Strange Days

"I think if Gandhi had to spend a prolonged amount of time with you, he'd end up beating the shit out of you, too."

It's been a strange couple of days. My half-brother had an appointment with a cancer specialist in Stanmore this afternoon, so he decided to come down a day early so that he and I could spend some quality time...

...and I should backtrack some before I get into this. Backstory, you know?

I know of only three O'Mahony males. One of them's me, the other two are my father and my half-brother, Roger. Were you to take us as a representative sample of our breed, you'd find historical and scientific evidence to suggest addictive personalities, huge frustration, a womanising streak, a tendency to run away, and what I can only describe as a sort of Holden Caulfield Syndrome. In our wake, you'd likely find broken marriages, confused children, abandoned jobs, and a surprisingly large amount of people left charmed and somewhat impressed by this behaviour.

You'd also find a 66.6r% probability of cancer.

My dad...well...I still haven't told that particular story in the blog, and I don't intend to tell it now. No, this one starts where he ended, on the day of his funeral, when I bumped into Roger for the first time in something like seven years. I was standing at a urinal in the upstairs toilets of the hall where they were holding the old man's wake.

"How are you bearing up?" he asked.

"Yeah. Okay," I replied.

We stared at the tiles for a few moments, the only sound that of liquid on porcelain. He held the door for me on the way out.

I remember Roger staying with us for a while, 'us' being my mother, my sister, and me. This was back in the days when my father was absent but not dead. Roger was coming off the back of a delinquent childhood, attempting to gather the pieces of his life and somehow reconfigure them into something that worked. I was too young to remember much, but I have a vague recollection of idolising this strange new brother, of following him around and imitating his quirks.

So he was around during my formative years, making occasional cameos in the story of my life in much the same manner as my father. Then there was a gap, then there were seven words exchanged at a funeral, and then another gap. After dad died, his side of the family just melted away. I have cousins and aunts and uncles that I haven't seen in over ten years. Those particular relatives never had much time for my mother, and by proxy, they never really had time for me. Roger and his sister Lisa were much the same. Or so it seemed.

That second gap lasted eight years and ended when Lisa got in touch with Catherine (my sister proper, for those of you who have lost track of the all the step and half siblings that orbit my little world). Lisa was on a family kick, suddenly desperate to rekindle old kinships and reunite those of us who came about as a result of my father's utter inability to keep his dick in his pants. We met up for family dinners, where we caught up on what everyone had been doing and began to untangle the myths surrounding dad and the things he did. For me, this was instant boredom. I'll explain...

I was never close to my father. He died when I was fourteen. Nonetheless, I had certain ideas regarding the kind of man he was. They were nice ideas, noble and strong. They were ideas a kid could look up to. So I'm sure you can have at least a little sympathy for the betrayal I felt when I learned about the alcoholism and the stealing and the cheating and the violence. For several years, I harboured a posthumous hatred of my dear old dad, a hatred all the more frustrating for being immune to closure. It wasn't until I was older that I began to understand the motivations behind that behaviour. In reaching that understanding, I learned not to hate him. Of course, you can never love somebody that did pretty much nothing but lie to you, even on their deathbed, but you can come to terms with who they were, and you can know that their intentions were not, generally speaking, evil.

So at the age of 22, when Lisa reappeared and teamed up with Cath to bring us together so that we could talk endlessly about subjects I'd mentally exhausted three years previously, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic. But I persevered when they reached exciting new conclusions, some of which I'd reached in the first few months after his death, and I smiled and joined in when they decided to buy a plaque to commemorate his cremation. But I wasn't exactly overwhelmed, and my cynicism drove something of a wedge between Cath and I.

"We're 'family'," I'd say, rolling my eyes. "That's why - despite the fact that she had our address and we never once moved house - it took her eight years to get in touch. She must have really seen us as a priority, huh?"

"She sent cards," Cath would reply.

"Not to me. She makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Why?"

I'd look at her. She knew why. She knows why. Lisa makes me uncomfortable because she's everything I don't want to be, trapped in a semi-detached house in suburbia hell with two kids and a partner she gives no sign of having any affection for. I'm not saying she doesn't love them, she does. I'm saying that her house doesn't strike me as being full of happiness. Quite the opposite.

The other thing is that Lisa seems adamant about the fact that I am her little brother. I'm not. Sorry, but you can't disappear from my life for almost ten years only to return and assume a closeness that doesn't exist as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Not only does that make me uncomfortable, I also find it presumptuous and rude, a feeling that only serves to widen the gulf between us.

Roger is a little different because he's a lot like me, because he's a lot like dad. Our backgrounds aren't that similar, but like the man responsible for us, we both have a tendency towards self-destruction and instant gratification. Not much of a bond, I know, but it means more to me than any number of plaques and revelations about dad.

So when Roger called me up on Monday and enquired as to whether or not I was interested in spending his extra day in my neck of the woods getting drunk in London, I immediately accepted. We've never socialised together before, not outside of those teeth-grinding 'family' occasions of the last few years, and I thought it an opportunity to get to know him a little better.

Somewhat predictably, this resulted in a ten-hour pub crawl, during which we did get to know each other more than we ever have. I learned a lot of things that I hadn't known, and heard a lot of stories that weren't rehashed versions of the tales I've been hearing ever since dad died. We fed our addictive personalities, leered at women, and romanced the city in a way I'd forgotten I really enjoy. Then we played pool, and I discovered that Roger's skills in this department are of a near-professional standard. Somewhere in the midst of a discussion about this, sandwiched between stories of past victories, he told me how dad would take him to the snooker hall when he was a kid and just leave him there while he went to work, checking in during his breaks and taking a sneaking pride in the way his son learned to hustle older, more experienced players. Roger, back then, had nowhere else to go. Dad had to work. So he did what he could, I suppose, leaving Roger in a place he loved and checking on him as often as was possible.

I'd never heard that before, and I'm glad Roger told me. It's been a while since I've had reason to believe that my father might have been capable of anything but self-interest. It made me feel closer to both him and Roger, made me feel like I had a family outside of my sister and my mother, made me realise just how much I've missed having a dad.

Roger went to the specialist today and was told that on a scale of one to a hundred, his cancer was a one point five. It should be easily dealt with in a small operation he'll have in the first week of January.

A strange couple of days, for sure. But in that good way.