keep each other warm

body on body. i kiss cheeks, foreheads and lips as the music builds.

I’m walking down the street of what could be any small rural city in Australia - wide, straight roads, old deciduous trees, the leaves starting to turn, scattering over the herringboned brick footpath. Suddenly in front of me there’s a wall of them, shimmering slightly as though a mirage.

They’re enormous: a pack of men, no necks, arms thicker than my legs. They must be at least eight feet tall, not including the giant hats on their heads. Caps, broad brimmed. Like nazi cowboys they strut toward me, pushing people out of their way. How do men walk like this, I wonder? As though their dicks are so thick they have to thrust their hips out and almost waddle to protect their bulging girth.

I maintain eye contact and walk past them, hearing them visibly hiss as I pass them.

“Faggot.”

“Fascist.”

I walk back to the house. Despite it being so late in the season, the sun is still so warm and I feel myself sweating as I climb the hill. I ruffle my hair, try and mop some of the sweat off my face before I enter, but I can see on everyone’s faces I must look flustered.

“The fascists are here.”

“Are you okay? You look flustered”

I’m handed a bowl of fresh tomatoes, salad and pasta. Yeah, it’s just been a few years since I’ve been called a faggot. Also, you should see their arms. They could squash me with their little fingers. Also, why do they never have necks and are always bald?

More and more pour into the small city. They come in their utes, cars so outsized and so loud - riding so high off the ground - that you could disappear under the wheels and they'd never know. A haze envelops the plains, blown in from the north. Smoke, dust, fog, mingle together. The white turns from liquid gold to a diffuse white. And out of the mist come an army of men. Before long they outnumber us all.

I start dressing differently. I cut into my jeans, so high they barely cover anything. I wear my oversized t shirts and tie them into a makeshift crop top. I walk down the street with legs and slutty waist on display. I smile at the neckless men as I pass. I watch them convulse, their fists clench.

It’s building. Everyone can feel it. The energy on the street hums. It feels like an electrical current is being pumped into the city - to the region - and everyone is charged with a jittery hum that rapidly turns malignant.

The current finds the screens first. I sit in the park, sun warm on my bellybutton and face, spreading sunscreen. All around me I watch it spark from phones into eyes and from eyes into bodies. And then from body to body.

I see one man turn from his screen and to the person sitting next to him.

“It’s the fucking migrants.”

——

“No! Don’t close them,” I tell you as you start playing with the curtains. The near full moon lights up the paddock outside the window, all the way over to where the forest starts.

I look up from my book and shuffle closer to you. We watch a small family of kangaroos standing, as if frozen, under a tree. I breathe and see the air fog lightly.

“It’s freezing in here.”

I look through the bedroom door at the fire smouldering in the fireplace in the other room. I wonder why none of the heat has come through into this room?

I lie back down, pulling the blankets over me. The lamp casting a faint golden glow over both of us. You rest your head on my chest and I trace my hands over your skin absentmindedly as I keep reading.

“Okay, hear me out,” I tell you putting my book down. “All I can think of right now are these neckless men flooding the streets. And how deeply unsexy they are.”

I tell you about my friend who dated this guy who ended up being crazy right wing. She said the sex was terrible - that she felt like she could have been anyone or anything. That it was as though he was masturbating into her body. And how once she asked if she could put a finger in his ass, circling around there. And that he hit her hand away, stood up and called her a pervert.

“Should we do our anti-fascist duty?”

“Sure, but its too cold in here, let’s go in front of the fire,” you say as you jump out of the bed and launch yourself onto the couch. I push it closer to the fire and feel it immediately start warming my skin.

You’re face-down and I straddle you. Pressing into your shoulders, feeling the warmth of your skin under my palms. I run my fingers through your hair, hearing you moan as the tension leaves. I kiss your back and bite your skin gently as I make my way down toward your hips.

I bring my hands down to your ass and feel you push back against me as I massage you.

“You spoil me.”

“Let me spoil you properly,” I tell you as you lift your ass into the air.

I bring my tongue against you. I clench - my body responding - as I feel how wet you are. I feel you drip down my chin as I keep going. You cum. And sitting on the edge of the couch, watching the fire, you pull my head between your legs again.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” You moan as you cum again.

“Grab your eye book,” you tell me.

I go to my bag and grab The Story of the Eye - the book I’d told you about. The one with the priest and that I said was the most disturbing thing I’d ever read in years, and yet couldn’t stop thinking about.

“Read me the part about the priest.”

I turn to the end of the book as you grab me. A hand gripping me as your other plays with my balls. I moan and tell you there is no way I can focus on reading right now.

You tell me to stop talking and read.

She straddled the naked cadaver again, scrutinizing the purplish face with the keenest interest, she even sponged the sweat off the forehead and obstinately waved away a fly buzzing in a sunbeam and endlessly flitting back to alight on the face.

You grab me harder and take me in your mouth. Firelight moves over your skin and the open pages. I lose the thread entirely.

You look up at me, “what happens next?” you ask with a smile.

“Sorry I can’t concentrate on anything else right now.”

Afterwards, you crawl beside me on the couch and kiss me on the mouth. Well, we kept fascism at bay for another night, you tell me, smiling.

“I do have one question,” you mumble. “Why did she put the priests eye in her ass?”

——

I wake drenched, tearing at my sheets. For the past week the dreams have all been the same. Phantoms, both real and imagined, haunt me. They chase me, always. The ground shakes under their boots and the air is thick with their cries. I lie there, watching the fog dance around the streetlight and wait for the sun to rise and burn the mist away.

The miracle of insomnia sees me at the sauna by the river by 6:30am. It’s really no problem to drag myself there when I’ve been up since 4. We cram too many bodies into the tiny wooden box, sardined next to each other as our sweat drips and mingles. We press even closer for comfort - skin on skin in this tiny room. Someone pours water on the coals and the air thickens. We sit and lie there as the temperature builds, drinking, sipping, pouring water over ourselves. Again and again we sprint to the river - the cold shocking our bodies to life - and then back into the heat. I feel wrung out.

In the river the last time, with my head under the water, I know we’re going to lose. Not just here, but broadly.

The current swirls past me, and the reeds brush against my legs, my feet deep in the mud as I flash forward - am transported - to a future where they claim a mandate. I see them, on TV screens, phones, standing tall, again shimmering as though a mirage, telling us everything they do is for our own good.

I launch my head and body out of the water and breathe deeply.

Later, at the polling place the air hums with an energy I don’t immediately recognise. I keep looking at people’s faces to try and place them, but clarity and specificity escapes me. I seek out features and only see broad outlines. What was once clear has been replaced by an ambient low buzz, and I can only catch glimpses of it. Over time I start hearing what the buzz is - it is the sound of people saying out loud what they used to keep in the dark.

An older man, who still towers above us all, but whose features and body have slackened with age, is telling a stranger about the muslim plan. The harder I listen the less sense it seems to make. A woman says First Nations people have taken too much, that there are real Australians to consider. The phrase real Australians hangs in the air like a toxic haze we’re all standing in.

A woman walks past in a denim miniskirt and crop top and a pasty, balding man - with a pot belly spilling out over trousers his ex wife must have bought him in the 90s - hisses you’re going to hell, pervert to her

I hear myself tell him to shut the fuck up before I realise I am going to.

I find his face suddenly very close to mine. Bad breath and spit coat my face and I find myself suddenly swimming in his certainties. He knows what a good life is (his); he knows where both me and that transexual are going (hell); and his eyes are a weapon boring into my skull.

I’m not here anymore with this wraith almost licking my face in glee that he can demonstrate his sexual purity. Instead, I’m back in my bed, reading Umberto Eco: the insecure man is an embodiment of the fascistic machismo. He hates women and any sexuality he can’t control. I repeat it to myself.

I snap and lean into the storm of words and fluids.

Maybe you should try sucking a cock, I tell him. You might like it. Your whole world might sparkle.

I turn and before he can say anything walk away. My body writhes with emotions and I feel hot tears welling around my eyes. I hold it together until I find the others.

“Where are you?” I text and make my way there. I collapse on a chair and burst into tears.

“These people are such cunts,” I mumble. “I hate them. I hate them.”

A warm of people cuddle me. Someone grabs my head and pulls me to them, while another person grabs my arms and chest. I feel a cup of tea thrust into my hands and my tears turn to laughter.

I love you all so much. I think I may have just assaulted someone and told them to suck a cock.

——

The concrete is hard and cold against my ass. I’m leaning against Ines, who’s back is warm against mine. We trade a cigarette between us. I drag and cough before passing it to her. I can’t see her smoke but I feel her lungs swell as she drags in. We sit there in silence until a friend comes and offers a hand.

He pulls me up and I in turn pull Ines up.

We head back inside. The smell of beer and sweat and piss and farts washes over me as we step in. The music is so loud and I reach into my pockets and grab my ear plugs. I unscrew the case and put my left ear in and then my right. Ines sees me doing it and does the same.

I grab her hand and pull her through the crowd to where the rest of our friends are. They see us and scream.

We hug. Everyone smooshing together, body on body. I kiss cheeks, foreheads and lips as the music builds. It drops and we are all moving. Everyone’s bodies shifting in unison to the sound. The heat builds and builds as the night wears on. At one point some more friends arrive from a smaller town hundreds of kilometres away.

“Char” I scream, grabbing him and kissing him on the neck. “You made it.”

He lifts me into the air.

We go out for another cigarette and he tells me how it was. Cowboys and fascists. He said he was on the apps for a while, but it started getting weird.

“Being out there, I really realised I am queer and not gay,” he tells me laughing.

“There were so many big, buff cowboys who would say the most cooked shit to me. I realised I didn’t want my hole ‘ruined’ by a 6’5 cowboy and decided I should probably just delete it.”

We go back inside and have some shots. And dance. I tie my shirt again in my makeshift crop top and feel someone grab my hips.

“Nice waist.”

I turn around and see an older woman smiling at me. I ruffle her hair and turn back to my friends to keep dancing.

The bar closes and we go back to someone’s house for afters. I’m exhausted but buzzed. We lie on the couch together, watching the city through the giant glass windows. An entire valley lit up by streetlights, punctuated only by parks, hills and the river.

My head is resting on Char’s shoulder, my arm wrapped around Ines, holding her to me as she dozes lightly.

“I know we lost. And will keep losing. But I love you all so much,” I mumble. Also starting to fall asleep.

“I bet the fascists didn’t even fucking dance,” someone replies and we all laugh.