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“Ya know he sucks dick?” a guy on the other side of the bar said to his friend. Not loudly, just part of their regular conversation.
“Get ya hand off it,” the friend replied and shoved him lightly.
“It’s true! I read about it.”
Joq paused with the beer to his lips.
“Oh well, it must be true then. If you read about it,” the guy’s friend gestured to the bartender for another beer.
“Nah, man, it was on like, one of those threads. And I know like, that’s usually bullshit or whatever, but this was like, the other dude’s sister’s friend that said it,” he waved at the screen where George was lining up for a shot on goal. George pulled up a bit of grass, threw it in the air to assess the wind, then fixed his eyes on the goal posts from the awkward angle.
He kicked. The crowd in the bar hushed. A rippling of sound started up as they watched the ball follow the intended line and scrape through for a goal.
“Fuckin’ beauty!” the guy’s friend yelled. Everyone was clapping, cheering. “If he can kick like that, he can suck all the dick he wants!”
Joq watched George on screen getting mobbed by teammates, his face so young he had the look of a man who hadn’t fully shed the boy yet. His smile was small, which would become the norm for him; a quiet joy which radiated beneath the downcast eyes, the closed mouth smile. He always looked like he was barely containing his happiness, and yet he had no idea how to express it, if it was even okay to express it.
The guys in the bar didn’t bring up the rumour again. Joq finished his beer and left before the game was even at half-time.
He remembered trawling through a lot of bullshit on the internet before he found it.
It was more than a blowjob. The author of the post claimed he’d heard about it from his friend, who knew the sister of the guy George was with. And that was the story: he was with this guy in high school. Everyone in the town kind of knew it, and everyone kind of dismissed it. George was going to the AFL, George was the only claim to fame this little Victorian town would ever have; everything else was irrelevant.
It was a nothing story on a dark corner of the internet. Joq was curious about the guy. George never brought up another guy. But George kissed and sucked and fucked like he knew what he was doing. He was eighteen years old, and he was no gay virgin. It actually made sense when Joq thought about it beyond his excitement at fucking around with a guy as hot and chill as George.
But at twenty-one, Joq was yet to develop the courage to confront a man—even the young version—as impenetrable as George.
It was a year before it came up. The dark recesses of the internet found their way into a more mainstream gay blog; an article speculating on closeted, gay athletes. Nothing hit official channels, but it was hard to miss the chatter. Even harder to miss how closed off George was, how twitchy; twitchier than usual when it came to arranging their dates and hook-ups. And Joq would’ve been a fool to miss the timing of George disappearing on him for a month.
Busy was the clipped reply when Joq messaged. Then George stopped answering his calls. He stopped dropping by. Joq almost ignored him back when George finally did message asking to catch-up.
They’d fucked, quick and frantic with pent up energy, and after, lying naked and sweaty in Joq’s bed, he’d finally asked.
“Is it true?”
George exhaled roughly on top of his already laboured breathing. He sat up.
Joq rolled onto his stomach and looked up at him. George was young but he looked tired then, hunted. He met Joq’s eyes then skittered his gaze away, jerked his chin, eyes on the wall.
“Are you gonna confront him?”
That got George’s attention; he looked at Joq, his forehead creased. “Who? Alistair?”
“Yeah? I mean, is that the guy?”
George rubbed his face. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He outed you without your permission.”
But George was shaking his head. “He didn’t. His sister knew about us, we…” he peered at Joq, then glanced away like a boy recounting a crime, “used to, you know, at their house after training.”
“Was he your boyfriend?”
George shrugged, picked at nothing on the bedspread. “Yes and no,” he ran his hand over the material and watched the path he made.
“Yes,” he said after a while, firm. “He’s apologised. And Tammy, his sister, is horrified it got out like this, some girl in the salon must’ve said something… But like I said to him, it’s nothing. It’ll blow over if I ignore it.”
Joq sat up and pushed himself so he was sitting next to George against the headboard.
