—
The most interesting aspect of the media ‘outing’ was that Matt became, in a way, a bit of a poster boy for gay men. It was as if the whole city was in the thrall of the gay-best-friend syndrome. I can see it I suppose. I mean, I never met the man, but Matt Gray on paper was definitely easy to like. He was an Anglo Aussie with a middle-class suburban background, healthy, fit, good (enough) looking, and living something close enough to a typical suburban Australian life that would be familiar to many other Australians, with a partner and a job and a mortgage to chip away at. He would, people might think, be the type to be into sport and barbeques, who would dutifully wash his car and mow the lawns on a weekend, the type who would chat to the neighbours over the fence and bring in their mail while they were away. He would be all these things, but also gay in a non-threatening, non-confrontational, out-of-sight, inside-the-house kind of way. He seemed knowable, like a brother or a mate, he was nice-guy regular, he was palatable, consumable on a broad scale, and he became, as such, some kind of absentee ambassador for gay men.
Joe Public’s opinions about Matt in letters to the editor were amazingly positive, even gushing. Some were along the ‘I don’t like gays, but he seems like a good bloke’ kind of track. Editorials on the subject of Matt’s sexuality were less gushing but just as positive. A councillor in local government, whose big topic the previous election had been gay marriage and the Government of the day being against it, even went so far as to use Matt and Kevin and their suburban ‘marriage’ to illustrate his point in the gay media, both in a column he wrote in a fortnightly gay newspaper and on the gay radio station. I didn’t hear that last one, but I heard about it and found the transcript online.
Unfortunately, all this guff was horribly off the point. The missing swimmer’s absentee ambassador status as gay-poster-boy had absolutely nothing to do with his disappearance or with what efforts were being made to find him. Police reiterated their plea for anyone with any information about Matt to come forward, but these pleas were, sadly, if not drowned out then at least pulled under water now and then by the more abstract ra-ra of the poster-boy stuff. The absence of any real sense of police activity, let alone progress, made it feel very much like there was none. At just over the two week mark people started to suggest knowingly that Matt would never be found, and that his mysterious disappearance would never be solved. I tended to agree with them. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was voluntary, like he’d engineered his own disappearance to start a new life. It also didn’t seem likely that he’d been on the end of some kind of ‘foul play’. Heaps of possibilities, but no probabilities.
Actually, with the absence of any publicised activity from the police, the way Matt’s loved ones were so ordinary and so baffled, and also I suppose with the objectification of Matt as gay poster boy, the whole thing started to feel, to me anyhow, more abstract. Or do I mean more literal? It felt to me like Matt Gray had quite simply vanished into thin air. Somehow you just felt he was gone for good. That he would never be found. It was terribly sad.
—
One other thing about all that poster-boy stuff. I knew it wouldn’t last. I could smell the backlash like ants smell rain.
—
I was at Priceline buying another vat of Vitamin E cream. Part of my routine when I got home from the pool was to have a shower, smear myself over with Vitamin E cream, then let my skin slowly absorb it while having a beer and a cigga on the balcony. I’m a great believer of toxins-in-toxins-out, a Zen, Karate Kid kind of attitude to indulging in the naughtier things in life, like sure you can smoke crack, as long as you eat broccoli and wear 30+.
Anyhow, I was in the line at the checkout and heard these two young fellas in front talking.
‘Did you see him on the news this week? He looked nice. He was crying his eyes out at the launch, press conference thing.’
I guessed they were talking about Kevin.
‘I don’t believe in all this gay poster boy stuff. There’s something rotten there somewhere. In fact, I think he did it.’
‘Did what?’
‘Offed the swimmer guy somehow.’
‘He wasn’t even there at the pool that day?’
‘He could have been.’
‘People would have seen him.’
‘Maybe he was in disguise.’
‘What as?’
‘Not as anything. Just in glasses and a hat maybe. Or with his hair parted on a different side?’
‘What did he do with the body then?’
‘Maybe just left him on the grass with all the people sun baking. One dead body amongst them wouldn’t be noticed.’
‘But what about closing time? It’d be discovered.’
‘I wasn’t being serious.’
Then the checkout chick said ‘Next please’ and they moved up and started their transaction.
—
One night out of the blue I remembered where I’d seen Matt Gray, and it wasn’t at the pool. I think it was that photo of Kevin with the 4WD and the picket fence in the background that made me remember that I met Matt once at a party just before I left for Spain and we talked about a leaf-blower.
It was at Vernon’s place, which is a big sprawling house backing onto the Yarra in Hawthorn. It’s got huge verandas all round enclosed entirely in fine mosquito mesh stuff and is painted a pale pale faded apricot (amazingly) which doesn’t seem to me a colour anyone in their right mind would choose to paint their house.
Perhaps it’s an undercoat that was never painted over. It looked like a low-security prison. Melanie christened it the Malaria Ward, which kind of describes it brilliantly. The garden is totally overgrown with quite lush plants (even in this drought—I wonder whether you’re allowed to pump water out of the Yarra for your garden?) which effectively hide the fact that there’s a large river at the edge of the garden. Vernon loves to tell a story of a guest of his going missing, only to be found three days later floating face-down some odd miles downstream, with his fly open and his dick out, victim of a full bladder and a lurch in the dark.
Anyhow, I remembered, just as I was drifting off to sleep that I’d met Matt on one of those weirdly huge verandas overlooking the Yarra. Everything happened on the verandas at Vernon’s house. There were a few men standing there looking out at the bend in the Yarra through the overgrown garden. They all held beers and stood around in that slightly formal half-circle that forms at Australian parties when there is a view, a game to watch, or a BBQ to stare at. Matt was one of the semicircle. Taller than me. Heavily built with a square jaw, squinty eyes and thick features. A real Anglo-Aussie type. That night he was all fresh-shaven, damp-haired and pink-ear clean. Not a dog, but attractive because of his size and fitness rather than his face.
And he was talking about a leaf-blower. It was autumn. There were shitloads of leaves around everywhere. In gardens and gutters. He had just purchased a leaf-blower and was telling the group about what it did and how he’d got a good deal on it. I of course didn’t give a flying fuck about his leaf-blower, but I said, ‘Oh yes’, or something else non-committal and a little dismissive and I’m sure, I’m absolutely positive, that he threw me a look then. Although what that look meant I can’t quite remember. I must have had an impression at the time, if I bothered to think about it, but I don’t remember now.
His companions in that semicircle were ‘his kind of people’ with ironed chinos and crisp checked shirts. All holding a beer. Some, most, were a little older, but they were all of a type. I imagine they all had property, with gardens, some maybe even pools, and probably all with leaves. Some had wives. Vernon had a thing for straight and usually married men. Matt, as we now know had a ‘husband’ in Kevin. It was one of those comfortable but fairly limited home-ownership types of conversations—the type