“Okay, how the hell you know they told her that? Ain’t like they said it in emails or texts or WhatsApps.”
“Actually that one was just a lucky guess.” And once again with his string of meditation beads – or abacus or single-function calculator or whatever. “Way I see it, you’re a teenager, Dylan. You’re at the age when you’d want to seek out your father regardless of any of this other bad business. It’s imprinting. It’s thousands of years of data bound up in men’s collective DNA. In primordial societies, boys would reach a given age and start to go out hunting with their fathers. Spend every minute of every day together. The switch from being mummy’s boy to daddy’s daily hunting partner was a big fucking deal – even came with all kinds of traumatic initiation rituals designed to give meaning to the pains of growing up. To suffering and loss and heartbreak and tax return admin. That way, the young men wouldn’t slip back into being perpetual adolescent mummy’s boys who try at all costs to cushion themselves against discomfort and rejection and contrary opinions. Or who try to seek out other kinds of validation.” He started scrolling through a bunch of For Examples – chatting about sports cars and strip bars and that. Gangs, terrorism, football hooligans, locker rooms, boardrooms, groping, arrogance, over-explaining. Said one reason that men keep getting twisted online is cos guys need more validation generally.
I asked him to tell me again the bit about over-explaining.
“And then along comes a digital economy that’s practically designed to turbocharge these tendencies – to tell them what they want to hear, bolster their fragile egos, wrap them up in their own tailor-made cotton-wool kindergartens. So you see, Dylan, in light of all this, how could I possibly in good conscience stop you from seeing your father?” And then scrolling down to some next slide: “However, I would say this, kid: you’ve done okay without having a daddy in your life – all your teachers and tutors and heroes are in agreement with this. All the symbols and metaphors that have more than performed the paternal function. So try not to undermine things now by pining after some fuckhead father figure like some self-pitying, therapy-addict patsy.”
“Okay, what the hell does that even mean? You want me to meet my dad in theory – for some random anthropology reason – but not in practice?”
“I mean scratch your itch but not your scab. I mean stop clicking on every single link. I mean meet the man if you must do, Dylan, but don’t talk about things. About what’s going on here. Me, the digital archive – don’t even mention that you work here. Don’t give me cause to regret this.”
“I ain’t got a fucking clue what’s going on here anyway and you know it.”
“Well then, that’ll make it easier for you not to talk about it.”
“Look, why do you keep longing this shit out? Why can’t you just cut to the season finale smackdown and just tell me why they blacked out my dad’s stories?”
“Sure,” he said, “why didn’t you just ask me that in the first place? Your father’s stories were redacted because we didn’t want anyone to read them.”
Even before the taxi pulls up, I already know my dad’s the passenger. Knew it soon as I clocked the headlights appearing at the top of the road. Push open the door of the phone booth with elbow instead of hands to avoid snot/phlegm/jism, but then the payphone starts ringing – the jump of it making me shut the door instead of stepping outside.
Payphone stops ringing.
Again, I elbow open the door and, again, the phone rings. Shut the door and phone shuts up. Dad don’t notice any of this shit – first he fumbled for his change, now he’s fumbling with his keys. Now he’s indoors, fumbling with his umbrella, talking to the woman who mans the twenty-four-hour security desk. Once again, I elbow open the phone booth. No gold stars for guessing what happens next. From inside the booth, I try scoping out the street to spot whoever it is who’s fucking with me. Nearby parked cars, the windows of nearby houses. But it’s dark and drizzling and dying and so on, so I can’t make out diddly fuck. Then what I do next is, I start opening and closing the door on the quick – so quick that whoever’s messing with me won’t have time to keep hitting redial. Have to use my actual hands to do this instead of my elbow, but that’s fine, whatever – I’ll be sure to shake my daddy’s hand when I’m done. Don’t matter how fast I push the door open and pull it closed, though – ringing just carries on starting and stopping in sync with the hinge. This fuckery goes on for a couple more minutes before it even occurs to my dumb ass that maybe I should pick up the phone. But I don’t. Because my dad’s now standing outside his block of flats, watching my random display of dicklessness.
“So you came to see me then, Dylan.”
Finally, I step out the phone booth. Ain’t walking towards me, though, just standing and watching. Him lifting his umbrella a little, me losing my hood.
“Why were you fooling around with that payphone?”
I tell him the phone was fooling about with me. He looks up and down the road, says it’s probly just kids, switches from holding his laptop case by the handle to sliding his arm through the strap. I do the same with my rucksack.
“So I take it they’ve spoken to you,” he says instead of asks. “Well, let’s hear it, then. Let’s go for an evening stroll and talk about it. Let’s see how many blocks we can make.”
I tell him ain’t nobody’s spoken to me.
“No point playing dumb, Dylan. How else would you know where I live?” Damp streetlamps making his moustache look dunked in tar or someshit. “You should have phoned and told me you were coming to see me. We could have planned something. I could have kept myself free. To talk about it properly – to discuss what you’ve been told. I’m supposed to be going out for dinner in an hour, but we can walk for thirty minutes. We can get all the whining about being fatherless out of the way. All the struggling to survive your single-parent upbringing – that self-indulgent nonsense they picked up from the news. It’s fine, Dylan – as a matter of fact, I’m glad that you came. Actually, why don’t we just go inside and talk in my flat.”
Before I left his office, the Botox man hit me up with one more sermon of advice. Said that all his talk about our “ancient tribal forebears” had reminded him of something I might find helpful.
“When you meet with your father, be mindful not to rely on reason or logic.”
“Mate, I know I ain’t got much experience, but I’m pretty sure that same shit could apply to all sons and dads.”
“Just accept what I’m offering you here, Dylan. A few hundred years ago, I’d be giving you a fucking sword or a magic wand or something. I still feel remiss for not providing you with a single-function flashlight the other week. So let me at least give you data. Info. Information about information – I believe the technical term for that is metadata. When you meet with your father, your feelings of kinship and clanship will dramatically impair your ability to use reason or logic. This won’t be because of heightened emotion or sentimentality, but because logic is basically a tribal tool, not a tool for establishing the truth of things. That just wasn’t originally its primary purpose, kid. The human mind’s ability to mentally reason was developed for a bygone age when the key to survival was to foster basic social collaboration – to convince people to go hunting together in packs. To keep each other on the same side. It was about the formation of clans rather than correct answers to empirical questions. And since then, the human mind simply hasn’t had enough time to readapt. That’s why people seem hardwired with all those crapfuck cognitive biases that we now consider to be mental design flaws. Defects that distort their decisions and make it harder for people to figure out what’s true. That make them seek to corroborate what they already believe, to ignore or reject contrary facts. It’s why a digital economy that places such a high value on clicks and shares rather than on the truth of the information being clicked on has proved such a clusterfuck. But it’s also why family and kinship units are so vulnerable to fictions and untruths. It’s why families seem stro
nger in less developed, less science-centric societies. It’s why truth always seems to be the first casualty of divorce – the dissolution revealing all the fictions that glued the marriage together. It’s why family units tend to shut out the wider world of threatening facts. And it’s why your burgeoning father–son relationship will be particularly fraught. And I just think you should be armed with this data.”
So like some sap who always sits in the front row of the classroom, I told him that maybe this was also why Oedipus got his ass in such a shitstorm – dude kept relying too heavily on these twisted tools of practical reasoning and logical deduction.
“Exacerbated by his reliance on incomplete information, Dylan. That’s why the shitstorm hit the cyclonic fan.”
That’s all for today about Oedipus.
Fuck knows what triggered Mum to tell me “maybe it might” be good for me to link up with my dad. Coulda been some story she read on Facebook. Coulda been that time this dicktard in Physics lesson wired up my orthodontic braces to a nine-volt battery. Coulda been that first time I puked in sync with her – even though she didn’t even know I was upstairs puking. Probly just thought I was just wanking or something. I laid down some decoy action, you see. You wouldn’t believe how well online porn videos can camouflage the sound of retching. It’s like it’s the exact same sonic frequency or something.
Might just be cos of the weight of the rain, but Dad’s coat looks longer. Ain’t never met a man in a long coat before. All my schoolteachers wore anoraks.
Security guard assumes he still can’t find his keys so she tries to buzz us in. But Dad stays standing at his own doorstep.
“We don’t have to do this, Dylan.”
“Then what will we do?” I ask him.
Then we enter.
24
FIFTH TIME YOUR mum told you she had the C-bomb, it sounded as if she was telling you something else. That she was scared. Over-the-counter sleeping pills and a lavender-scented candle. That it sucked. That the treatment was just another symptom and so on. There was a light above her dressing table that hadn’t worked in years – though sometimes you could still hear it sizzle. That she was sorry. Confession, plea and apology all rolled into one. That you needed to learn how to drive.
You wiped away the bloody discharge. Told her it weren’t her fault. That it happened because of your shaky hands.
Maybe she was always saying something else when she said it? Announcing something else – some official secret statement. A Declaration of Co-dependence.
When the discharge wouldn’t stop discharging, you weighed up foning NHS Direct. Or the after-hours GP. Ambulance, even? Be six more years before you were old enough to drive. (Later you’d learn never to mention the future like that.) (The future brought up sad memories.) (Better still, don’t even think about it.) (Nobody actually needs to go to university.) Who the hell puts 999 on speed-dial?
Decided to give it one more shot. Resterilise your hands. Brand-new gauze pads. Fresh pair of latex gloves. Started cleaning from the centre of the wound and then worked your way out to the suburbs. Standard procedure, standard.
“Dhilan, baby, what’s wrong?” Her brave face just a data visualisation of pain levels. “Why the bloody hell are you crying?”
“Because I hurt you, Mama.”
And that was the fifth time she told you it. Confession, plea and apology all rolled into one.
You told her it weren’t her fault. Immunity issues and so on – weren’t even her fault it’d got infected.
Truth is, you were glad for the change. To be changing a dressing on her leg for a change.
At first they thought the leg pain was septic arthritis cos of her compromised immune system. Or bone weakness from previous rounds of treatment. Or postural realignment problems. You couldn’t decide if it was better or worse to not even know. Back when it was just minor level, just a scent-free biopsy lesion. Better to not even know the why of the wound.
After cleaning, don’t rub dry – just gently, pat it, gently.
Avoid the sutures. (Duh! Obviously, etc.)
Check if drainage or discharge has become darker or thicker.
Couldn’t never predict which part of the process would hurt her, though. You’d think it’d just be the antiseptic or the surgical tape. Or maybe you were just crap at doing this – same way some kids were just shit at Maths? Wasn’t even any body hair anyway.
I’m sorry I hurt you, Mummy.
I’m so, so sleepy, I’m sorry.
Never got angryfied with you for hurting her, though. Or for any other carefulness fuck-ups. Not yet, at least, not then. For bruising her veins. For looking away. For changing the subject. For suggesting a sedative. For contaminating her pillbox with those candy love hearts. For offering all those reassurances that you didn’t really believe yourself. For getting all mashed up inside every time you tried to be her rock. One of the district nurses had told you to call her if you ever had any problems and that. Didn’t never fone her, though, because you always had problems. And because you’d have to tidy the house – clear away all the tissues and laundry and stuff. And because having an actual nurse in the house would make it seem like now your mummy was really, seriously, really sick. And because you wanted to do this. Didn’t matter that government policies and cutbacks that were designed to attack sick people basically forced kids into doing district nursing work. If she’d got stung by a bee or burnt her finger on a milk pan, you’d want to make her better, standard. Size of the wound shouldn’t make no difference. Love and compassion and so on, not duty or obligation or some audit-style give-and-take vibe (though you thought of all the splinters she’d removed from your fingers). (Her magnesium sulphate magic trick.) (Weren’t as if she’d got traumatised by changing your nappies.) And so, soon as you got stuck with the whole “young carer” label, you tried to show your mum that being a young carer weren’t a bad thing. Even put it on your CV even though primary school kids didn’t even need CVs. Even lobbied your school to hold a first-aid course so you could boss it and get a certificate. Even advance-schooled your technique by scoping out videos on YouTube. Anyway, who the hell else was gonna help her unzip her evening dresses and take off her necklace? Deffo wouldn’t want some district nurse doing it for you. You just needed … You didn’t know what you needed.
“Dhilan,” she whimpered when you were done with the new dressing. “Sweetheart? You remember when you first started going to school and I’d come and pick you up at lunchtimes?”
You just needed steadier hands.
Or stronger hands.
Sometimes you told yourself that it wasn’t her, it was just her body you couldn’t be near. Then you told yourself it wasn’t her body – that you weren’t some masculinity asshole who couldn’t stomach her body – it was just her.
“I’d bring you home to give you proper Indian food – instead of the school dinners with the beef and the overboiled vegetables. Saved you from all those moody dinner ladies. You remember?”
She took your non-response as a sign you were struggling to access the memory.
“It was just for your first year at primary school. I’d bring you home for Indian food.”
You remembered the safe-disposal protocol for binning old dressings.
“What I didn’t realise was that all your friends gobbled up quickly and then went out to play. I thought they just went to the dining hall and had to sit there for a whole hour being shouted at by the dinner ladies. Dhilan, I didn’t realise the school lunchtime was also a playtime.”
Fuck the protocol. You chucked the old dressings in a torn Tesco carrier bag. None of that double-bagging bollocks – not for your own mummy.
“And then when I found out, I got upset with myself for dragging you back home every lunchtime. Because I didn’t want to be that sort of mother, Dhilan. I want you to have friends. Even girlfriends – lots of girlfriends. You could be in the playground or in Gunnersbury Park. I never wanted to be that sort of mother. I don
’t want for it to be like this.”
And then the crying came. Proper hurricane hitting a burst water main. On top of the Niagara Falls.
Young Carer’s Playbook #272: Could switch your brain off for all the practical tasks – even the sterilised scissor tasks – but when it came to being a shoulder to cry on, you gotta keep your head.
To begin with, she’d just cry on the downstairs landline. Carry on crying as you got ready for bed. Take five to kiss you goodnight and then, when she thought you were sleeping, she’d phone the other person back and start up again with her crying. Saying all kinda things in between her sobs – and sometimes the things she said were actual words. You figured maybe she was talking to one of her work colleagues or some loosely defined aunty. Something about being sorry for whatever she’d done to deserve all this. But after three or four months of that same bedtime routine, you started getting proper curious. Who the hell is she always howling to and why the hell don’t they just come to the house? Didn’t exactly need to be James Bond to creep into her bedroom one night and listen in on the upstairs landline. Waited for her next round of coughing and then just, careful like, lifted the receiver. The person on the other end was silent while your mummy finished coughing – like they were holding the phone away from their ear. Stayed silent while she cried. Stayed silent while she told them how sorry she was. Carried on staying silent until it finally hit you: maybe there weren’t no one on the other end of the line?
Took your chickenshit ass another month to bring it up. To tell her it was okay for her to cry in front of you. That you wanted her to.
Talk about opening the floodgates.
Her panic and fearfulness.
Her loneliness.
“Dhilan, you must believe me. I don’t want for it to be like this. I never wanted it to be like this.”
You wiped away her eye saliva.
Hush now, Mummy, don’t you cry, etc.
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