NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | ✓

03: safe haven

            The restaurants of Gay Village are bustling with folk grabbing lunch (or more likely: late breakfast) before the parade starts. Pride flag streamers form a canopy above Canal Street with larger ones decorating pub fronts or hung from the balconies above. Music is already loud, though it's barely noon. The sun is almost too hot.

Cece's feet start to drag, Vans scuffing the baking tarmac as they shove their hands in their pockets. Is this the kind of anxiety I'm supposed to reassure him out of or the kind that will humiliate him if acknowledged?

Maybe it's not even anxiety and just jitters from all the coffee he drank this morning—which they've never drunk before but are forcing themselves to like in an effort to "become an adult". 

Of all the things they could change to prove their maturity, they chose drinking coffee...

Before I can decide whether to address their nerves, they speak. 'You sure it's okay for me to come?'

'Course.'

He chews on his thumbnail. As well as he can with his grillz, anyway.

'Caleb well wants to see you,' I add, honestly.

Rather than the employee door behind the club, I take Cece in through the main door, still locked at this time. I want his first impression of Spectrum to be the space in all its glory and not a bunch of empty lemon crates piled by the door for the next person to throw in the bin but everyone walks right past.

I let him in first and wrestle the key out of the lock to follow. Cece hesitates past the cloakroom and the posters about alcoholics anonymous meetings, domestic violence support, and other community events that Sasha hosts here during weekdays when the club is shut.

I smile as he goes silent with awe, tension melting from his posture. The main room is muralled with various queer icons in the print style of propaganda posters. Even with only the task lights on, the disco balls add sparkles to their faces. With no people in the way, Cece can trace all the details up close and read the small-print biographies.

'Hello, baby girl.'

I turn to see Caleb limp through the open employee door between the stage and the bar counter. He decided not to go in drag this year but still looks appropriately glam in what is literally his old school uniform now embellished with rhinestones in accordance with the Class of 2017 theme of the year's Pride.

With a glance at Cece to make sure they've not spontaneously dropped dead, I stride over to scoop Caleb into a hug.

Caleb's Ethiopian sperm donor (a lenient term to use considering his mums found him through Gumtree and the "profile sheet" in question was written by hand) was 203 centimetres tall but Caleb ended up getting his five-three height from his Japanese mum, which means I get to kiss the top of his head with every hug.

'Hi, kid,' he calls to Cece.

Cece offers a distracted "hiya" before bursting up the ramp to a room inspired by the Sistine Chapel, except even gayer.

The smallest room of the club is plunged in black light, encompassed from floor to ceiling in a mural of a dragon that squeezes the walls in on themselves. Its single visible eye follows you wherever you stand.

We both watch the staircase seconds after the echo of his footsteps has faded.

'They came,' Caleb coos. He knows how much this means to me; he has listened to me talk about it all summer. 'First Pride!'

'Yeah.'

I stifle my smile in case the blooms break through my skin and freak Cece out—"don't be weird", as they say. Bobbi said it would be good to try to get him used to crowds and social situations again before they start school in two weeks.