Goddamn, if I’d known, if I’d had the slightest idea he was close to the edge – (especially over a relationship, for chrissakes) – I’d’ve called him.
I’d’ve called him. I’d’ve gone and stirred him up, like I always could, since we were toddlers. My cousin Adam, my father’s sister’s son, three months older than me. He hanged himself last week.
I hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years. He has an eight-year-old daughter I met at the funeral. Bombshell of a child, as you’d expect. Errant golden boy produces lively golden offspring. At the funeral they made it clear he lived for her. No comment.
It goes without saying I am furious with him. You bastard – you always were a proud, arrogant, wilful, righteous sonofabitch and now it’s killed you. And a stupid, vengeful, graceless, futile gesture it was too – loser. Come back and do life again and do it better, you-with-all-the-talent. Make all the stupid gestures you like, but try and make sure they teach you something.
I loved him (though I’d forgotten how much), and he loved me. Classic kissing cousins, we declared it, age five, and he got his friend to conduct a marriage ceremony. We each had a sister three years younger, so the parents put the four of us together often. My parents were raising Clare and me in a quiet, conservative, religious environment; Adam and Sarah’s parents were in advertising, social and cultural butterflies, the picture of sharp, fine, fashionable taste. Ideological conflicts were frequent – subtle between the parents, overt amongst the kids.
By around eleven or twelve we were fighting more than playing; at his birthday party he flaunted his ravishing blonde girlfriend Paris (yeah, they were, like, twelve). I had crushes on boys, who sometimes had crushes on me, but our interactions consisted largely of moments of sweet, paralysed, mad, joyous terror. We didn’t go around together. I had few boys to my parties; I don’t remember having Adam there at all. We never saw each other through our teens; I heard word here and there: he got caught growing weed on his parents’ country weekender, he wanted to be a chef, he played a bit of guitar, he’d moved to Manly. I’d moved to Melbourne, to the Australian Ballet School, and later the Company. When we were 23 or thereabouts, out of curiosity, I called him.
We had a drink at the Steyne (oh, when I walked in those doors for the wake yesterday! The place holds far fewer memories for me than for most who were there; just this one of such bittersweet power) and then we found our way back to his – what was it? my memory is blank till we were inside that small space – a cabin, a caravan perhaps, a tiny granny flat. All I remember is the bed, and a Turkish rug. We fell pretty much straight on it – the bed, mostly. I wanted so much – but I couldn’t, oh god no; I was too young and too delicately raised to survive the thing it would have been if we’d slept together – once would be traumatic, more often was not viable for too many reasons. So I retreated, leaving him shrugging.
We met another couple of times over the years, and it always went the same way. The last time was during my marriage, and again I backed off, somewhat distrait. He said, ‘If we don’t do it this time, we never will.’ I said, ‘Then so be it: I can’t.’ He wouldn’t wait a day for me to honour an agreement with my husband; the next day he was unreachable. Typical; fucking prince.
When I went polyamorous – nine, ten years ago? he came straight to mind. I called him; he was here in impressively short time. I opened the door, but my wild child was gone. It was Adam, but not as I remembered him. He looked every inch the suburban family man he was soon to become. His late-thirties beer-drinker’s body had set as they do, even the active ones. Gone were the long streaky brown-gold locks, the front now receding, the rest cut. His face was tough and ruddy from a life of sun and surf; he was wearing (surely not ?) apricot chinos. (Forgive me, but the cultural shift from Manly to Redfern is akin to that from Barbados to Berlin, and he had crossed it without changing his pants. That’s salty for you.)
Now call me shallow, but I had just discovered a penchant for young men, a delightful number of whom seemed rather keen for the kind of encounter I had in mind. My head, shall we say, was turned in another direction, and I did not see my cousin as I might have. I fear he may have caught disappointment in my face: we were both outwardly relaxed but very much less than forthcoming. We talked lightly about music and the industry… strangely, I don’t think we even played each other anything. I had a number 2 crop, limited skills and a bad attitude at the time; I would’ve been far too out there for his taste. We were too different and too much alike: proud, intense, angry.
He left, and shortly after I heard he had settled with a partner, and then there was a child. I never called, and nor did he. There didn’t seem to be any reason to complicate each other’s lives. But if I’d known, goddamnit, if I’d known – that he had talked of suicide, that his partner felt he was morbidly obsessed with her, paranoid about her fidelity and constantly angry, miserable and often mean. That he had withdrawn from his friends of late, or that at the end he left: she did not kick him out as he claimed. If I had known he was in such a desperate hole I’d’ve come straight over. The man was in need, and knowing him deep but not well I could’ve got him talking all sorts. I would hardly expect him to call, but how I wish that word had got round to me.
By now, by this age, we could’ve been great friends, with or without sex, that most likely depending on whether I helped him repair his relationship or survive the ending of it. Take that as it comes: I would’ve been content either way – anything but this.
Such Is Life
© Adam Jenkins
*If his friends see this and know a link to where you can hear it, please leave it in a comment.*
Well I fell from your grace once too often
More often than it comes in five long measures
The length of life that surrounds you
And calls you to the end
So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life
Don’t you know it
Well I came from higher up oh so briefly
Even more when the call came from God
We will dance around the outlife
Never seeking more
So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life
I come from a town where I used to know
Where the places were to go
Then I packed my things
And I’m on the road again
So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life
Don’t you blow it
ArtOfBeing 