“Porter Street, Beginnings’ End”
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Context
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‘Porter Street’ was a private clubhouse in Porter Street Prahran (behind Chapel St). It had been a gathering place for gay men since the 1990’s, and had occasionally garnered publicity when deaths had occurred from drug fueled ‘stim parties’ in which men would inject themselves with methamphetamine and GHB and have marathon sex sessions. Almost unknown to the heterosexual community, Porter Street managed to fly under the radar from the authorities and maintain its offers of sordid depravity for almost a decade. When gay men would die from being ‘made love to’ too hard, an ambulance would sometimes be called, and to conceal the fact a death had occurred, the ambo’s were paid to carry the victim out with an oxygen mask on their face to depict they were still alive to any potential passer bys on the street, despite the fact they were stone cold dead.
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Act 1
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Xav crosses his right leg over his left and enthusiastically flips through the pages of the MX clubs guide to Melbourne, licking his lips in excitement over the plethora of possibilities that awaited him.
X: ‘Dude, this place looks perfect for your birthday!’ It’s called Porter Street, it’s 5 minutes from here too.
S :‘Dope what’s the guide say.’
X:’‘The traditional home of all things manly, sweaty, furry and leather clad, Porter Street is not one for the faint hearted, though it’s bark is definitely worse than its bite. In fact, the crowd in this VCAT-approved men only joint is probably one of the friendliest on the scene, just don’t expect any Kylie tunes. An excellent beer garden out back makes for perfect blokey afternoons, while the weeknd often plays host to dance parties. The real star of the show is Thursday night’s strictly leather event, Spit n’ Polish, complete with free buzz cuts.”
X: Ok that’s it we’re going.
S: I’m not going fucking gay clubbing.
X: Dude, it says Sunday nights here both sexes are allowed, imagine all the hot fag hags!237Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvfhn3xgPqW
S: I’m not convinced man, it’ll be mostly guys, fuck that.
X: Dude nothing else is open on a Sunday and everyone else is busy, let’s just go and if it’s all guys we’ll come home.
S: Alright, fine, but if it’s heaps of gay cunts I’m out.
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11PM - Porter Street
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As they approached the club, two beautiful door girls came into view, Shane licked his lips. Importantly there were girls and guys in line for the club. It was the real deal, a unisex night. Just as Xav had promised.
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X: I told you man! There’s heaps of hot chicks here, and dudes!
S: Wait what did you just say?
X: I mean like, good looking dudes will attract more girls to the club and there will be more girls total for us.
S: Ahh, fair.
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They waited in line for no more than 5 minutes, before being greeted gleefully by the door girls.
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DG: List?
S: This is our first time here we’re not on anyone’s list.
DG: That’s fine guys, you’re both cute so you can go through, it shouldn’t be too busy tonight.
S: Awesome! Cheers for that, maybe see you in the club later! (Smirk)
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The red ropes were lowered and they walked down the path to the club.
X: I got weird vibes from her, she was strange.
S: Really? I thought she was bangin’ and potentially keen..
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The pathway to the club was far from the red rope adorned entrance. The front of the building they approached was grey and monolithic, statues of gargoyles lined the perimeter of the garden, nestled between a spiked fence and array of security cameras.
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S: They’ve got a lot of security here for a club.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a club have so many cameras and security guards.
X: It’s a pretty exclusive club man, they’ve gotta keep things safe.
S: It can’t be that exclusive, they let us in without a peep.
X: Yeah true, apparently the unisex nights aren’t huge for them so maybe that's why.
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They arrived at the front of the building, and red velvet curtains hung in front of the open door. Smoke wofted out from the velvet hangings and the sound of high BPM electronic music could be heard as they approached.
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S: You first.
X: No you first.
S: Fuck that, I don’t wanna catch gay.
X: Oh my god you’re so silly, you’re not gonna catch anything.
S:...
X: Fine! Follow the leader!
The entrance room to the club contained a cloak room housed within a wrought iron cage. There was no one behind the counter. Beyond the cloak, were 8 doors, each listed in roman numerals. The frame of each door had what seemed to be a theme. One door had an aquatic them, another had a Roman theme, and another seemed to have a strange flesh theme. To the right of the doors lay a dark steel elevator, with a series of strange numbers surrounding it, the numbers read. B1, B2, B3, all the way to Basement level 10, and beyond those numbers, were a series of symbols. Shane could make out the Omega symbol but the rest were entirely unfamiliar.
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Act 2
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The pool ebbed with glugginess, as the abundance of lubricant and bodily fluids had turned the water into a layered gruel.
‘If we dive under whilst they search the room and we hold our breath, they won’t find us’
‘I’m not getting in that fucking pool man, there will be some other way..’
‘There’s no other way man, we’re gonna have to get wet.’
Xavier lowered himself slowly into the semen filled gay play pool as to not make much noise, and said softly once again to Shane, ‘we have to get wet..’ and submerged himself with his mouth confusingly agape and a smile in his eyes. Shane’s eyes darted around the room looking for a place to hide, he found a small clothing locker ajar, and managed to squeeze into it.
The gay brigade burst into the room and frantically searching high and low, Shane could see through the grating of the locker, the men were buff and oily, sporting obvious roid guts and repeatedly chanting something as if they were zombies, and it wasn’t brains..
The back of the locker began to give way, and revealed a tunnel leading into a ventilation shaft. How incredibly fortunate he was to have picked this locker of all lockers. On the floor of the tunnel was a plastic bag filled with needles and vials, it must have been contraband hidden from the rest of gay community. He pondered for a moment what on earth would be considered banned in a place so depraved. Another plastic bag lay next to it with the initials JL written on the front, contained inside was a book titled “How to avoid sloppy story writing” it looked unread.
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Shane peered through the grating of the ventilation shaft down into the pool room. In exhaustion from holding his breath, Xavier had been forced to surface. The assailants immediately noticed him and he was pulled out of the pool. Shane’s heart sank and the reality of the situation began to sink in. He continued crawling until he reached another grate, he peered through to see Xavier on his knees surrounded by at least 5 men, liberally servicing each of them with an unsettling fervour. He wasn’t sure if Xavier was trying to stall them by actively engaging in group felatio or if he had fallen and become a changeling.[]
He remembered what Xavier had said to him days earlier when looking back on their youth, and missed career opportunities, ‘It’s never too late to be what you could have been.’ He had said, and perhaps Xavier had taken that quote into practice and finally found his place.
‘He’s done.’ Shane said to himself, and continued crawling, until he reached a ventilation opening in the adjoining room. It was a cold room of some sort, filled with plastic wrapped sacks of what looked like meat, but he couldn’t be sure. The door to the meat room was locked from the outside. The only way out was back from whence he came or a manhole in the middle of the floor where the blood drained through. He opened the manhole and exposed another tunnel. He crawled through into the narrow and blood filled wooden buttressed space. He crawled for 10 minutes in the dark, the tunnel seemed to be going down rather than up and as he progressed gregorian chanting could be heard, it became louder and louder, the tunnel began to feel hot and humid. Light started to appear, and he finally reached the mouth of the tunnel. A huge cavern became visible, filled with industrial machinery and massive dark holes that seemed abyssal. At highest point in the cavern was an altar, with a lectern next to it. Behind that lay a massive mirror looking object bolted to the cavern wall, it looked like a mirror without a frame. Shane felt puzzled.. There was no way back, and the only way forward was to enter this strange cavern. Just as he was about to drop down, people began to enter the room. He shuffled back into the tunnel and remained quiet. A man in a red robe with black trim approached the lectern.
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‘I am glad to see such a turn out tonight, the delegates from the outer rimworld clubs will be arriving shortly and the ceremony will begin! Let us pray our brothers do not tarry! We have an eventful night ahead gentlemen.’
Shane noticed that there were no women in the audience, only men in white cloaks. Shane waited for the speech to finish, and as it did, he noticed a gurney being wheeled out toward the altar. It was Xavier, completely naked, his body bruised and battered and a pool of fluid lay between his legs seeping off the side of the gurney. Shane shuffled back into the tunnel to obscure himself more, there was gay bullshit afoot. The mirror against the wall began to shimmer with light, a dark light.. as Xavier’s body was wheeled closer the light intensified.
The man in the red robes spoke ‘We commit this changeling to the depths of the gay underworld, may he cross the River Styx safely, and arrive in his eternal home of Sodom.’
The gurney was pushed toward the portal, and was violently sucked through with supernatural force. The crowd began to roar with a thunderous applause, and Shane began to feel dizzy and feel his eyes closing..
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Act 3
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2 Weeks Later - Monash University
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On his way to class, Shane spots Xavier limping toward him in the distance with a poorly disguised shit eating grin on his face.
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S: Dude what the fuck?! I thought you had died?! How the hell did you get out of there? What the fuck is going on?!
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X: Man what if I was to tell you that everything you saw that night, was an act.. a kind of.. charade..
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S: A charade..? You tell me Xav, what kind of charade, ends with you sucking a bunch of guys dicks!!
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X: I did what I had to do to make it believable for you. We had to stage a narrative that was consistent or you would’ve seen through it. I’m not actually gay man, not full blown anyway. This whole operation was intended to highlight your homophobia. I thought that through you seeing all this stuff going on you would’ve changed your mind about the gay community, but I think in retrospect it was a bad idea.
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S: So you organised hundreds of people at this venue and spent god knows how much money to try make me less critical of gay men? I don’t buy it man. I know you’ve always been partial to that world..
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X: I’m not partial though man I like girls.
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S: What about that guy in JoBurg’ who bottomed out on you? I remember overhearing you tell that story at a party we were at last year and you thought I didn’t hear but I did..
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X: That was just jive talk man I had to make it seem convincing for you.. even back then, this has been a long work in progress trying to turn you around. By the way South Africa is worth visiting though, Johannesburg is a beautiful place.
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S: After everything we went through that night, I have come out feeling more homophobic than before, what were you thinking staging such a ridiculous plot? Did you seriously think upon witnessing a bunch of sex acts, hiding from the gay Gestapo storming rooms searching for us, and some obscene KKK esque ritual that I would actually have a better opinion of gay men? You’re a fool man. Why would you even bother..
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X: Because I love you man, I want you to see the world the way I see it, free of the constraints of petty phobia and open to a spectrum of free love and unbridled sexual hedonism. Call me an epicurean, call me gay, but life’s too short man, now give us a kiss and let’s get fuckin’ weird.
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The End
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