Men Don’t Take Themselves Too Seriously
‘So we are a boy, we are a girl.’
‘Moving’ by Suede
‘Music is very important to me,’ says Phil quietly. We all nod at the simple truth of this and watch Phil gently readjust his glasses and take a sip of his peppermint tea. I’m beginning to hate Phil.
There are six of us sitting around the floor of his room and he’s just put on a Nina Simone album. Not a Best Of . . . a proper one. It’s the second night of Freshers’ Week and we’ve been going round each other’s rooms, playing our very favourite music to each other. After Phil’s room, it’s my turn next and I can feel the panic taking hold. I drain the can of Foster’s that I’ve been carrying around. This is the first time I’ve heard Nina Simone and I’m instantly ashamed that I’ve never heard that amazing voice before. Everyone else is talking about ‘Nina’ like she’s an old mate. So far I’ve learnt that every one of their parents is a teacher, academic or writer. All ten parents are seemingly all still married.
I’ve just turned twenty. With my September birthday and my unmissable third-year sixth form, it feels like I’m two years late to the party and also two years under-prepared.
What the hell am I going to play them? Michael Jackson? At least he’s . . . y’know, OK, he isn’t really ‘black’ any more but . . . oh, why haven’t I got any Jackson 5? At least I could say, ‘Of course he’s a joke now, but I quite like his early stuff.’ But no, that’s no good because his early stuff sold millions of records. He did his early stuff when he was tiny – he could dance like James Brown before he could read. No one else seems to think this is cool. No, I won’t be inviting them to my room to give them a recital of Thriller.
Phil and I are the only boys – there’s a tiny, just a subtle feeling of competition. Of course, that’s not coming from Phil. Phil isn’t like that. Phil has travelled extensively in Thailand and has already offered to cook everyone a Thai meal next week just as soon as he can find a shop around here that could sell him ‘a decent wok’. I ask, genuinely, ‘What, you mean a non-stick one?’ and Phil gives me a look of infinite patience and says, ‘No.’
We get to my room and everyone finds somewhere to sit.
Julie, a calm presence with watchful and watchable brown eyes, notes the giant Laurel and Hardy poster. ‘My dad likes Laurel and Hardy.’
That wasn’t quite the effect I was hoping for, but at least she’s being nice. The poster isn’t intended for a group anyway. It’s there for someone like Julie on her own with me. It’s supposed to say ‘Hey, look, Julie. I don’t take myself too seriously. This is a friendly room so relax. I’m no trouble. So if that’s all cool, you could probably take your clothes off?’ That, at least, is the idea.
Phil is giving the poster his own brand of critical attention. ‘They’re great, aren’t they?’ he says. ‘Although I much prefer Buster Keaton.’
Of course. Of course you do, Phil. Of course you prefer Buster Keaton. All wankers prefer Buster Keaton. They don’t for a second find him funnier than Laurel and Hardy, but they prefer him. They prefer his work.
But Phil isn’t finished. ‘When was the shot taken?’
‘The what, sorry?’
‘The shot,’ he explains as if to a child, ‘the photograph they made the poster from?’
It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t have to play by Phil’s rules. ‘Fuck knows, Phil. From a film? The one with the piano? Most of the films are about them moving a piano, aren’t they?’
I like the general chuckle. But something is wrong. I’ve taken off my jumper to reveal what was once a grey T-shirt but which last summer I cut into the shape of a grey vest. My longish hair has grown much faster at the back, so I look less like a foppish public schoolboy and more like a mullet-wielding footballer. The gold stud in my left ear that was daringly effeminate in Woodhall Spa now feels weirdly aggressive, as do my Doc Martens boots and the box of condoms visible from within the bedside cupboard, left artfully ajar. The summer spent painting all ninety-four of the Dower House window frames has, for the first time, given me some muscle definition in my arms and shoulders but . . . did I have to wear a vest? And why, next to the Laurel and Hardy poster, is there a page of A4 on which I’ve written ‘Je suis une Communiste’ in chunky hip hop writing? Why, within hours of arriving at Cambridge, did I make a sign that said ‘Je suis une Communiste’ in chunky hip hop writing and put it up on the wall?
More urgently, why am I about to play them INXS? The new can of Foster’s is already light in my hand as I scan the song list on the back of the CD. In a crowded field I find the most tuneless and bombastic: ‘Guns in the Sky’. I place it carefully in the vertically loading CD player. Julie, Fay, Suki and Collette all do versions of an indulgent smile when they hear Michael Hutchence shouting along to the introduction: ‘Ooh! Uh! OOH, A-ha-ha HAAA!’
I take a seat next to a speaker and cross one skinny leg over the other, leaving a sixteen-hole boot quite close to Phil’s face. So I re-cross my legs while unobtrusively lighting a cigarette with the Zippo that Will gave me as a going-away present. I’m not the only smoker here, but I’m the only smoker not making a roll-up. To listen to Fay talk about manufactured fags you’d think rolling tobacco was some kind of health food.
There’s some desultory chat during which Phil stares at a section of carpet in front of him, looking quite upset. It’s like Michael Hutchence is actually hurting him.
Everyone notices but Julie takes a cheerful interest. ‘You all right, Phil? You look a bit glum.’
Glum. I’m starting to really like Julie.
Phil says, ‘It’s silly. I’m being silly . . .’
We all exchange glances the way we’ve seen grown-ups exchange glances in films. Phil waits for some encouragement.
‘What’s up?’ says Julie. ‘It’s OK, we’re all complete strangers and will probably never speak to each other again for the next three years.’
I like this and join in. ‘Yes, you can tell us, Phil, we’ve all forgotten your name already.’
Phil gives this a brave little nod. And then: ‘It’s really dumb, it’s just . . . this band, the singer, Michael Hutchence . . . it’s just our family pet, our cat, passed away a few months ago and I haven’t really got over it.’
‘Was it in a band?’ I ask.
‘He was called Michael,’ Phil replies evenly.
My upper and lower lips disappear into my closed mouth and I hold them there, trying to find somewhere in the room where it might be safe to look. The ceiling is as good a place as any. I sense Phil defiantly searching everyone’s face for signs of mirth or satire, but I’m damned if he’s getting it from me. I think maybe if I frown as well as keep my mouth like this, it will look like contrition or sympathy, rather than what it really is – a thin disguise for an overwhelming urge to laugh my guts up.
‘I know it’s just a cat,’ continues Phil, ‘but it was also losing a member of the family.’
I get up quite suddenly and start stepping over people in the direction of the bathroom. Julie catches the look on my face. Somebody else has asked how Michael died and as I leave the room, I hear Phil say, ‘Just old age really, the vet said cancer . . .’
In the bathroom, my abdomen contracts and bends me double, but not with laughter. I straighten up and blow my nose, look in the mirror and try to reason this out. It’s not Phil’s fault. Phil is annoying but he’s only eighteen and middle-class. Don’t bully him, he doesn’t know. None of them know. This would be the wrong time to tell them because it would look bitter. Bitter about Phil’s reaction to the demise of a cat. Don’t do it. They’re in your room. They’re guests. Keep it together. Be a man.
By the time I get back, the conversation has moved up a gear and now they’re talking about how tough it is to lose a grandmother.
I think I’m doing pretty well, not saying anything.
There again, there might be something about the way I light my next cigarette, with a violent flip of the Zippo, that suggests a change in mood. And maybe I didn’t need to stab the ‘Stop’ button on the CD player quite so abruptly. And maybe I should stop looking at my watch. And maybe, despite how brilliantly I’m handling this situation, people are starting to look uncomfortable. It’s quite late and they should probably make a move. That’s what they start to say, anyway, and I agree with a mumbled ‘yeah’ while I start to unlace my boots. They see themselves out and I hear Julie whisper something to the others at the door. She’s still on the inside when it closes. She comes over.
‘Right then, you . . .’ She sits in front of me and takes her time, looking from my earring to my hair to my shoulders and then into my eyes.
Finally she says, ‘With you, it wasn’t a cat, was it?’
After college, Julie took a job in marketing which she didn’t much enjoy. So she was more than happy to give it up and become a full-time mum to the three children she had with her devoted husband, Phil.
Her relationship with me was less of a big deal, lasting as it did that gentle night and the night after.
*
For one of the less formal colleges, Robinson sure knew how to give me the willies (the willies: noun, sensation of fear located in genitals. See also ‘the fannies’ or ‘the vulva-tumbles’). On the first day there was a matriculation photograph and ceremony. This involved wearing an undergraduate gown over my one and only suit. The suit was a hand-me-down from Dad’s dad, Ron, and at least it fitted me quite well even if it was from the 1960s and pale blue. If that sounds rather dapper, it wasn’t – not in 1992. Stripy flared lapels from the 1970s, yes; square-cut, powder-blue polyester, no.
I begin to feel like I’m the unwilling star of a Comic Strip Presents film called The Boy Who Thought He Was a Ponce but Turned out to Be a Yob. I follow the others into the main hall, where I’m immediately hijacked by the choice of sweet or dry sherry. I’ve never even tried sherry before and go for the dry one as I assume that’s the sophisticated choice. Then, having swallowed a mouthful of paraffin, I start to try and make friends with the other freshers. Moving around the hall, and having found a cup of tea instead, I glance out of the window and check that the clouds are still clouds and the trees are still trees. Yes. This is still recognisably Britain. I have a cup of tea now. I like tea. Everything’s fine.
‘Hello there! So, where do you hail from?’
I’ve attached myself to a group of freshers. The wrong group. The question comes from a tall boy with chalky white skin and bright red cheeks. He sounds like he was at Eton and looks like he’s driven directly from there with his head out of the window.
‘From Lincolnshire,’ I say, ‘a couple of little villages in Lincolnshire.’
‘Lincolnshire . . .’ the posh youth replies, rolling the word around his massive mouth like it’s an novelty wine-gum. ‘Tremendously flat, Lincolnshire. Isn’t that so?’
‘That is s – that’s right,’ I manage, ‘although Lincoln itself is quite hilly.’ Oh God.
‘Fascinating. Lincoln itself is quite hilly. Fascinating.’
Actually he isn’t taking the piss. He’s just doing his best with what I’ve given him. I hear myself saying, ‘I mean, it’s the flatness that makes it good for arable farming, as well as the quality of the soil, although we also have quite a lot of sheep.’
Why don’t I just kill myself? Why didn’t I kill myself in the bungalow when I had the chance?
The tall boy says, with a naughty grin, ‘You don’t roger the sheep, do you?’
‘Only on Thursdays.’
He gives me a startled look and then lets out the kind of laugh that would embarrass Brian Blessed. ‘ONLY ON THURSDAYS, HE SAYS! Oh, you’re a tonic. I’m Noel, what’s your name?’
‘Robert, er, Rob.’
‘Which do you prefer, Rob?’
‘Rob.’
‘Well, Rob it is then! And what an extraordinary suit, Rob.’ Intrusively, Noel slightly parts my gown to get a better look at the polyester sex-dream.
‘It’s my dad’s. Actually, it was his dad’s, but . . .’
‘And who is your dad, Rob?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Who is your father?’
‘Who is he? Erm . . . he’s called Paul . . .’
‘Paul . . .?’
‘Er . . . Paul Webb.’
Noel casts his eyes to the ceiling in concentration. ‘Paul Webb . . . no, sorry.’ There’s a moment where I wonder if I’m supposed to accept his apology for never having heard of my father. ‘And what does he do? Does he have an occupation, Rob?’ Fucking hell, can I go now?
‘Yes, well, he used to be a woodsman, but now he’s a gang-master.’
‘He was a . . . he’s a what?’
‘He hires and organises groups of labourers to pick fruit and vegetables from farms. From fields in farms. From farm fields, essentially.’
Noel is looking at me as if I’m the most exotic creature he’s ever encountered. I take advantage of his moment of helplessness. ‘Well, anyway, I’d better move on and . . . and wow some more people with my knowledge of Lincolnshire’s tockological, toplodocklic –’
‘Topology.’
‘Right, topology, thanks.’ I start to move off and Noel shakes my hand.
‘Excellent meeting you, Rob. Stay in touch.’ He’s visibly creating a file in his memory, most likely under the category heading: Full Maintenance Grant.
My first encounter with the diamond-hard courtesy and cheery humourlessness of the English upper middle class has left me drained. I circle the hall for a while longer, miserably contemplating going back to my room to open the complete works of Chaucer (that will need doing, sooner or later) or, more likely, to moan to the diary about how coming here was a mistake. There’s another gaggle of first-years: it includes a boy with his head shaved at the sides and the rest of his hair dyed red and pulled back into a ponytail. Also a short, beautiful girl in full Goth make-up. They are both, nevertheless, wearing formal clothes and gowns. They look like they’re hating this. OK, maybe worth one more go.
I hang around the edges of the group. Plum-hair and Goth-girl don’t notice but someone else does.
‘Hello! I’m Patrick.’
‘Hello. Rob.’
Like Noel, like a lot of the men around here, Patrick is about six foot two. What have these boys been eating? I suppose their mums didn’t smoke. Mum was scrupulous about giving up the booze when pregnant, but not so much the other thing. I reckon she owes me an inch or two as well as thirty years of company. I make a mental note to pick that bone with her the next time we have a pan-celestial chat.
Patrick says, with the others listening, ‘We’ve all been having exciting conversations about what A levels we did and what we did on our gap years.’
The group quietly hums with a sense of irony and self-consciousness. Oh yes, this is more like it.
‘I can get that over with quite quickly,’ I say. ‘English, History and Economics. I had a bit of unfortunateness and went back to school for a year. I’m from Lincolnshire and, yes, I do fuck the sheep.’
‘Rams or ewes?’
‘That’s a bit personal, Patrick.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Rams, mainly.’
Plum-hair, whose name is Joe, adds helpfully, ‘The horns. The horns give you something to hang on to.’
‘Ah, a connoisseur,’ I say.
Joe giggles.
I’m sorry to tell you that this bestiality banter goes on for about another minute. The rest of the group divide neatly between those who think this is weird but funny and those who think it’s just weird. As for Patrick, Joe and me – it’s perfectly obvious that we will attend each other’s funerals. This is how my brain currently interprets good news about new friendships.
Patrick is the first to sense that we’re being insufferable and tries to include everyone else. ‘So Rob, this is Joe, Lily, Phil, Julie, Dan . . .’ He could do the whole thing in one breath but realises it’s starting to look like he’s showing off his social skills; not showing off your social skills being, of course, an important social skill. ‘Er . . . Glynn? Tara? And Dorothea. I probably got that all wrong.’ Everyone mumbles happily that he got it all right, like he’s just tickled them on the tummy.
Phil, the one standing quite close to Julie, who looks as if he’d much rather be in his room with an earful of WOMAD, has been thinking. ‘You went back to school for a year?’
‘Yeah. I thought about Thailand but realised I just hadn’t had enough good old ruddy sixth form.’
Phil isn’t satisfied. ‘What was “the unfortunateness”?’
Nope. Not here, not now.
I hesitate for just a second. Julie sees it, so does Patrick. The latter good-naturedly explains to Phil, ‘He’d tell you, but he’d have to kill you.’
‘Exactly,’ I say, locking eyes with Phil through his expensive glasses, ‘probably by clubbing you to death with a dead sheep.’
Ooh, that was a bit much. Phil snorts lightly and looks around for somewhere else to be. The funny half of the group is amused, but I feel I’ve let Patrick down. That’s the thing about kind people: I can never live up to them.
Of all the things I currently want these Cambridge people to think I am – witty, clever, sophisticated, ambiguous, sexy, ironic, exciting, artistic, self-possessed, self-aware – it doesn’t occur to me that ‘kind’ should be at the top of the list. Nor ‘brave’ or ‘honest’ or even ‘reliable’. I think, at this time, that these virtues are too obvious, too boring and too typical of some kind of normal man.
No, as long as you’re very serious about not being like your dad, you don’t really need to be ‘good’ at all. What is ‘good’ anyway? This is the method by which I give myself permission to start acting like a liar and a sleazebag.
*
It’s about this time that I give up reading. That’s to say, at the beginning of my English degree. So, naturally, this is also where the lying has to start in earnest. As an English student, reading books and writing essays about books should really be quite high up there in a time and motion study of how I spend my day. The trouble is, much as novels, plays and poems have previously been a solace and an inspiration, reading them is now my job. I used to be practically the only boy who loved reading: now I’m surrounded by them. Therefore: screw reading.
Yes, I could open that copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but first I should probably get myself a coffee and a KitKat from the machine next to the junior common room and then go in there to browse the newspapers for an hour. Then I should probably start that critical evaluation of a sonnet by Philip Sidney, but not before sauntering towards the discount shop in town to buy a tight-fitting scoop-neck top like Brett Anderson wears. Then I’ll dive right into Troilus and Cressida once I’ve written a long and amusing letter to Will, Tiffany or Isabel; or a short, cheerful one to Auntie Trudy. At that point, I’m absolutely desperate to start learning Anglo-Saxon, but there again I could audition for those five plays or try to write something funny that might get me into Footlights.
And now . . . oh look, the bar’s open.
All this requires a lot of lying. Frankly, it’s hard work. I put so much creativity into my excuses for doing nothing that it sometimes occurs to me that it might have been easier just to read the sodding book or write the sodding essay in the first place. I become a sort of Method Actor in reverse – I spend so much time pretending to be ill that I actually feel quite ill.
My Director of Studies (chief teacher) is Dr Judy Weiss, an infinitely patient and brilliant tutor who interviewed me twice and took a chance. God knows, she must have seen this kind of thing before, but her policy is either to believe my excuses or at least do a very sound impression of believing them. The lies begin as evil saplings but by the end of the year are fully grown triffids.
‘Sorry, Dr Weiss, I didn’t write an essay this week because I had glandular fever . . . I couldn’t come to this week’s supervision because I was in a bike accident . . . Please accept this work in note-form because I have to attend a funeral in Lincolnshire . . . Unfortunately, I’m suffering from an unspecified mental condition but isn’t it wonderful that the sun’s out today?’
I was clearing the road for myself while leaving ever-more conspicuous piles of horseshit for everyone else to try and ignore. By the end of that year, I’d killed at least two members of my extended family and was considering a kidnapping.
At this point, Dr Weiss gave me a one-to-one ticking off so gentle it had the effect of encouraging me to do even less. ‘Robert, it’s possible that you could secure a 2:1 with native intelligence alone, but unlikely. And certainly not a First.’
Oh Judy mate, that’s FINE! That’s BRILLIANT NEWS! Who needs a First? I’m going to be a wealthy TV star! (This is also how I privately justify the tax-payer’s money I’m currently pissing up the wall. I glibly assume I’ll be in a position to pay it back through tax.)
I nod at her and look contrite, while wondering what I have to do around here to get thrown out. The answer will come next year in the language I have completely neglected to learn. On the shelf in my room, there’s a copy of Beowulf ticking like some kind of Anglo-Saxon book-bomb.
*
Sexually, if not quite romantically, Little Tart Fauntleroy is having the time of his life. The diary becomes littered with what Twitter users now describe as a #humblebrag.
God, this thing is starting to read like Confessions of a Sex Maniac! It’s awful I know, but I’m just recounting the facts.
Let’s be clear, poppet, you don’t think it’s awful in the slightest. You’re having a ball and good for you. Pity about all the lying, though, dearest. Pity about the ‘facts’.
I immediately get myself into a relationship with a third-year called Mags. She’s charismatic and slightly mad, but interesting company and, crucially, a Third-Year. I am literally dating an older woman! Sadly, the sex is consistently underwhelming, partly because we’re going out with each other for the wrong reasons, but also because she has an over-developed critical faculty and won’t shut the hell up. As a more mature lover (say, next week), I won’t mind when women tell me exactly what they want. It’s just that this is a bit new to me. And Mags has a particular style of running commentary.
‘No, no, yes . . . all right then, yes. That is indeed my clitoris. Top marks. “Well done you” Et cetera. That – actually no, you’ve got lost again, haven’t you? Oh dear. No, higher, my sweet. Gentler. No, not that gentle, I’m falling asleep. Ooh! Well, all right, if you say so.’
And then, a few minutes later –
‘Oh dear, it’s not really your night, is it? Classic erection fiasco. Ho hum. And there we were, trying to avoid the cliché. Anyway, not to worry. Let me stroke your bruised male ego. Poor you . . .’
I carry on going out with Mags even though I’m now pretty sure that I don’t like her. She says something about how nice it is to be in an exclusive relationship for a change. I hear it and agree. I, too, am a big fan of monogamy. Just not with her.
One Saturday, she goes home to London and I go to a sweaty ‘bop’ (a dance, a disco, whatever – a room crammed with a hundred young people getting down) in what Robinson touchingly calls its Party Room. I seem to be on some kind of promise from a fun first-year called Bianca. We flirt and dance, then she disappears. But that’s OK because here comes Collette, another fun first-year. The flirting and dancing resumes. We leave the party early and go back to my room.
Things are just getting a bit fantastic in the dark when there’s a knock at the door. The room has a tiny corridor – you can close the bedroom door before you open the one outside.
It’s Bianca: sweaty, smiling but quizzical.
‘You left the party.’
‘Yeah, just tired.’
‘You left the party with Collette.’
‘Yeah, exactly. She needed to talk.’
‘Talk?’
‘Yeah. It’s her brother.’ I’m not going to say this, am I? Yup, apparently I am. ‘He’s a heroin addict.’
‘What?’
‘He’s really struggling. And she wanted to talk.’
‘To you?’
‘Apparently, yes.’
Bianca has clearly been lied to before, by better liars and even worse men than me. She’s now enjoying life.
‘And she’s in there right now, is she?’
‘Er, yeah, actually.’
‘Discussing her brother’s heroin addiction with you.’
‘I know it sounds mental, but yes.’
‘It does sound fairly mental, Rob.’ Bianca is quite gleeful as well as fairly drunk. She casts the odd glance at the white cotton top I’m wearing, with its see-through sweatiness and unevenly fastened buttons.
‘So, I’ll see you back at the party, yeah?’
‘Er, yup.’
She kisses me on the mouth. She smells fucking great. ‘Don’t be long, then.’ She goes off, softly cackling to herself.
Right. OK. I go back into the room and turn on a lamp. Forgive me, reader. I don’t know why you should, but forgive me anyway.
‘So anyway, shall we go back to the party?’
‘What?’
‘I just thought we maybe left a bit early.’
‘Was that Bianca out there?’
I’m all out of ideas.
‘Bianca . . . Yep!’
Collette starts indignantly pulling on her knickers. ‘I have never been treated so shabbily in my entire fucking life.’
I slightly turn away while she finishes dressing. You know, because I’m such a gentleman.
She heads out of the door and never speaks to me again.
A couple of hours later, I’m in the same room with Bianca. We’re both shit-faced. And, aah, here are two more lovely breasts and, aah, here is another soft, beautiful triangle in the dark. And, aah, she’s just fallen asleep.
Okey-cokey. I tell her not to snore. She slurs, ‘You not snore neither, mister,’ and giggles at how that came out. I pull the duvet over her shoulders and give her a kiss on the cheek. Wow, I think. I just cheated on Mags with two women. Or at least I would have done if one hadn’t stormed out and the other hadn’t fallen asleep. But it’s the thought that counts. Hope she doesn’t find out.
A few days later, more in sorrow than in anger, Mags calmly destroys me. We’re in my room again – H1, Robinson College. There should really be a blue plaque, commemorating the night when the author of How Not To Be a Boy had his testicles quietly removed and then pushed slowly and firmly up his nostrils.
‘I think we’re both aware that your behaviour has been deplorable,’ she states, neutrally. It’s 5 November, and I’ve just got back from a fireworks display. After twenty minutes of wandering around with Patrick, Joe, Dora, Lily-the-Goth, Bianca and a few other first-years, I withdrew into a terrible sadness and then just gave them the slip. Partly it was the fireworks, conjuring memories of Mum and Derek in the bungalow garden. And I missed my brothers and my Lincolnshire friends. Where were Will and Tiffany on a night like this? These new guys didn’t know me at all.
It was in this frame of mind that I walked into the Robinson bar, bought four cans of lager and took them back to H1. Mags had witnessed this and then followed a few minutes later.
‘Drinking alone, oh dear me. We are feeling sorry for ourselves, aren’t we? I’ll just sit down, shall I?’
She sits opposite me, cross-legged and scarily focused. ‘So what’s the problem?’
I don’t know whether to trust her, but I tell her anyway. What it adds up to is . . . I’m lonely. She listens, occasionally sighing with apparent sympathy, sometimes rolling her eyes at the ceiling with theatrical impatience. Troublingly, she isn’t interrupting or even replying. I get the distinct impression I’m being given enough rope to hang myself. After about a minute, I stop talking and she starts.
‘It must be hard being as important as you, Rob. I mean, all these feelings of sadness and loneliness – the rest of us never have to deal with those, do we? You don’t think it’s possible that Patrick or Joe miss their friends from school, for example? Because it doesn’t sound like that actually crossed your mind. I think it’s quite likely that they also feel confused and lonely. But somehow they don’t go into a sulk and then fuck off without saying goodbye . . . and then sit around with a beer saying “everything means nothing and it’s all just ‘why . . .?’”. Do they? They didn’t name their car after a man whose only song was called “The One and Only”.’
She sighs and lights a cigarette. ‘Obviously I know all about Bianca and Collette. That was pathetic and I’m quite hurt, but it’s beside the point, frankly. I think we can both agree that your behaviour has been deplorable and it goes without saying that I don’t want to go out with you any more. If you want us to remain friends, then I think you need to get used to the idea that other people are real.’
Well, that’s me told.
She says, ‘What do you think?’
I say, ‘I think you should stop talking and go away.’
She gives a mild snort of disappointment and does just that.
It feels like I’ve let someone under my skin and she just trashed the place from the inside. Mags, by the way, is young, hurt, and has just spent all night in the bar. But she hasn’t said anything untrue or even unfair. I feel a vague sense of indignation – familiar from Dad’s domestic bollockings – at the spectacle of anyone who isn’t Mum presuming to tell me off. But the thought of Mum makes matters worse because, without quite saying it, Mags has left me with the heavy impression that my mother is ashamed of me.
The idea burrows slowly into my brain like a malign worm. I look distractedly around the wet, unfocused room for a Tupperware box – but then remember why I couldn’t do it last time, so there’s no point thinking about it this time either.
*
To be well enough to reject suicidal thoughts is not the same thing as being well enough not to have them in the first place. We are not responsible for our thoughts, of course. We’re responsible only for our words and actions. There are no ‘bad thoughts’, only bad deeds.
But obviously there are some lines of thought that are unhealthy to pursue, two extreme examples being: ‘How exactly am I going to murder this person who just barged onto the train when people were trying to get off?’ or ‘How exactly am I going to murder myself?’ We all have wayward thoughts. We don’t choose them, but we can choose not to follow them.
With feelings, there is no choice at all. Zero choice. How are you feeling right now?
Right. Whose idea was that? I don’t mean to be rude but I doubt that you had much to do with it. Not because of what you’re reading now, so much as what you had for breakfast and that annoying thing your friend said to you last Tuesday night. We are not the same thing as our emotions. With practice, you just get to watch them bubbling up and simmering down again.
And you can sometimes tilt the playing field in your own favour. You don’t discreetly lift the surface of a game of table football (or foosball) unless you’re an outrageous cheat. It’s acceptable to do so, however, if your opponent is the one in your mind who keeps saying ‘stop being alive’. Going for a brisk walk or having a cup of tea are a couple of harmless ways to change the chemistry of your body enough, maybe, to change your frame of mind. At least, it works for some of the people some of the time. If your opponent wants you dead, tilt the table. Tea, exercise, talking therapy, meditation, prescribed anti-depressants . . . different things tilt different tables. Whatever works for you.
My problem in my twenties – a continuing but much diminished problem as I type now – was that I tended to miss out the teas and the walks and reached straight for a lager. Oh, I can change the chemistry, all right. It’s just a pity that my chemistry-changer of choice is, among other things, a known depressant that gives you liver failure and a fat gut.
So, on that particular night (and I’m tempted to put the negative emotions in bold here, but I wouldn’t do that to you), I was afraid that I was in the wrong place, afraid of losing my old friends, anxious that my new ones didn’t love me and, as usual, in grief. On top of that, someone just correctly pointed out that I’d behaved in a selfish and self-indulgent way, so we can add shame and challenged pride to this bountiful platter of Reasons to Get Drunk.
If you’re thinking right now that this catalogue of mishandled feelings is, in itself, all a little bit self-indulgent, then I suppose my reply is this: for men of about my age and older – those whose fathers had fought in a war, or those who were raised by the sons of such fathers – there can be few more powerful accusations than the one of self-indulgence. Paul got it from Ron, and I got it from Paul. This is the voice I hear all the time:
Be a man. Man up. Act like a man. Get a grip. Get real. Get over yourself. Pull yourself together. Sort yourself out. Stop moaning. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t know you’re born. BE A MAN. MAN UP. ACT LIKE A MAN . . .
It’s no coincidence that this is the language frequently used by men who believe that we live in a ‘feminised’ society where men (particularly white men like themselves) have become the victims of discrimination.
Men’s rights activists tend to make a series of valid observations from which they proceed to a single, 180-degree-wrong conclusion. They are correct to point out that, worldwide, suicide is the most common form of death for men under fifty. It’s also true that men are more likely than women to have serious problems with alcohol, that men die younger, that the prison population is 95 per cent male and that the lack of support for our returning front-line soldiers is a national disgrace. So far, so regrettably true.
They are incorrect, however, to lay any this at the door of ‘feminism’, a term which they use almost interchangeably with ‘women’. In my experience of reading the comments and replies to articles I’ve written on gender-related subjects, these are invariably the guys telling me to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man.
No, sir. No, lads. No, Daddy. That won’t help us and it won’t help anyone else. Men in trouble are often in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help, something we have been repeatedly told is unmanly. We are in prison because the traditional breadwinning expectations of manhood can’t be met, or the pressure to conform is too great, or the option of violence has been frowned upon but implicitly sanctioned since we were children. We are dependent on booze when we try to tilt the table, try to change the chemistry in a way that is harmful, counter-productive and, of course, widely accepted as tough and manly, irrespective of whether the impulse comes from conformity or rebellion, from John Wayne or James Dean.
We die younger than women because, for one thing, we don’t go to the doctor. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t want to be thought self-indulgent. The mark of a real man is being able to tolerate a chest infection for three months before laying off the smokes or asking for medicine.
Once in a long-term relationship, men are worse than women at maintaining same-sex friendships. I don’t mean talking bollocks with Gary in the pub, enjoyable as it is. I mean being able to tell Gary you’ve got cancer and expecting Gary to be able to listen. I’m not saying none of us have that kind of friend in our lives, but women seem to have about four each. That’s fine as long as your wife doesn’t die or divorce you. If she does, men are left higher and drier not only because they relied on just one person for emotional support but because they tend to be less plugged into the local community. If we do less of the school run, less of the shopping, less sitting in dentists’ waiting rooms with our kids, we aren’t going to meet and get to know as many people, especially younger people. Loneliness is a man-killer.
Then there’s work. Whether it’s enjoyable, dangerous, repetitive, well paid, badly paid, fulfilling or soul-destroying, work-related stress is our problem, thank you. You women, please, hello there, please stop banging on the door and smacking your heads against glass ceilings in the attempt to compete or support. Shhhhhh. We’ve got this. Ow, shit, my ulcer! My tumour! The ulcer on my tumour!
At least we have a job. When we don’t have a job . . . fuck! I don’t have a job! I’m not a man! My tumour! My ulcer!
Feminists didn’t create these circumstances. Neither am I saying that men have gone along with this stuff like a bunch of passive idiots. I’m saying it’s difficult to resist because it hides in plain sight. It’s everywhere: a system of thought and a set of invented and discriminatory practices in our laws, culture and economy that feminists call the patriarchy. Feminists are not out to get us. They’re out to get the patriarchy. They don’t hate men, they hate The Man. They’re our mates. The patriarchy was created for the convenience of men, but it comes at a heavy cost to ourselves and to everyone else.
To put it childishly, if you want a vision of masculinity, imagine Dr Frankenstein being constantly bum-raped by his own monster while shouting, ‘I’m fine, everyone! I’m absolutely fine!’
*
‘I’m fine,’ I think to myself. The message that I get from Mags is that I’ve been selfish and self-indulgent. That’s reasonable. Also, every now and again, I want to kill myself. No problem.
The trouble is, someone whose only moral compass is the mother whom he believes – whom he has to believe – is watching over him, is going to find it difficult to walk into a shrink’s office and demand to be listened to when he already thinks his mother is disgusted by his self-indulgence.
It will take something else to push me to take this highly sensible and long-overdue step.
It’ll come down to love and sex again. Unrewarding sex and unrequited love. Nothing very unusual, but then the privilege of being young is a total lack of perspective. So there could never be a sexier, more gorgeous woman than Lily-the-Goth. And there could never be a more beautiful, more enigmatic man than Mags’ friend Sam (the-former-Goth). And there could never be a turn of events more calamitous than my sort-of girlfriend Lily, and my sort-of minor deity Sam, falling in love with each other.
At that point, I can scarcely get out of bed for two weeks. That’s what it takes for a boy – for this boy anyway – to seek professional help.
Well, I did tell you I was a slow learner.