Zack

Zack and I were best friends at school. We met in year 8 after the finger pulling incident. Zack is an attractive ranger (ranger as in orangutang, not as in national parks ranger or council ranger handing out ridiculous parking fines) that kept his body in shape. (I know spherical is a shape, but in this instance, I mean in the shape of a hot well-built man shape) Zack’s parents were divorced and happily so. Zack’s dad had remarried, a Filipino woman named Mika, who was lovely. Mika had two sons of her own, Zayne and Tan. So, Zack had two step brothers.

Zack’s mum, Cate, was also lovely. Bubbly and blonde, Cate was the cool mum. The sort who didn’t mind having us sleep overs and getting up to trouble. We were basically inseparable, and once we got our drivers licenses, we were at each other's houses every weekend. Filming videos, playing games or just hanging around the shops, the stuff that 16-year old's used to do.

Zack was one of the first people I ever came out to. For some reason, when I told my close school friends, rather than it bringing us closer together, it kind of just made everything so different. No one had an issue with me being gay, it wasn’t homophobia, but once it was out there, stuff just changed. Once we all left school, we kind of just scattered into the wind. We all went to different Uni’s, or Tafe and started real jobs, in the real world. We all slowly fell out of contact with each other.

To my surprise, I found out through the grapevine that Zack had come out a few years later and was dating a new partner. It’s funny how friendships are formed, and funny how they end. I was hurt that I had told Zack my secret, yet he had never shared his with me. We had a few random encounters, not deliberately, but there are surprisingly few good gay clubs in Sydney so we ran into each other from time to time. We would do the drunken ‘We must catch up sometime’ but it almost never eventuated. Zack was keener to catch up than I was, he invited me to his birthday party a couple of years in a row. I never showed up to his birthday parties, because they always clashed with other plans I had made. In truth, I didn’t want to go. It felt like too much hard work to fit into Zack’s new life. Zack now had a group of super intimidating and judgy friends that made me feel anxious, and I didn’t want that in my life.

Zack and I both turn 30 this year. It was probably time to make an appearance at ‘The Birthday’ and catch up with all the old school pals and family that I had been avoiding over the years. Zack and I were Facebook friends, so we recognised each other's friends from Facebook posts. One day Zack bumped into a friend of mine, Joseph, at one of the clubs we frequented. Zack recognised Joseph from my Facebook pictures. Zack walked up to Joseph and asked if I was the guy with Joseph in his Facebook profile picture. Props to Zack for unashamedly admitting to being a Facebook stalker, we all do it, but very few of us admit to it. Zack invited Joseph to his 30th, so this time I had a buddy to go with. This eased my anxiety a bit, and I think Zack knew this.

Joseph lived in my old hood, so I decided to drive out there one Saturday morning after work to catch up before we headed into the city. It was easier to catch a train to the city from there anyway. We went shopping, hung out, and had dinner with his sister. Before hitting the clubs, I decided to pre-game. A few pre-drinks. I was one week into my new medication and didn't feel the need to drink excessively but for some reason this night I got on a bit of a roll. I had been eating less due to the medication, and didn’t think this would affect my alcohol tolerance, but it did.

After the bottle of white wine, I had inhaled at Joseph’s we made some roadies for the train. I half emptied a 1.25litre bottle coke, and topped it off with bourbon. It didn’t taste too strong, but it kicked like a mule. The train ride to Newtown took 40 minutes. A short walk later and we arrived at the birthday venue an hour and a half late. Zack had a nice sectioned off area at the club and seemed happy.

There were a lot of people to catch up with, so I dived straight into it. My anxiety hadn’t taken the night off so I thought a few more drinks would help. I switched to vodka to mix things up. Maybe it was the vodka that was the problem, maybe I should have stuck to bourbon, but truthfully it was probably an issue of sheer volume. I had already had a bottle of wine and a litre of bourbon in the space of an hour, but felt fine when I walked in, so was obviously having a delayed reaction. The chain smoking and vodka was the stiff breeze that toppled me over the edge of the mountain.

I felt like I was going to throw up, so I took myself off to the bathroom for a little vom. It didn’t happen that way. I did however fall over no existent trip hazards. As I tried to cross the room I probably looked like one of those fishermen you see in documentaries about ocean fishing where the waves are 20 meters high and they are tossed from one side of the boat to the other, and the only thing that stops them from drowning is a piece of rope. I made my way to the veranda in search of a glass of water and found Joseph. I babbled at him that he was my rope and it was his duty to save me from being washed overboard and eaten by the kraken.

Joseph tried to lead me to the stairs that lead down to the bathrooms. I projectile vomited across the floor. It was like a Tsunami, here my metaphors become mixed. I was at the whim of a violent ocean, but I was the ocean. I was drowning, but floating. Luckily no one but Joseph had seen me vomit, and no-one else saw me standing there crying. Luckily Joseph still had his wits about him, he shoved me into the disabled toilet, not because I am permanently disabled, but right there and then I definitely was.

I washed my face and checked that there were no remnants of vomit on my clothes. When I came out of the bathroom, Joseph had already told the staff about the vomit and they were cleaning it up. Ashamed at the looks the staff were giving me, I headed back to the party. On my way back, stumbling and clearly still intoxicated, I decided that I didn't want to be seen looking like this and I begged Joseph to take me home. We left without saying goodbye.

Not listening to your instincts is always a bad idea. I knew I was drunk, but I kept drinking. I knew it would end badly, but I did it anyway. I don’t usually ignore my gut like that unless I’m bordering on a huge mental breakdown, so maybe I was on that precipice that night. I had even predicted that it wasn’t going to end well earlier in the week, but had talked myself into going anyway. I told myself that seeing everyone, and revisiting my past was a good thing, but my gut knew it wasn’t, and I ignored my gut.

When you look back, there are always a series of circumstances and reason for stuff. How do we really determine the reasons we had for doing stuff? Is it all a story we tell ourselves later just to make sense of how things turn out? For a week, I had been responsible about my new medication. What triggered my meltdown? Why did I ignore my gut when it said not to go? Why did I ignore my gut when it said to slow down with the drinking? Why do we make the choices we make?

The next day I messaged Zack and apologised. He was neither worried nor bothered, but I felt as if I had let myself down, and I had let Joseph and Zack down.