From Campus to Camera

Hey everyone, this is a chapter that I feel a bit unsure about publishing because it heads into Tyson's point of view as he opens up and I'm just not sure if it works with the story but thought it was the best way to say everything.

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Embers of Resilience

Walking around Tyson’s room, I notice that he has a lot of memories both good and bad scattered around his room as I can tell that for how confident he is now, he has had to put in a lot of work to be the person he is today.

Even though I know the complicated basics of his life, I feel like that I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is underneath there because from the limited things and what I can see that he has been through so much just to get to this point.

Heading out of his room, I notice another picture that looks a lot more recent than the others as I take a long look at it and notice him standing there with his grandparents and I can tell it’s a new photo because it was at the first Night Markets a couple of weeks ago.

I head back out of the room and have a quick shower before just laying on the bed in what would be my room thinking about things especially about moving in with Tyson because I know that it’s only a matter of time before things get worse at the apartments. 

The issue though is the feelings with Tyson are so damn confusing because I really like him in a way that is more than friends but then if we move in together will he be expecting anything because of the way that I opened up to him even though he says that he isn’t.

Tyson gets back from the gym as I’m looking at the bus timetable on my phone “I’ll drive you home, It’s too long of a trip back” he says as he is getting changed and into work mode which his outfit really isn’t too much different to what he’d wear if we were going out. “Don’t you have to get to work?” I ask as he nods but then tells me that he factored in the time before he has to be there at 12 and it’s actually in this direction.

As we are driving back, Tyson looks at me “So when are you moving in?” he says with his smile that means he’s having fun but I don’t realise that he is joking right now.

“I have to think about things, I’ll still have to pay rent on my flat for another six months at least with money that I don’t have and then if I tell my family about needing to move then they’ll know about my situation and that I’ve been less than truthful about everything which causes more stress,” I say as Tyson nods his head and then turns to me.

The concerned look on his face worries me for a moment “I was only messing about with you because like I’ve said, there’s no rush on me finding a roommate if I want one at all and as I said everything is paid for so it’s only 50% of the bills and that is less than what your rent is before adding bills in” he says as I nod and feel him patting my leg.

“Just remember though that you are an adult, you don’t need your family’s permission to do anything because you are you, nobody controls who you are but you,” he says bringing out that line again which is clearly his motto for life that is serving him well.

Heading up to my apartment after he drops me off, I jump straight onto my laptop because I need to look at my finances and re-arrange them again because even with the healthy money from the porn shoots, my account is already dwindling because I’ve had bills come out.

I spend the next few hours back focused on my college work, working on my main research paper that takes up 70% of my marks for the subject so I need to get it done as well as possible to make sure that I pass and get the most attention for the next step going forward. 

Starting to get a headache I realise that it’s nearly 6:00 and that I haven’t eaten all day. I grab something out of the freezer to heat up in my sometimes working oven which today is deciding that it doesn’t want to work and after 20 minutes of trying, I just end up using the microwave.

Dinner ends up being atrocious which is expected from heating it in the microwave but it was something to eat as I go and have a shower. The quality or lack of in the apartment is on full show tonight as it takes nearly 10 minutes of cold water to shoot through the system before I get something that is akin to hot water. I make another note and shoot the landlords my fifth message about the issues knowing that I’ll either get just a thumbs-up emoji or no response at all.

It’s only about 10 pm when I hit bed, still pretty tired from the last few days and having an early start in the morning. My sleep is actually pretty good until it’s about 1 am when I hear all sorts of commotion and screaming from downstairs before there is a big bashing on my door.

Ordinarily, I would let it go at this time of night because with the people around I don’t want to even risk hoping in the door but then I can hear Sharon yelling “SCOTT SCOTT, YOU IN THERE”.

I rush out just in my PJ pants to see Sharon panicking and smoke billowing from downstairs “Someone threw a Molotov or something through the window downstairs” she says panicking and needing my help to get downstairs.

Stupidly, I head back inside to get my laptop because I know that I need it for school and I don’t want to lose anything on it as well as grabbing a few important pictures and stuff before heading downstairs. As I get down there, I’m being rightly yelled at by the firefighters for being stupid and going in there to get some personal items but the one thing that I didn’t want to lose was my family photo which was the last one before Dad had his stroke.

I get downstairs and see how alight the building is and how quickly it’s spreading with all the crap that was in the apartments and then the storage room that is located in the middle of the second storey catching alight. As I keep watching it, I pray for the first time in I don’t know how long because over the past few weeks, it seems like I’ve just lost everything and I’ve put so much effort into the apartment.

Even though it’s nearly 3 am, I try to ring Tyson but get his voicemail straight away before getting through on the third try even though I know that he should be fast asleep.

“Scotty, everything alright bro, it’s 3 am” he says I know that I’ve woken him up and I didn’t want to but I didn’t know who else that I could call in this situation. “N...Not really… my apartment's on fire, someone attacked downstairs” as I start my sentence I can hear him on speaker phone already getting out of bed and getting ready to come to be with me.

“I’ll be there shortly, let me get dressed,” he says as I try to stop him but he won’t let me finish my sentence “I’m not letting you deal with this alone”. 

It’s about 40 minutes before Tyson gets there and everything is well alight and we get told there is nothing that could be done until the fire is completely out and given how spread it is could be a few hours at least but even then, it’ll need to be inspected by fire safety crews before the Arson Squad gets involved.

As I’m standing there I feel a hand on my shoulder “Hey, I wasn’t expecting you to actually turn up here, I shouldn’t have woken you up” I say as Tyson hits me but then gives me a big hug that doesn’t really dispel any thoughts Sharon has of us.

“Who else are you going to call? It’s not like you’ve got anyone else close by and I want to be here for you and help you” he says as we all get given a generic information sheet about how everything will work and then they take our contact details and tell us if we have somewhere to go we can leave whilst other arrangements are made.

I ask Sharon if she’s got anywhere to go and she nods that she can go to her sisters as I give her a big hug and I head off with Tyson.

“Guess you are moving in now” he says in the cheerful way that only he can trying to bring a lightness to the situation which works.

As we’re driving we go past an all-night diner “Do you want to get some Coffee or something?” Tyson asks as I nod and we pull in to pick up some stuff. Heading back to his apartment, I tell him he can go back to bed but he just wants to chill out with me as he opens up his iced coffee which looks too thick for this time of morning but unique situations call for unique things.

Tyson puts on some music as we sit there and I’m just having a Latte “They your grandparents?” I ask and point to a picture right next to the TV that I think he’s had hidden when I’ve been here. I look as Tyson nods “Yeah that’s my Nan and Pa, we took that when I took them to see Hamilton last year” he says as I look at him surprised.

“Yeah, I know I said that I don’t connect with my family but they are the only two that I have any contact with and they know that I’m a hair stylist and gay porn star” he says chuckling a bit thinking about it. “They know everything about my life and what I do and they stood by me when I was having the issues with my parents and they have never let on anything about me and what I’m doing,” he says as I sit there nodding.

I never wanted to force information out of Tyson but the fact that he feels that he can open up to me is special considering how long we’ve known each other which really hasn’t been that long but I think we just get each other which is important.

As we sit there, Tyson opens up to me about what happened and even though I didn’t want to push, I’ve always wanted to know and I think that he has been desperate to open up about it with someone.

“So it was a Wednesday night and I’d told Mum and Dad that I’d been going to the library just to do some Chess practice because yes that’s a thing but I stopped off at my grandparents to go pick up my gym stuff because that’s where I’d kept it and they weren’t living too far away so they’d let me keep stuff there,” he says as the story continues.

Heading to my grandparents' place, I wasn’t feeling good about myself because I just hated everything about my life at the moment because I knew that I was a disappointment to my parents because they wanted the star athlete to follow on but I was never into it and I think they resented that. My brother and sister got all the attention because whilst not a football player, my brother had all the athletic ability and they fawned over him taking him everywhere and I had to get to my Chess tournaments using the bus. 

I’d lost about 20 pounds in a few months and my parents started noticing especially my Dad who still resented the fact that I had a passion for the gym where he thought it should’ve been for athletes who actually cared about what they did and that I shouldn’t take up the space. My Dad was unusually cruel to me which I still haven’t ever worked out because I know that my grandparents were never like that and my Nan often laughs at the way my father is because she knows that it wasn’t how he was raised.

Getting back after hitting the gym, I wasn’t expecting my Dad to be at my grandparents and I don’t know whether it was because he suspected something but he was there which was unusual and the ordinary chat between my Pa and Dad was probably more than what it seemed. I came back to my grandparents straight from the gym and so my Dad was fully aware that I’d still been going despite being banned by my parents from doing so.

The car trip back home was a weird one because I didn’t even get a chance to change or anything at my Grandparents so my Dad took offence at everything “WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU? DON’T FUCKING ANSWER THAT I KNOW AND I TOLD YOU NOT TO” he yells as I can’t even get a word out at all like I’m a criminal that has been out committing crimes when all that I wanted to do was just be a healthier and better version of myself.

The night at home was an absolute nightmare because it felt like that I’d become the verbal punching bag for Dad when things weren’t going right because yet again he failed to make the move onto a College coaching job again because realistically he was not a good coach. The frustration often got brought back to me because he would come up with this excuse that “If I was a competent football player or had any interest in the game, Colleges would want me and that when that happened, he’d come with me and have his foot in the college door.

I never knew why my brother copped the same level of crap that I did because my brother shunned football initially for Baseball but then took up track and field athletics and was really good at it until he retired after doing both ACLs and he just didn’t have the enthusiasm to get back. My relationship with my brother and sister was strained because they got everything because I suppose as the babies of the family. After all, there was a few years difference between me and them so once I became “a failure” all their attention went to my siblings.

The rest of the night I don’t remember what happened but my Dad just went ballistic and told me that I needed to remember my place in the world and that was where I just had enough and packed my bag and walked out. It was about 11 pm and I was laying on my bed and I was on my laptop just reading a magazine online and realised that these people were so happy in their lives and living in the city I needed to do something.

I thought that I could’ve lasted a little while here before finding somewhere to go once I turned 18 but that night when I came downstairs to get a bottle of water my parents were down there talking about this situation that they weren’t happy with. I knew that my sister had snuck out with her boyfriend and snuck back in so I thought they were talking about that when I could hear them talking about how they were going to deal with the situation.

As I got the bottle of water I was listening but then very quickly I realised that they weren’t talking about what my sister did but talking about me. I still remember hearing my Dad “I’m sick and tired of the dishonesty and disrespect of him, it could’ve been so big for us that if we got him into Football because I would have had the chance to step up instead of being stuck here” he says as I sit on the stairs trying to listen.

The passivity of my Mum always frustrated me because she would always just go along with what my Dad said and even when I did try to talk to her she would just say the exact same fucked up lines that Dad would about things as well. It was listening to a whole lot of what they had to say and it was just plain nasty you know, I thought there was some resemblance of care and love for me but it was at that point where I knew I was a disappointment because I could hear them trying to think of a way that they could get out of coming to see me at the State Chess Championships.

They never really took too much interest in that part of my life but arguably on the biggest day that I could have they were looking to more or less try to find an excuse to get out of it hurt me so much and it was the same sort of comments and insults that I’d get at school from mostly the guys on the Football team and I knew that my Dad not saying anything was condoning it.

I just went back upstairs and packed my bag waiting for my parents to go to bed and I just wrote a note which I still remember every single word I wrote that night and then just walked out the door promising myself that I would never set foot in that toxic pit of hell again and I didn’t.

“Katrina and Francis,

I heard every word of what was said downstairs last night and it hurt me to the point where I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be living in a place where I’m seen as a disappointment and treated like I’m the problem child when I’ve never done anything wrong in my life.

You let Robbie and Cassie get away with anything and everything but for me going to the gym has been an issue to you because I’m not happy with the person I am and I should be. I know that Dad knows about the comments and taunts I get from his football team at school and I know that he hasn’t said a thing because he resents me and the feeling is mutual because all I wanted was his respect and love but I never got it.

For all the words that you could say, I know that it would never be true and instead of being a disappointment to you and hating myself for that, I would rather be a completely new person that I love and want to be.

Don’t come looking for me because I don’t want anything to do with you ever again because you’re truly nasty self-centred people and only ever cared about yourself and how you look to everybody else through both Robbie and Cassie’s life. Dad proved to me in the car today that he didn’t want me to play football for my benefit, he wanted to use it as his step-up into the college coaching program.

I just want to be happy and having any sort of relationship and contact with you is never going to make me happy so any sense of connection between us is dead and that the Francis you know is dead and I will be a much happier person living as a gay man which I am and know that you both hate”

The note might’ve been harsh or cruel but I’ve never ever regretted anything that I’ve said in it and even though that quite a few people might tell me that I’d want them back in my life but eight years later I’ve never thought of once that I wanted them back in my life. I’ve surrounded myself with the right people and look at me, I’m happy about everything I have done you know and I actually see my Mum around the place because she comes into the salon regularly to get her hair done.

I don’t know whether she knows about me working there but she’s never said anything to me and we’ve interacted before. The difference in how I look is probably so big that she doesn’t recognise me at all and it might be that there has been a slight bit of plastic surgery that changed things enough but she hasn’t ever said anything to me.

“What? She surely knows that has to be you?” Scott says to me as I look across and shake my head at him. Nah, she’s been coming in for the last 3 years and I’ve only been there 2 years and she’s never said anything to me about it and I’ve never suspected that she knew at all though even if she did know that it was me, I really doubt she lacks the ability to put the two brain cells together to actually think on her own.

I go back to telling the rest of what happened that night, I just walked out the door and went straight to my grandparents' place because I know that they always had my back with everything and even though I didn’t know what they were going to do because they spoke to my parents regularly that they could have just told my parents that night.

Thankfully, they never did and when my parents came looking for me the next morning, my grandfather actually snuck me down into the wine cellar that only he and my grandmother knew the code for and kept me down there for the time that my parents were looking for me.

I don’t know what my grandparents said to my parents but things quickly settled down between everyone and that my family never really came looking for me again and although part of me thinks that they should have, I think deep down that as sad as it sounds that they really were glad that I was gone and they could focus on my brother and sister.

The influence that my grandparents had on my life growing up can never be underestimated because they are powerful people and I suppose that in other people’s situations, they wouldn’t be so lucky to get a roof to live under and have somebody so supportive around them to help them. As time went on, I lost weight more and started building the body that I have now and as much as it was a pain I loved every bit of it.

With the change in my life and the support, I started to explore a lot more and because even though I knew that I was gay and there were zero doubts about it, I still hadn’t done anything so I started going out more and hooking up which was a real eye opener and I just came really out of my shell and was probably a lot more out there than I am now because I was still not sure and I’ve now embraced this personality because I’m still pretty masculine but still not afraid to slut it up. As I say that, we both sit there and laugh nodding because I can see that Scott is sitting in that same situation and being able to open up to him makes me feel good because I’ve never had the ability to do it at all.

It's nearly 7 am as Scott says that he has to get ready to go to College and I try to tell him to leave it but he wants to get there because it’s important to him and I nod and admire the dedication he has as he goes into have a shower and get ready. 

As he goes and has a shower, I head into my room to look out the window and reflect on everything in my life that only very few people know the full story and I don’t tell them what I’ve ever been through in my life being deliberately vague about the story. 

It’s not that I feel embarrassed about my life but it’s something that I’ve tended to shut out and never really think about because honestly, I think of that time as if it’s the life of someone completely different and that the Tyson story starts once I turned 18 and then started to get into porn and embrace who I am.

Despite all the shit that happened in my life, I’ve never actually ever felt disappointed in myself for what I felt that I had to do but at the same time I actually feel proud that I was able to just say no this isn’t good for me or my situation. I always knew that I was gay and as I’ve told Scott nobody that would know me as a kid would be surprised but I’ve never actually felt any hate towards myself about it and honestly, I want to make a difference to the world and if I can do that to help one person I’ll consider that a success.

Thinking about the situation with Scott whilst different reminds me a lot of myself, a kid who grew up not in the easiest of circumstances and the fact that he is on a path of discovery for himself is tough because I can see in his face that he only got into porn or the money but there is a deep desire down there for something different and as much as I want to help him out, it’s only up to him to figure out.

Watching him get ready, I just smile at how determined he is and again that determination reminds me of me when I was younger because I know so many people that would be so down and looking at the negatives of everything and wondering how they go on. Scott takes everything in his stride and just looks to bounce back better because he has been through a lot in his short time and I think he has that dedication.

I look at the time after Scott leaves and head to the salon for work and I’m glad that it’s a Monday because we generally don’t take bookings on a Monday because we are one of the few places that will be open on a Sunday for people to come and get their hair done ahead of the working week which makes their lives all the more easier.

Everybody at work knows about my porn career and it’s something that if it comes up I’m not afraid to tell people and naturally you get some people that aren’t a fan of what I do and react negatively but the overwhelming response is actually one of interest. Heading to work today, I look at the bookings for today and there are only half a dozen but as I look I can see a name that is familiar and just hope that today isn’t the day the awkward conversation happens.