Self Abuse by Jonathan Self

Author:Jonathan Self
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC035000
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

He’ll drink neat vodka, or ruddy nothing

I was woken from a dreamless sleep by a loud cracking sound. I lay in the pitch black feeling queasy and confused. There it was again. I listened carefully. Someone was outside the window attempting to break in. Alarmed, I sat on the edge of the bed and began to search the floor for a weapon with which to defend myself. As my hand closed around a shoe the casement shot up and a gust of wind blew the curtains back. I leaped to my feet, ready to strike.

“Will?”

“What?”

“Will, is that you?”

“No. It is his brother, Jonathan.”

“Sorry, I thought it would be Will.”

Before I could reply a figure dressed in a silver jumpsuit clambered through the window. Hastily I dropped the shoe and pulled on some underwear.

“How do you do? I’m Will Sieghart.”

“How do you do?”

More clambering.

“This is Ben. Ben, this is Will’s brother, Jonathan.”

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Will’s usually still up at this hour,” said a cross voice from outside the window.

“He’s with Penny,” I explained.

“Oh.”

Three or four additional bodies scrambled through and crowded into the room. In the dark it was hard to see exactly what was happening.

“Only way to get in once the porters have closed the college gates. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The group began to file out through the door. As Will Sieghart was leaving he hesitated for a moment.

“I say, I don’t suppose Will left any of his dope here?”

“No, we smoked it all.”

I visited Will most weekends during his freshman year at Oxford. Generously he gave me his room in Exeter College, moving over the road to stay with his longstanding girlfriend—Penny Phillips—in Balliol. It was a period of rediscovery for us. After I had left home we saw very little of each other. I can’t remember him ever coming to any of the places where I lived or to Walberswick and, of course, we had both grown up keeping the greater part of our lives secret from one another. Our childhood experiences had isolated us—in some respects we were more like strangers than brothers. We didn’t discuss our emotions. We made barely any reference to our parents or to our shared past. There was always a degree of antagonism between us, too. Yet simultaneously there was an exceptionally strong fraternal bond. We were intensely loyal. We struggled to be closer. Deep down I was aware of his suffering, he of mine, and it united us. Crucially, we enjoyed the same sense of humor. No subject was ever so sacred that we didn’t try to get a laugh out of it. This is a verbatim account of the somewhat disrespectful telephone conversation we had when my father’s brother unexpectedly died.

“Bad news. Uncle Mike dropped dead addressing an envelope. He was sending off a check to pay the rates.”

“You are joking.”

“No. Dad just rang. Apparently Aunt Penny went into the kitchen to fetch a banana and when she came back a minute later he was dead.”

“If it had been a different fruit perhaps he’d still be alive.

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