Mentors by Russell Brand

Author:Russell Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

CHAPTER NINE

MISSED CHANCES: BEFORE THE STUDENT IS READY

I first realized that Pete was remarkable at a convention for addicts at a hotel in Birmingham where such things are held, that is to say, a mediocre hotel. A convention for addicts has more variety than you might imagine, many classes of people, ages, etc. If there is a common bond it is derived from the shared solution. Ex cons, people with pink hair, a fair few coach trips from treatment centres. A lot of smoking.

I’d met him once before at an event at a treatment centre in Birmingham where I’d said a few words and he’d sung a few songs. Since then he appeared to have acquired crutches and he swung enthusiastically through the crowded lobby to say hello. I suppose the presumed temporary nature of crutches makes it okay to ask what the injury was in a way sensibly forbidden by wheelchairs or even canes, the general rule being ‘crutches, funny story, cane, sad story’. I asked Pete what had happened and he, and this is odd, smilingly responds, ‘I have cancer and I’m having my leg amputated.’ The news is unusual but it’s the smile that’s most strange. I, aghast, say, ‘Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.’ And he says, ‘No, I’m okay, I’m clean and I want to live.’ Now when he says this it is entirely without bravado and with the kind of certainty that, if I’m honest, I’ve never seen in anyone other than the spiritually switched on. By definition in fact, Pete’s connection to a Higher Purpose was so strong that his forthcoming amputation was irrelevant. I’m very good at saying ‘the material world is an illusion’, I’m less good at blithely brushing off cancer as if it is the will of the universe. I was in awe at Pete and started to keep in contact with him, in a way to study him, curious as to whether he was for real, to see if at some point he would yield to self-pity or rage. He didn’t. He FaceTimed me from his hospital bed and showed me the bandaged stump before the anaesthetic had worn off. I was at a charity car wash which I’d impulsively been drawn to by the attire of the women conducting it, but such baser motivations were washed away on talking to this saintly man, joking from his post-operative bed.

I’m mates with another bloke who’s had a leg amputated, Will, who is like Balloo from the Jungle Book, a big cuddly, handsome, hulking thug. The first time I met him I knew I’d like him, he was loud and aggressive and vulnerable. He works with the street homeless in Oxford and he announced himself to me and the group of men we were hanging out with by recounting the tale of his journey to our group meeting, in which he’d got out of his car to have a row with a fella who had cut him up on the M40, a key detail being the reattachment of his leg prior to getting out of the car and punching the bloke.

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