Liam Sharma: I fell in love with my straight best friend and lost my shoes in thailand

I landed on Monday in Phuket, Thailand, and reactivated my Tinder profile because Tinder pops off in Asia. And I always pop off in Asia. It’s a mass market, and I have a bank of approved photos of me pouting my dry lips like a cat’s bumhole loaded on the app already.

A screaming toddler had dismantled me on Scoot flight TR21. Scoot is the Thai Airways dupe. The child had galloped down the cabin aisle mid-flight and nudged my bony shoulder. The piss-yellow orange juice in the plastic cup I was perching with splashed all over my keyboard. I moaned, slapped down my sticky laptop and closed my blood-shot eyes and waited for the two darling diazepams I had swallowed before take-off to knock me the fuck out. I was feral at the kid, but my prescribing doctor is a tight-arse, and I couldn’t afford to blow this high.  

I flew to Thailand because I had stopped writing and started to feel unsure about how I leaned into the world. The cadence of self-empowerment to crippling vulnerability is cyclical. The only power I have over it is distance.

My musings online made me feel dirty. It gave people vertigo when I wrote about spinning out on a Grinder guy’s chest in London. Some dudes I slept with in Sydney over the summer brought my writing up to me during pillow whispers. I hated it. The apparent problem with first-person essays is that your words are no longer just yours. I have found the most nectar when I write about what the actual fuck is going on in my life. It is cathartic for me. It’s how I slow down and stretch my bones as I look back and excavate them for words. I felt exposed, and, well, I tensed up. The devils in my eyes stopped dancing on the crust caught between my eyelashes and I stopped writing. Three weeks ago, I was rolling around in bed with another bottom who had just informed me that he had read a piece I wrote for RUSSH about love. I declared somewhere in it that I usually lose interest in men after four or so encounters; I wanted to lick those words back. We were rolling around on the third level of my three-story scrawny Surry Hills Terrace (it’s a treehouse) that I had lived alone in for over two years. We were both bottoms, but he is a writer and I am pathetic. There was a moment when we faced the inevitable fork in the road and he caved and lasted all of three minutes. He apologised for being so brisk and then announced that was the worst sex I’ve ever had, haha. I stared at him and wondered if it was the end of the world.

Later that afternoon, we started to roll around again on the outskirts of the grassy knolls of the Prince Alfred Pool in Surry Hills. I was back in Sydney for the summer and I looked gauntly after months of not taking care of myself in London. It was the first time I had felt the sun on my skin so I stripped off my singlet and lay back flat on the grass. Before he could jump on top of me again, three bull ants bit my right nipple in unison and I squealed and jolted myself straight into the fence. He never texted me after that day, and I couldn’t stop scratching the welts from the insects’ poison for weeks; it was the most rewarding physical touch I’d had in months.

Before I bounced out of Sydney, I had a martini meeting with my editor, Bri Lee. Bri wrote that book you all know, Eggshell Skull, and she took a chance on me six months ago. I write a column every month or so for her online magazine,News & Reviews; it’s entitled Word Vomit. It’s behind a pay wall on Substack which helps me split myself in two. Opening yourself up is an escape out, it isn’t easy but it’s how I summon closure. Reflection sharpens your sense of self, and I spent six summers not doing it. I must feel it out alone first to now squeeze your wrist as I drag you through it because it’s your turn. The extraction makes me sick – It’s billions of neurons twisting tales together until I barf. A column dribbling down the ether to puncture a tiny hole for us to be weird, beautifully flawed, and fucking mad together.

I was 14 minutes late to meet her, I swivelled into the corner of a Bill’s brown sugar booth and told her how all my nerve endings felt fried and that I was shit scared of perpetuating this unhinged stigma that eroded my perceived reputation. I funnelled fried chicken down my throat and licked the split skin on my nails. I had forgotten to eat all day. Bri agreed Thailand would be good for my creativity. So, I put oceans between us so I could drown. I packed my bags, grew my hair and stopped giving a fuck for a second. I slept and swam in silence. I gave my brain the space it needed to shut down in a hut above the Anadana Sea in Ko Phi Phi, I flooded the ooze out of it like a mermaid in limpid waters and blasted the bulbs black-out in fluorescent alleyways. I sat on the edge of the world with the consequences of my own decisions, flicking free the last remains of my creative stagnancy’s smithereens.

Eighteen months ago, I fled on a whim to India. I had reached the end of a relationship that consumed most of my early twenties. I was in love with my straight best friend, and I was in love with him for over eight years. He didn’t love me like that back. We never had sex, and we still haven’t spoken openly about it with each other. He might read this, but I can’t let that bother me anymore. And anyway, it’s not like I see him as much in person now. We tried to link several times over the summer, but it never eventuated – I know his new girlfriend isn’t fond of me because he told me she had a go at him once because I went into his room without asking. We were all smoking and watching TV in his lounge – which is only a few meters away from his room – after a bender, and I was cold. brrrrrrr. I had my heart set on one of his many Supreme hoodies. I stood up, scurried across the wooden floorboards into his room and scavenged around his piles of clothes and found what I was looking for. I pulled his baggy hoodie over my chest, it smelt sickly as if it had been bathed in Aldi Lavender Syrup. I returned to the lounge a touch warmer. She thought it was a daylight robbery. I still giggle thinking about how much our relationship bothered her. She couldn’t bear to watch me wear the clothes she had boasted about folding for him, and I couldn’t stand how much I loved him and never verbalised it. During my unhinged week in North Goa—AKA India’s fabulously feral party jungle—I spent an afternoon with Minerva, a psychic, in the heart of Goa’s rainforest. I sat cross-legged on a cushion on the living room floor of her trippy tree house, perspiring. Her windows had no glass; the forest breathed muggy air into the room as she picked and peeled away my rotten roots to vent them out. I expressed my concern that I seldom cried. I told her the last time I properly wailed was in the shower in 2019 when I fried every hair follicle on my scalp as I sobbed about the complexity of being in love with my straight best friend. I told her everything; I shattered myself on her tiled floor. Minerva shared a lot of enlightenment with me over a few hours as we covered periods of my life that felt both reckless and foundational. But she said something that stuck with me long after I left the wild. She was resolute in her belief that creative stagnancy is resolved by doing more of what you do when no one is watching.

When he and I were 18, we would drive around Remuera in his sleek silver BMW, doing all sorts of deals. His car was a pillar in our friendship – we spent so much fucking time in it. Over the years, his mum bought him upgrades. I sat in the front seat as he road-tested each one. We talked about everything and sometimes said nothing, but the silence never felt apparent. I knew if I told him I wanted something more from him, I would have jeopardised what we had. I thought my life was unequivocally better with him driving it, so I leaned back and tried to sit comfortably.

I still have his jumper on loan – he will always be my friend. He will always be the person who lodged half a salted peanut in my left ear when I was 20. I fell asleep on his shoulder after getting stoned in his room during our university trimester break. He broke a peanut in two and jammed one side of it in my left ear because he thought it was just soooooo hilarious. I woke up in a fit and slapped him. I shook my head from side to side and blew my nose with a finger shoved in each nostril to get all the salty remnants out of my ear’s canal. A year later, I flew to Hawaii with my parents before I initiated my J1 Visa in New York. He and I weren’t speaking much before I moved to America. My feelings for him had eroded our friendship. I think he knew how I felt, and I resented us both for continuing it on for so long. I was snorkelling off the coast of Maui with my mother when I felt a sharp pain in my left ear. I squealed as I shot up for air – my mum thought I had ruptured my ear drum. We got back to land, and went straight to the local doctor near Happy Valley in Maui, who asked me if I had been over-cleaning my ears with cotton buds. I lied and said no. He informed us that he thought something was stuck in my ear.

Like a build-up of wax? I said, squirming on the seat. Maybe, he smiled. Or have you put anything else in there? I gazed at my precious, perplexed mother, who is a tiny-figured woman with a wicked sense of humor and pruney-face. I remember hearing the laugh that was born from the bottom of her belly bouncing off the walls, I remember watching her shit-grin-smile slip off her face, I remember the moment I blacked out for a minute or two. All the colour drained from my skin. I soon realised some of the salted peanut was still lodged in my left ear. I was sent back to our hotel with an at-home ear wax removal cone, and I sprawled my burnt back over the sofa as my mother lit the candle’s end. I stared into the abyss, praying that it was the end. The doctor removed the piece of peanut from my ear the following day; all the nurses and other doctors on shift came into the patient room and looked at the tiny piece of peanut they extracted from my ear, posing on the silver tray beside my head.

It has taken me years to write about him. To write about my first experience with love. I left him in Delhi’s dust but have only just felt distanced enough to articulate it.

I lived in three different pockets of Hackney over three months at the end of last year. I then flew to Australia to pack my life up. My terrace in Surry Hills was my first big-boy home. I didn’t own it, but I didn’t need to. The owner lived out of state and liked that I never complained. Because no one complained about 25 Little Riley Street and I, it’s a blind spot. One side of the terrace is connected to an empty commercial building, and the other is connected to my neighbour, Arthur. He is in his seventies and has hearing loss. The neighbour across the alley is one of Sydney’s most notorious brothels – A Touch Of Class. The brothel first opened in 1972. It’s a national treasure and has been rumoured to have high-profile clientele like the late Australian billionaire Kerry Packer, who supposedly hired the entire venue so his friends could be entertained by 'some good, clean girls'. Scenes from the 2006 Australian film Candy, starring Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish, were shot in the bordello.

I worked at home a lot. The window at my desk primed the perfect view of the back entrance of the lovely establishment. I’d watch men pile in at midday while I chewed on salami sticks. I called it the VIP entrance because I am painful like that. Some pulled up in Bentleys, lots pissed on the walls, most men only lasted 15 or so minutes inside. Some were so hot I wondered if they would just want to fuck me for free. The white chipped window sill with security steel bars framed a movie. Men stared down the brothel’s barred doors like it was a shotgun. They had pools of sweat under their armpits, and their hands shook as they buzzed their way up the crimson-lit stairs. I loved being the nosy neighbour who never said anything out of place, and I think the brothel liked me. I’ve gone in and drank light beers and chatted shop with girls on their breaks when I was too wired to sleep. They danced in and out of the waiting room. I am so gay I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands if two perky plastic bosoms were staring straight at me. I could tell the girls liked me as I lay slumped over on the cherry-red couch next to the madam’s reception. I made them laugh. They let me smoke inside and heckle the men into tipping them more. They couldn’t technically sell me alcohol, so it was always on the house.

I’ve lived on the edge and fallen down every flight of stairs in my first home on Little Riley Street. I’ve looked after Arthur during his forgetful episodes. Arthur constantly nagged me to bring him back whitebait whenever I travelled. He would leave me minute-long voicemails asking only for white bait. I don’t, like, just travel back to New Zealand, Arthur!! I’d grizzle as I screened his call for the second time that week. He treated me like a boy. I became my own man in that house. I never called Arthur back, but I saved and listened to his voicemails when I missed home. His erratic, storm-in-a-teacup demeanour soothed me. I could hear the wind chimes hanging off the tree in his yard in some of his voicemails. I had worried about that tree before I went to London last year. Its roots were getting too thick and too big for its boots.

I remember the morning of the incident on level one like yesterday. I can still hear the sound of the mechanical auger drilling and taste the smell of shit on my tongue if I think about it long enough.

My property manager, Tracey, had texted me the day before the incident to tell me I would be without water in the morning while some guys checked out our pipes. I didn’t ask what was wrong with the pipes; I was more fixated on the fact that it would mean I would have to book the earlier Barrys’ class if I wanted to shower before midday. I hated the earlier class – it was crawling with sober, sculpted, protein-puffing Sydney gays. I should have asked her what was up. I didn’t know the tree’s roots had started to clog surrounding neighbours’ toilets. I didn’t realise it was causing such a communal fuss. I remember first waking up to the mechanical drill’s exhaust pipe muffling unnecessarily loud outside; I pressed my pillow hard on my face and suffocated myself back into a shallow state of sleep. Then, the men in orange suits started drilling. Tracey’s text never mentioned anything about drilling?! I did an alligator death roll and formed a cocoon wrapped in angst that I prayed killed me. Then, I heard Arthur. He wouldn’t have checked his phone, so I am sure he missed the no-water memo. I don’t want to bitch about my adorable next-door neighbour, but I used to overhear him going on about losing his damn phone almost weekly. He never lost his house keys because they hung around his neck or off his top; he often had a tiny key-shaped tan on his chest. He’s cool like that, but that morning he was wild. LIAM, bang bang bang, LIAM!! I jolted myself awake and unrestrained my naked body at the sound of Arthur’s presence. I was gropeable and fucked off that I wasn’t dead.

Before I could bite Arthur’s head off, I smelt shit. I flew my butt-naked body down three flights of stairs to the bathroom on level one. I told Arthur to shut the hell up as my naked arse slid, screeching down the steel bars of each level. I am a Cosmopolitan Gorilla. The ensuing four seconds after I opened my bathroom door haunt me forever. The men in vests burst a pipe, which exploded gallons of diluted poo-particle liquid from our toilets. My entire bathroom had been hosed in crap. Speckles of shit were splattered on my silk pillowcases. I melted on the bathroom floor and missed the earlier Barrys’ class I had booked.

Although the tree was the root cause of this faeces debacle, it had provided me with privacy through its leaves and arched spine for nothing in return. I loved the tree and pleaded my case to Tracey for all the reasons it should be allowed to stay put. Surely, it’s legally protected, Tracey. Most trees are these days, don’t you know that? It’s iconic!! I stupidly texted her one afternoon when all the drilling had driven me to drink. I would have rather lost my mind than lost that tree.

I knew in July last year that my time in Sydney was done. I had a sniff that I wasn’t ever coming back to Australia to live when I slammed the door shut as I ran late to the airport. I mentally filed it under conspiracy theory and slid into the back of the black sedan. My two-minute Uber timer was about to tick over, and I was already so late that I’d have to charm the check-in ladies. I made my flight and picked my nails thinking about the terrace in Surry Hills I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. I knew I had to wash off the dried blood on the skirtboards and wipe down the pastel pink ice cream marks on my bedroom's sliding mirrors. I thought it was a brilliant idea when I microwaved a tub of strawberry vanilla and splashed it all over the glass for art's sake. I licked my name and peed into an empty Peroni bottle on the ground. You would, too, if your bathroom was three floors down. It was dark, and I felt insane. I have to get going. The party must get shut down. I have to come clean to Arthur. Arthur makes me feel so connected to my grandparents, who have all passed. He is a root in my life, and soon he won’t be.

Distance can both dampen and enlighten you. But I wouldn’t be able to write like this without it. I just gulped back a lemon-lime Gatorade, sand is lodged in my arse crack, and the remnants of fried green pea snacks are all through my sheets. I’m slapping my Mac’s sticky keys like the murdered mosquitos that have started bleeding on the walls. I forgot I had acute writer’s block on the third day I woke up here. I went out the night before with two cute-as-hell British girls I met on the beach while watching a fire show. I woke up on the other side of the Island wearing mismatched shoes. Neither of the shoes was my precious Prada sneakers, and I started frantically looking for my phone. I tippy-toed around the dead silent room between two different girls and two unnamed men. I was slightly confused at first; then I rudely remembered that I had insisted on joining a group’s hotel after-hours because I refused to sleep. The free-pouring Thai bartenders cleaned me out. While looking for my phone, I realised I had also misplaced my endangered-nearing-extinct black ALT vape. I darted out of the room in distress, and the swipe-card door locked behind me. I found my phone on the ground in the hotel corridor. I realised I was still wearing such awful shoes. I didn’t want to barge back in and wake them, as I had embarrassed myself enough, so I spared them further agony and decided to wait for them to arise. I starfished over a beanbag on the beach that kind of smelt like piss and started to write this.

Words — Liam Sharma