I deliberately make no sense to avoid intimacy”. Mmmm just what you’re looking for in a soulmate. Tick.

Maybe Trump is right, the educated elite need a good slap.

For those born after Guardian Soulmates was all the rage, Marcus Schenkenberg was uncovered whilst roller-skating in Venice Beach, which led to his iconic Calvin Klein campaign. This break secured a longstanding, successful career with roles at Versace, Giorgio Armani and Donna Karan. The Swedish model’s long flowing locks, handsome looks and toned physique added to his overall charm. And I thought a cut and blow would do it. Hairdressers are always right. If you stare into someone’s scalp long enough you can see what their thinking. I think the same wise hairdresser said that too.

“Robert was a hedonist. He was a hedonist not because he was a fag but because he was a hedonist. The best kind”

A crazy person said once that “everyone’s life is a form of psychosis in slow motion and that crazy people are just experiencing psychosis in real time so its more noticeable”. For most of us there’s just enough gaps between disastrous events to create the illusion of sanity.
Crazy people provide a perspective on your lifestyle achievements that you take for granted; house, car, family, dog. You won’t have realised for instance that a house is an ostentatious expression of your control tendencies. A car for instance is the penis you envied in the gym changing rooms. A family is the fear of being alone. A dog is a crutch for your social ineptitude.
Crazy people will churn out great works of beauty as acts of defiance. Stand-up comedy is a slow and public nervous breakdown. We shouldn’t be laughing we should be calling an ambulance.
Crazy people are unpredictable, vulnerable and authentic. The combination of these are an aphrodisiac and will conjure love. Crazy people will do anything to make themselves feel better. Their self-effacing twists and turns will make you laugh and invigorate your spirit but exhaust the crazy person. You’ll want them in your arms radiating manic energy but they will fall limp well before you’re ready to stop feeding off them. You’ll justify the chaos by declaring that opposites attract. The sex will be unparalleled because you’re having sex with a body in turmoil as personalities jostle for attention. It’s an orgy without the insecurity body image issues. Then inevitably a relationship forms, you may even marry and suddenly they want to have sex with you ONLY to mute panic. You will feel like a carer at best and a piñata full of antidepressants at worse.
A crazy person never sees themselves as crazy particularly when they’re in a relationship. They think the other person is crazy which of course is true making them even more convinced they are right about everything including their misguided view of themselves as sane. This is the very definition of crazy.

If two speeding cars collide, the impact is the combined speed each are travelling at the point of collision. This is a relationship when both people are crazy. The coming together of crazy people is always a glorious explosion.

Robert’s eyes are fixed on Cameron’s. Cameron’s feet are stuck to the floor. The beers keep arriving and when the crowd thins Robert moves in. Now Cameron can see the colour of his eyes. A distant blue under thick shattered ice. Too many late shifts. He places another beer in front of Cameron and asks the last few customers to leave so he can close up. They complain, over-using his name. Robert. Did he hear correctly? Eventually the customers do as they are told. He locks the door behind them. Robert sculls Cameron’s beer to wash down his fear and rests his elbows on the bar. A hand grabs his belt and swings him round. He pauses for a few seconds to study Cameron’s face and then begins undressing him. He lies Cameron on the bar. Wet beer squelches beneath his spine. He undresses too now, keeping his eyes fixed on Cameron. Once he’s naked he climbs on the bar and places one foot on either side of Cameron’s hips. He slowly lowers himself down.
Cameron goes back to the bar night after night. It’s the same ritual. Cameron wants to lay himself down on the bar from the moment he arrives but he has to wait all night till the bar closed. Robert barely speaks but he makes his intentions clear through eyes that glue on to his. Holding Cameron long in his stare he feels guilty for crimes not yet committed. Only Robert know this.
Cameron tells Robert they are in a relationship as he licks Cameron’s torso clean of beer. Cameron nods and lets his hands rest on the peak of Robert’s buttocks.
The bedroom feels stale. He needs more. Fresh beating heart. Seduced, just as Cameron once was. The smell of cigarette smoke and beer was hard to adjust to first thing in the morning but Cameron got used to it and looked forward to it after a while. Robert would pull the man to Cameron’s bedroom and undress him starting with a tug of the belt. Robert would stare into Cameron’s eyes as the man pushed into him. His eyes were an embrace.
“Are we open?” Cameron asked. He was not sure what this meant but if it meant living a life free of social and moral restrictions he wanted in.
“Polyamory”
“What?”
Cameron laughed and held on to him tightly. A man like this would ground him.
“So you’re okay with it then?”
“If you are?”
Robert kisses Cameron’s forehead.
“Monogamy is unnatural. I don’t own his body and he doesn’t own mine”

He waited till noon to hear his knock. He went to the bar. He hadn’t turned up for work the night before.
Cameron went home and waited.

Cameron is naked on his bed with the fire exit door open waiting for a breeze. It’s the darkest hour just before dawn and the air is still thick with humidity. The thin skin of his testicles sticks to the inside of his thigh. He peels the skin away and flicks them gently to keep them cool. He stares at the ceiling and tries some Jungian interpretation of the stains and cracked paint. Cameron sees only Robert’s face, arms, legs. Silence is typical of this time of day but the silence this morning has depth. It hangs heavy and sticks fast as if it is a sound in it’s own right, overshadowing all other sounds. Like white is a colour, silence can be a sound. He understands it’s depth. It was holding something, someone. He didn’t hear footsteps so when he appeared it was as if he was floating. Robert. Beside him, propped up on one elbow and staring into his eyes. Robert’s eyes are colourless he remembers they are blue but he can’t see the blue. It’s dark. He rests his lips, his breath falters. Cameron holds on until finally his tongue pushes into his mouth. He places his hand on the back of his head and pulls him in. The room cools. This is a good thing this humid morning but an ominous sign too. Cameron tries not to think about it as he kisses him, his first love. Robert where are you?
Cameron and Robert made clumsy love. Cameron kissed Robert with a welcomed objectivity, without the deep hunger he felt when he made love to him two years earlier. Robert sensed a detachment and stepped it up. His writhing body and honks of wonderment at Cameron’s thrusts stretched his cock to new lengths. Although this time he was only mildly intrigued by his dance. Cameron remembered why he lusted for Robert so irrationally once. He wasn’t a fool after all, Robert was just very good at what he did.
Cameron smiled at Robert slouching against his pillows chain smoking not because he loved him in any romantic sense anymore but because he remembered how desperate he was for him to be in his bed once. Cameron was filling in the gaps and honoring his younger less resilient self.
Robert was a fantastic lover. He gave all of himself in fits of vulnerable desperation and slutty exuberance. He made Cameron feel like he was the only one who could satisfy him and the only one who could save him from self destruction.

Cameron was led into a room by a thin man with round spectacles. He had a beard that struggled to flourish on his face and instead knotted and crisscrossed in patches of unremarkable growth. When his kind eyes set upon Cameron, he felt like he was stroking him gently. “My name is Angus”. He told Cameron he wasn’t judging him. Cameron described his relationship with Robert as intense and complicated. He shook his head back and forth and shrugged in a prolonged heaving forward.
“He creeps inside me and before I know it I’m lost in him” Cameron said. Angus nodded . He knew what he meant, it seemed. Angus was a good 20 years older than Cameron so he assumed he’d stacked up plenty of intense and complicated relationships, presumably so many that he now just referred to them as relationships, the intense and complicated bit was a given.
There was no way Cameron was going to start from the beginning. He knew how therapists worked. He remembered they had a habit of cutting you off at 45 minutes just when you start to make some sense.
“To be honest I feel like my brain has been bashed in”
“Is that how you feel about our session, someone trying to bash the answers out of your head? Angus bashed his own head.
Cameron dropped his shoulders to show he was exhausted.
“It’s totally voluntary but I was wondering if you could provide me a list of phone numbers
Cameron heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes.
“Robert could give us a few phone numbers and we could call them. Robert would remain anonymous. It’s helpful in terms of getting people tested”
Cameron flared his eyes and nostrils and dispensed a cluster of air trapped in his lungs.
“For fucks sake” his hands now running through his hair, “Yeah I get it, I get it, I guess”
This was easier than analysing the reason why he loved sadistic men. Public good was something he could rally behind.
“There really is no telling how many men he slept with while I was at work. No telling. He fucks everything – butcher, baker, candlestick maker”
Angus looked overwhelmed but he kept his professional demeanor by pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“I will try and get a few numbers for you and bring them in tomorrow”
Angus thanked him and continued.
“Maybe Robert personalised the failure of monogamy but the truth is its failure has nothing to do with you”
Cameron smiled at Angus and looked at his feet, he needed to leave now.
He knew what Angus was talking about in laymen terms, that Robert will fuck anything”

Cameron gave Angus’ comment some thought as he walked home but he couldn’t give it the attention it needed since he was preoccupied with planning the phone conversation he needed to have with Robert. He walked through his front door and sat down beside his phone and rehearsed the conversation out loud. When he felt ready, he dialed the number. He was put through to Robert’s room. To hear his voice again was like sunlight sinking into cold skin. He sounded upbeat. Cameron wanted to say nothing, let Robert do the talking, but he couldn’t help myself. He told him everything. He was after all an old friend not just a guy who broke his heart.
“There are drugs now” Cameron said.
“I take pills three times a day. I get to live. We are lucky fags Cameron” Robert replied.
His declaration made Cameron’s cock grow. The boldness, the ownership of the word fag.
Robert was a hedonist. He was a hedonist not because he was a fag but because he was a hedonist. The best kind. Cameron started to understand Angus’s parting comment. The only way he could understand and accept Robert’s desires for other men was to think of Robert’s sexuality as something to do with him. The realisation that possibly Robert was a victim of Cameron’s narcissism rather than the other way round eased the arch in his shoulders.

A door slammed in the hallway outside his apartment. His neighbour was leaving for the day. A bit late, he thought. He was pleased he had the head space to think about the mundane again. Everything felt less crazy.

“Suddenly he sat up and pointed at me. “Haha look at the size of your mouth! You could suck 10 cocks with that!””

When I was a child my mother pu​t me on the Pritikin Diet, a ​low-fat, high-fibre diet which forms part of the Pritikin programme for diet and exercise. A lifestyle regimen created by Nathan Pritikin. The book describing the diet became a best-seller while I wasted away. By the time I was 12 I looked like an Ethiopian supermodel. In the same year Bob Geldof launched Live Aid and pictures of starving Ethiopians were splashed all over our TV screens. I knew I wasn’t alone.

For years I had a recurring dream. My mother is handing out chocolate biscuits to a long line of children. By the time she gets to me the chocolate biscuit packet is empty. The dream then starts again and again it ends with an empty packet of chocolate biscuits. When I found my father’s secret jar of loose change the first thing I did was buy a packet of chocolate fucking biscuits. Oreo too, American biscuits wonder-filled with churro-flavored creme. I gobbled the lot in a carpark behind the Cole’s New World. Oreo are still my favorite biscuit not just because of the secret trans fat goodness but because they come without a plastic tray. You can rip open the packet with your teeth and scull. Wash down with milk. Oreo’s are best stored in the freezer. Discover them late at night, behind the frozen peas.

Family Hold Back or FHB is a code the adults in my family applied to kids when guests arrive unexpectedly and there was potentially not enough food to go round. FHB was whispered from family member to family member. I remember watching the guests pile food high on to their plates unaware of the holes I was drilling in the back of their heads and the sacrifice I was making in the shadows of FHB. I resented FHB with my whole being I began to devise sophisticated strategies for getting my dream foods into my mouth; chocolate biscuits with cream centers, soft coffee roles with pink icing and sherbet.

I’d been self harming with sherbet behind the school dunnies for months. While the other kids smoked cigarettes, I scooped packet after packet of sherbet into my mouth to make up for the lost years in the Pritikin wilderness. A handsome student dentist discovered a carnival of rot in my mouth at my 6 monthly check-up and set to work filling the cavities. He decided not to use anesthetic for reasons I’m still unaware of. Budget cuts, sadomasochism, whatever, it was my first memory of torture. My mouth kept closing and the dentist assistant kept saying “a little wider, a little wider, a little wider” finally my mouth flipped open doubling it’s capacity and astounding even the dentist. “Woah there tiger, don’t eat us” 10 years later when I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed under a general anaesthetic, the surgeon remarked how big my mouth was. “I was butchered by a dentist when I was 7″ I said. He laughed heartily, so much so it must have slipped his mind to prescribe me any pain killers. Once home I had to rely on ice packs to ease the pain. It was torturous. I remember my mother telling me while I lay in bed in excruciating pain that pain is relative and it couldn’t possibly be worse than child birth.

My polyamorous girlfriend Tracey told me about an older man she was seeing. He was 17, she was 15. He was cool and looked just like Morrissey from The Smiths. I was 14 and had never heard of The Smiths. Although I was old enough to get the punkness of a band naming themselves after the most popular surname in the English-speaking world. After school one day we caught a bus to West End where this guy lived. His flatmate let us in and we walked into a warehouse space with hessian sacks strewn across parched floors and cheesecloth throws over purple bean bags. Incense was billowing from a window ledge. Tie dyed pantaloons and rainbow knitted ponchos hung on big brass hooks sticking out of the wall. Empty bottles of red wine lay on their side. Tracey nodded at me with her eyes, relishing my excitement. I could hear a hollow crooning coming from the ceiling, I looked up. Sitting at the top of some narrow fold out stairs leading to a loft was a man with high quaffed hair and a strong jaw line singing to a song playing in the background. One foot dangled through the stairs, the other propped up to his chest. He was writing with a red pencil on to rice paper held together by string. Tracey called out to him “Hey you”

“Hey sweetie” he said but wholly distracted, saying hello it seemed had wasted a second of his valuable time. 

“This is BJ” she yelled.

He glared at me and sung even louder.

“Now I know how Joan of Arc felt. Now I know how Joan of Arc felt”

He sounded out of tune to me but so did the singer he was imitating. Neither sounded happy. I wondered if he positioned himself like that for our arrival or if he was a cripple that had to crawl around the apartment and he was waiting for us to carry him down the stairs. The guy on the cassette started again “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt, now I know how Joan of Arc felt”. I thought “who the fuck is Joan of Arc?”

She grabbed me by the shoulder and whispered “Isn’t he fab?” I don’t think she knew who Joan of Arc was either.

I shrugged and asked loudly “What is this music?” He got up and disappeared into his loft. Tracey grabbed me and we followed him. I crawled into the loft and noticed the ceiling was covered with sheets of paper with lyrics or poetry scribbled all over them. He was waiting for us lying on his back across a low set Futon bed, one foot tapping the floor and the other extended out. The music was louder and the next song even more obnoxiously miserable than the last. I said again “What is this music?” Suddenly he sat up and pointed at me. “Haha look at the size of your mouth! You could suck 10 cocks with that!”

 I laughed, I’d only contemplated one cock, maybe two. I asked again about the guy moaning in the background.

“It’s Morrissey from The Smiths, just the best band ever, they are so ironic. I would die for Morrissey”

Tracey jumped on the bed, pitched her back against the wall and sparked up a cigarette.

“Me too” she said.

I crawled on to the bed but balanced myself on the edge, anxious about the 10 cocks possibly coming my way.

Tracey started to sing with Morrissey, she whined with a strange melodic joy like she was in pain but happy about it. I sparked up a cigarette too.

The guitar jangled and wobbled like it had been thrown from a balcony, still plugged in. I wanted to take the cassette to my room and listen to every song carefully to discover the secrets this music held. It made good looking men open their legs and talk about cock. “This one’s called Bigmouth Strikes Again. He wrote it for you” The cool guy lent across Tracey who was now between us.

This cool guy put his lips on mine. The cold rush of wetness that came from his mouth repulsed me and turned me on. I didn’t know it was possible to experience opposing feelings simultaneously. I opened my mouth and almost swallowed his face. The cool guy screamed and recoiled “Eeek big mouth strikes again!” My ego remained intact because in that moment, as I scraped my teeth along the top of my tongue to remove the taste of his peppery aftershave, I became a man.

John: a 50 year old sex therapist. Observant and funny. Magda: a 40 year old prostitute. She speaks with a strong Polish accent. Concetta: a 26 year old Italian woman. PhD student. She is English born with Italian parents. Duncan: a 24 year old English man. Softly spoken people pleaser, works for a Charity

1.PARKBENCH

John talks to camera

John: When I was 17 it was illegal to be gay in my hometown. I was in my first year of university and the local gay and lesbian activist group organised a Kiss-In. The Kiss-In was to happen at the gates of the university carpark blocking students and teachers from driving in or out. We had instructions to gather at the gates, find a partner and when our leader Gai Lemon waved her Queer Workers in Solidarity Socialist flag and blew her rape whistle it was time to begin kissing. We were kissing for equal rights, our freedom and our lives. A peaceful protest that was about being visible and legitimising same sex love. If we blocked the university carpark we might get media attention which is ideally what we wanted. I arrived by myself and watched as everyone paired off. I was hoping to find a boy my own age who I could kiss for way too long and fall in love. The paring was quick and most paired off. I looked around, there seemed to be no one left to kiss. Emerging from a sea of student activists came a lesbian punk with pink hair and a very high green fringe. Gai Lemon waved her flag and blew her whistle. The lesbian punk and I spontaneously grabbed each other and began kissing. Our leader Gai Lemon pointed at us and yelled into her rusty megaphone. ‘Right here queers, solidarity in action and the very definition of irony’. This is how I came to understand the meaning of irony and the value of strident political action.

2.BEDROOM / BED

Duncan and Concetta lie in bed post-coital

Duncan: Do you remember your first kiss?

Concetta: You have to be careful asking that question. Not everyone’s first kiss was consenting you know.

Duncan: Oh god, why do feminists have to ruin everything nice about the world

Concetta: I’ve met your Uncle

Duncan: My Uncle, what has he got to do with anything?

Concetta: Can you imagine your Uncle shoving his tongue down your throat when you were 5? What if that was your first kiss?

Duncan: Well I wouldn’t consider it my first kiss. I’d remember a good kiss, a kiss, not a kiss from a pervy uncle. Not that my Uncle is pervy.

Concetta: What if you enjoyed it but later thought you’d done something bad?

Duncan: I don’t know. Did your Uncle kiss you like that?

Concetta: No (laughs)

Duncan: Do you like the way I kiss?

Duncan turns his eyes toward her.

Concetta: More tongue maybe

Duncan: Uncle style? Oh god, what am I saying?

They both laugh. Duncan jumps on top of the Concetta

Duncan: So when was your first kiss?

Concetta: I was 16 he was 15, so somewhere in between him fumbling to take my shirt off and him prematurely ejaculating. Somewhere in there I guess. It wasn’t memorable. I assume he kissed me.

Duncan: Do you remember our first kiss?

Concetta: Yes. The only kiss worth remembering is the one that blossoms into love.

Duncan: Oh god, that’s nice

Concetta: See feminists don’t ruin everything nice

Duncan: Can I kiss you?

They kiss.

3. PARKBENCH

John talks to camera.

John: The kiss after a rigorous debate can be hot, if both people feel like they gained some power in the debate, otherwise the one that got the upper hand presses harder and the one that lost some ground holds back. If it’s two men one man can just give up his arse to level the playing field. If it’s two women one can submit to the other to redress the balance. What does a heterosexual woman do if she feels powerless?

4. GYM

John’s voice is taken over by Concetta now working out in the gym doing squats, she finishes her set and talks to the mirror.

All heterosexual sex is rape. Andrea Dworkin never said this in her 1987 book Intercourse. She said actually that “violation is a synonym for intercourse.” She also said later that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. There I go again ruining everything nice about the world. Kissing after a healthy debate is hot. Kissing after an argument is something else. It’s salvaging. ‘I love you even though we disagree’ For the French thinker Michael Foucault, power and knowledge are not seen as independent entities but are inextricably linked – knowledge is always an exercise of power and power always a function of knowledge. If the woman thinks he has demonstrated greater knowledge in the debate she’ll probably kiss him anyway. What does the man do if he feels like the woman demonstrated greater knowledge than him in the debate, does he still kiss her? Or does he wonder what he has left to offer her, if he doesn’t have intellectual superiority? Who is he? Does his dick go limp. Do you need to feel superior to someone to get an erection. Can a man feel powerless and still dominate a woman. Maybe that’s the point. All sexual dominance is a physical manifestation of powerlessness? Sex levels-out an uneven playing field.

5. PARK / POND

Duncan standing beside a lake eating a ham roll. He talks to the ducks.

Duncan: I’m not sure what if feels like to be powerless? I don’t think I need to be passed around at a gay orgy to understand powerlessness?

He throws a bit of bread at a duck. It lands nowhere near it. The duck slowly swims toward the bread that’s absorbing water and sinking. It dives down to eat it exposing it’s bum. Close on duck bum.

We hear a voice of the Park Ranger off camera.

Park Ranger: I hope that’s not bread?

Duncan quickly puts the remainder of the ham roll in his pocket.

Park Ranger: Bread has no nutritional value for ducks

Duncan walks off. Close on duck bum.

6. PARKBENCH

Magda talks to camera.

Magda: I kiss. Sure. Easier to kiss a man I hate rather than let him fuck me. But that’s just me. Other girls will tell you something different. Maybe because they can’t fake a kiss. Kissing is the most intimate act in the world, I’m not disagreeing but it’s also the easiest thing to do when your trying to make up the hour.

Close on her gentle kissing the air quivering with passion.

Magda: The mouth only has to open once or twice, the vagina doesn’t have this option.

She picks up a leaf and a forked twig.

Magda: French men just push the tongue in and leave it there (pushes leaf into twig and lets it hover to make her point)

Magda: Italians stop and start and tease your mouth (uses leaf to caress the twig)

Magda: Greeks are wet and curious (uses the leaf to slowly slap the twig)

Magda: Spanish bite your lips (she closes the forked twig on the leaf, it snaps)

Magda: Chinese peck and poke excitedly (uses leaf to poke the twig back and forth)

Magda: African’s tickle your lips with theirs (uses the leaf to tickle the twig) before allowing the tongue to descend into your mouth (shoves leaf deep between the twig)

Magda: American’s assert the bottom lip and slide the tongue in fast when you least expect it (uses leaf to repeatedly nudge the twig and then pushes it in)

Magda: The British open their mouth very slightly and the tongue pops out like a turtle head popping out of it’s shell (she pushes the leaf through the twig tentatively looks left to right)

Magda: The German’s clean your mouth with their tongue (rubs it all over the twig) like a toothbrush

Magda: But kissing is subjective. I might not like the way you kiss but someone else might like it. So very happy we are all different. Very happy.

7. PARKBENCH

John talks to camera.

John: My first boyfriend taught me how to kiss. He told me to go slow, act a bit shy even and gradually build up to the tongue. He always kissed with his eyes closed. He gave everything. He was a desperate kisser like I was giving him life saving oxygen through my mouth. When we had our first threesome I discovered he kissed everyone like that. Turned out our kissing wasn’t special. But it felt special to me. When I was young I believed I could tell by the kiss if he was the one. Since then I’ve felt fucking fireworks kissing some men and they’ve turned out to be right fizzlers in a relationship. Why do we think that the kiss holds all the answers when it tells us nothing about the future?

8. GYM/SHOWERS

Concetta is in the shower soaping herself down after her workout.

Concetta: After the Last Supper Judas identifies Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss and this leads to the arrest of Jesus by the police force of the Sanhedrin.

Concetta: So a Judas kiss has come to mean an act appearing to be an act of friendship, which is in fact harmful to the person receiving the kiss. The mafia made Il bacio della morte, the kiss of death famous.

She puts her shower-cap on a bottle of shampoo and it becomes Fredo Corleone, she’s Michael Corleone and she kisses him on the lips.

Concetta: “I know it was you Fredo, you broke my heart, you broke my heart”.

Concetta: Such a male thing to do, ruin something nice, like a kiss.

9. BUSTOP

Duncan is sitting at a bus stop near the park in a line of old ladies. He eats his ham roll.

Duncan: Michael thought he did the right thing by killing Fredo. I’m not sure it was the right thing to do for the Corleone family.

10. GYM/SHOWER

Concetta strokes the soap and suds up her.

Concetta: A man can kiss another man as long as he counterbalances the inexcusable intimacy by killing him. I guess I also use the kiss to work out whether a man is going to kill me. The first few pecks are testing the waters. When two bodies come that close there can be only two outcomes, pleasure or pain. Never ambivalence.

11. BUS (CROWDED)

Duncan stands on a crowded bus, wedged between two large women and two large men. Every one is frozen as the bus moves at a snail’s pace. Close on Duncan’s ambivalent face.

12. GYM/CHANGING ROOM

Concetta pulls her pants up.

Concetta: A kiss states intention but it can’t predict the future. Nothing can. Kissing is about hope.

13. PARKBENCH

Magda talks to camera.

Magda: The kiss from an 18 year-old boy who wants to lose his virginity to a prostitute is like a persistent tap on the shoulder. His tongue speaks on behalf of his penis. It just keeps poking the roof of your mouth until your legs open. He is ejaculating into a woman for the first time. I take this seriously. Virgins always make terrible conversation after sex.

Occasionally there is chemistry. The kiss is loving. The bottom lip becomes a cup ready to catch the secrets of your inner world that might fall out your mouth and in another reality where I’m not a prostitute and his not paying, we could be in love. Sometimes the lips collapse on yours exhausted by the strip bar, the job, the kids. The kiss that spooks is the one that heaves with loneliness, you can feel gusts of yearning rushing up the throat from stomach. I’ve never felt hate in a kiss. Fear but never hate.

14. PARKBENCH

John talks to camera

John: I got married once, to a man and you know I’d never seen myself kiss another man even though I’d been kissing men since I was 16. When we received the wedding photos I was repulsed at the sight of me kissing my husband not because I hated being gay but because from the side I looked exactly like my Uncle Don. It looked like my Uncle Don was kissing my husband. That was weird.

15. STREET

Duncan walks along the street talking to camera.

Duncan: Why can’t a kiss be about being happy to see someone? Why can’t a kiss be an expression of happiness?

16. STREET

Concetta walks along the street talking to camera.

Concetta: Of course a kiss can be a simple gesture of hello or goodbye. If you’re a dog. But it’s also full of intention, anticipation, hope and power.

17. STREET

Duncan walks along the street talking to camera.

Duncan: I just kiss. I lay my lips on her lips and we kiss. I don’t expect to get sex. I just want to kiss.

Concetta walks along the street toward him.

He continues to talk to camera

Duncan: To feel her lips. To feel her breath. To know she is alive. To know she still loves me. TO KNOW SOMEBODY LOVES ME.

Duncan and Concetta come face to face, their lips move closer and closer.

18. PARK

John talks to camera.

John: Kissing can be a sign of weakness because it’s associated with feeling something and feelings are dangerous because they don’t win wars. I remember the days when it wasn’t uncommon to have sex with a man who refused to kiss because kissing meant he was gay, not sucking cock. This was ok when I was young, kissing was important but so were all the other sexual acts. Now at 50, kissing is the only sexual act I insist on, the rest I’m grateful for. In every gay male story the gay man is battling with his sexuality, struggling to understand what it means to be man. He finally meets someone that forces his lips upon his lips and he does all he can to wrench these lips away because lips on lips means feelings. And feelings are evil.

Magda talks to camera.

Magda: The thing we fear the most is the thing that is most true. We can’t face it because it contradicts the lies we’ve told ourselves to survive. Black people of the land are the original people so to live on the land without guilt we must destroy the black people. The vagina is Our Creator not the God so the vagina is a reminder of the lies we tell ourselves to survive, so we must destroy the vagina. Everybody hates women, even women. Because woman gave us life and therefore death.

John talk to camera.

John: My first kiss with a girl was when I was 10 and she smiled when we kissed. I kissed her teeth. It was beautiful. The smell of her breath. It was the first time I smelt another person’s breath and it made me feel alive. My first kiss with a boy was when I was 14 and I thought I’d swallowed an ocean of saltwater, froth pouring from my cock. It was the strongest I felt about anything in my short life up until that point. I could see my future. I wanted more of this, all of that, one after another.

But the best kiss I ever had was a political one with a lesbian punk. A kiss where there was a complete absence of desire on both sides. That’s the kiss I remember. Even her prickly chin against my smooth chin. The one that meant more than just the love between two people. It was the ‘fuck you’ kiss. The kiss that fought for all those kisses to come, kissing without fear in the full light of day.

How can two men kissing each other hold such power?

I remember seeing a film once and when the two male protagonists kissed, a teenage girl beside me let out a bloodcurdling scream and hid her face under her boyfriend’s armpit. It was as if she was watching a horror film. It was just two men kissing. That’s all. Two men kissing. 

My stomach whines, my lungs burn and my kidneys ache. The carpet absorbs my tears, my burdens and my glitter.

Each year as I sit amongst the ruins of another Mardi Gras, a vague yet eternally relevant question falls from my amyl bleached lips. What was all that about? I blinklessly survey the damage to my flat. What’s before me is the kind of destruction only ‘The Gras’ can create. ‘The Gras’ – sounds like a good name for a disaster movie. Thousands of sub-plots, all about the plot being lost. I identify the flat as mine. It must be, why else would I be sitting in this dump. Sifting through the devastation I assess the hoc-ability status of any valuables remaining. My crossing eyes stop crossing for one brief second to seize upon a gold mine. One of my international visitors kindly left his Clarins products in my bathroom. Those Happy Hocers in Kellet street should give me enough cash to keep me in sushi with extra wasabi for a couple of days. Everywhere I look and I look everywhere, decay prevails. I lift a fur coat from the floor and blink for the first time in days as I unveil some quivering queen who has taken shelter under the fake fur. Clad only in a sequin band aid, this is the single most terrifying display of depravity I’ve seen since, well, since the fog cleared from the mirror after my shower this morning. He is not familiar to me but then his constant convulsions make it difficult to make a positive identification. Perhaps he is a friend in which case I should consider calling an ambulance. Perhaps he is stranger, in which case I should consider calling a friend so we can both have a laugh. A violent convulsion this time hurls him in the air. Conveniently, he lands facing heaven enabling me to get a good look at him. The fading shade of lipstick his sporting strikes a familiar chord. Is it? Could it be? No? Yes! Shocking Burgundy. I have some vague recollection of some chatty, anaemic homosexual wearing that very shade arriving in my lounge room shortly after the parade on Saturday. Someone got stuck with him somewhere along the line, like chewing gum to your Docs. Someone’s trade, someone’s dealer, brother, sister, girlfriend, whatever luvvie. I’m certainly no authority on the subject of house guests around this time of year. They come, they go. However if it is the queen I think it is, I can safely say he wasn’t a picture of health then. Oh dear. I drape the fur across his quivering frame, returning the worm to his cocoon. I pray for a butterfly by morning. My stomach feels light and my eyelids feel heavy, reminding me of two concepts – eating and sleeping. I continue to scrounge around for valuables, scratching, sniffing, scratching, sniffing. But there is nothing more for me here. How is it I realise so many things when I’m on my hands and knees, (I realise on my hands and knees realising so many things). The Clarins range decorating my bathroom cabinet is the only thing of any worth.

Realisation 1 – Can’t hoc facial products. Realisation 2 – Sell them to my neighbour. I knock on her door and put forward what I consider a reasonable offer. She tells me to get some sleep and slams the door in my face. Realisation 4 – Reality is such an unnecessary state of mind. I walk back into my flat and fall to my hands and knees, again, realising I forgot realisation 3.

From my hands and knees I roll over into the security of the foetal position and cry. My stomach whines, my lungs burn and my kidneys ache. The carpet absorbs my tears, my burdens and my glitter. Glitter, in plague proportions, otherwise known as drag queen dandruff. Glitter finds its way into my bed and underpants all year round. Even when I declare my flat a drag queen free zone which I’m forced to do every so often in order to exfoliate my social life and to regain a semblance of sanity, glitter finds its shimmery way back into my nether regions. Like the very air we breathe glitter will always be with us. Perhaps it’s a constant reminder that we must shine in order to survive. Or is it just that we simply appreciate the kind of cheap makeover a bottle can provide? I can’t eat it so who cares.

I fall into a much needed slumber, dreaming that each piece of glitter is a diamond. Reality ebbs slowly from my sad bones. Replacing it is a parade of fears and delights emerging from my subconscious. My own internal Mardi Gras, where I want to be.