Bradley and I had never talked about giving each other a hall pass before. I guess I must have been hiding under a rock all my life because, honestly, I’d never even heard of the concept until that night we were out for dinner during our trip to Sydney.
At that point we were three nights into a week-and-a-half-long visit for Mardi Gras. It’s something we’d both been wanting to do for a few years but never quite managed because every time we’d leave it too late and find all the events sold out and the hotels booked by the time we got around to planning anything. This time though, we’d been prepared. And we were finally doing it.
We were out with our old friends Ross and Lance at a restaurant in Darlinghurst, the gay neighbourhood. Even the idea of a ‘gay neighbourhood’ was wild to me because I’d never been to a city that had a whole neighbourhood for our people. Looking around the restaurant the tables were filled mostly with men, and mostly hot ones, too. I guess thats to be expected in a town full of guys who are primed for the male gaze, and live close enough to some of the world’s top beaches that they can manage to maintain a permanent tan. I have to admit I felt conspicuously plain in this city.
We were talking about the official post-Mardi Gras afterparty coming up on Saturday, and Lance was going on about how fired up he was about the headline act, a certain Puerto Rican DILF and gay icon that he’d been wanting to see live in concert for literally decades now. “Seriously,” he said, “his videos back in the nineties were my gay awakening. The one where he’s in those leather trousers? Made me feel things I did not understand at the time. Or the one where he’s like, in some kind of underwater orgy? My god, I would have given anything to be one of the pairs of hands in that video, rubbing all over those abs.”
“Ah,” said Ross in some kind of aha moment. “So that’s why you wanted him to be your hall pass,” he said.
“What’s a hall pass?” I asked, confused by the reference.
Everyone at the table stopped and stared at me like I’d asked them to explain gravity or something. “You don’t know what a hall pass is?” Ross asked.
“Surely you two have hall passes,” Lance said. “Every couple give each other a hall pass, don’t they?”
Bradley seemed to know what they were talking about because he shook his head in response. But I must have looked sufficiently blank-faced that Lance could see he needed to explain. “You know, like a freebie? One person that you have permission to fuck outside your relationship if you get the chance?”
I shook my head. “We’re not open.”
“No honey, of course. Neither are we… mostly. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” I asked.
“It’s like the one exception to monogamy,” said Lance.
“Your one get-out-of-monogamy-free card,” added Ross.
“You get one person you’re allowed to hook up with, without it being considered cheating, and without your partner being allowed to get upset about it,” Lance explained. “It has to be someone famous — it can’t be like, Steve from accounts, or your ex boyfriend or something.”
“It’s more hypothetical than literal,“ Ross added. “That’s why it’s always a celebrity, someone who’s a long shot.”
Lance glanced at Ross with an expression of exaggerated offence. “Speak for yourself,” he told him. “We’ll see at the afterparty if it’s a long shot or not. And if Ricky’s inviting me backstage you’d better believe it’s not going to be hypothetical then.”
Everyone laughed, and Ross gave Lance a sympathetic pat on the back “I believe in you, babe,” he said in the least convincing tone possible.
“So who does Ross get to fuck then?” Bradley asked.
“His is one of the Hemsworths,” Lance replied, “but I can never remember which one — which is it babe?”
“Well I was making an argument for it to be all of them,” Ross said. “But if I have to narrow it down then it’s got to be the one with the big hammer.” He gestured an indication of the size of said hammer.
“So who would yours be?” Lance asked me.
I scrambled to figure it out on the spot. “Jonathan Bailey?” I speculated out loud after a few seconds. I pictured him wiping a stray drop off his lower lip, and decided he would definitely do if I was allowed one celebrity affair.
“Decent choice,” Ross said. He looked to Bradley. “And you?”
Bradley didn’t need time to think it over, the answer was obviously on the tip of his tongue already. “Luca Reyes-Rivero,” he said.
Judging by the blank looks on Ross and Lance’s faces the name must have been as unfamiliar to them as it was to me. “Who?” Lance asked.
“Have you guys seen that new TV show, Conquestus?” he said.
“The one with all the mean gays in ancient Greece?” Ross asked.
“Ancient Rome. But yeah that’s the one.”
Ross thought for a second before it clicked. “Oh,” he said, “I think I know who you mean. The really slutty one? Wavy black hair, ethnically ambiguous, big fuck-me eyes?”
“Yeah, that’s the one, Bradley replied.
“I don’t think I know who you mean,” I told him. Period dramas weren’t really my thing, and ancient Rome definitely wasn’t my thing.
“You’ll know him,” Bradley said. “He was in that film we watched a couple of years back, called Release, about the guy who got out of prison and falls in love with the hot nerd?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, trying to picture it. “So he’s the guy who gets out of prison?”
“No, the hot nerd.”
Lance was on his phone by that point. “Oh, I see now,” he said. “Very good choice.” He turned the phone around to show me. I only vaguely recognised the face, but god, those eyes. And those thick, lush brows. Full, soft lips. Sharp jawline. This guy had supermodel-level beauty. Even if I didn’t really remember who he was I could see why Bradley would be interested.
I felt heat in my cheeks and could tell I was blushing, which was weird: it was only a photo after all. The guy wasn’t real — I mean, obviously he was a real person, but he was a celebrity so removed from our lives that he might as well be fictional. I was never going to meet him, and Bradley was never going to meet him either. But seeing how quickly Bradley had thought of him when asked, I wondered if he’d fantasised about the guy before.
For a second I wondered what would happen if they actually met in real life. And to my surprise the idea of it excited me a little.
“He’s handsome,” I said, the understatement of the evening.
“So what do you reckon,” Bradley asked with a laugh, “you okay with me having a hall pass to sleep with Luca Reyes-Rivero?”
I shrugged. “You can have yours if I can have mine.”
I probably never would have thought about that conversation again. That is, if we hadn’t run into Luca Reyes-Rivero in person that very same night.
