I Cried in a Dan Murphy’s and Emailed A Retired Rugby League Player

Reflections on queerness, Jackass and rugby league.

I’m standing in the middle of a Dan Murphy’s in Bateman’s Bay. There are tears welling up in my eyes and my vocal cords have seized under the weight of my inability to understand the way I feel.

Five minutes earlier I’d found a complete collection of Jackass DVDs at the op shop around the corner. Utter elation.

Now Amy stands in front of me with the ask that they don’t come back to her family’s holiday home with us. The thought of exposing Louie and Daisy to the content that resulted in a culture of bullying in high school boys, through pranks in a post Jackass era, is more than enough reason to say no.

It’s an entirely reasonable request.

My response wasn’t.

I couldn’t comprehend how something so important to me could be harmful. I also couldn’t comprehend how something like a Jackass DVD box set could be so important to me.

Since coming out I’ve rolled out the same story of my first true moment of clarity in sexuality as a bit at parties, dinners and dry moments in conversation. I’m 13 years old and religiously watching the DVD extras of the first Jackass movie. Chris Pontius, sweaty and exhausted after grinding his way through a suburban Target as Party Boy, is asked “Is Party Boy gay?” Without second thought comes the throwaway reply “If the bear is hungry it will eat”.

Something so silly and seemingly unconsidered hit like a claw hammer of clarity to my head. Colliding so hard I suddenly had no doubts I’d just figured something out about myself.

Something I’d been entirely unable to understand until that sentence was suddenly there in front of me. The intangibility of my sexuality that I now simply label queer had been represented on screen by someone I idolised.

Someone I idolised who had friends. Friends who laughed together with an intensity that is rarely captured. A full bodied laugher that cripples cast members between moments of utter stupidity that so often results in some of the most tender displays of genuine male friendship to be captured on camera. Men collapsing into each other, slapping each other’s backs, giddy with a joy that can only be shared.

Someone who got to share that joy was like me. Like me in the way I was most terrified to address.

There was a feeling of safety in this that has seared itself into my subconscious to this day. Eternally binding me to the Jackass series.

Unfortunately I’d go on to hide this for nearly 20 years. Uncomfortably masking my sexuality behind my ability to pass without needing to address the omnivorous nature of bears. Certain that if I just ticked off the next milestone in life I wouldn’t need to sleep with men anyway.

For the longest time it had stayed hidden. Then it became a funny story. Finally it became a revelation amongst the cartons of cruisers.

The reason I was crying in a Dan Murphy’s was ultimately because it felt in that moment like the person I care most for in the world was rejecting something that had made me feel safe.

Amy and I laugh about this moment now. A moment of absurdity that has ultimately helped us both to understand the part of my identity I find the hardest to understand. It’s also the hardest part of myself to talk about. Even as I type this I am quietly terrified of the visibility of my queerness.

So when I felt that unexpected intense feeling of safety again a few weeks ago I didn’t wait 20 years to act on understanding it.

I’ve recently fallen into another period of rediscovery of the Canberra band Hoodlum Shouts. In my mind still one of the greatest bands to capture the ugliest elements of Australian identity and history in a disparate sound elevated to intensely brilliant levels.

Whenever I find myself digging through the long defunct band’s back catalogue I always gravitate towards one song - Young Man. A sparse song that spurs itself forward to a wailing epic lamenting the murder of Arron Light. The victim of a paedophile ring killed before being able to give evidence. The close friend of rugby league great Ian Roberts.

I vaguely knew the story. A homeless boy who had been taken in by Roberts fled when asked to give evidence in court. Weeks later being found dead. This time I wanted to know more. Searching for content I eventually land on a two part podcast featuring an interview with Roberts. Putting it on for the long drive home from Werribee.

In the first episode Ian Roberts details in length the reality of coming out as the first openly gay rugby league player not only in history but still to be playing the game.

He speaks of the Manly Sea Eagles locker room and starts throwing out names of players who had been there for him during that time. The last player named, Jack Elsegood, takes the wind from my chest. I pull over my car.

Until the week I came out I’d doggedly supported the Manly Sea Eagles. 32 years of highs and lows ended on the couch as I told Dad about my sexuality. Playing in the background of our conversation was a news story on seven Manly players boycotting a round of football out of fear of wearing a rainbow. Dad looked at the tv and with the most sincere voice he could muster stated “well that’s no good”.

It wasn’t good.

The pride round jersey had pulled apart the team and pulled me away from being able to support them. I still can’t.

Yet suddenly listening to a podcast, dodging afternoon traffic, I had that sudden feeling of safety hit me again.

When I was 3 and 4 years old I ran out onto the makeshift footy field in our preschool’s playground alongside Jack Elsegood. Rugby League’s Rookie of the Year, League’s Sexiest Man and son of the owner of my preschool.

We all supported Manly because we all loved Jack. A flock of toddlers followed him wherever he went every afternoon when he returned from training and stopped by to say hi to his mum.

The revelation lands that one of the first men I was to ever idolise was supporting a queer man to the extent he would be called out by name in conversation some thirty years later.

I wrote Jack Elsegood an email that afternoon to say thank-you. He didn’t reply. I don’t blame him. He’s a real estate agent now and an email about a 37 year old man who went to his mum’s preschool’s sexuality probably came across as quite odd on a Friday afternoon.

I’ve been pulling the threads of these two stories and trying to find out why they’re tangled for the last few weeks. Incessantly picking apart why I found the same feeling of safety in the throw away comments of DVD extras and podcasts.

Shower thoughts solidifying. Distilled through the practice of pressing buttons in my notes app.

It’s the safety of being able to be my whole version of self. My inner child is a big dumb boy. A big dumb boy who snorts wasabi for his classmates. A big dumb boy who runs out onto the footy field on the weekend. A big dumb boy who occasionally wants to kiss a bloke. That inner child has found two men to idolise; who would hold space for him to safely be himself.

Despite all my queerness I am an acutely masculine man whose identity doesn’t often feel like it has space within traditionally queer communities. Yet that doesn’t matter because there are people just like me found in Jackass or the Manly Sea Eagles locker room of the early 90s.

For the cracks in traditional male culture where queerness can exist I am thankful.

I am thankful for Jackass.

I am thankful for a real estate agent from the Northern Beaches of Sydney.

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