"The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex.
It's true. In fact they say men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course that's straight men. With gay men it's every nine."
Twenty nine year old advertising executive Michael Cliffor...
Arq is a sea of writhing bodies, the King of Arq contest being one of the favourite nights of the year for an unusually large portion of the gay population in Sydney. So much so that tickets sell out as soon as they go on sale and outfits are planned well in advance. Not that they tend to stay on people's bodies for long in the heat of the club. It's the main event for October, easily surpassing Halloween at the end of the month.
"Gentlemen and gentlemen! Welcome to our hostess for the evening! Her Royal Rudeness the Queen of Arq!!!"
A drag queen dressed as Cleopatra is held aloft by six burly, nearly naked men as she's carried over the heads of the crowd to the stage to a huge cheer.
"Welcome to the Kind of Arq contest!" she announces in a sexy gravely voice, wafting a plumed fan in front of her artfully made up face. "Where the competition is stiff and so are the contestants! But don't despair any of you who haven't made the contestants tonight, you can still sign up to 'Drop Trou and Win a Thou' contest!! " She takes a deep breath, waving her arm in the direction of the dressing rooms, "Our first contestant tonight can light your fire AND put it out!"
With that introduction still ringing around the PA system a guy arrives on the stage to loud music and loud cheers. He's dressed as a firefighter and gets to work straight away on making the stage smoke with his hotness.
Michael takes one look and decides to go upstairs for a while. "Shaved chest, pec implants, steroids?" he says, turning to Luke who's following him up the steps.
"Yeah it's sad isn't it? All these older men still partying way past their prime? They don't know when to stop..."
Michael chews on his chewing gum as he glances at Luke wondering if he means him. He's had half the guys in here tonight and was planning hitting on a few from the other half but now that Luke's said that he wonders if his capacity for knowing who's hot and who's not is dwindling with age. His dreaded birthday is fast approaching and he doesn't want to think about it but it's looming over him like a dark shadow and he's started to second guess himself as a result.
"So how about the real thing?" Luke asks him, his eyes twinkling as he steps forward to offer himself to Michael, confident in his abilities. If Michael's so derogatory about people who've had work done then that's pretty much 3/4 of the club out. If not more.
Michael looks at him; tempting but no. With the date that he doesn't want to think about coming up, he still needs to prove to himself that aging doesn't mean he has to stop living his chosen lifestyle. Michael knows he's obsessed about his age and trying to remain eternally young, he'd honestly really rather die than hit forty, and that powers him on to have sex with more and more people. To do whatever he needs to do to prove his virility and defy his age, and he's more than happy to carry on.
"Check back with me in an hour," he says, already looking around, scanning who's there and who's not, only giving Luke a third of his attention.
Luke screws his nose up, taking a half step backwards, "What?! So now I'm a back up plan?! Who you do when all else fails?!"
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Michael gets instantly annoyed, "How many times do I have to tell you we're not a couple! Calum and Stephen are a couple. Geordie and Maddie are a couple. Sam and whatshisface are a couple..."
Luke interrupts him demanding, "Yeah? So what are we Michael?!"
"I don't know about you but I'm single!" Michael glares defiantly back at Luke before walking away without another thought.
~~~
Dave hurries into the Men's toilets in the shopping centre. Eager to start on his Christmas shopping early he got stuck in a queue for free gift bags and wrapping and now he's desperate to pee. He drops his bag quickly by the side of him and unzips his fly.
Breathing out with a sigh of relief he listens to the tinny music playing over the speakers, paying no attention to the guy who comes to stand next to him at the urinal.
That is until he hears "Hey," next to him. Looking up briefly he says hello and then looks down again, noticing out of the corner of his eye that the guy isn't peeing like him, but is jerking off instead.
"So what are you into?"
"A little shopping," Dave replies, looking down at his fly. He's very good looking this guy standing next to him, but he's much younger and he really can't imagine him wanting to have anything to do with a much older guy like him. Nevertheless he keeps on talking, not quite knowing why he's divulging so much information to a complete stranger, "Dinner, a movie, anything with Julia Roberts, I love her."
"You want to do something?" The guy's tone is loaded and Dave knows exactly what kind of thing he's referring to. But those days are long gone.
"I'm sorry," Dave says, a little regretfully, zipping himself back up again. "But public restrooms aren't my scene."
"Then how about we go some place else?"
~~~
'God, the music's so loud in here you can barely hear yourself think' thinks Corey, wandering through the club, people watching as usual. 'I don't know why I insist on coming here, it's always the same. Guys interested in me but I'm not interested in them. The ones I'm interested in aren't interested in me...'
And then it happens, unfolding right before him, exactly like a movie. A path opens up through the crowd of people and there, standing at the end of the path, a cute and tall, dark haired guy wearing a blue cut off tee waits, staring wantonly at him. Corey stares back as everyone else fades away into the periphery. Even the music quietens as if Corey's senses are all focused in on this beautiful person in front of him.
Corey's mouth breaks into a slow smile, has he found..?
Could this be..?
His soulmate..?!
~~~
"Gentlemen and Gentlemen! Contestant number two! An officer in blue....very arresting don't you think?! Officer, why don't you strip search me!" the drag queen invites cheekily as she introduces the second guy up on the stage in the King of Arq contest to hollering from the crowd.
"The problem with this contest..." says Stephen, turning back to the bar and ignoring the guy gyrating around a pole with black leather pants on and a policeman's hat on the stage behind him, "...Is that it exposes the tragic, single biggest flaw in gay culture..."
"It exposes a lot more than that Doc!" Michael tells him, barely tearing his eyes away from the stage.
"...And that is our almost pathological obsession with youth, beauty and smooth muscular bodies..."
"I know, what a shame," Michael replies sarcastically, wondering what the hell he's talking about, what's the matter with obsessing over a smooth muscular body?
"...Until we break free of our stunted adolescence and our superficial values, we'll always be boys, never men..." Stephen carries on, knowing exactly where Michael stands on the points he's trying to make.
Michael frowns, "Is that all?!"
"I happen to find what Stephen's is saying to be profoundly insightful," Calum tells Michael, standing in between the two of them as he sticks up for his boyfriend.
"I find it to be profoundly full of shit!" Michael declares. "An opinion put forward as truth by a bunch of hypocritical, jealous, guilt ridden, self-loathing, middle aged, sexually frustrated, pseudo-intellectual fags who wish they were straight."
The intimation is clear of what Michael thinks of Stephen, who just laughs at the insults fired his way. Calum turns to look at Michael with his jaw clenched and nostrils flaring, the look on his face equally as clear as to what he thinks of Michael right now.
