Page 146 of The Moon Also Rises
“Always,” I say before I kiss his neck. When Jake pushes his arse back against my groin I curse how we don’t have more time before I need to be at Blues Point for my set. “You know you really don’t have to come tonight.”
Jake spins in my arms. “It’s New Year’s Eve in Sydney and you’re playing a Harbour-front set. You really think I’d rather be stuck inside a hotel room, even if it isveryluxurious and has possibly the best view of the Harbour Bridge fireworks?”
“You have been the supportive partner many times before. We’re both jetlagged. You don’t need to come, if you don’t want to.”
“Sod being your partner. What kind of tour manager would I be if I wasn’t there to keep an eye on you?”
I smile at this. It had taken quite a few weeks of persuading Jake to become my tour manager, but I was glad he had taken his time. Leaving his job with Status wasn’t an easy decision, although they assured him he would always be welcome back once the tour was finished. It was also risky, us working together – we’d be living and working in each other’s pockets – not to mention how Jake had never done this exact line of work before. But I knew he was more than qualified for the job, and he quickly proved me right. As it happened, spending more time together didn’t pose any problems at all. Maybe all those weeks reluctantly sharing an office had prepared us well for the dynamic, or maybe we were both too loved-up to be apart. Because we really are loved-up.
After his birthday party and the long, hot night that followed it, Jake and I returned to his flat and stayed there talking until the sun came up on Monday and he went to work. When he returned from work that night, I had dinner waiting for him as well as an eager readiness to answer any more questions he had. Our evenings followed the exact same pattern for the rest of the week until Saturday when we stayed in bed all day communicating in many wordless ways and then on Sunday Jake and I went to spend the day with Mom and Roxana. The following week we went up to Birmingham, Jake and I walked around the corner to knock on my childhood friend Dev’s house. Jake and I had been welcomed warmly and it took no time at all before we were drinking tea and playing Nintendo with his kids, including my godson, Jaden who kicked both of our asses. We followed this routine almost to the letter for a month or so until I took Jake back to LA with me so he could meet Cassie and we could finalise the world tour plans.
It was both jarring and therapeutic having Jake in California with me. On one hand, I had feared having him there would blur my old and new lives in ways I wouldn’t make sense of. Likewise, I didn’t feel completely comfortable with him meeting people who had known me back when I was a very different person. And then there was the proximity to the desert, Michelle, and Gee. An irrational, illogical part of me was almost worried this closeness would infiltrate Jake and tarnish his opinion of me in one way or another. But after letting these fears come and go, I was able to make space for the healing aspect of being in LA with Jake. I got to experience his excitement at a new city, one I had also been thrilled to discover for the first time many years ago. And I got to stand proudly by his side as various friends and acquaintances met him and instantly warmed to him. After a few days, it really did feel like the beginning of a new chapter. It was also good for planning the tour.
Although, at first, he described Cassie as a “terrifying Miss Trunchbull type of woman”, over the course of several meetings they became firm friends whose primary shared interests quickly came to include taking the piss out of me and also agreeing they would hide all my black clothing on the world tour so I would have to wear some colour, something that scared me more than I would like to admit. But still, that couldn’t stop me smiling. I feel like I haven’t stopped smiling since Jake and I kissed outside Clapham Manor House nearly four months ago.
After our LA trip, Jake worked out his notice at Status while I started doing a few warm-up gigs to promote the tour up and down the UK. Once Jake had left his flat and job, he then officially started as my tour manager and together we travelled through most of Northwest Europe doing more gigs and club nights for a few weeks. After a deliberately planned night in Dublin, we spent a week with Marty and Jenna, whose growing baby bump had to endure Jake singing most of Wham!’s Greatest Hits to it. After that, we returned to London for a short time while I got my Hoxton apartment ready to rent. Jake also had a proper farewell party with his friends, which was a modest affair in a Mayfair pub’s function room and there was absolutely no dancing or lip-synching by me, much to Lionel and Luigi’s disappointment.
We took a week off to spend Christmas in Edinburgh with Malcolm and Carol, which was exactly the slower-paced rest we both needed before we boarded a flight to Sydney two days ago. It was also what Jake needed, to spend quality time with his father who revealed he’s started doing cognitive behavioural therapy, and I even managed to persuade him and Carol to join me on some of my meditation sessions.
The next eight months will see us travel most of Asia, North America, South America and Europe on this world tour that I am more excited about than I expected. This is thanks in large part to Jake accompanying me but it’s also because I’ve created a set that will honour my roots and my father’s memory. Gone are the EDM remixes I once used to do and instead I will be focusing on playing the seventies and eighties disco and soul my father loved so much. I’ve remixed my old releases to have this same flavour and bringing nearly half of my personal vinyl collection on the tour with me. The rest of the records are now lovingly displayed on the unit in my living room and my new tenants have my full permission to enjoy them as much as they choose.
While Jake still has a way to go with his debt, he continues to pay off a decent chunk each month, helped considerably by the fact he no longer has to pay rent or many living expenses, something I insisted on as soon as he agreed to be my tour manager. More than a few times I’ve considered paying off the remaining balance for him and one time, I was seconds away from voicing the suggestion, but in the next breath, I sensed that Jake would refuse it even if I offered. And I don’t want to offer. Me paying off his debt wouldn’t bring him the affirming mood boosts he enjoys each time the number drops. Me paying off his debt wouldn’t give him the self-esteem-enhancing pride that he feels when he puts a little extra cash aside into savings that he regularly tells me he wants to spend on our first home together. Me paying off his debt would present more problems than it solves.
Not that it’s all been easy. It hasn’t been. Jake has had many wobbles along the way including a few pairs of shoes that he grumblingly took back a few days later of his own accord. Despite us being with them last week, since the party he’s also not had the regular contact he wanted with his father and when he finds himself having to call him more often than Malcolm calls him, sometimes he drifts off inside himself and it takes a little encouragement to bring him back to the surface. And other times, whenever they have spoken, the conversations have been so stilted and one-sided that Jake can’t move on from them until he’s had a big cry on my shoulder. It feels a little insensitive to say this but those are the moments I treasure most and I always, always tell Jake how grateful I am that he gives me the privilege of being there to look after him.
I am slowly getting better at showing Jake the same vulnerability.
A month ago, I finally heard from Michelle. It was off the back of an interview I did with The Guardian, the only piece of public press I have done about my comeback tour. In it, I talked openly about RemiX, and about what it cost me, emotionally and to a certain extent, financially. I didn’t mention Gee or Michelle’s names and it was a condition of the interview that the article also didn’t refer to any other individuals, but there was enough noise surrounding the publication that it wouldn’t have taken people much to piece it all together. Indeed, Michelle read enough about herself in the article that she felt motivated to contact me after over two years of silence. Her email was scornful and it detailed just how disappointed she was in me, and just how much I had betrayed her and Gee. She also told me how much I had now “muddied my waters”, tainting “the purity” I attained when I was part of RemiX. It stung at first. I felt old familiar stirrings of panic mixing with the dreaded fear of letting down someone I cared about. But then I glanced up from my laptop and watched Jake cooking me dinner while shaking his perfect backside to Sister Sledge’sThinking of Youand I deleted the email and let it go.
The hardest day we’ve had together was on a windy autumn day in November: my dad’s birthday. I’d been feeling the build-up to the day for almost a week, and I hadn’t uttered a word to Jake about how I was feeling, choosing instead to try and push through the way I woke up with a heavy weight on my chest and how any moment of silence invited that deep, dark self-disgust that had kept me company since the day I found out he had died. And I didn’t tell Jake about it. I didn’t share how awful I felt. I didn’t even tell him when it was the day that should have been my father’s 76thbirthday. I didn’t tell him until I was pushing food he’d lovingly made around a plate and staring at the wall of the London apartment we were renting for a few weeks. Jake had kicked me under the table and insisted I talk to him or he would take my credit card to Selfridges and ruin my perfect credit score. When I’d opened my mouth to tell him it was Baba’s birthday, only sobs fell out.
After a few minutes of crying at the table, Jake dragged me to the bathroom where he ran me a bath and put on his own playlist of choice, which was anything but chilled-out music. I continued crying as I lay in a sweetly fragranced bubble bath with Britney Spears playing on a Bluetooth speaker near my ear and Jake holding my hand while sitting on the closed toilet. It had taken me a few more hours to really voice why I felt so bad, to admit how disgusted I felt with a previous version of me, but I did share some of those feelings and mercifully, gratefully, Jake had stayed by my side the whole time.
I hope Jake is always by my side.
“You know I do wonder what Steveo is up to these days.” Jake is looking back outside at the view.
“Steveo?”
Using air quotes, he explains, “The ‘straight’ man I was stupidly hooking up with when I was living here. He had a wife in Melbourne and swore he was straight but nevertheless had a terrible habit of rogering me senseless.”
“I happen to think that’s my best habit of all. After meditation, of course.”
Jake laughs and it’s my favourite song. “God, I’m so glad you’re funny these days,” he says. “No way we would have lasted this long if you weren’t.”
I smile at my boyfriend. “So what do you think Steveo is up to?”
“I really don’t know. But I’d like to think he’s living his best gay or bisexual life, or just being whoever he wants to be. Life’s not exactly easy when you’re living a lie.”
I nod before moving to stand behind Jake again, my arms wrapping around his chest this time.
“That was what, sixteen years ago, you say?” I ask and in my mind I pinpoint the year and start to scroll back through my memories.
“Sixteen years to the day. I remember that new year so vividly. We were at a club night in the hotel I worked at. I left it too late to get tickets for something more exciting. I can’t remember who was playing but it wasn’t terrible. Besides, that night I was all preoccupied with Steveo. Or rather, I was preoccupied with trying to getun-preoccupied with him. I actually dumped him that night, and I was all ready to stop messing around with unavailable men for good, but somehow a few weeks later he broke me down. And spoiler alert, he wasn’t the last unavailable man I slept with.”
“We’ve all done things we regret,” I say and bend my neck to kiss the skin I find just above the collar on Jake’s shirt. “The key is to not be consumed with that regret.”
“Yes, Guru Rami,” he says and then when I don’t say anything, he adds, “Too soon?”
