The Older Brother
The bowling ball made the familiar rumble-tumble roll down the alley, the rail-guards preventing it from settling into the gutter for it’s short journey. The ball pin-balled off the rails and continued it’s voyage, bumbling echoes of the slow moving sphere filled the half full room of lanes.
What the HELL am I doing here? A spare wheel in the scene of happy families?
My brother Ryan and his wife Sophie were only trying to do their best – I knew that. After the so-called intervention – which was less cathartic and more embarrassing in retrospect – I had committed to them that I’d get better (what else could I say after that?). The novel – such that it was – hadn’t been touched in the last month. Sobriety had brought lethargy and procrastination with clarity.
At nights, sitting in front of the computer watching porn instead of writing my seminal follow-up, I secretly longed for the oblivion that addiction took me to. It was like writing in my sleep – an altered state of consciousness that allowed work to get done without ever knowing it. That longing for “just one drink”, or “only a little pill – I know when to stop” was a nagging, badgering tappy-tap on my consciousness that never seemed to abate. Perhaps time would dull its impact, deaden its persistence.
God I hoped so.
Ryan had read my story so far and he knew what it all meant. He was part me, a younger me, the better me.
He was the me that finished what he started, completed his degree and stayed in his vocation.
He was the me that could find a wife who wanted children, who wanted the domestic, nuclear family that I eschewed purely for cosmetic reasons.
He was the me that didn’t build facades of pretension.
He was the me that I could never be.
Growing up, we shared so much. There was only the two of us and we were two years apart, so we pretty much grew up together – best mates and confidantes. In some ways I helped make things easier for him.
When I brought a girl home, I was 18 years old. Her name escapes me now I think about it – you think I’d remember my “first one”. Simone? Sandy? Stacey? I was a late starter and I had only ever gone as far as kissing, fumbling, a few gropes of some boobs and a hand-job. But, at 18, I knew that this was now the adult version of the teen awkwardness; the MA15+ version of the PG prologue. This was about to be one-night-stand sex – the sex of the movies, of friends’ smutty stories (fantasies), the sex of the letters to Playboy.
But I still lived at home. However, despite knowing that this was a seriously bad error of judgment, the little head that resided in my pants won any discussion of logic and morality that went on and she ended up at my place. We weren’t caught or heard that night, but the next morning, my mother was not amused at all. Outwardly she was very nice to the girl (what the HELL was her name again? Shauna? Siobahn? Shannon?), but the daggers my mother threw me with her eyes told me that I was going to pay for this once the awkwardness of the morning after was done with.
My father said nothing, fuck all. I think he was just happy I wasn’t gay.
Once the young lady left (Shantelle? Sherrie? Sharon?), I was denounced a pariah – a shameful blight upon the family. I was a fornicating harbinger of immorality and decadence that brought deviancy into the home. My Dad simply agreed with her – mainly to show unity and also because he couldn’t be bothered with any arguments.
I knew that my time at home was over – there was no way I could live the life I wanted so I moved out of home not long after. I wanted that freedom and abandon that only the young can truly indulge in. I never saw the girl again (Shelley? Shirley? Sarah? Yes! It was Sarah!). A year later, Ryan brought home a girl from a party and, in the morning, my Mum and Dad cooked her breakfast and Dad even drove her home.
The older brother always paves the way, forges through the unknown wilderness of adolescence to lead not only his siblings, but also his parents, down the path to adulthood for the children. That was my lot in life as an older brother.
It wasn’t all one-way traffic though; being the older brother did have some advantages.
I was 15 and Ryan was 13 and we were watching TV. Mum and Dad had friends around for a dinner party so we made ourselves scarce by disappearing into the lounge all night. Both of us were at that in-between stage where we were too old to be little kids and watched all the time by our protective parents, but we weren’t old enough yet to fully engage in adult conversation. Parties, Christmases, any sort of family get-togethers ended up in three groups – kids 11 and under, parents, and the teens.
(I never liked the term “teen” – I always preferred “Tween” because the 13-16 years old is in between an adult and a child. Not quite one and over-evolved from the other.)
My parents were in the driveway with their friends, executing a particularly long goodbye, which could last 30 minutes sometimes. I had been ordered to have a shower before bed so I left my brother lying on the floor, his head resting on his arms as he watched Arnold Schwarzenegger fumble through the jungle chasing an almost invisible alien killing machine. I turned on the hot water and disrobed only to feel the gaseous rumblings of a mega-fart build quickly in my bowels.
I don’t know why this thought hit me, and maybe its just a male-thing, but I immediately realised that this was too good a build-up of gas to simply waste it on myself – I needed to share. I wrapped the towel around my waist and snuck back into the lounge to creep up upon my unsuspecting younger sibling. Poor Ryan was so ensconced in Arnie’s antics that he never heard a thing.
I quickly jumped astride of him, unwrapped the towel and squatted – all in one motion. As I did I pushed out the bottom-burp with all my might as I knew I would only have a second or two before Ryan reacted.
I pushed too hard.
I sharted.
In one ferocious burst of rectal power, I managed to cover my poor brother in a mass of diarrhoea. It exploded from within me with a force and pressure that I would not have thought possible, perhaps amplified by my squatting stance and by gravity.
I immediately jumped up and away as he rose, shocked beyond comprehension. I could see that his instant reaction was one of disbelief, followed by revulsion and anger – all in the space of approximately two seconds.
Ryan was smaller than me and I knew that I had seriously crossed the line with this one, so before he could say anything, scream for our parents who would surely beat me to within an inch of brain damage, I dropped the towel entirely and physically dragged my shit-covered brother into the bathroom. I expected protestation from him but I think he wanted the shit off him just as much as I did, albeit for different reasons.
So there we were, one naked 15 year old with faecal matter running down his legs dragging his younger sibling (similarly covered in the same matter, but this time extending from his cranium to his waist) racing to get to the bathroom. As we entered the room, I threw open the curtain and shoved my brother under the water.
That was when the screaming began.
I had forgotten to turn on any cold water.
Within the space of 30 seconds, my innocent sibling went from lying on the floor watching an action movie in his pyjamas to getting covered in his brother’s excrement and then being scalded with second degree burns.
He tried to get out but I pushed him back and turned on the cold water, instantly cooling him.
That was when the door opened behind us and my father stood there – in a fit of hysterical laughter. True he was slightly drunk from the dinner party, but I could imagine his surprise to come back inside to find both sons gone, the smell of shit in the air, smattering of faecal evidence on the carpet and screaming from the bathroom. His journey down the corridor would reveal more shit, a soiled towel and more screaming. Then he opened the door.
Yes, being an older brother was a burden at times. But I could laugh about it later.
Ryan didn’t though – he still couldn’t see the funny side all these years later. Even his wife Sophie knew this story and thoug
ht it was brilliant, which kind of made it worse for Ryan.
Yet, here I was – a spare cog in the machine of their family at a bowling alley. My brother loved me, I knew that. Was it despite the antics of the past, or because of them? I always thought it was a combination of the two actually.
Sophie was always kind to me, in a patronising kind of way. She reminded me a lot of my mother and it was no surprise Ryan would end up with a girl that was more like Mum – my wife was the opposite of Mum.
Also no surprise.
Thoughts ran, yet again, to Tina and her absence in my life. If I’d married a Mum-replacement like Ryan did, would I be in this place right now? Perhaps destiny would ensure that I would be…I’ll never know. To contemplate is folly, but I can’t help it.
When all you have is “ifs and maybes”, then nothing is twee.
The reality of where my life had ended up hit me like a freight train that Sunday morning in the Golden Lanes Bowling Alley. Ryan’s kids, my two little nieces (twins – Polly and Eva) struggled to hold the bowling ball as they gently pushed the heavy sphere down the almost imperceptible gradient of the polished floorboards. These little four years olds were so perfect, so innocent, that some part of me yearned for one of my own in the hope that some of that naiveté would rub off on me – even though I knew such perfection was not viral.
Ryan had taken me here to get me “out of my dump”, to try and keep me “off the gear” and help me get “back on track”. The fact was that the track he wanted me on was one I never wanted anyway.
But I loved the fact that he was trying – and so was Sophie who, for the first time I had had ever noticed, was actually being sincere and genuine with me. A part of me wondered if she had been that way all along but I was too blinkered to see it.
My depression did not abate with this trip though, it exacerbated it. It made me realise more and more what it was I was missing and how I’d never achieve this level of family bliss that Ryan – and all these other families at the alley this morning – so clearly had. I could see birthday parties in other lanes, noisy sugar-hyped kids (the first step to substance addiction) competing to see who could be the most annoying and irritating. Huffled mothers tried to retain a semblance of control – diffident fathers watched on with curiosity as they necked another Corona.
Domesticity – how I envy thee.
Through the cloud of my self-imposed negativity I was able to spot something that changed me. This made me realised just what a self-important, arrogant, whining, depressing twat I had become. This kicked me so hard in the heart that I felt like a bolt of lightening spearing through me.
Three lanes over was another birthday party, a smaller one with only four kids. The rails were up on the gutters and the children – probably seven or eight years old were waiting for the birthday boy to have his roll. The ball slipped from his stubby fingers, smacking to the floorboards with a thunderous thump, barely missing his bowling-shoe clad toes by an inch or two. The purple ball rolled with the speed of tectonic plates as it rumbled in slow motion down the slight gradient towards the awaiting pins. The red and white targets had their destiny prolonged as the ball approached, bouncing off the rails. I swear I could see the pins physically shake with fear as they awaited their fate.
The ball hit them, gently nudging the first one and a domino effect ensued, miraculously knocking over all ten pins – not so much with an explosive smash, but more of a crumpled heap. But a strike is a strike.
Birthday Boy’s friends jumped up and hollered, fist pumping the air. But birthday boy wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. He turned around to face his friends and the beaming faces of his proud parents and then I realised the source of his confusion. He had Down’s Syndrome.
One of his friends told him what he’d down and his face lit up with a beaming radiance that could never be faked. The genuineness, the pleasure, the sheer excitement of the moment filled me with such warmth and love at that moment that I forgot all of my own troubles. I didn’t know this kid, nor his parents or friends, but in that moment there was nothing but love in that lane.
True – his parents would always have to be there for him.
True – it was likely he would die before his Mum and Dad.
True – he would never have the opportunity to bring a girl back home.
But this was purity of spirit personified in front of me.
How could I feel so low when this family – who have every right to ask “why me”, “why us” – can revel in the joy of the moment and live their lives to the full?
What’s wrong with me if they can do this and I couldn’t?
Yes my wife was dead…
And there I stopped.
Those words: “My wife was dead”. They appeared to me naturally, casually, without emotional breakdown, tears, indulgence and self-destruction. They rose within me as matter-of-fact, as life.
Without knowing it, the Birthday Boy changed my life.
Thank-you Ryan.
An Easy Death to Handle
The months had slipped away from me, distorting and elongating whilst I took my slow motion dive into oblivion. The time that passed had the nerve to become a year – then a year and a half. I hadn’t realised I’d entered a self-imposed time warp, so enrapt in my own self-destruction and denial that I had barely recognised the passage of time.
My memory faded, blocked out and erased through selective amnesia and the genuine article induced through alcohol and cowardice. Although lucidity returned like the prodigal son, it did not bring with it the guilt-ridden baggage that was memory. I couldn’t remember the details of the months past – and I thanked my mind for that small mercy.
But sobriety brought with it the pain that I had been hiding from (read: running from). The honesty I faced each day, as I eschewed alcohol, forced me to remember the past; to recall my life before my attempt at slow motion suicide was thwarted by the best friends that I could have ever hoped. The subsequent weeks of post-intervention, post-breakdown, post-revelation revealed a strength that I never knew I had.
I resisted the urge to consume.
I welcomed the terror of reverie.
I confronted the demon of guilt.
And I remembered Tina.
Not in the sexualised way of a drunken reminiscence as I was jerking off to internet porn late at night, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t cheating on her with these porn stars if I was thinking of her.
Not in the romanticised way of our white wedding, tuxedos and awkward speeches.
I remembered her as she was.
And those memories are mine.
I could go into descriptive minutia, outlining every nuance of her face, her body, her personality. I could describe the curve of her hips in a dozen different ways, the sparkle in her eyes would take another thousand words. Her sense of humour would be two chapters, alternating between the absurd (and her love of Monty Pythonesque humour) and the high-brown intellectual stuff (a la Stephen Fry) that I rarely understood so I just laughed when she did to try and seem more intelligent than I was.
But none of this would help in any way. There were thousands of memories that had been released from the prison I had locked them in using alcohol as the most vehement jailor. Now they were free, they all wanted attention and screen time in the feature that played back in my head.
However, what was most difficult to recall was the memory I had of something that I never saw. It was one that I knew intimately but it was still hiding from me, dodging my newfound courage to confront the past and move on with life.
It was the memory of her death.
The words came to me as I searched – at first not even knowing what I was looking for. The frustration of failing to find something I didn’t know I was looking for built up until I realised what it was – and then it hit me like a bus.
The night Tina died, I was not with her. I had been as a talk at the University of Western Australia which was arranged by the publish
er and showcased Western Australian writing talent. I felt like a fraud at the time as I had only released two books, although they had done well. I recalled sitting on the stage waiting for my chance to give a five minute speech on my writing process and thinking to myself that I’d never felt more out of my depth than then. However, once I started speaking, the minutes flew by and, before I knew it, my five minutes turned into fifteen and I had to wind it up quickly. The other writers spoke, the audience politely applauded and that should have been that.
Except, “that” wasn’t “that”.
“That” became “something else” when the girl approached me to sign her book.
As I recalled this, I had the mental equivalent of stubbing my toe on a chair in the night. The pain, and the familiarity of it, was instantly recognisable.
Before me, holding open her book, was Desiree.
This was the Desiree of my story, her Gothic/Steampunk persona perfected as she told me how much she loved my two books and was “really hanging out” for the next one. I remembered smiling, coy and bashful, knowing that this brought out my dimples and turned most women to mush. And, in this façade of tough rock-chick, I noticed the cracks of femininity force through.
I should have left then – but I too was hooked. I couldn’t take my eyes off this girl. Her beauty, her adoration and her attentions stroked my ego and I was a slave to temptation. I stayed and drank with her, lapping up her idolatry whilst trying to stay as cool as I dared. I wanted her and when she suggested we go back to her place, I was in no state to say no. The trap had been sprung, my lust caught fast and I couldn’t escape.
We were barely inside the door of her apartment when our hands were all over reach other, lips locked and tongues probing. Clothing started to be pulled out and taken off when my mobile phone rang.
And the world exploded with the words “Sergeant Mike Phillips calling” echoed through my head. Desiree continued to get undressed but I had frozen as the policeman told me to get home straight away.
The strange thing about autopilot is the brain’s inability to recall what actually is happening. I certainly drove home in a daze, but I have no idea if I ran red lights or stayed under the speed limit. One second I was detaching myself from a half naked seductive temptress, the next I was standing in my living room listening to a stranger explain how my wife was killed.
I have never known exactly why Tina was driving that night – she had said she was staying home instead of coming to the Uni with me. Maybe she was trying to find me; maybe she had other reasons to be out on the road in the rain – it was a mystery. My guilt sadistically hinted at the reason why she was dead, a hint that my consciousness decided was fact.
Tina had hit someone crossing the road in the dark, the slippery tarmac and poor lighting compounding her problems. She skidded off the road, rolled the car and was killed when it landed upside down in a flooded ditch.
I didn’t need to know any more – the policeman’s words were white noise to me as I deciphered the night. If I had come home straight away, she wouldn’t have gone out and she’d be alive.
Fault – it was my fault.
I wrestled with this for a long time, various elements within me (and outside of me) argued that:
It was the walker’s fault – the guy who staggered out onto the road.
It was Desiree’s fault – she knew I was married, tempted and weak.
It was Tina’s fault – she shouldn’t have gone out, she should have been able to see the guy walking, she should have been able to control a bloody car!
But, for all my assuaging of guilt and denying the obvious, the simple fact remained that Tina had died because I was with another woman.
How does one reconcile that?
I have the death of a beautiful, intelligent, loving, caring, patient and sensual woman on my hands.
Evil, negative parts of my mind tried to tell me that she was out driving because she was seeing someone else. Even in my most unreasonable state of denial I knew that this was simply bullshit. This blackened part of me tried to deflect the responsibility by creating doubt. This was the same part of me decided that hiding inside Vodka bottle for the best part of two years was an appropriate way of handling this.
That was the part of me that took so long to die. For almost two years I wrestled with the demon that resided within, a cancerous sadist who taunted me with cowardice and fear.
The fear of facing up to my faults.
The fear of facing the death of the woman I loved.
The cowardice in failing to deal with it.
It’s only once I decided to bury the alcohol that I was able to bury the past. I had to starve the inner demon of its sustenance to finally kill it and emerge from my own cocoon of denial to deal with reality. Fuelled by alcohol, regret and fear, the demon flourished and thrived. Denied this sustenance, it withered and died.
I found this death much easier to deal with.
Writing Crash Page 18