Tigers and Devils

“Whose party is this, anyway?” I grumbled, wrapping my scarf tighter around my throat to protect it from the winter winds everybody claimed blew straight up from Antarctica. I could see the fence of Melbourne Cemetery as we walked along, and truth be told, I would rather be spending the night in there than going to a shindig where the only people I would know were currently alongside me.

“I don’t know,” Fran replied, snuggling in closer to Roger for warmth. “Roger knows them.”

“I thought you knew them?” Roger asked.

I groaned. “Aren’t we a bit too old to be crashing a uni party?”

“I don’t think it’s a uni party,” Fran said. “It’s somebody’s engagement party.”

“I thought it was a thirtieth birthday party,” Roger murmured.

“Great, just great,” I said in an even lower tone of voice, which they couldn’t help but hear anyway. “Is there even a party?”

“Don’t be Mr. Grumpy,” Fran warned. “We’re saving you from a night of sitting at home and watching reruns of crappy rom-coms.”

“Or talking on message boards about whatever crappy cancelled-too-soon TV show you’re obsessed with at the moment.” Roger laughed.

I would have given him the finger if my hand wasn’t jammed so far into my pocket. “That all sounds much better than going to a party where we apparently don’t even know what it’s for.”

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Roger said. “Synch up our watches, if we’re all bored shitless after an hour we sneak out.”

That sounded like a good plan to me. I agreed happily. I set my watch a little fast because I already couldn’t wait to make a break for it.

“Look at Simon, that’s the first time he’s smiled all night.” Fran sighed as she adjusted her watch.

“I can’t help it if you’re the only two people I like associating with on a regular basis. Or maybe that you’re the only two who will associate with me.”

“Oh, boohoo,” Fran said dismissively. “Try to act a little suave at this party, and people might even talk to you this time.”

Suave isn’t really me. I’m the doofus who normally will end up spilling drinks on somebody or inadvertently insult the host’s partner. Then it’s time for a quick getaway and a renewal of vows to never go out again. Until, of course, the next time when Fran and Roger forget about whatever heinous social crime I committed before and force me out again.

We paused before the front door. From the sounds of it, the party was in full swing.

“Do we knock?” Fran asked.

“They wouldn’t hear us,” I said.

“Doorbell?” Roger suggested.

I sighed and took the initiative. The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open.

“Enter,” I told my friends.

Fran and Roger were big fat liars. They instantly found people they knew, mutual friends who I had met only vaguely. From what I could remember we had all come away from the night still uninterested in each others’ existence. I circled nervously around the lounge room, the main congregating area. I groaned when I saw the first person I knew properly—Jasper Brunswick. He had worked for the Triple F a couple of years before, and he was a royal pain in the arse. I hadn’t been manager at the time, but I was being groomed for eventual takeover. Jasper was one of those know-it-alls who thought he could do everything better, but really didn’t want to have to do the work. I had burned my bridges with him when he drunkenly tried to seduce me one night, and my mouth had fired off before my brain had the opportunity to think of a kinder answer than “No way in hell!”

A cold war began between us and was exacerbated when I had to do some admin work and discovered that his name wasn’t Jasper Brunswick at all, but Jon Brown. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got him all figured out now.

He was sitting in the centre of the lounge on a red couch that had seen better days. He drew everybody into a circle around him, regaling them with tales about himself and various celebrities he had schmoozed with. Jasper had made a name for himself recently for penning a gossip column for the local gay rag. His ego certainly had recovered nicely since I last saw him.

I immediately slunk into the shadows lining the walls and made a beeline for the kitchen. I needed that beer now and had to find out where Roger had put them.

As I did so, I looked at my watch. We had only been here for ninety seconds, and I was ready to do a runner. That had to be a record, even for me.

Sure enough, Roger was in the kitchen. Anywhere there’s food and beer, that’s where you’re likely to find him.

“Roger!” I hissed. “Beer! Now!”

He grinned at me infuriatingly. “Did you see your best mate is in the lounge?”

“Why do you think I need a beer so badly?”

He took pity on me and handed me a bottle. I twisted the cap off savagely and downed half the beer in a few huge mouthfuls.

“Pace yourself,” Roger warned.

“We’re only going to be an hour, right?” I pleaded.

But it looked as if I may have lost this battle. Roger wore an expression that signified he might be ready to settle in, and Fran could be seen lounging comfortably against the wall, her posture relaxed and her attitude sparkling.

“Maybe you should sleep with him,” Roger said out of the blue as if he had pondered this for the past four minutes.

I almost spat out my beer over him, such was my disgust. “Are you high?”

He giggled like he had already downed a six-pack and it was affecting him already. “I don’t know, maybe you should just get laid.”

“Does your wife know you talk like this?” I polished off my beer and resolved to take the second one slower. I gestured for Roger to hand me another.

“When single you are,” Roger said, imitating Yoda dispensing advice to Luke, “get laid you can. When married you get, make love you do.”

“Oh, one of the magical gifts afforded to people who can actually get married,” I said, never one to miss the opportunity to climb up on my soapbox.

“Well, if I had my way you could,” Roger said, draping a casual arm over my shoulder. “But you’d also have to find someone first.”

I snorted as I opened my beer. “It’s not going to be Jasper Bloody Brunswick, that’s for

Fran rubbed Roger’s back affectionately. “Idiot. Please try to find better conquests for your mates.”

“I’m not looking for a conquest,” I pointed out, shepherding them out into the backyard, where a small fire burned in an old oil drum.

“Last I heard, you weren’t looking for anything,” Fran mocked.

“Is that a crime?”

“It’s certainly not normal.”

“And what’s normal? You guys?”

“Shut up,” Fran instructed.

“You love us.” Roger always got cheesy when he was drunk.

I mumbled incoherently into my feet, an admission of returned love which they could understand without knowing exactly what I said.

Fran hugged me and then pushed me off her. “Now, go away. I want to make out with my husband.”

I laughed, not taking any offence, and went off to find a corner where I could hide. Luck scored me a garden swing in a dark corner that no couple had yet appropriated to mack upon. I settled in and slowly pushed myself, my beer nestled snugly in my hands. There was a small group standing off to my right, talking loudly. So it wasn’t like I was eavesdropping. I wish I knew who they were, because, really, I have them to thank for this whole story. Well, unless you want to give Fran and Roger the credit for dragging me to this party in the first place. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Again.

“The Devils are gonna have another shit year, I’m telling you.”

The voices were a garbled mess; beside the gender of each voice I couldn’t really separate them into distinct entities.

“Nah, it’s about time for them to start crawling up the ladder again.”

“You said that last year. There’s no way they’ll finish in the top eight.”

“Yeah, no finals hopes at all. They’re wasted.”

“They never should have allowed them to merge.”

That had been the biggest controversy in the recent history of AFL. To truly make the game Australia-wide (although conveniently neglecting the Northern Territory, but as my father liked to argue, it was a territory, not a state. My reaction: “It’s a bloody big block of land at the top of Australia with people living in it! They deserve some sort of team!”) the AFL created a Tasmanian team. But in order to keep the numbers of teams even so that there wouldn’t be any hassle in arranging games, they had to sacrifice one of the Victorian teams so that they could merge into one (Roger: “It’s like bloody Fitzroy all over again!”). So we said goodbye to the Melbourne Demons, who moved down south and across the Tasman Sea to become the Tasmanian Devils.

At the time I remember being horrified at the thought that they might make Richmond merge so that they could be the Tasmanian Tigers, after one of the most famous extinct (supposedly) animals in the world, but we were safe.

So the Devils weren’t exactly popular in Victoria, like the Brisbane Lions before them, because they had committed the cardinal sin of taking one of our teams away from us. Problems besieged the Devils from the very start, with two of their key players being injured in their very first season, and although one had gone on to recover, Declan Tyler seemed plagued with injury ever since. It was a favourite source of discussion on both sides of the Tasman Sea; we thought it was an act of the gods showing us that the merge should never have happened, while the Tasmanians bemoaned the fact that one of the best players in the league was doing nothing for them but to sit on the bench and occasionally run out to get injured.

I knew that Tyler would come up sooner or later, and it was sooner.

“They’ve taken Tyler away from us, and look what they did to him.”

“I don’t think it was their fault.”

“What are you, a Devils supporter?”

Howls of derision floated over to where I was sitting.

“No, I’m not! Just I don’t think they’re going to take someone like Tyler and then intentionally injure him so they can’t use him at all!”

“They should do something with him. All he does is sit on that bench and gather dust. And lard.”

“He does not. He’s hot.”

He was, actually. But that’s not important.

“Typical bloody woman. Just watching the game to perve at the guys in their shorts.”

There was another frenzied protest at that. I sighed to myself at that remark as well. Women and gay guys always get stuck with that image, that they couldn’t possibly be interested in the game itself—it had to be the guys. I mean, sure, it’s a fringe benefit, but when the game is on the last thing you’re thinking about is the bodies of the men. You’re concentrating on that red leather oval ball and if it will make it between the triad of poles that will either signify glory or failure. And some of the women I’ve met over the years at games or supporter functions have been the most vocal and knowledgeable proponents of the game.

Those very points were raised between the arguers. I laughed to myself and swore I wasn’t going to get involved. But then someone made a comment that I just had to refute.

“It’s not even like he was that great a player to begin with, anyway.”

Well, that was just wrong.

“Not a great player?” I made some of them jump when I emerged from the shadows. There were two women and three men, I could see that now. “You are talking about Declan Tyler, right? Winner of the Best and Fairest for the Devils two years consecutively, a Brownlow Medallist, and winner of the Norm Smith medal and the Leigh Matthews Trophy? Yeah, he really sucks as a football player.”

“How many Devils fans are there at this party?” one of the men asked.

“I’m not a Devils supporter,” I said, the disgust plain on my face. “I barrack for Richmond.”

All five of them burst out laughing.

“Hey!” I protested. “We’re about due for a final.”

“You’ve been due for over fifty years, mate,” the woman closest to me said.

I could feel someone approaching us from behind me and just assumed it was someone else interested in the conversation or a friend of one of the group. “Look, I know Tyler comes across like a bit of an arrogant prick, but you can’t say he’s not a great player. When he’s not injured, of course.”

For some reason, everybody’s eyes went wide at this point. Puzzled, I raised my hands for any kind of response.

There was the sound of somebody clearing their throat behind me. “Well, thanks for defending my honour.”

No way! No way this was possibly happening. I turned, hoping it was just Roger being a dickhead, but I could already tell by the expressions of the rest of the group that it wasn’t.

Behind me was the man himself, Declan Tyler.

At that moment I wished that I had accompanied Roger to his martial arts classes when he went through his obsession with wuxia movies. I was no good at violence or defending against violence, should the occasion arise.

“Declan Tyler!” I heard one of the other men breathe in wonder.

“Well, great conversation,” I said hurriedly. “Very nice to meet you all.”

I managed to escape while the footballer in question was surrounded by the group, that, of course, was now star-struck; most of all, the man who previously had been bagging him.

I searched through the garden and the house for Roger and Fran, who were nowhere to be found. Jasper Brunswick was still in his own self-created shrine, and I couldn’t help but think that at least Declan Tyler deserved the adoration he was currently receiving, because he actually did something, even if it was just kicking a ball around.

Just kick a ball around? What was I thinking? I must have been more agitated than I thought. I was hopeless at confrontations.

I burst through the front door; the yard was empty. They surely wouldn’t have left without me. I checked my mobile to make sure they hadn’t tried calling or left me a text; they hadn’t. I beat the phone in frustration against my forehead, as if I could absorb the information I needed through osmosis.

“Hey!”

I turned around. It was Declan Tyler, coming to punch my lights out. Crap.

“I know karate!” I said stupidly.

“Good for you,” he said, a confused expression on his face. It wasn’t one I was used to seeing on him; on the field he was always in control and stoic. In fact, that was his normal expression. It was like he knew how good he was, and he wasn’t going to deny it, which is where I guess my presumption of him being an arrogant prick had come from.

He was a good head taller than me, and the span of his shoulders was practically a third wider than mine. He could easily fell me with one king hit. Looking confused gave him more character, it made his boy-next-door looks become even more appealing. He had to lose that gross bit of fluff above his chin, though.

“What do you want?” I asked defensively.

He jammed his hands in his pockets. Was he trying to show me that he came in peace? “I wasn’t sure whether to thank you for defending my record or yell at you for calling me… what was it again?”

“Arrogant prick,” I said helpfully, before I could even think to stop myself.

He grinned. I had walked into his trap. “Most people think I’m either one or the other. It’s rare to find someone who thinks both.”

“Really?” I asked.

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, most footballers are….” I trailed off.

He kept his grin carefully plastered on his face. “Uh huh.”

“… really nice guys,” I finished.

“Stereotypes are a killer,” he said. “I mean, if I was to go on what you look like, I would say you’re a typical arty wanker, what with your cargo pants, your Doc Martens and your all-black wardrobe.”

“Ah, but I am an arty wanker,” I replied. Rule one, always be self-deprecating and get in with insults about yourself before the other party can.

Just at that moment, Fran and Roger stumbled through the front gate.

“Where have you guys been?” I demanded.

“In the cemetery,” Roger replied.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Not what you’re thinking.” Fran giggled. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Roger’s eyes widened. “Are you chatting up a guy?”

I flushed. Roger had just committed a major faux pas. You never outed somebody on their behalf. I mean, it’s not like I hid it, but you should always be the one to say it yourself. It’s just commonsense, as it also gives you the opportunity to protect yourself if the situation warrants it.

“No,” I muttered.

Roger’s eyes widened. “Hey, you’re— “

Declan shifted uncomfortably and seemed to grow even taller. “Declan Tyler,” he mumbled.

“Oh God, I don’t believe it!”

“Who’s Declan Tyler?” Fran asked.