And when the rainbow jerseys arrive it shall be complete

I always sniggered (quietly, behind my hand) about the amount of latent homosexuality in the Australian football codes. You know the line: all those fit, hard-bodied men, sweating together in and out of their tight shorts, gripping and wrestling each other for a living. It's got to be more than one-in-ten in the national leagues, right? But of course, the Australian male hegemony being what it (still) is, of course no-one is openly gay in professional football. Not in such a way that it was ever discussed.
Until now.
In case you didn't know, Matthew Johns, former NRL player has been stood down from his job for his part in a group sex scandal. Turns out it's fairly common practise for NRL players to have group sex with a woman - "team bonding" is a phrase often let slip here, like a sly testicle from ill-fitting shorts.

I'd like now, if I may to set a reading exercise (does the fun never end?!). Read the following passage taken from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled 'Defiant rep star says group sex romps will keep happening'. At the end, I'm going to ask an open question which I believe, if I'm right, might just change the ugly, ugly face of Rugby League in Australia.

THE comments of one senior NRL representative player indicate how difficult it could be to change the sexual behaviour and attitudes of elite league players.

He warned group sex among NRL players would continue regardless of a warnings from chief executive David Gallop that unsavoury sexual acts would put their contracts at risk. The representative player told the Herald that his colleagues were left stunned by Gallop's hardline stance when no player had been convicted of sexual assault, adding that the caution would quickly be forgotten.

"It's fine for David Gallop to come out and say you can't have group sex but the last thing blokes will be thinking about on a Friday night at the club is David Gallop," said the player, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don't know how a chief executive can come out and say we can't have group sex if it's consensual. It's like discrimination because that is a person's private life. It's like saying you can't be homosexual, or you can't have such-and-such sexual preferences. How can he tell us what we can do in our private lives?

"We already have so many rules: we can't drink on these days, we can't go to these places, now we can't have group sex. About the only thing we can do these days is go to club functions, and just hang around other players. That's just isolating us more from the rest of the world, and it could lead to even more violent acts."

Are Rugby League players finally coming out of the closet?
Read the passage again, but this time bear in mind the fact that while these players appear to engage in a lot of group sex, there aren't any women mentioned. Based on this, I firmly believe that the NRL is on the threshold of throwing open the flimsy plywood doors, tossing aside the coathangers and shoe racks and announcing to the world "We're here! We're queer! We have group sex with each other!" Imagine that. Out, proud and scoring tries. I reckon the NRL fans and clubs would breathe a collective sigh of relief: no more scandals, no more 'How to treat women nice' classes, no more lies! Just good, honest, consensual sex between large groups of large men without the apparently tricky and complicated inclusion of a woman.
Of course, the game itself may suffer from the channelling of all that built-up homoerotic tension away from the playing field ...

I often I wake up next to Mele scratching furiously in her sleep after a waking dream that a wolf has dragged us into its subterranean den and is devouring her body while I struggle to wake and save her.

Wet Writing

Who else suffers in the heat? Is it just me? It's 1am and I'm exAAWWsted from a day of playing cricket, driving, hockey, more driving and stuffing myself with Greek food but I can't bear to lay down on a thick mattress because the sweat demons will get me. Sweat has only become an issue with me since my early-to-mid twenties. It must be hereditary because I have a very clear memory of going with Dad when he played squash and looking at the plastic chair that he sat in after a tough game and being amazed at how his sweat actually left a pool in the concave seat.
When I took up netball a few years ago I used to play it in a large tin shed without much airflow. After a forty minute game (36 minutes? Help me out here Moifey) I would literally be dripping. The moisture would run off my nose, eyebrows, elbows and knuckles and hit the floor as though coming from a leaky tap. I used to put away a two litre bottle of water per game.
That seemed to start the next stage in my development. Since then, I've become a sweater. All clothes, once worn in anything other than chilly weather, need laundering. When I first moved in with Mele this created a few arguments when she would do the week's washing and find herself hanging up ten or so t-shirts. The arguments ceased when she encountered one of my just-worn shirts.
At hockey today, an opposition player had cause to put his hand on my back during the second half.
'That's disgusting!' he cried, wiping his palm on his relatively dry shorts.
'That's what you get,' I replied. 'And good luck getting the stains off!'
I thought I had grown out of waking up wet, but here I am some undisclosed years later, coming to in the early morning literally drenched. I often have to shower twice in a row. Once to wash myself and again to rinse off the sweat that instantly covers me from head to toe when I step out of the shower to dry myself.

Since I'm still up late I'll relate a little writing story that I've been practising on a few friends over the past couple of days. I'm not satisfied with the way I tell it, so maybe just explaining the events will illustrate it better. I see as a fine example of the unique juxtaposition of internal lives that writer experiences. I hope I can get it out before the laptop shorts out from my leaking wrists.

I have taken to writing in cafes recently. Despite the noise and the people and the cost of a cup of coffee, my work-rate increases hugely over whatever I achieve at home. I believe that this is because at home, no one is watching me so I can get away with checking my email, the weather, the news, eBay, my downloads, my email again, watering the plants, making a sandwich, stirring around pieces of important paper and checking my email for the third time in ten minutes.
At a cafe however, I am sitting there with my silver laptop open at a table and when people look at what I'm doing, if I don't at least appear to be hard at work, then I am just the wanker who brings his laptop to a cafe to check his email and look cool. I chose a particular cafe in Norwood primarily because it has no wireless internet and a comfortable row of bench seats along one wall. I generally sit next to the little staff table for no reason other than I'm a stubborn old creature of habit. The owner of the cafe recognises me and says hello on occasion, but none of the other staff really care to engage me otherwise (also a good work motivator).

This little scene happened just this week. I'm sitting at my table and working over a scene I've written out, but needs going over and tightening and finesseing. Missing words added, tenses fixed, over-long sentences torpedoed with a full-stop or two, that sort of thing. The owner comes and sits down next to me at the little staff table and this time he does engage me in conversation. He says that he has seen me working there a lot and asks me what I do (politely, not what I'm doing). I tell him I'm a writer and a student and he tells me that he likes to read and often thinks that he would like to tell a few of his own stories. I tell him that telling stories is why I'm studying writing and the craft of it is mostly down to hard work and slogging it out at the computer every day. We exchange further platitudes and he wishes me well in my work and I turn back to the sentence I was working on. I read it over and notice a missing piece.
'Aha,' I think. 'I know what this character needs to say to make this little remark make sense.'
I add in the word 'fuck' and feel very pleased with myself.

And that, my friends, is where twenty years of writing craft has gotten me: knowing when to schmooze and when to insert the word 'fuck'.

***
GTH - The points must go to Milly for the sad story.