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Everybody wants to measure the adult men in my life by goodness. I measure them in details. In memories. In the times they said my name. ‘Never found out,’ I say. ‘What’s with you and men being good?’ ‘Never met a good one, that’s all,’ he says. ‘Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ’em.’
‘Don’t forget to be specific,’ Slim always says. ‘Details. Put in all the details. The boys appreciate all that detailed daily life shit they don’t get any more. If you’ve got a teacher you’re hot for, tell ’em what her hair looks like, what her legs look like, what she eats for lunch. If she’s teaching you geometry, tell ’em how she draws a bloody triangle on the blackboard. If you went down the shop for a bag of sweets yesterday, did you ride your pushy, did you go by foot, did you see a rainbow along the way? Did you buy gobstoppers or clinkers or caramels? If you ate a good meat pie last
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‘Time will do you in,’ he said. ‘So do your time before it does you.’
‘You’re not a pussy. Don’t you ever be ashamed of crying. You cry because you give a shit. Don’t ever be ashamed of giving a shit. Too many people in this world are too scared to cry because they’re too scared to give a shit.’
‘Sacrifice,’ he said. ‘Never grow attached to anything you can’t instantly separate yourself from.’
And I just assume he means, I’m sorry for driving you into that dam that crazy night all those dark years ago because I’m such a fuckin’ mixed up nut but I’m tryin’, Eli, I’m tryin’ real, real hard, and I hug him tighter because I have a forgiveness weakness in me that I hate because it means I’d probably forgive the man who removed my heart with a blunt knife if he said he needed it more than me or if he said his period of bloody heart removal came at a complicated time in his life.
Maybe we’d all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.
I know I don’t always practise this but, basically, you know, the whole point of life is doing things that are right over things that are easy. Because you want to feel good about yourself, suddenly the ibis are spending less time in the wetlands on a tree and more time on the ground in a fuckin’ car park rubbing shoulders with the pigeons, and then we start getting inter-species contact and weaker immune systems in the birds and higher stress hormones and from that little petri dish of dynamite springs salmonella.’ Dad nods his head next door at Pamela Waters, in her gardening gear
