It’s like he doesn’t even want me to believe him. Like he couldn’t give two fucks either way.
“Dad, please.”
“I was sceptical at first myself, Dylan. I thought perhaps all the others were just copying my stories to generate cheap clicks. After all, some journalists do that – just lazily recycle each other’s stories to get maximum web hits. And if the stories turn out to be fabricated, they just churn out another story debunking the first story and then they get even more clicks. Believe me, son, media professionals can be the most dishonest people on earth.”
“Don’t worry, Dad, I believe you.”
He tells me how he then contacted each of those other journalists. Asked them how the hell they could just copy his quotes like that – though obviously he didn’t tell them he’d been faking the quotes. “Well, they all flat-out denied it, Dylan – a few of them even played me their dictaphone recordings to prove that their own content was genuine. And then, just for good measure, they posted their audio clips on their websites. As you correctly inferred, they’d all reported the same quotes as each other after descending together on the scene of the incident or stage-managed news event in question and thrusting their microphones and dictaphones in front of the same eyewitnesses or spokespeople. They weren’t copying my fake stories. And I wasn’t copying their real stories. Rather, as I said, son, it was a major paranormal phenomenon.”
There’s this cognitive bias called the Bizarreness Effect. We lock onto facts that are strange. Probly explains all them times I’ve had YouTube on autoplay and each “Up Next” video gets more and more weirdness, keeping me logged on for longer. Maybe even explains why I stay sat here instead of standing up and splitting.
I start counting all the holes in Dad’s story. Some of them multiply like cancer cells too fast to even be counted. Some of the smaller holes slowly turn into assholes the size of truck tyres. And some of them start fronting like black holes, sucking in the rest of his story. But other holes seem to fill themselves in as we talk about them so that they ain’t no longer holes. Dad dropping actual physical evidence – pulling out his laptop and showing me timestamps that show how all those other stories were published within seconds of each other. Tells me that means the reporters couldn’t have been copying each other. Next he pulls out his actual cuttings book and shows me how the publication dates of his fake news stories back up the story that he’s just told me. I sneak a peek through the book: all his stories all intact, the pages untorn, spine unscathed, no bruises or redactions in black marker pen. Allow this shit – you wanna know about holes in someone’s story? Try talking to an immunocompromised woman with actual holes all over her oral orifice. Broken sound of her words as she tries reassuring you she ain’t in pain – that she ain’t even hungry anyway.
I ask Dad for extra info. Deleted scenes, director’s commentary. Just to show some buy-in or open-mindedness or whatever, obedience. For instance, were all the other journalists as spooked as he was – or at least as spooked as he expects me to be?
“Actually, one or two of them got angry at me – they were worried their own editors might suspect that everyone was just lazily copying everyone else’s content. I remember one of the reporters had a lisp and he kept grovelling and begging me, ‘Please, please thstop jeopardithing my career.”’ As he says this, Dad twists his arm out like he’s translating the lisp into sign language or something.
“Wait, Dad, did you just make fun of some other guy’s speech impediment?”
“Of course not. I never mocked his speech impediment. I would never do a thing like that, son. I was simply doing a general impression of someone grovelling.”
Guess I could play back the audio to prove him wrong. Call my dad out on this specific dollop of bullshit. But most probly he’d still deny it. Probly claim it was just a recording glitch – that my dictaphone had malfunctioned due to the price of fish or something.
Dad tells me how he even did a few experiments, making up more and more ridiculous eyewitness quotes. For instance: “We never spoke to the last occupant but sometimes we saw her walking her baby elephant.” And yet, each time he did this, all his fake shit ended up actually being spoken by genuine eyewitnesses at random news incidents and then reported in other publications. “By this stage, Dylan, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was in danger of completely losing the plot.”
“Tell me about it, Dad.”
“I mean, who are you even meant to go to with a thing like that? I didn’t trust normal so-called experts, so why the hell would I trust paranormal experts?”
First time me and my dad manage to pull off laughing at the same thing at the same time. Shame we both just pretending to laugh.
“When the man first approached me, Dylan, I thought maybe he was some kind of media regulator. A real one, I mean – one that regulates social media and search engines. He certainly looked the part – aside from the mud on his hands. Whoever the hell he was, he warned me that if I wasn’t careful, my increasingly outlandish fake stories could end up killing someone. That’s what he said, son: ‘Your words are actions and they can kill.’”
One thing I’ve learned from monitoring my mum’s bedtime browsing habits: crazyass conspiracy theories ain’t meant to be believable – they’re meant to be comfortable. Easier to believe something comfortable than something factual. And having something or someone to blame is way more comfortable than blaming randomness. All those viral health-scare stories spread about on Facebook. Mummy, please stop reading that stuff. That “shareable” anti-vaccination crap that actually kills people. Mummy, please stop reading that stuff. That Daily Mail breast cancer story that didn’t reveal until paragraph 19 that the research in question had fuck all to do with breast cancer – just clickbait with caveats to cover their asses. Mummy, please. Stop clicking on the links.
Dad’s milkshake has finally cooled down or warmed up or whatever. Folds his arms like he’s trying to hug himself. “Over the years I’ve come to believe what that strange man told me: words are definitely actions, Dylan. They can change things. And sometimes fabrications can become the truth.”
We shoulda just stuck to small talk. Kinda chat where all we was basically saying beneath all the bants was, You and me, we’re good.
“I’m not talking about how fake news stories catastrophically altered reality via the ballot box. I’m talking about the fact that if you call me a journalist, Dylan, then at some deep, cellular level I actually become more of a journalist than I would be if you kept calling me an insurance salesman. Likewise, if you call me Dad, I become more of a dad.”
Don’t matter how many times Dad calls me Dylan, though, I’m still acting like Dhilan – sitting here soaking up whatever crap he needs me to soak up. But why the hell would he make all this up? There’s gotta be enough more believeable stories that he could spin if he just wanted to put me on divert.
“So you see the reason for all the secrecy now? Why I never told you I worked as a journalist and why I actually encouraged your mother and her family to tell people I worked in insurance. And of course it now goes without saying that you must never tell these things to anyone else, Dylan. Not even your friends, your girlfriend, Mona – is that her name? Not a word of this to her. She should respect your right to some family privacy.” He tells me he doesn’t actually care if I don’t believe his story. All he cares about is that I leave all these things alone now so that we don’t have some kinda throwback to whatever forces were at play all them years ago.
I figure this is a bad time to tell him how I’ve already gone and digitised all his fake stories. So instead I tell him I buy the idea that words can alter reality. Start hitting him with the example of oracular prophecies in Oedipus when he cuts me off – like he doesn’t wanna hear about Oedipus.
“You ever heard of something called ‘automatic writing’, Dylan? It’s similar to what happens with a Ouija board, only instead of a board you just have your pen or your typewriter or laptop. And you j
ust write. Or rather, some other force writes and your mind just takes dictation. And sometimes the things you write down happen in real life. Whether you’re predicting it or causing it, I have no idea, but it’s my belief that that’s what was happening when I was fabricating things in my news stories.”
I tell him I don’t know nothing about automatic writing but that it sounds kinda similar to—
Again, he cuts me off like a gameshow buzzer: “Come on, son, these days there’s no such thing as not knowing something.”
I pull out my Dhilan handset. Soon as I start to google the words “automatic writing”, Google predicts what I’m typing before I even finish the word “automatic”. Tonight, Facebook will hit me with a video about it. Amazon will hit me up with a book. End of the week I’ll probly be an expert. Fuck knows whether Google’s some oracle or whether I’m writing my future by typing. Or whether I’d be reading about automatic writing right now even if I’d actually been searching for an automatic washing machine. And fuck knows what happens to you when autocomplete and predictive text become as natural for choosing what words you write next as more old-school forms of writing tech – like using spellcheck and cut-and-paste.
Soon as I put away my fone, Dad starts acting all extra and parental, saying he wants to link up on the regular. Finishes his Big Mac and closes out by saying let’s meet in McDonald’s again tomorrow – like as if he can’t find a midpoint between abandonment and smotherment. And I can’t bring myself to say no. Don’t want him thinking when he’s walking past some lonely loser’s strip club that he’s now also been rejected by his son. Or when he’s walking past the top shelf in a newsagent’s – clutching some takeaway pizza box like the closest he’ll get to feeling the warmth of a woman’s arm across his chest.
“Dylan, in the past, I had a number of limitations. Your mother said she didn’t need anything from me. And in spite of this, I kept trying to do my maximum for you. But one thing you should do is let me help you now.” He asks me if my start-up business happens to have a funding shortfall. Even more specifically, if I need any bucks from him to help me branch out into new businesses. More specifically still, if he can drop, say, five hundred bucks to help me diversify away from digitising. “After all, one day all the newspapers and books and documents will have already been digitised.”
I tell him I don’t need him to give me any money. Thanks all the same, though – thanks.
“Then think of it as an investment. Bridge financing. If you ever have any cashflow problems, no bank will lend credit to a start-up run by a student. In fact, give me your account details and I can transfer five hundred pounds right now – or even one thousand if you prefer.”
I have to lock eyes with him just to stop mine from rolling. The fuck is he keep offering me money for? Man’s being way too obvious for it to be bribery or divertory tactics. Best-case scenario, it’s just something to do with his tax return – offsetting his liabilities or someshit. “This is to stop me asking questions about your fake news stories?”
“I’ve already answered all your questions, Dylan. I’m offering you money because I don’t want for you to have any additional worries and stress while you complete your studies. You must believe me when I tell you that I was denied the opportunity of helping you in a variety of ways in the early period. With all the limitations, whenever I could, I did my best for you.”
Fuck’s sake. Now I gotta reach back into my pocket to hit record on my dictaphone again. Or swipe open the voice memo app on my fone. Or pull out a pad and take old-school notes. Or just take a stool sample from this latest bout of bullshit and stick it in a jar of formaldehyde.
“If you don’t want to branch out and diversify, then that’s fine – I’m not trying to dictate anything, son. But then at least use my financial assistance to rebrand – give your company a proper name, something you can put on LinkedIn. See what you can do with this little start-up of yours – you don’t want to be a typist for the rest of your life.”
If Mum had called me that shit, I’d get proper man-menstrual with her. Tell her I ain’t a bloody typist, I’m a digitiser/data-enterer/data temp. Why is it that I’d shout at the parent who took care of me but not at the parent who didn’t? Surely should be the other way round. Ditto calling him out on his bullshit. Ditto calling him out on my bullshit. Best I can manage right now is to just say things that sound like they should be shouted – or at least thrown up in a raised-up voice. For instance: “I never needed your money, etc.” Only I say it all on the down-low – like we’re a couple of actors quietly reading rather than rehearsing some loud and angry showdown scene. For instance, all them showdowns in those films set in newsrooms – when reporters and editors start arguing about sources and truth. Or deadlines and truth. Or truth, justice and truth. Trouble is, we ain’t in a film – we ain’t in a film where the journalist is a sleazeball, we ain’t in a film where the journalist is a superhero; we ain’t in a film. Cos the dialogue’s already recorded in a film. You don’t need no fucking dictaphone to play his bullshit back to him, you just hit rewind on your remote.
35
EIGHTH TIME YOUR mum told you she had the C-bomb, she told you via an intermediary. And, no – we still ain’t talking the spirit-medium kind.
Even though it was daytime, they’d closed the living-room curtains. Sunset oozing through green fabric, turning it from emerald to the colour of baby shit. We’re talking intermediaries plural. Like you’d walked into the opposite of a surprise birthday party. Where instead of jumping up and shouting, “Surprise!” everyone falls down and starts crying, “She’s dying!”
“Welcome home, Dhilan,” said your Uncle Deepak. “Please – have a sit.” He gestured at a kitchen stool cos the sofa, dining chairs and latest prospective deathbed were occupied by your masi and, like, nine other various assorted aunties and uncles – mostly aunties. Weren’t sure if you were actually related to them all, or even if you even knew them all, but they were definitely aunties.
“Where’s Mama?” you said to some general blur of coiled opinions. “I want to see my mum.”
“Just, please, just have the seat.”
The stool had been placed against the nearside wall, beneath the LED picture light your mum had rewired. More framed fotos from weekend wellness breaks. The sunsets, the moonlit-candlelit dinners, the arguments about you being too sissy to slow-dance with her, the breathing exercises by the indoor rehab pool with the tropical-themed drinks, those breakfast-buffet bikinis and swimsuits of hers with the pouches for her plastic prostheses, her with her travel spanner for tightening the bolts of your honeymoon suite bed. You dreaded school holidays. Couldn’t wait for them to end. Then you’d dread the start of term in case something happened to her while you were stuck in some bullshit Biology lesson.
In among the various assorted aunties and non-aunties and uncles and non-uncles, you spotted your cousin Ravi – rocking chinos and regulation Ralph Polo logo. “Rav-man? I thought you was in New York?”
“I was meant to be, Dhilan. But I cancelled my trip because I love my aunty.”
Cutting through the all-round silence of approval came the sound of your mum’s accessible downstairs shower. Spurting and gurgling and groaning in sync. But wait a sec – even if some Macmillan nurse was in there helping her, you were for cert your mummy could only be washed in bed. (Or maybe that was a month or two later.) (Or could be a month or two earlier.)
Next, one of your aunties or non-aunties asked you if you’d like a cup of tea. Like some dipshit gimp you almost said yes. Checked yourself, though – somehow you mustered your mother’s bollocks. “How about if I place the teacup on my head – maybe you could all aim at that instead?”
“Don’t try to be clever,” said Aunty Number Five.
“Fine, I’ll try and be stupid.”
“You are bloody stupid!” Uncle Deepak at max volume. “When my own mother had the heart attack I never had this chance that you have now. But you, instead, you do the
gallivanting and the studying and the partying and the typing and the laughing and the studying.”
“And also the gallivanting with the girlfriend,” Aunty Number Four jumped in.
“Look, if you’re referring to Ramona, I was actually lying when I told Mum she was my girlfriend.”
“Bullshit rubbish bullshit,” said Aunty Number Six. “You think we’re all the fools or what? Boys tell their mothers they don’t have the girlfriend only when they do have it – they don’t say they have the girlfriend when they don’t.”
You didn’t know whether to tell them that Ramona was more like your best-friend-with-benefits or just someone who settled for you and your weirdness, whatever, your dirty fucked-up foot fetish. Truth is, this shit weren’t even about Ramona, it was about the fact that, back then, even you reckoned the worst thing you could’ve done to your mum was to split. Bail. Walk. Wash your hands of her metaphorically as well as literally. Looking back, it was actually kinda sweet. Maybe one or two of your aunts had heard about euthanasia and reckoned that was the worst thing you could do – in which case that would’ve been kinda sweet too.
“Dhilan, why are you moving your mouth like a horse?” asked Aunty Number Four. “Are you chewing the bubblegum while talking to us?”
You told her you were sucking a mouth ulcer. Mouth ulcers plural.
“You think you’ve got the mouth ulcers,” replied Aunty Number Six. “Wait you see your mother’s mouth. In my life I never see such a horrible thing.”
“I’m familiar with her methotrexate-induced ulceration,” you shot back. “Have you tried giving her pineapples?”
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