But not this year. This year, the fury caught up with me.
5
Lana did invite me to the island, in the end—–despite saying to Kate that I was annoying her.
I’m Elliot, by the way, in case you hadn’t guessed.
And Lana was only joking when she said that. That’s the kind of relationship she and I had. We played around a lot. We kept it light, like the bubbles in a glass of Bollinger.
Not that I was offered champagne, or even cava, on my flight to Greece. Unlike Lana and her family, presumably—who traveled to the island the same way Lana went everywhere, on a private jet. Mere mortals like myself flew commercial; or more often than not, these days, sadly, budget airlines.
And so it is here, at a distinctly down-to-earth check-in desk at Gatwick Airport, that I enter this story. As you know, I’ve been waiting impatiently to introduce myself. Now at last, we can get properly acquainted.
I hope I won’t prove disappointing as a narrator. I like to think I’m considered decent company—fairly entertaining; pretty straightforward, good-natured; even occasionally profound—once I’ve bought you a few drinks, that is.
I’m about forty years old, give or take a year or two. I’m told I look younger. That’s down to my refusal to grow up, no doubt—never mind grow old. I still feel like a kid inside. Doesn’t everyone?
I’m about average height, perhaps a bit taller. I have a slim build, but not as razor-thin as I used to be. I used to vanish if I turned sideways. That had a lot to do with cigarettes, of course. I’ve got it under control now, just the odd joint and the very occasional cigarette, but during my twenties and early thirties, my God, I had a fierce tobacco habit. I used to exist solely on smoke and coffee. I was skinny, wired, edgy, and anxious. What a joy I must have been to be around. I’ve calmed down now, thankfully.
That’s the only good thing I’ll say about getting older. I’m finally calming down.
I have dark eyes and dark hair, like my old man. Average looks, I’d say. Some have described me as handsome; but I don’t think of myself that way at all—unless I’m in good lighting.
Barbara West always said the two most important things in life are lighting and timing. She was right. If the light’s too glaring, I see only my flaws. I hate my profile, for instance, and the way my hair sticks up in a weird angle at the back, and my small chin. It’s always an unpleasant shock when I catch sight of myself in a side mirror in a department-store changing room, with my bad hair, big nose, and no jaw. I don’t have movie-star looks, put it like that. Unlike the others in this story.
I grew up outside London. The less said about my childhood, the better. Let’s dispense with it in as few words as possible, shall we? How about three?
It was darkness. That about sums it up.
My father was a brute; my mother drank. Together they lived surrounded by filth, squalor, and ugliness—like two drunken children squabbling in a gutter.
Don’t feel bad for me; this isn’t a misery memoir. Just a simple statement of fact. It’s a familiar enough tale, I suspect. Like all too many children, I endured an upbringing characterized by long periods of abandonment and neglect, both physical and emotional. I was rarely touched, or played with, barely held by my mother—and the only time my father laid a hand on me was in anger.
This I find harder to forgive. Not the physical violence, you understand, which I soon learned to accept as a part of life, but the lack of touch—and its repercussions for me, later, as an adult. How can I put it? It left me unused to—even afraid of?—the touch of another. And it has made intimate relationships, emotional or physical, extremely difficult.
I couldn’t wait to leave home. My parents were strangers to me; it felt inconceivable that I was even related to them. I felt like an alien, an extraterrestrial, adopted by an inferior life-form—with no choice but to flee and find others of my own species.
If that sounds arrogant, forgive me. It’s just when you spend years marooned on the desert island of childhood, trapped with parents who are angry, alcoholic, endlessly sarcastic, full of contempt; who never encourage you, who bully and belittle you, mock you for loving learning or art; who ridicule anything remotely sensitive, emotional, or intellectual … then you grow up a little angry, a little prickly and defensive.
You grow up determined to defend your right to be—what, exactly? Different? An individual? A freak?
In case I am speaking to a young person now, let me give you something to hold on to: do not despair at being different. For that very difference, initially such a source of shame, so humiliating, and painful, will one day become a badge of honor and pride.