Threads of Life

Chapter 1-1

Simon, my twin, and I were different beginning in the womb. He met all his in-utero milestones and flourished, taking up most of the space. I barely survived on the few nutrients he hadn’t already scarfed down. If you could have seen us inside our mother’s uterus, you would have seen a very healthy fetus and something half its size that looked like its pet.

in-utero* * *

At birth, Simon weighed a whopping nine pounds and went home with my mother two days later. I weighed two pounds, two ounces, and lived in an incubator for three weeks until I tipped the scale at four pounds and was allowed to leave the hospital. Given my precarious existence, I had to be fed a super-enriched formula every two hours by increasingly irritable, sleepless parents. Simon, who was breast-fed, quickly packed on an excess of baby fat and after five weeks was able to sleep six hours at a stretch and awake to appreciative cooing sounds.

* * *

It’s always been like that. Simon began life with every conceivable advantage, and rather than developing any arrogance or entitlement, or coasting on his considerable laurels, which would have been perfectly understandable, he turned into a child and then a man who, with a determined smile on his face, squeezed every drop of goodness out of every day.

And me? I can’t seem to take advantage of what the world offers me on a silver platter.

* * *

Growing up, the room we shared was like the womb all over again. Simon’s possessions spilled out of his drawers and shelves like an urban sprawl until my bed and the few things I owned were overrun. He had more athletic trophies, ribbons and medals than I had socks and underwear. His clothes overfilled his drawers and were piled high on our dressers and the floor, while in my undeserving mind, the few pairs of jeans and two or three t-shirts and sweatshirts I owned were more than sufficient. And that was just the beginning of the clutter. He also had dozens of toys and books and records and cassettes. And athletic equipment: pads and helmets and bats and sticks and mouthguards and balls and pucks. And exercise equipment: pull-up bars and weights and jump-ropes. And musical instruments: two guitars and a saxophone and five harmonicas and bongo drums and an electric keyboard. And paraphernalia that went with the instruments: songbooks and reeds and picks and music stands and amplifiers and tuners.

It’s a wonder only my autonomy, and not my body, was swallowed up.

* * *

My parents knew what was going on, but could hardly make sense of it. Faced with a phenomenon of unexplainable inequality under their roof, they did their best to cultivate my interests. Or, rather, what they interpreted as my interests. And it wasn’t for lack of trying that they were unable to do so.

theyOne day, at age ten, a dog followed me home from school and my mother and father assumed I had a yearning for a pet and surprised me with a puppy, a small cocker spaniel. I pretended to be excited and took to my new responsibilities with a satisfactory sense of duty, but really, I had no interest in playing with the dog or petting it or tickling its stomach. And I especially had no interest in walking it. The whole thing struck me, even at a young age, as a needless dependency sapping way too much energy and attention from my otherwise unencumbered life. So, when Simon began wrestling with it and rolling around on the floor with it, it had little interest in me unless I was waving the leash in front of its face. And even then, it would run to Simon if he was anywhere in the house.

* * *

Three days after the dog arrived, I still hadn’t given it a name. I didn’t like it and didn’t want to develop an attachment to it. I was hoping my parents would send it away.

“What are you going to call it?” my father asked me. He had just walked through the door after working all day and I could tell he had no patience for me, which I understood. I mean, what sort of kid doesn’t name his new pet the minute it arrives?

“I was thinking about naming it Simon.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It could get confusing around here,” my father said. Though he probably wanted to say, “Are you stupid? Is that the best you could come up with after three days?”

“What about Spot?” Simon asked.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework. Simon’s books were spread all over the place like they had dropped from the ceiling. My workbook was clinging to the last bit of uncovered table-top and hanging over the edge where I sat.

My father thought Simon’s suggestion was funny. “I like it. It’s old-fashioned. What do you think, Auden?”

“Sounds ok to me,” I said. I didn’t care.

* * *

A month later no one remembered Spot was my dog. I gave up paying attention to it. Simon and my mother did the lion’s share of walking it, and Simon and my father wrestled with it, played fetch with it, and pet it while watching television.

* * *

The Spot story was played out dozens of times with different misinterpreted interests or hobbies foisted on me. I’ll list some of them to save time: hockey, soccer, baseball, swimming, tennis, ping-pong, snooker, karate, painting, goldfish (tragically), gerbils (tragically), stamp collecting, astronomy and photography.

If you looked in our bedroom closet, under Simon’s things, you’d find broken telescope parts, a camera, an empty fishbowl and gerbil cage, broken easel parts, paints, skates, a tennis racquet, and all the other associated relics of my assumed hobbies.

* * *

But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. There are plenty of things I like. There are even things I like with something akin to passion. I like reading books and will more than occasionally read a novel. By age eleven, I had read every Roald Dahl book I could get my hands on and, after that, whenever I found an author I liked, I read everything he or she wrote. Because why not? And I like television—the uncomplicated one-sided relationship with television that lets me take as much as I want and give nothing in return. And I like music. Especially Bob Dylan (I’ll explain later). And I like women. In my twenties I was lucky enough to have s*x with two of them. That neither of them returned for a second time never really bothered me.

* * *

That’s not altogether true. A pretty girl from work came home with me one evening and after we drank a bottle of wine and undressed each other, she touched me and put me inside her in a way that made me ejaculate in five seconds. This distressed her a great deal and she yelled at me—or maybe at herself for being with me—and ran into the washroom, where I heard moaning sounds for the next five minutes before she came out fully dressed and, without another word, marched out the front door. I wanted to tell her that I was ready to go again and probably would have lasted a lot longer, but after listening to her satisfy herself in a manner way beyond my capabilities, at least without months of good instruction and practice, I said nothing.

* * *

In my forties, believe it or not, I started living with a woman. But that’s jumping way ahead, and if I tell you now how my unexpected cohabitation came about, my story would be ruined.

* * *

What I’ve never liked are complications. Small complications like social commitments, and big complications like pets or kids or marriage. As far as I’m concerned, people are always needlessly complicating their lives for reasons that seem insufficient to justify the drain on their time and energy. While I do have a job, I try to work as few hours as possible. Most nights I watch television and eat potato chips. If Simon or someone else calls me on the phone, I try to keep the conversation as brief as possible without making a commitment to get together. You get the picture.

* * *

Though I’m sure you’re puzzled by the fact that I agreed to write everything down. Because, really, is there a bigger complication than that? It has something to do with the woman I started living with in my forties, but that’s the last clue I’m going to give you.

* * *

Throughout our years in school, the sun shone on Simon and I was content to remain in the shadow he cast. He was an athletic boy who did push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups by the hundreds, maybe thousands, every day, which did wonders for his body and his popularity with girls. At school and everywhere else, he collected friends by the dozens. He had a genuine decency about him that comforted people in times of trouble or sadness.

And while I ignored our older relatives like a wasted investment of time into something without the promise of a long-term yield, Simon not only talked to them during family get-togethers, he called them periodically just to see how they were doing. And here’s the strange thing: no matter how morose or withdrawn or unmotivated I was to be nice to him, he never—never ever—bore a grudge against me. On the contrary, he ignored my repellent behaviour and sincerely tried to involve me in his joyful life. In every facet of his life. With his friends. No matter what the activity. And later with his girlfriends, of which there was no shortage. And with him alone whenever he had spare time.

If you were to ask me to sum up my relationship with Simon in one word, I would answer: bewildering. I was a miserable, colossally unlikable kid, and the same as a teenager, and probably worse as an adult, and still he exuded love and caring toward me, a perplexing unreciprocated excitement whenever he saw me and an undying interest in my wellbeing and small accomplishments. And do you think I ever mustered the energy to ask him about his successful life, or took the slightest interest in his many accomplishments? No. But he was my protector, my guardian angel. And I can’t begin to describe how much I hated him for it.

* * *

One afternoon, riding my bicycle home from school, along the path between the school parking lot and Old English Lane, two older kids ran in front of me, grabbing onto my handlebars and stopping me suddenly.

“Where are you going?”

I don’t remember their names, but I do remember that they weren’t that much taller or bigger than me and that they were in grade eight and I was in grade six. And I remember that one of them had red, almost orange hair, and wore a faded green army jacket with yellow letters on the breast pocket that must have been a joke: FU. He was the kid who stood directly in front of me. His accomplice, who stood beside me, was a fat kid in a dirty blue shirt with a slight rip in the collar and greasy brown hair. And I remember that they both seemed oddly entitled to their meanness; I mean, they really looked like they believed it was their right to hurt anyone weaker than them.

FU“Home. I’m going home. Let me go.”

“What are you going to do at home? Play with your dolls?” The red-haired one did most of the talking.