by Lech Blaine
‘You’ve provided a high-range alcohol reading,’ he said. ‘I’m placing you under arrest for the purpose of further analysis.’
The cop opened the back door of his police car. A sheet of Perspex divided authority from the shit-kickers.
We glided smoothly towards the CBD. The officer made a series of garbled remarks into the two-way. He stared in the rear-view mirror, grim with recognition. ‘You’re the boy from the car crash,’ he said. ‘The one who walked away. Aren’t you?’
I shrugged.
We pulled up outside the silver police station. I’d been here six times in twelve months to defend Dom from the accusation of dangerous driving.
I stumbled through the sliding doors and sat down inside a small, square room, waiting to be tested by a more precise piece of machinery. As a P-plater,
I needed to blow 0.00 per cent. I blew into the mouthpiece, praying to a god I didn’t believe in to save me from disgrace.
The computer whirred for thirty seconds before returning the dreadful verdict: 0.217 per cent. I could already see the headline: CAR CRASH SURVIVOR CAUGHT DRINK DRIVING.
First, I was required to spend the night in lock-up. A young woman and an old man were on night shift. The guy sighed. ‘Anyone you want to call?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Parents?’
I shook my head.
The girl took an inventory of my personal details. ‘Do you suffer from any mental health conditions?’
‘I’ve got depression,’ I said.
I’d never said the word out loud, but it seemed like the only crisp way to label my unrequited desire to die.
The officers performed a strip search. They made me put any loose belongings into a clear plastic bag.
‘Can I keep my phone?’ I asked.
‘No way.’
Everything went inside. Wallet, iPhone, car keys and digital camera. The bag was placed in a large plastic tub like the ones at the airport, along with my belt and shoes.
‘You were in the Highfields crash,’ said the old cop.
I nodded. There was a mortifying silence.
‘What were you doing behind the wheel of a car that pissed?’
We walked towards my jail cell. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
The man unlocked the door and handed me a freshly pressed prison blanket. ‘I’ve got one golden rule in life: don’t apologise unless you know what you’re sorry for.’
The cell was deliberately unwelcoming. In the corner was a metal shitter with a missing seat. I took a sip of lukewarm water from the silver fountain. ‘Oi, ya weak dog,’ whispered the neighbouring deadbeat.
A red dot blinked from the security camera in the top corner of the cubicle. On the wall was a sign: YOU ARE CONSTANTLY BEING WATCHED. As if I didn’t know this piece of wisdom already. It was advice to live and smile and die by.
‘Fuck you, ya dog,’ growled my unseen adversary.
‘Shut up, cunt,’ barked the guy beside him.
I lay stiff on the rigid surface, using the blanket as a makeshift pillow. I transitioned between the first two phases of grief: denial that I’d done anything wrong, and anger at the police for arresting me.
These delusions were entrées to the bottomless dish of depression that wrenched my insides apart from midnight until morning. I cried quietly to avoid being humiliated by the lunatics in the adjacent cells.
I canvassed all the ways I could kill myself once I was released, before conceding that I probably didn’t have enough courage to follow through with any. So I planned elaborate vanishing acts. I’d withdraw all my money from an ATM. Throw my iPhone and car keys into the river. Buy clippers from a chemist. Board a bus to Victoria.
A police officer opened the door. ‘You’re free to leave,’ she said. I followed her to the front desk and signed the bail documents. I was served with a high-range DUI that immediately disqualified me from driving. My court appearance was set for three weeks’ time.
The guy behind me was one of my dad’s former customers. ‘Your old man’s gonna be pissed,’ he said.
Outside, it was a beautiful June morning. Opportunistic taxi drivers waited across the road to intercept the brawlers and drunk drivers emerging from lock-up. The radio announced that an eighteen-year-old male had been arrested after providing a homicidally high breath test. I scrolled through the pictures of Vincent’s party on my phone, scrutinising my grinning face for clues.
Dying is the secret wish of the survivor. I don’t just mean by suicide, although that had become the most attractive exit strategy. I’m talking about the need for danger. The impulse to shipwreck the miracle of being alive.
On the Sunday night following my arrest, I committed social media suicide before doing anything too rash.
My regret kept intensifying as I slowly sobered up. Laughter floated over the back fence from a barbeque.
There were more obstacles to killing my Facebook account than throwing my body off a bridge or swallowing a fistful of sleeping pills. The jilted algorithm identified Will, Hamish and Henry as my three best Facebook friends, because I’d spent the previous year stalking their digital apparitions. Images of us together were deployed to prevent me from taking the leap. They were going to miss me. Why was I betraying them?
My departure from social media had a bureaucratic euphemism: DEACTIVATION. The profile could be resurrected whenever the urge returned. I clicked deactivate. It didn’t do much. I spent another sleepless night more adrift than normal.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I deserved death more than my friends, that my survival was a waste of breath. I was perfectly prepared to trade my life for theirs. Why them? Why not me? The midnight appeals went unanimously against me.
YOU SHOULD BE DEAD YOU SHOULD BE DEAD
I was beyond sleep, beyond study, beyond love, beyond wasting my breath and blood much longer.
My father pulled up in the driveway. I knew on a tenuous level that it must be Monday afternoon. A hushed argument ensued between former spouses at the other end of the house. I opened the door to hear my mother say, ‘He isn’t playing silly buggers, Thomas. I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself.’
Dad’s heavy steps proceeded up the long hallway. Coins clanged against keys in deep trouser pockets. He knocked softly on my bedroom door. I made him bang more urgently before I answered with pretend sleepiness.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘It’s me,’ he said.
I opened the door and wiped fake sleep from my eyes.
‘G’day, big fella,’ he said. ‘Come and have a yarn.’
I followed him out to the back patio. My father had sold the tavern a month earlier and was in the midst of a lawn bowls bender. I could’ve been about to receive a lecture or the rendition of a dirty joke.
‘How’d you go at bowls?’ I asked.
‘Shit hot,’ he said, chuffed with himself, before remembering what he was here for. ‘So I spoke to my solicitor. He sang the praises of a criminal barrister. Best in the business. We’ll go in tomorrow. He said to bring your report cards from school.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘How are ya feeling?’
‘Struggling a bit.’
‘Fair enough. Your mum told me you want to quit uni.’
I couldn’t tell if he was angry or sympathetic.
‘Yeah. Just for the rest of the year.’
I could see he wanted more detail, but I begrudged his interest now that my life was over.
‘Do whatever you need,’ he said. ‘I’ll back you to the hilt.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, more ungratefully this time.
We talked awkwardly about everything except why I needed a lawyer: sport, the weather, his desire to renovate my childhood home and buy a motel up north.
‘Lech Blaine,’ he said.
‘Yep.’
‘What’s the g
o?’
‘What do you mean?’
Dad twisted his moustache. He was sixty, hair finally starting to recede, but still with ridiculously thick facial hair. ‘I can tell when you’re beating around the bush,’ he said.
‘I’m just tired.’
‘Well, I’m a bit bloody worried about ya.’
‘You’re worried?’
‘Yeah. So’s your mother.’
His disappearance and her alcoholism hit me as if they’d both happened a minute ago. I mustered all the courage I had left to hurt the person I needed more than anyone.
‘It’s a bit late for your worry,’ I said. ‘My life is fucked.’
Dad looked like he’d been bitten by a green ant – wildly irritated that something so little could pack such a sting. ‘Oi,’ he said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The moment grew both large and small, fast and slow. I gasped, slumping into my father’s arms. But I couldn’t cry, a symptom of my constipated emotional state.
Dad yanked me back towards him like a bouncer, nuzzling a sunburnt nose against my ear, stubble scraping against smooth skin. ‘What is it, mate?’ he asked. ‘Tell me what the hell’s going on.’
‘I can’t.’
My father laughed heartily. He lifted my chin with his fingers.
‘You’ll get through this. We all make mistakes. I’ve been done drink driving. Bob Hawke was an alcoholic! He fixed his act up, and the country loved him. There’s no use crying over spilt milk.’
I twitched with anger at the missed clues, the constant comparisons with famous larrikins, his insistence that everything would be fine if I just continued to lift my dipping chin. ‘For six months, I’ve wanted to kill myself,’ I said. ‘And you’re still worried about whether or not I’ll become the fucking prime minister!’
Dad studied my lightless eyes, finally recognising the tight deadline. So much heat and history flowed between us. He bit on a chapped, quivering lip. ‘Don’t say that!’ he said. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Do you understand how much people love you? How much I love you?’
‘It’s too much to live with,’ I said.
‘I can’t lose you, mate,’ he said, weeping freely over me for the first time that I could remember.
I hoped nothing would interrupt, that I could bottle up the thickening intimacy between us and live inside of it.
‘Do you think I don’t blame myself?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘Just don’t kill yourself. I guarantee ya, mate: it’s gonna get better. In twelve months’ time you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.’
‘What about Tim?’ I said. ‘He isn’t improving.’
My father’s tenderness flickered with trademark irritation. ‘So you’ll do him a favour by committing suicide? That’s gonna do wonders for his recovery.’
The tears began to dry. I could see a game plan whirring behind his eyes, the old coach stirring up. ‘I’ve done a pretty piss-poor job,’ he said. ‘But you can’t keep all this shit to yourself. It’s too much for one person.’
ACT III
THE SURVIVOR
‘Just because you have stopped sinking
doesn’t mean you’re not still underwater.’
Amy Hempel
Solidarity Forever
On Tuesday morning, I quit my pizza delivery job and dropped out of university. My father and I drove to Brisbane to collect my belongings, and straight back to my childhood home in Mort Estate, which he’d received in the peace treaty with my mother.
‘Welcome to the Ritz!’ he said, a publican with a boner for home renovations. ‘There are only two rules: no drugs, and don’t shit where you eat or sleep.’
‘That’s three rules,’ I said.
‘You get the drift.’
Twelve years after we left Mort Estate, Glenvale had been infiltrated by violent ice dealers, while the inner-city slum of my childhood was undergoing a renaissance thanks to gentrifiers flooding back from the suburbs.
Our house remained dilapidated. Floorboards were covered by linoleum, putrid shades of lime and ivory. The bedrooms had seaweed-coloured carpet. In exchange for Dad paying my exorbitant legal costs, I would help him complete an overdue facelift.
‘I don’t need to give you a tour,’ he said.
My father’s interior design principles gave the impression that we were criminals hiding out after an art heist. There were less than ten items of furniture, but at least fifty pieces of sporting memorabilia, taped in bubble wrap to protect from scuff marks, and covered with blankets to hide them from burglars.
Bananas decorated the card table. The bar fridge contained milk, a tub of butter, a loaf of raisin bread and a carton of Diet Coke. A stack of Lite n’ Easy meals sat in the mini freezer. On that first night, two bachelors at a loose end played blackjack while eating Mongolian beef and sweet-and-sour pork.
‘It’s time for you to knuckle down,’ Dad said.
I had an appointment the next day with Dr Rattray, my childhood GP. Still unable to sleep due to anxiety, I spent the night trawling the internet, becoming an iPhone psychiatrist. Grief was too universal. Depression didn’t have enough teeth. So, using a series of free quizzes, I diagnosed myself with PTSD, bipolar II, alcoholism, social anxiety and narcissistic personality disorder.
I didn’t give my father the bad news yet. ‘All the best,’ he said the next morning, handing over a Mastercard.
Dr Rattray’s surgery sat opposite my primary school. In the waiting room, I rated twenty-two vague statements on a scale from 0 for NOT AT ALL to 4 for A LOT, according to my feelings about the car crash.
I think about it multiple times a day. I feel numb when I think about it. I know I have a lot of feelings about it, but I bury them.
A total of 44 or over indicated severe emotional disturbance. My score was 57.
The second survey included forty-two statements to help refine a diagnosis. Twenty-four received the maximum rating, including I feel I am worthless, I feel I have nothing to look forward to, I can’t experience any positive feeling and I feel that life is meaningless.
The cheerful receptionist tallied the grim results.
‘Young Lech!’ said Dr Rattray when he emerged from his office. ‘You’re a picture of health.’
I shuffled into his office, unnerved by how delighted he was to see me. There was a tan line on his ring finger. Maybe he knew a thing or two about a rough trot.
‘You don’t seem happy to see me,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
I confessed to my arrest. Then, for the first time, I went into graphic detail about the daylight fatigue and midnight insomnia leading to a public act of self-destructiveness, and my peaking temptation to act on months of rising suicidal ideation.
‘I’ve been reading about Freud’s theory of the death drive,’ I said. ‘Repetition compulsion is making me re-enact the original source of trauma.’
‘Well, we don’t have a tablet for that,’ said Dr Rattray.
‘I’m also inclined to suspect bipolar II or PTSD,’ I said, stung by his flippancy. ‘Although the frequent hypomanic tendencies – such as the grandiosity and impulsivity – could be evidence of narcissistic personality disorder.’
The doctor sipped from a water bottle and reviewed the test results on a clipboard. My depression was extremely severe, but my stress and anxiety levels merely severe. I had no physical symptoms of PTSD, such as trembling hands or involuntary flashbacks, and no evidence of mania. The doctor smirked as if to say: You think this is a mental breakdown?
‘You’d be the first self-diagnosed narcissist in the history of psychiatry!’ he said. ‘But you sure don’t love yourself much.’
I was irritated. He seemed to be underestimating the record-breaking nature of my pain. I relitigated the case for a diagnosis of PTSD and bipolar II.
Dr Rattray straightened his glasses. ‘I don’t get the PTSD vibe,’ he said. ‘You started driving again
straight after the car crash. All your nightmares are about missing dead friends, not the collision itself. And I’m sorry to tell you, my friend: drink driving isn’t a symptom of bipolar.’
‘So what’s the problem then?’ I said.
‘Your biggest issue is that you haven’t really grieved since the crash,’ he said. ‘What you need to do is work through the time-consuming business of understanding who you are and what you lost. Whereas I get the impression today that you want the most godawful diagnosis to give you a great excuse for the magistrate.’
‘That’s not true! I’m taking full responsibility. But it’s not the real me. Why else would I drive while drunk?’
‘My theory? I think you climbed behind the wheel of a car for much the same reason you jumped into the passenger seat a year ago. To prove you are a man.’
Dr Rattray didn’t have a cure for toxic masculinity, but he prescribed 50 milligrams of Pristiq as a short-term salve for suicidal ideation. His letter to a psychologist destroyed the soothing illusion that I was irredeemably cursed, and nothing I did would make a difference.
Mr Blaine has a tendency to pathologise sadness that is produced by personality traits consistent since childhood, he wrote, or the logical grief from witnessing the death of three close friends. He needs to learn coping mechanisms to process negative emotions, rather than numbing them with alcohol. I feel that generally the severity of symptoms is in keeping with the lesser diagnosis of an Adjustment Disorder (Reactive Depression).
On the way home I googled ‘famous writers with an adjustment disorder’, but came up empty. The diagnosis was a crushing blow to the self-importance of my sorrow.
That afternoon, in a kitchen straight from the 1950s, I lost my pharmaceutical virginity to a serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. School students shrieked on their way home. The pink tablet went down with water from a corrugated tank. I felt an ancient pain uprooting from my long-suffering soul – or maybe that was just the taste of rust triggering déjà vu.
The following few weeks were like a combination of The Block and Dr Phil. On the first morning, when I sheepishly appeared for duty, Dad laughed at my Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt and ripped skinny jeans. ‘Put on some shorts, mate. We’re not here to fuck spiders.’