One Midlife Crisis and a Speedo

by Darrel Bristow-Bovey

  How is a shark like a woman? Toothy? Rough if you stroke them one way, smooth the other way? Lacking a swim bladder? I never found out exactly, because Captain Spike went to sleep in the rain with his cap over his eyes and a beer in his hand.

  “Oh god,” I said. “Oh god.”

  “Oh god,” said Clarence too.

  Normally I’d be happy that Clarence was also suffering now, but I was long past the land of simple human pleasures.

  Thoughts occur to you when you’re a grown man on an inflatable boat on the Indian Ocean, vomiting with another grown man in the rain. Thoughts like: Remember when I was young and Mom would bring me strawberry Nesquik in bed and a toasted cheese sandwich and an Archie comic? That was nice. I’d like that again. I want to go home.

  “You know,” gasped Clarence, “we could go back. We could wake him up and say we’ve had enough. We could just go back.”

  I didn’t answer. I was retching, but I was also thinking about it.

  “We’re too old for this,” gasped Clarence. “We don’t belong out here. We belong in restaurants.”

  “We’re having an adventure,” I said between dry heaves. The heaves were the only things in my life that were dry.

  “I don’t want to do this any more. It’s my wedding.”

  “Shut up about your wedding! Are you a Kardashian?”

  Clarence puked on himself with cold dignity. I should have felt bad – no man should call another man a Kardashian, even if the other man is in fact a Kardashian, which wasn’t even the case here – but I was too busy feeling bad to feel bad.

  “I’m going for a swim,” said Clarence. “You don’t get sick when you’re swimming.”

  I wasn’t convinced of that. The way I was feeling, long after death my ashes would still be groaning on the mantelpiece, but I didn’t care what he did. I didn’t care about anything.

  I watched him pull on his mask and snorkel and jump over the side. Then I watched him levitate like a cartoon coyote and backstroke through the air back to the boat.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  I couldn’t see anything on the surface, but following the line down from the buoy I saw the drum jerk and dance in the surge, and shadows pass across it like bats across a moon.

  We tried to wake Captain Spike to tell him the sharks had come.

  “Good,” mumbled Captain Spike, and went back to sleep.

  We sat there stumped, the mask and snorkel sloshing in the water between us.

  “Look,” said Clarence, “there’s no first-aid kit. There isn’t even any drinking water. If anything happens, Popeye won’t get us to a hospital in time. I doubt he’ll even recognise us when he wakes up. Let’s be smart.”

  Yes, we should have been smart. I knew that. I’ve made smart decisions before. I even knew the smart decision here. But next month I was turning forty.

  I lowered myself over the side. I’d never been in the open sea without fins before. Feet aren’t made for swimming, they’re made for resting on a stool. In the sea they’re small and soft and don’t displace much water when you kick. They’re like sardines tied to a whale. Hands are like sardines too, now that I came to look at them all white and wrinkled through Clarence’s mask. I was going swimming around a drum baited with sardines, with sardines on the ends of my arms and legs.

  I’ll say this about swimming with sharks in the open ocean: it gives you something to look at. I like a game drive as much as anyone, but at a certain point one piece of bush looks much like another, and there are those in-between-animals stages when even the most avid fans of nature might choose to rest their eyes and contemplate the infinite. This is not true of swimming with sharks. I was in no danger of falling asleep.

  There were a lot of them, although they were hard to count because they moved so fast. A shark on one side of you could be on the other side before you could finish turning your head. I turned my head a lot. It swivelled like a young girl watching a tennis match while being possessed by the devil. There were sharks on the left and sharks on the right and sharks underneath and more sharks arriving all the time. They were big too, as big as me, and in the distance there were more and they looked bigger there because you couldn’t see exactly where shadow ended and shark began.

  The rain fell cold on my back. I lay face-down with the sea in my ears, breathing heavily through my mouth like a dirty old man. Some of them came towards me to see what I would do, straight and fast like unfriendly teenagers on a train. I couldn’t get away so I stared them down; my incompetence looked like confidence. They swerved aside and I thought, I’m having an adventure. I can’t be middle-aged yet, because look – I’m having an adventure.

  The sharks made a kind of electron swarm around the atom of the drum and I stayed on the outskirts, keeping an eye on one in particular, a big brute with a notched fin who circled and darted through and returned, side-eyeing me with a worryingly casual air, as though I was a wallet lying on a sidewalk. I watched him so carefully that at first I didn’t notice that the ball of sharks was moving further away. The drum was in the distance, glinting in short shafts of light, the water around it growing dusky and indistinct. It took me a moment to realise that if the drum was far away, and the drum was tied to the boat, then …

  I lifted my head.

  The boat had drifted away.

  But that can’t be true. The boat has an anchor, so it can’t drift away. That’s a relief. But no, that’s not a relief, because if it’s not the boat that’s drifted away then …

  On the back on the boat, quite far away, Clarence was shading his eyes with his hand, watching me. Wait – is he watching me, or is he trying to find me?

  I tried to wave, but that meant turning upright and pedalling the water with white, sardiney feet and that wasn’t very comfortable, so I switched in mid-pedal to get horizontal again and swallowed a mouthful of water.

  The boat was rising and dropping. When it was in a trough I couldn’t see it any more. I tried to kick towards it but the drift was stronger than my kicking. I tried to swim, but swimming is exhausting and suddenly all that water opened up beneath me.

  I started to thrash.

  There’s a small industry in helpful books about how not to be bitten by a shark. Not all experts agree. Some recommend you swim towards the shark, others that you cautiously back away. Some say you should strike its nose as a deterrent, others prefer screaming loudly. There are certain areas of unanimity, however, namely:

  1. Do not, when you see sharks in the water, jump off the boat.

  If, however, you have jumped off the boat:

  2. Avoid irregular movements or jerky motions, or you will resemble some kind of ailing sea-mammal. Ailing sea-mammals are the cheeseburgers of the ocean.

  Thrashing falls into the category of irregular movements and jerky splashing motions. I was like several ailing sea-mammals tied up in a sack.

  I thrashed and I thrashed and when I interrupted my thrashing to raise my head and swallow some more water, the boat wasn’t further away but it wasn’t any closer either. The sharks didn’t scare me; it was the fact that I was about to drown. My strength was gone and I was going under, and it was all my fault because I jumped into the sea without fins when I can’t swim very well and I floated away and my body will sink and maybe that swine with the notch will take the first bite and then the others will join in. Would anyone find my head? Do heads float? I hoped they’d find my head.

  *

  But no doubt you will already have guessed that I didn’t drown. When someone drowns they have better things to do than write about it afterwards. If I’d drowned, you can bet I wouldn’t be at my desk right now, checking my word count and avoiding mails from my publishers. I’d finally be watching the last season of Breaking Bad.

  What happened was Clarence dived in and swam over and helped me stay afloat till Captain Spike finished waking up and hauled anchor and brought the boat round. The sharks didn’t eat us, but I had to put up with Clarence’s s
mug face for the rest of the weekend, so it was a mixed blessing.

  “I suppose you could say I’m some kind of a hero,” he mused as I lay staring at the sky.

  The rain had passed and the sky was pale blue and ribbed with high clouds like the roof of a mouth. Captain Spike dropped the last of his sardines over the side and the sharks rolled up against the boat like fat koi in a pond.

  Nearly drowning brings moments of clarity. I’d been acting like a fool, and probably had been for some time. Something was affecting me and it had something to do with my age, and unless I recognised it I’d go on being a fool until I did something really stupid or everyone around me finally lost patience. I needed to go home and tell my partner she was right, and ask her for help.

  But if moments of clarity lasted they wouldn’t be called moments.

  When I landed back home she was there to meet me. It had been two days since I’d nearly drowned. Time’s a funny thing. Ten years can pass like a drunken afternoon but two days can change everything, or change everything back.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  “It was great,” I replied.

  “Really?” she said. “Because I thought, on the phone, you sounded a bit …”

  “No. It was excellent.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m like a shark whisperer now. That’s what they called me there: the shark whisperer.”

  “Wow. So you were like Ernest Hemingway?”

  “Yeah.” I said. “Oh yeah. Totally. I was just like Ernest Hemingway.”

  2

  For Whom the Back Tolls

  Becoming middle-aged is the process of realising you’re going to die one day.

  No man under the age of thirty-six really believes he’ll ever die. I don’t know if this is so with women, but on the whole women’s approach to life is based more on observation than wishful thinking, so I doubt mortality comes as quite the same surprise to them.

  Young men are aware of the odds against making it out alive, but they don’t feel them. Everyone dies, you say? I think you mean everyone dies so far.

  I’m not saying we all imagine we’re giant redwoods or Riaan Cruywagen: most of us know we can die. We understand what will happen if a piano falls on us or we fly once too often on Air Malaysia, but those are bad luck and mishaps. When we’re young, we think it will take an event to kill us.

  But no matter how lucky or special we feel or how positive we think or how much quinoa we eat, the software has an end-code.

  For some while, like a Victorian gentlewoman in the colonies, I had been genteelly ignoring or politely explaining away the unpleasant facts of life: the glint of silver in my beard (“My grandfather was blond”); a certain thickening around the middle (“Pizza”); the hint of a jowl in an unposed photograph (“I was looking at something on the floor”); the fact that my evening walk seems to grow longer each day, even though it’s still the same route (“I need new shoes”; “These shoes are too new”). Come to think of it, the fact that I even take an evening walk at all.

  Like a child, I needed an event to make me realise something’s happening. It was when I threw my back out.

  I’ve thrown my back out before, but not like this. I’ll spare you the technical details and biomechanical breakdowns – you can find them in Appendix A at the back of this book, if you’re interested – but let’s just say that I begin this anecdote in a seated position, and then I stand up, and in the process of transitioning from position A (seated) to position B (standing), I give a sudden startled whimper.

  It wasn’t a noise I’d made before and I didn’t like the sound of it, but then this was a pain I hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t even low down, where decent pains reside – it was high and to the right. If my back was Africa, it would be Eritrea. Sub-Saharan pains I can understand – I’ve grown up with them, I know how to talk to them, there are diplomatic channels you can use – but who the hell knows what goes on up there above the Horn?

  I gave another whimper.

  “What’s it now?” said my partner from the other room, as though I’m in the habit of making high-pitched noises for my own entertainment.

  “Aaarggh!” I said in a strangled voice. And then, because sometimes people crave more detail: “My back!”

  There was a pause.

  “Is it sore?” she asked, with the deep concern of someone trying to finish a paragraph in her book.

  “Only when I breathe.”

  That’s the worst of it: I injured myself by breathing. I’m turning into gingerbread.

  I mentally hobbled back through the events of the morning. What had I been doing? Something strenuous and heroic? Rescuing a cow from a tree? Did a car slip from its jack and was it about to crush a tow-haired child when I leapt forward to hold it up in a feat of strength I hardly knew I had? No. It happened when I stood and twisted to pick up that cup of tea. No, wait, that sounds pathetic, don’t forget the important part: I twisted to pick up a cup of tea while breathing.

  At least it was a full cup, but surely the day must come when I’ll be injuring myself picking up empty pieces of crockery. This will go on, the machine will run down, I’ll become ever more vulnerable to items of light tableware. Doilies will defeat me, antimacassars will rick my neck. (God, do antimacassars even exist any more? How old am I?) The only way to make this stop will be to stop breathing.

  “Do you want to see a doctor?” asked my partner.

  That’s precisely what I didn’t want to do. Once you start going to the doctor, you never stop.

  The middle-aged go for check-ups all the time because when you’re middle-aged your health is a matter of suspicion. If all seems well, you’re even more worried, as though your body is a house that’s fallen silent even though there are small children in it somewhere. Even if there’s no bad news, the good news is qualified: “You’re in good shape for your age”; “You’re doing well, all things considered”; “Well, I’ve examined you, and you aren’t going to die.” Yet.

  I don’t need a doctor. A doctor will just say here’s some painkillers and don’t feel bad because everyone gets old and dies. I’ll go to the chemist and get my own painkillers and try pretend a while longer that not everyone gets old and dies. Not everyone.

  Ordinarily I’d walk to the pharmacy but I was locked in a position that looked like a sniper was continually shooting me in the back from a tall building, so I took the car.

  I live one block from Main Road, but my road is linked by a one-way that goes the wrong way. To get to Main I have to turn right – completely the wrong direction! – and then drive around the block. The entire block! It’s the reason I never drive. That one-block diversion stands for all the petty, pointless obstacles and uphills the universe drops daily in my way. Normally I’d have to just swallow the indignity, but my back was sore and I was experiencing the entitlement of suffering. Besides, I’m a man who swims with man-eating sharks in the open ocean. The rules of the road are for schoolboys and old men.

  I nosed to the end of my street and peered out cautiously. All clear. I edged out and accelerated the wrong way down the oneway to Main Road. Yes! Freedom! You can’t fence this wild colt! And my back’s not even sore any more! It’s not medicine I need, it’s the open road and the rolling range and sweet, sweet liberty!

  On the other side of Main a traffic policeman stood beside his motorcycle, watching me with hands on hips.

  He looked at me as though I’d once invited his wife to a cheap motel and he’s been waiting patiently all these long years for this moment.

  What should I do? Has he seen me? Of course he’s seen me. Should I just drive away and hope he’s standing beside his bike because it’s run out of petrol?

  He crooked a finger at me.

  Should I slip into reverse and back away and hope he’ll think I was a trick of the light? Is the coast clear behind me? What should I do?

  What I should have done was step on the brake to stop my car rolling into the oncoming traffi
c, but as I looked wildly from side to side and back over my shoulder I forgot not to breathe while I twisted and the pain returned and shot from Eritrea all the way across to Mali and Mauritania and the other terrible places above the Bight of Benin and I gave another strangled yodel and stamped blindly for the brake. It wasn’t the brake, and the car went forward into the traffic and there was hooting and swerving and someone avoided driving into me by driving into a lamppost instead.

  As with avoiding shark bites, there’s also a small industry of literature dedicated to not antagonising traffic cops. As the policeman walked towards me I tried to remember whether you should get out of the car to meet him, thus showing respect, or stay seated, thus showing subservience. It probably didn’t matter at this point. Anyway, I couldn’t move.

  He asked for my driver’s licence and I realised I’d left it at home. He looked at my car’s licence and pointed out that it had expired the month before.

  “This is not a good day for you,” he said.

  “I know,” I said pitiably. “My back.”

  He looked at me the way young, strong people look at old people who complain about their backs.

  “You know what?” he said.

  “What?” I said, through clenched teeth.

  “At your age you need to be more responsible.”

  The tips you would find in those books about not antagonising traffic policemen probably include not getting angry. Restrict your interaction to light humour and verbal byplay, they would probably counsel.

  “What do you mean, my age?” I said, my voice lifting. “I’m not that old! I’m just – aarggh! My back!”

  “Calm down, sir,” he said, in a tone that implied next up is a pistol-whipping.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! Just give me the ticket! Aaargggh!”

  “You should go see a doctor,” he said.

  “No, I’m fine,” I sobbed.

  “You’re being very stupid. You’re trying to deny something that cannot be denied. Age happens, and the more we know about it, the better prepared we are to endure it with dignity. This is just a different life stage. Yes, perhaps it signifies the end of some things, but it can also be the start of something different, something better or at least not necessarily worse. Trying to pretend you’re not older won’t keep you younger, it will make you ridiculous, and it will cause you to make some terrible mistakes.”