lifenactuality

I’m lucky, because I come from a stable family.

The spectre of divorce has never loomed large in my household. I’ve lived at home my entire life and have never encountered any major dramas. My parents don’t ask me to pay any board, and I’ve never seriously considered moving out.  I even have four living grandparents, all healthy, and all still on their first marriage. I suppose this is all somewhat miraculous, even freakish. Perhaps I’ve missed out on opportunities to build character.

My father is an electrician. He is self-employed and he has had the same moustache for twenty years. He has never genuinely attempted to teach me about the stuff he does, and I’ve never been interested. Looking back, I’ve realized he never bothered because he knew I would never learn. My father is a real man. He is part of the world, he is out there, he is alive. He can touch things and tinker with them and make them work. He understands technical jargon. He has a thing, he has an area of specialization, a sort of secret knowledge that in some way I suppose I envy.

My Dad is not an intellectual, in fact he is not really an intelligent man at all, but I have a certain respect for him, because he is so unlike me, but I can also relate to him in some ways. We watch sport together. Sport for me has always been an easy way to interact in the masculine world, but it has always been an unearned pleasure. My father watches sport, indeed he spends hours in front of the television or his computer, but he has always earned it with his hours at work, with the money he earns, with the knowledge he has and the house he has paid for and the little world he has created for himself. His achievements appear unattainable to me, and I feel ashamed when I think about the fact, the FACT, that I will never even be a competent human being in his eyes.

My mother, on the other hand, sees me as not merely competent but as brilliant. She is right, of course. I believe her, but it doesn’t matter, because it is an empty genius. I am completely insubstantial and even she must see that, surely. My mother is a schoolteacher. She teaches English at Massey High School, although I simply can not see her as an English teacher. My English teachers at High School always seemed like aspiring writers and literary critics and poets who had everything going for them but talent. They were invariably articulate and resolutely artsy. Regardless of their age, the High School English teachers I have met have always seemed like the dregs of the Baby Boomer era, liberals thwarted by a society that doesn’t afford decent pay or even moderate social status to their particular brand of wisdom.

 My mother is not like that at all- she is homely and conservative. I have never, not even for a second, thought she was intelligent in any way. My Mum is, I think, someone who was good at writing stories when she was 10, and set her sights on being a High School English teacher from that point on. There is no frustrated genius in her, no novel that she would have written if there was any financial point in writing it. She is satisfied with being a High School English teacher- it is a lofty position for someone with her abilities.

My mother is, however, a more than competent cook, and a willing cleaner, and as such she is an old-fashioned compliment to my father’s gruff masculinity. They couldn’t be more perfect for one another really. There are days when I think that I would love to grow up to be my parents, but I know that it can never happen because I can never be my father. At other times, I pity my father, who seems in some way to be dead inside, although unlike me I feel that there was once life in him, and it has been killed by the drudgery of adult human life, of conformity, of following the plan that was made for him with such perfect accuracy and attention to detail that he already knows what will happen next, he has already established a pattern of cause and effect. I imagine that when he wakes up in the morning he knows exactly what is going to happen that day, and he also knows why. My mother, however, knows nothing, and is constantly surprised by life. Her enthusiasm wearies my father and me, and it makes me wonder if this is normal, if it is a male thing, to have figured out exactly what life consists of, and to know that without surprise there is no true happiness.

And, of course, I have a brother, because no married couple as normal as my parents would stop at one child. It would have been highly inappropriate. My brother David is only eleven and the eight year gap makes me wonder whether my parents actually did only plan to have one child- but it’s not something I like to ponder. David likes whatever it is kids like at the moment, whatever it is that replaced marbles or Pokemon, but also, thank God, he likes cricket and rugby league and soccer, and although he is basically empty, not fully human yet, he might be my best friend.

It scares me that I don’t care more about my family. To me, they are not my real life. My real life is, and I suppose this is fabulous irony, a life that doesn’t exist, but that I wish did. It is a life away from my home, away from my room, away from tossing a ball around and talking nonsense with my brother or watching TV with my Dad, away from internet pornography and forums and blogs. The perverse thing is, all of that stuff is my life, it is how I spend most of my time, it is my daily reality, but it means nothing to me. I am going through the motions, a family is simply a necessity, and I cannot escape it.

I often wonder if they are to blame for everything. There’s logic to that. The world is a messy place, and I’m stuck on the outside looking in. My life is too clean. It is not normal to be so normal.

One day, and I genuinely have no idea why, my mother confronts me and suggests that I am no longer giving my best efforts to my University work. Of course, I never was. Nevertheless, I’m a little taken aback, as I can’t figure out how she can tell, because I don’t feel that I’ve been doing anything different to before. I haven’t failed any papers yet, although I have started to mix Bs and Cs in with the usual procession of undeserved As. My Mum does have a tertiary qualification of sorts, but I feel that the fact I am doing a Law degree gives me leverage in this conversation. Neither of my parents came close to the academic attainment I have managed and hence they know that they are in no position to criticise me.

Of course, it would be perfectly valid to criticise me. Of course, I could do better. When I left school I didn’t realise that there were so many people out there who actually tried, who actually strived for success. I spent 13 years just doing what I thought I was obliged to do, succeeding, and being praised for it. Even as a very young child, I never dreamed of being a doctor, or a fireman, or a rock star, and certainly not of being a lawyer. It is beyond me where these dreams come from, why any child would genuinely look forward to a time when they have to work and pay bills and look after children, but apparently most do. I enjoyed being a child. I didn’t know I was enjoying it, but now I know. Apparently I was a sombre child. Perhaps I knew, perhaps I had a precocious understanding of what was to come. Nevertheless I was as happy as I have ever been, because I didn’t have to pretend to be anything.

 “Andrew, you really have to start working” is what my Mum says.                                    

“What?” I grunt. I really do grunt as well. I don’t want to talk. I fear this conversation.

“You have to work harder. I was talking to Jeff Kinroy’s Mum. She said he studies at least a few hours every night.”

“Who’s Jeff Kinroy?” I say incredulously. It really is a pretty obscure reference.

“You know, Jeff Kinroy! He went to primary school with you. His Mum works as a reliever at school and I saw her the other day. She knows me from when you boys were in Kindergarten together. She said he’s studying medicine now.”

Bullshit, I think. Jeff Kinroy was a dumb-arse at Kindergarten.

“Well....why do you care what Jeff Kinroy does?”

My Mum smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth involuntarily, making what I imagine is that “tsk, tsk” sound...or do people actually say “tsk, tsk”, pronounced “tisk, tisk”? I was never quite sure about that. I actually go through this thought process as my Mum speaks, and miss part of what she is saying, and I hear “the point is, you need to work harder!”

“Aaaaah...why?”

“I just told you! Are you even listening to me? Listen. I’M SERIOUS.”

“O....k” I say, trying to sound meek and respectful, but probably sounding sarcastic. I can’t tell her that I actually didn’t hear what she just said, as that will just make her angrier, and possibly prolong this painful conversation. I don’t think I’m out of the woods just yet though, so I try to make a concluding statement that temporarily appeases my Mother while simultaneously promising nothing.

“ Ummmm ok. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“Well I AM worried. I don’t know if you will be fine. You can’t get a LAW DEGREE if you don’t work at it.”

“Well, how would you know,” I sneer, sort of deliberately, I think. “You’ve never done a Law Degree. I’ve done part of one and I’ve passed everything.”

“You got a C in one paper Andrew. You need to be doing better. There are a lot of smart and hard working kids in there with you, you know. Auckland Grammar kids. St Kent’s kids. Kids from Diocesan and all those schools. You’re competing with kids who probably have lawyer parents, lawyer friends. It’s even harder for you”.

“Why is it harder for me? We all get marked the same. If I get good marks I should get a job, right? I should be fine?”

“I don’t know. I think you need really good marks. I think you should be trying to get an A+ every time. I know you are smart enough Andrew. All your teachers at school all said you were really smart. One of the smartest kids they’d ever seen.”

“But...”..... she interrupts me.

“....and I also know that you don’t work hard enough, I see how little time you spend studying, and so I do know you can do much better.”

I try to maintain a facade of arrogance.

“You know Mum, New Zealand is one of the least corrupt countries in the world...I read that somewhere. So, like, there isn’t that much nepotism when it comes to getting jobs and stuff. Like I’m sure if I do ok there will be jobs out there for lawyers.”

I’m pretty sure my Mum doesn’t know what nepotism means, and furthermore I do remember hearing that thing about New Zealand not being corrupt once, so I’m feeling pretty confident about this line of argument.

“You shouldn’t be thinking about just being “ok”, Andrew. You don’t know. These people find ways. They will get their kids in ahead of you. You need to fight. You need to make yourself so good that they can’t ignore you.”

“How many kids do these people have? You know those rich people; they have 2 kids each max. I’m sure there are plenty of places around for people who aren’t the employer’s kids”.

“Just don’t be so confident about that. If you’re getting Cs maybe no-one will want you. You need to just do your best.”

“Right,” I say, with quite spectacular sarcasm. “I just need to do my best. Reach for the stars”.

“Don’t try to act clever Andrew. The world doesn’t owe you anything. It’s hard out there.”

“Out where?”

“In the real world”.

“Well what is this? Is this not the real world?”

“When you need to get a job. That’s the real world. That’s when it doesn’t matter what marks you got at school. All that matters is that you are a hard worker and you put yourself out there and people know you, and they KNOW that you’ll work hard for them”.

“Didn’t you just say that marks do matter, quite a lot?” Poor old Mum. She always defeats herself. And yet, we both know she is right.

“Yes. No. Don’t be stupid. You- you know what I mean. It all matters. You just need to change your attitude because I don’t think you are trying hard enough, and you can’t coast when it comes to these things. THIS IS IMPORTANT”.

She is actually shouting at me now, which is very out of character. This is probably the most serious conversation I’ve ever had with my Mum, and I’m starting to become truly scared. Maybe she is on to me. Maybe she understands who I am. Maybe she has, for the first time in her life, truly comprehended that her son is just “different”, in a completely useless way, and will never amount to anything. I realise the magnitude of the crushing disappointment that I am destined to inflict on those around me. It seems terribly unfair that I should have to give a shit about that, but I sort of do. In some stupid way, I actually start to feel a bit sorry for all of the morons who bought in to the whole “Andrew” thing, all of the people who are emotionally invested in me, or whatever. I realise that I have parents who chose (probably) to have a child and that child turned out to be me. I try to imagine how it must feel for people who really have hopes and dreams of this sort, and I feel that, perhaps, I can almost approximate those feelings.

“What’s important?” I say, feeling almost proud of myself for continuing to be argumentative rather than sentimental.

“LIFE!”

“This is life, isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“No, I mean...right now. My life so far. Like, I’ve been going for over 19 years, and it’s been ok. I’ve done well at school, better than 99% of people do, right? Wasn’t that important?”

“It was, Andrew. We were all proud of you. No, no...I mean we ARE all proud of you. We’re just worried you won’t do your best. I think you can do great things.”

My Mum is starting to get almost teary-eyed. Her love for me is evident, and makes me feel slightly nauseous, but ashamed at the same time.

“I don’t think you should worry. I’m still passing. I’m doing Law. It’s not easy to just get As. My marks are still above average, I think. It’s not fair. I’m still probably in the top 10%, at the worst. Like come on, I’m better than 90% of kids, right? So why are you complaining like I’m a bad kid. I never get in trouble or anything either. I’m always good”

“I know Andrew. You are a good kid. But still, I’m really worried about you because you don’t seem to care.”

“Well...maybe I don’t care.”

I don’t know why I said that.

“Don’t care about what?”

“Uni. Law. Law is not very interesting Mum. I just did it because it seemed like the best out of a bunch of options that didn’t interest me.”

“Well then maybe you should change. If you really want to, I’ll support you. It would be a shame. It’s a good degree to have and you did so well to get in, but if it’s not what you want then maybe you’re wasting your time.”

“There’s nothing else I want to do. And you know I need to get a degree. It would be stupid if I didn’t get a degree. Otherwise, what would I do?”

“Well, what do you want to do when you’re finished? What’s your dream job? What are you aiming for?”

“Nothing”. I feel a slight frisson of excitement, dropping hints to my oblivious mother about the sort of person that I am, although deep down I know that even if I explained it to her fully, even if I wrote her an essay expressing my world view, she wouldn’t understand, or maybe just wouldn’t believe me. I have this luxury for now, to be able to confound people with my non-personality, to perhaps occasionally seem intriguing. In the back of my mind I know it won’t last, it can’t last. I have 4 more years of study remaining, and then....what? I can’t imagine anything, can’t posit myself in any real life situation and work out how I will take the steps to get there. I can’t even imagine being a destitute alcoholic. What happens when you do nothing?

“There must be SOMETHING”, my Mother says.

“Nope”, I say, glibly.

“Well...Andrew...that’s terrible. Don’t be silly. You have to want something. You can’t just go through life doing nothing. You can’t just....you can’t just sit in front of the computer for the rest of your life.” She laughs nervously as she says this.

“Why not? What if I want to?”

“Who’ll pay for the computer? Where will you live? How will you make money?”

“I can just work in retail or whatever. Get a crap job. It’s New Zealand. No-one starves to death. I don’t need much”.

“Don’t be stupid”, she says defiantly.

“I’m not. What do I need money for? I already told you, I don’t want anything.”

“Life is not that simple. Anyway, you’re being ridiculous. I know you’re being ridiculous on purpose just to annoy me.

 I’m actually not.

“No...Mum...really, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. Like...I’m 19 now and I just have to look after myself and I can do what I want really”. Although really, if I’m to live, I would love to stay wrapped in this cocoon forever, with nothing changing, because as much as I fear this nothingness, I fear change more. What is change, what is work, what is effort, if it all comes to nothing? And what isn’t nothing?

“Andrew, I just want you to do well. So...” she walks over to the kitchen table and picks up a small, white, crumpled piece of paper, and I sense that something lame is about to happen,”so I am ORDERING you to go to this.”

She hands me the piece of paper. It says CAREERS DAY on the top, and I remember that a few days earlier, some fucking ginger had approached me in the quad at Uni, some freckly bastard, whatever kind of dork it is who does shit like that, and I got too close before I saw him and couldn’t inconspicuously avoid him as he handed out fliers. My Mum must’ve been rifling through my pockets or something, and so I feign indignation when I say “Where did you find that?!”

“On the floor in your room”

“Well, stop looking at stuff you find on the floor in my room. Like, that’s my private space”.

She just laughs at me, and all I can think is that it’s probably my own fault that my Mum doesn’t take me seriously. If I’d built up a history of her finding bras and empty condom wrappers in my room over the last few years, maybe she’d treat my “private space” with some respect.

“Andrew, don’t try to change the subject. You are going to this career day thing. I’ll bet you’ll find it really useful.”

“How?” I ask, and it’s a genuine question.

“It’s say they will have people there from every area, you know...” –she takes the flier from my hand and scans it quickly, trying to find the word she is looking for- “ummm, faculty. Every faculty. So there will be people there to tell you about the different legal careers you can get in to, and people from different firms, everything!” She actually builds up to quite a convincing crescendo of excitement as she says this.

“But...how will that help ME?”

“Because, you will get to...see the different options and everything. You know...the different jobs you could have.”

“Well, I already know I don’t want any of those jobs”.

“Well then what are you going to do. Go on the dole? Just never work at all. You’re just lazy. You have all the ability and you’re just lazy.”

“You say it like it’s a choice. I think laziness is an actual disease. I think it’s a physical and a mental illness. I definitely suffer from laziness. It pains me to work hard, definitely.” Again, I have no idea what I am hoping to achieve by saying something so ludicrous, although I really do believe it. I really do have no motivation or incentive to work and it really does cause me mental trauma to think about it. I have some vague understanding of what being a lawyer will be like. I know what working is like. I understand that the job will probably be more complicated than what I am doing now, working as a salesman at an electronics store. However, I disagree with what seems to be the general consensus: that complicated equates to interesting.

“I’m just going to ignore that, it’s so stupid. You are going to this. YOU ARE GOING TO THIS!”- she actually squeals here, and I flinch, feeling genuinely physically threatened- “...you don’t have a choice.”

I have no idea what sort of jurisdiction she has to make this sort of demand (and as a law student, maybe I should?), but I realise that I am in a hopeless situation, and I just can’t be bothered with confrontation anyway. I acquiesce to her demands. The Careers thing is a week away and I try to put it out of my mind, much like all of my other supposed future responsibilities.

I still cling to a dream where everyone just sort of forgets that I am obliged to do stuff, and hence my life just goes on and on with me in a permanently pre-adult state. As far as I’m concerned my life has already been going on forever, and it almost seems logical to think that the future will never come. If I just stay very, very still, maybe I can avoid all of this silliness.

There's no Uni today, and I don't have a job, so I'm watching ESPN. There's a baseball game on, and I don't follow baseball at all, but I'm watching it because watching TV seems to me like a good thing to do; more acceptable than downloading porn, certainly. I'm actually dressed, in the sense that I've changed out of what I wore to bed, and I take some satisfaction in knowing that someone could suddenly appear in the room with me, and I wouldn't be embarrassed by what I was doing.

This is, however, no normal day at home masturbating and watching Oprah, because I have a pipe and a fifty bag of weed in my pocket. My heart is racing, literally thumping in my chest, at the prospect of doing drugs on my own for no real reason. I'm a druggie- I'm smoking weed for the sake of it. My hands are actually shaking quite violently, and I hope that it's adrenalin, or excitement or anticipation or whatever, and not a preliminary form of Parkinson's caused by excess drug use, which would be truly remarkable since I've only smoked weed twice in my life, and have no idea if it causes Parkinson's at all.

Sammy Sosa hits a home run and for some reason I decide that's a sign from God, who I don't believe in, and I go outside. I find a sheltered spot in my backyard where none of my neighbours can see me, and sit down with my back against the fence. I'm shaking too much to think anything interesting, except for "oh shit oh shit oh shit", and I even try to take some deep breaths, because I don't want to fuck this up.

I pull the small plastic bag from my pocket and, criminally failing to savour the moment, open it and pull out a cone with a vulgar carelessness. Somehow I get it into the pipe intact, despite shaking so much that my elbow smashes into the fence behind me, hard, and despite the pain it is actually hard for me to cry out in my distressed state, so I croak instead. I'm so worried that someone might've heard, that I sit completely still, and don't move for what literally seems like half an hour.

Finally I decide that the coast is clear, but I hear a car, and instinctively I lie flat on the ground and start CRAWLING towards a nearby tree. The car was at least thirty metres away, on the other side of the house, but I feel that since I perceived its existence, it has in some way perceived mine. Don't get me wrong- I want everyone to know that I'm a druggie, just not yet. There's nothing much cool about what I'm doing now; it's more like an integral step on the journey towards having an identity. I have to wait another minute or so, the coarse grass imprinting its pattern on my emotionless face, before the car is sufficiently removed from my memory, and I can start again.

The trembling nevertheless returns with renewed vigour when I manage to extract the box of matches from my pocket. A lighter would be preferable, but I don't own one and couldn't find one lieing around the house. Things start to look bleak when the force of my convulsions snap the first match in half as soon as I pull it from the box. The next six, by comparision, perform heroically- all of them break as I strike erratically at the box, each one lucky break away from lighting. Number eight is the lucky match, and when the flame starts to roar, or at least purr, I feel rather like a drunk pool player who has just won a match playing blindfolded. Moving the match to the pipe is an equally onerous task. For some reason I decide it is best done in slow motion, but this seems less wise when the flame starts to burn my index finger. 

Suddenly I feel something rare and quite astonishing- a burst of pure commitment and decisiveness. I feel no pain. Somehow I get the flame to the cone, and miraculously the precious weed absorbs the orange glow. I thrust the pipe to my lips...

...and take the longest drag I can manage, trying to get my money's worth, even pinching my nose pathetically to ensure that the motivation-sapping smoke doesn't escape from any orifice. It is terrible, absolute shit. The taste of the smoke is barely palatable, and immediately I feel as though someone has rammed a feather down my throat and is tickling me mercilessly.

I start to cough, ridiculous, spluttering coughs that completely fail to extinguish my irritation, and so I give in- as one does when one is stoned- and start hacking loudly. This must be good shit, because my intense paranoia about being seen is gone, at least while coughing. As soon as I stop, abject fear returns- I hear a door slam next door, but this time it's too much. I dump the contents of the pipe on the ground and stomp on them purposefully, and then I carefully place the pipe, matches, and weed in my pocket. 

Standing up now, the neighbours' house comes in to view, and my resolve is shattered when I see Terry and Jan, a couple in their forties, chatting amicably with what looks like BOTH sets of their parents. I walk across the back deck, feigning casualness, and grapple with the back door key, in full view of my entirely disinterested neighbours, for at least thirty seconds. All the while I'm grinning and winking at them, sharing a friendly and self-deprecating joke about my incompetence, although they never actually look in my direction.