"Exotic Illnesses" - opening chapter of novel

“I keep thinking about death. Not my death. Just death, like, as a concept.”

I was sitting in the fake wood-paneled office of Daniel Larkin, Rosella State High School’s guidance counselor, when I said this. It was a Wednesday. It was also 2007. 

Mr. Larkin dressed like he was hosting a late-night talk show, except with none of the charisma. He was probably someone’s Dad; I always thought about that – someone’s dad. 

Mr. Larkin crossed his arms and frowned. “You’re not depressed, Thom. You’re thirteen.” He always dismissed my diagnoses. I wanted one so desperately. I’d found an old DSM textbook in Mum’s storage, and at first, I would propose only the exotic illnesses to him – ‘schizoid personality disorder’, ‘dissociative identity disorder’ – but Mr. Larkin would balk. I was back to the basics, ‘major depressive disorder’. I felt entitled to that, at minimum. 

“Sir, I really think you might be wrong this time,” I said. 

“I’m more interested in the fact that you always tend to come see me on Wednesdays,” Mr. Larkin said. He made a ponderous face, like he was a detective, and I was a severed head found in a muddy field. “Why is that? Why Wednesday?”

“It’s so I can skip Ms. Woodward’s geography class.”

Mr. Larkin licked his thin lips, like a reptile. “I don’t think that’s it.” I still couldn’t believe he was probably someone’s Dad. I felt vaguely mad about it. 

I went to lunch and ate alone. There weren’t any tables that were out of view, and so I felt everyone’s eyes on me. 

My best friend Rosemary and I weren’t speaking, and she kept shooting glances at me from our old table. She and I had argued one day because Scott Porter, a moonfaced kid in the grade above us, had walked up to me and started talking shit. 

“Heard ya dad’s in the looney bin ‘cause he was walkin’ around town screaming at tourists,” Scott had said. “And that he was naked.” He’d seemed scandalised by the last bit.  

Rosemary would’ve normally jumped in there, puffed her chest out, got in Scott’s face and swore at him until he left me alone. But that day, she did nothing, even when Scott picked up my devon sandwich, opened it, and spat between the slices of bread. He’d muttered “faggot” at me before walking away. 

Rosemary had explained that she was exhausted by defending me and that it made her feel unsafe. I’d been so offended that I started sitting by myself, and every day that she didn’t profusely apologise via MSN, I got more offended, less willing to grovel in return. It was a standoff, and it was nearing a month-long. 

My final class of the day was P.E, taught by Ms. Cassimatas, but it got hijacked by state-mandated sex education. Ms. Cassimatas was supposedly a big lesbo, but she really excelled at putting a condom on a banana. After the bell rang, I walked home from school wondering if lesbians ever had to touch condoms, and if not, how did Ms. Cassimatas get so good at it? Did she practice on bananas at home?

My mother finished work early that day to give me a lift to the hospital, like every Wednesday. If she was aware of the town’s views of my father, my mother never mentioned it. She overcompensated for his reputation for being stunningly quiet and avoidant of conflict, as if she were running for President of some obscure European country. She hated loud noises or disagreement, which she referred to as ‘theatrics’, and if I even slightly raised my voice, she’d react like I’d brandished a gun.

So, it had become harder and harder to imagine her and my father getting back together.

Mum waited for me in her parked car, reading a magazine that had Katie Holmes's face on the front page. Katie Holmes’s face had big white lettering over it that read Katie’s big secret? 

I took the steps to the non-emergency entrance and walked into Dad’s wing, in the old part of the building.

I was approached by the same male nurse who always greeted me. He was convivial, even though I never remembered his name, and he brought me into a white-walled room to visit Dad.

Dad got a little fatter each week. “Antipsychotics,” he’d said a while back. “They make you wanna eat like a frog.” Even his analogies didn’t quite make sense back then.

Today, though, he was calm and lucid. The male nurse sat across from us with a royal smile, always supervising. Many months back, when Dad would sometimes come to my visits drooling and dead-eyed, the nurse would prompt him with topics for conversation (‘Maybe you should ask Thom how school’s been, Henry?’), and I felt special. 

Dad gave me a tight hug, enveloping me in his mass. He smelt like soap and rust. “Good to see you, Thom.”

“You, too, Dad.”

“Guess what?” he said. “I’m getting out of here next week!”

I turned to the male nurse, who was also a fact-checker when Dad said unbelievable things (the nurse had once flatly said “Henry, stop telling people that,” in response to Dad informing me that surgeons implanted a tracking device in his abdomen). To my surprise, the nurse nodded in agreement. “It depends on your review, Henry, but sure, there’s a good chance you’ll get out. You’re doing very well.”

I was happy, but I also felt underwhelmed. It’d been eighteen months and this felt a whole lot like getting an eagerly anticipated Christmas present, only to open the wrapping and remember Santa still isn’t real.

Dad told me he’d be living in my deceased Uncle John’s farmhouse, twenty minutes outside town, which Uncle John had bequeathed to Dad in his last-minute will.  

“Why aren’t you coming home?” I asked. I knew I sounded whiny. 

Dad played with the sleeves on his gown, revealing a forearm scarred by razor cuts. I had to look away.

“Ask your mother that particular question,” he said. 

I wouldn’t dare ask. Mum would dismiss the question as ‘theatrics’. 

On the way home, Mum told me about her day at work, something she never used to do. “I have a new co-worker, Shelly. She’s got a son your age, but he goes to that expensive Anglican school. They’re new to town. You should hang out with him.”

In my opinion, I was far too old to be set up on playdates. But, of course, I couldn’t argue, or Mum would act like I’d stabbed her. So, that weekend, I agreed for Mum to take me to the kid’s house, outside town, the kid whom I knew almost nothing about.

The kid’s mother, who I assumed was Shelly, greeted Mum and I like a cooing bird. “Luke’s in his room, love”, Shelly said, and then she and Mum broke off into a separate grown-ups conversation that didn’t interest me.

Even with all the unpacked boxes, Luke’s house gave me a vague sense of wealth. I’d only started noticing things like that in the last few years. I previously thought Mum and Dad were comfortably middle-class, and that when they didn’t buy me something I wanted, it was out of spite.

Luke’s house was expansive and classy. I walked to his room slowly, worried I might break something priceless. Luke was laying on his bed reading an indie comic. I could tell he dressed expensively and had stylish, barber-cut hair. He had unblemished skin, unlike most of the other kids my age, but he also had the aura of someone who might screw with me, like Scott Porter did, or maybe watch it happen silently, like everyone else did. 

We were too old to play. Instead, I watched as Luke showed me every amenity in his bedroom for no reason. He stopped on a faded cassette video of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. “Have you seen Monty Python?” he asked.

I shook my head. He grinned as he put the tape in the combined DVD/video player underneath his plasma T.V. I wanted to remark that it was cool he had a plasma in his room, but I was afraid I’d sound like some country rube. 

At first, I laughed at the movie the way you laugh at things that have zero context, like seeing a teacher in the pharmacy. But early on, the silly tone of the movie clicked for me, and I found myself laughing along with Luke, tears in our eyes. He’d seen it many times before but he still found it hilarious. It was quite endearing. After it finished, he turned to me. “Monty Python made a bunch of movies, and I got ‘em all. Once me and Mum are unpacked, maybe you can come over and watch the rest?” I agreed, conscious of sounding too eager. 

Later, Mum drove me home despite the wine she drank with Shelly.

The Simpsons used to come on Channel Ten at six PM every night, and Mum and I would watch it together religiously. We sat through the last few minutes of the afternoon news. Kevin Rudd was campaigning for Prime Minister, and he was being questioned by a reporter about the current ‘refugee crisis’, none of which I understood. The footage cut to a field reporter interviewing a man identified only as Asylum Seeker. He was beautiful. He had a bulky, strong body, the kind you only get from fleeing authoritarian regimes and warzones, but a striking face and glowing olive skin. He said something about protecting his family. 

I excused myself to the bathroom and masturbated into the toilet, thinking about him. When I ejaculated, I felt overtaken with a foreboding kind of clarity. It was like the sense of doom you get when you make a mistake, except the mistake felt cosmic – my mistake was being born.

Then I watched The Simpsons with Mum. It was a newer episode, and it wasn’t as funny.