The Paradise Lodge

The Paradise Lodge is a standalone meta-memoir from Billy Haddad — St Kilda, Melbourne’s queer underground, and a story told across decades.

St Kilda, 1995. A sixteen-year-old boy lands at a crumbling hostel with stolen cash, a black eye and nowhere else to go. Sam is running from a home that tried to break him, then he meets the boy in the room next door. Troy is loud, beautiful, impossible. He hustles on Shakespeare Grove. He calls it a side hustle. Sam has never met anyone like him.

They become a dynamic team, working Melbourne's queer underground, and become high-end escorts for the elite. Trading their bodies for cash and calling it freedom. It feels true, free, and exciting, for a while.

In 1996, a wealthy patron of Sam's is found dead in a Collingwood warehouse. The boys flee. The police are after them, wanting a quick conviction.

A senior detective, brutal and deeply closeted, starts seeking the truth. The boys are on the run, and Detective Miller is on their scent.

Twenty-six years later, Troy is dead. Sam is standing at his wake, holding the diaries they thought they'd lost. And Troy's ghost is telling him to finish the story.

The Paradise Lodge. A love letter to a Melbourne that no longer exists.