The Day of Manhood

I am alone in my bed, trying to sleep. Trying not to think about her. Its not that she isn’t wonderful, she probably is. The problem is I don’t really know anything about her. I know her name, I know she goes to school, and I know she is pretty. I’d like to get to know her more. But unfortunately I’m unable to talk to girls at this stage. I can’t really form any conversation with girls, because of an unnerving presence I feel around them. Its hard to communicate because I’m completely unsure about my feelings, and how to go about them.



I was unsure what it was that attracted me to this unseen part of a girls body which resided underneath her skirt. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I had to get it. Or did I? I had just watched some music videos on TV. Thoughts about the singer on the video clip tonight resonated physical interest, not the usual musical interest. Was it his androgynus look? He was sexy, arousing, and I just knew this was different. As soon as the song finished, the popular girl band came on the television. It was scary, demeaning and suddenly interest was gone. I didn’t care about the music, or the girls. Just him. Did I want to be a rock star? Or did I want to be with a boy just like him? Was this disgusting, or just natural? Was I gay? ‘Gay guys can talk to girls, and I can’t,’ I re-assure myself.



I knew I was weird. I had to be, because everyone told me so. All the boys who were larger and meaner than I was. All the people who didn’t understand me, and didn’t care. They were too worried about being courageous enough to hate everything they didn’t understand and was not the same as them. I did, however, have a close knit group of friends who tried their best to help me fit in. They were cool, because we had the same taste in music. We shared bands we liked, and regularly rocked out in a state of adolescent depression. We were all depressed, but we were all depressed together, which made it fun. And tolerable.



The phone rings. ‘What?’, I think to myself. I only roll over in my bed to see the clock, its 11pm. ‘Fuck it,’ I decide. I’m warm, and the winter chill from a house that hasn’t had any electric heating for a while is too daunting for this unsure loser. It stops ringing. Finally.



Back to sleep, or at least attempting. Ring, Ring. “Oh c’mon!” I scream out loud. Fine. I have to get up now. My father is working night shift. Its just me and him in the house now. Older brothers and sisters have left for adulthood, and mum was never there. That was a good thing, but a possible reason why I couldn’t talk to girls. At least I thought so anyway. How could I possibly be wrong about anything, after all I was 15 years old. It was probably my dad anyway, asking if I wanted anything on his way home from work. ‘Of course not,’ I was thinking before I answered the phone, ‘I’m fucking trying to sleep like any normal person.’



“Hello,” I say nonchalantly, “what’s up?” “Hello,” says an unfamiliar voice in a nervous tone, “Is this Paul Hughes?” I awaken immediately. “Yes it is.” “My name is Darren Matthews, and I’m a paramedic with the New South Wales ambulance service.”



My heart stops.



“Is your father James Paul Hughes?” he asks. ‘Oh no!’ I think to myself. Everyone called my father Jimmy. Hearing his name as ‘James’ made my throat sink into my chest, I knew the news would be awful, and I had to bear it, alone in my pyjamas. “There has been an accident. Your father has been taken to the hospital. An ambulance service vehicle is on its way to pick you up at your house. It will be there in 15 minutes.”



What I thought was the longest 15 minutes of my life, waiting on the side of the road waiting for the pickup to arrive, was only succeeded by a period of time which felt like an eternity in the car on the way to the hospital. It may have only been a 10 minute drive, but the non-verbal communication of anxiety and horror between myself and the driver was louder than a jet airplane. The driver knew it, and was way too frightened to even motion towards me on the way. He probably knew very little, which meant there was no reason to talk about the football on the weekend. He knew who I was, a scared teenager being taken to the hospital because of an accident which occurred during the night.



Fuel only added to the fire of angst as I waited in the emergency room. My father was being operated on upstairs. I was alone. I thought of ringing my brother and sister, but they were hours away from home now. ‘There’s no point getting them out of bed at this time in the night,’ I thought. I was much like my father in that way, always putting my own problems aside and never using them to ask for comfort from the people I loved and cared for. Kind of a problematic trait, but one which, if understood properly, can be trained and resolved. So it could be normal again.



The doctor walked through the doors, and motioned towards me. He was exhausted and looked beside himself as he briskly walked towards me with his head down, as if he was searching for the courage to make the words come out properly when he made my acquaintance. ‘It’s funny,’ I thought to myself, ‘I do that too when I’m nervous.’ I knew what he was going to say. I was numb. Isolated.



It didn’t matter what he said, I knew it in the delivery.



I don’t remember taking two steps out of the last hundred when I entered the room where my father was lying. He looked asleep, but I knew better. There was no motion, no typical snoring. No sensors hooked up to him. Just death. Eyes closed and a colour that appeared off to his normal tone. Now, I was all alone.



Men don’t cry, and I instantly found out I was no man. Just a boy who has lost both his parents at the shopping centre. This time they weren’t coming back. The nurse took me downstairs to talk with a person from the hospital. She helped me through the enormity of the incident and made sure I was ok. My face was brave, but she knew it was fake. She knew, like anyone would, that this would take years for me to recover. Thankfully, I was given a bed to rest in. It was now 3am. A new day.



I woke up thinking it was all a dream. Then I saw the ward. I realised I wasn’t hooked up to any machinery, but I was at the hospital. It was real. I had a lot of growing up to do. On the chair next to my bed was a bag of my father’s belongings. His mobile phone. I opened it up, scrolled through to my Aunt’s number, and proceeded to be brave by telling her the worst news I could possibly think of. Bravery is doing something even though you’re terrified. Doing one thing you know will change the world around you as you know it. Not some, ‘I’m not afraid, I’m courageous bullshit.’ Men at war wouldn’t stand in the trenches and say, ‘I’m so brave because I’m going to leap out of here and charge towards the enemy.’ They were brave because they were terrified, as they knew that were marching out to their own certain death.



After every phone call, I had to take a few minutes a re-gather my emotions, so that when I had to make the next phone call the person on the other end didn’t hear uncontrollable panting and breathing. I made the calls, walked over to the nurse, asked for some change for the bus, signed a couple of forms, and walked out of the death house.



I needed to take two buses to get home. The other people on the bus are going about their lives like any other day. A girl is sitting across from me, looking depressed. She looked as if it was the worst day of her life as she sat there with a black permanent marker, crossing a boy’s name, ‘Henry’, off the outside of her bag. She had no idea that no matter how bad your day is, there’s probably someone else out there whose having a worse day than you. I wondered if there was anyone else out in the world that day who was having a worse than day me. It was hard to figure out.



I was sitting at the terminal, in between buses, when the girl I was thinking about 12 hours ago steps off the back of a bus. I froze. We weren’t in school today, it was holidays. I’d never seen her before outside of school. She instantly recognises me. “Hi Paul!” she warmly gleams, “How are you going?” She sits next to me. “Okay,” I reply, trying to be both cool, gentle and at the same time not terrified or upset, “Just on my way home.” “Cool,” she continues as she searched for a topic, “I’m on my way to work, I got a job in the canteen at the hospital.” Again, I froze. I attempt furiously to hide back a tear, but it was to no avail. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “I have to go, I’ll see you later.” I walked up to the shops, unable to control my emotions. Here I was, 15 years old, and yesterday I was worried about not being able to talk to girls. Now my nervousness didn’t seem to matter.



I quickly walked back to the bus stop. I realised that I was being overly weird and this couldn’t be resolved by drinking a soft drink. As I almost got back to the bench I saw the next bus to the hospital was arriving. I quickly ran over. “Wait,” I proclaimed. She turned around. “I’m sorry if I was weird, its just been a rough night for me. My dad’s sick that’s all.” Before I realised what I was actually saying, she said she was sorry for making me feel bad, quickly boarded the bus and said, “I’ll talk to you later Paul.”



As I sat there, still waiting for the next bus, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for making this beautiful girl feel awful for making me cry. It wasn’t her fault that my emotions were uncontrollable. I just felt completely empty. As if there was nothing left. I was not only weird, I was stupid. Dumb. An awful human being for making the girl I liked feel bad. A complete jerk. ‘Maybe a should jump in front of the next bus,’ I dreamed. Then I’d be safe again.



A terminating bus stops at the next row of chairs. ‘Damn,’ I thought, as I was still dreamy about leaping into the next life. A girl gets off the bus and walks over and sits at the same bench as me. She is short, with long black hair, really skinny with a skin tone that revealed that she was rarely in the sun. I noticed, as she turned to read the schedule on the bus stop, that she was wearing a black Pennywise hooded jumper. ‘Nice,’ I thought, ‘what an awesome band.’ The hood was over the top of her head, but I saw distinguishing facial features that I was interested in. She looked over, it seemed like all I saw were blue eyes.



“You like Pennywise?” I mustered. I instantly realised it was the stupidest question I’d ever asked. ‘No, of course not. Pennywise suck, that’s why I’m wearing their merchandise!’ Thoughts about the next bus creep back into my head. “Yeah, they’re awesome,” she said. It was refreshing to hear a natural voice come from an adolescent. It always seemed like girls were trying to raise their voice an octave so that they’d sound more feminine. I didn’t necessarily find it attractive. Especially when every sentence sounded like it was being ended with a question, raised that little bit higher for emphasis.



“Yeah I know!” I exclaim, “Have you got their new album.” “Yeah, it fucking killer,” she replies, “I’ve actually got it in my Discman now. Was just listening to it. How you going, by the way my name’s Tim.” This time I froze and my heart stopped at the same time. Tim took his hoody off, and I realised I’d not been talking to an interesting girl. Just another boy who was just like me. His hair was long, and his look was overall quite androgenous. I thought he was cool. For the first time I accepted my feelings for what they were, although I never told him that. I just met the guy and I didn’t want to do my patented ‘freaking him out’.



After talking about bands and music for a while, my bus arrived. We exchanged numbers and future gigs we were going to, and waved as we parted ways. I got on the bus, sat down, and smiled for the first time in a long time. At least for about three-quarters of the 15 minute bus ride home, I finally felt whole again. Unfortunately, these feelings never seem to last, at least for a teenager anyway. Back to the problems that must be faced in the future; the uncertainty of it all. But life goes on, and a new day can bring new opportunities and fresh ways of thinking. I knew that another day will come, maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point in future, where I can smile like this again. And next time, I plan to do it for a long time.