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Sport 29: Spring 2002
Two Andys
Two Andys
On television, John Dillinger just got his beans, running and falling through a fusillade across a dusty field. I drink Andy's wine, inclining the cask inaccurately. Now that I've been back several months, the booze is no problemo. ‘This place is freezing,’ I complain, but my opinion is invalid, as is my disgruntlement at the $100 per week board Mum and Dad have started charging. I have a part-time job knocking the bugs out of some software and I've started doing press-ups before my morning shower. That last bit is a big step. Physical power is worshipped here, but my strengths are more verbal. All the same, you can experiment with yourself, right?
Andy watches me from the corner of his eye. Two-thirty a.m. has a different atmosphere from any other time of the day, or the night. It's the cusp.
Andy's feet separate around a sleeping figure; his name is also Andy, but we call him Andy 2. Tomorrow he flies back to … Shit, what does it matter where he lives? Go to a G8 country and you feel envious; visit a Third World toilet and guilt rocks up. There's so much travel about that it's useless. Export yourself, guts it out in some grot hole for two years, come home and think this place is paradise, that you're lucky to have been born where you were born. I wonder if the government isn't involved.
Tonight we had a farewell dinner for Andy 2. He's been here two weeks and his adopted country allows him to earn our monthly wage in one week. The day he got back we sat around the kitchen table, page 126 drinking vodka in homage to his ‘gorgeous’ Serb girlfriend. He had been supporting her. Later a friend will tell me the only reason she went out with him was because he had money. Andy 2 phoned her. We must've woken her, but she was very accommodating.
Andy 2 has discarded his shoes. He is fully clothed inside the sleeping bag. As usual he has forgotten to remove his contact lenses. Perhaps he was impatient to find the dream where everyone speaks Serbian. Perhaps he's there now, making jokes to explain his socked feet. Actually, he wouldn't do that in life, but who can guess what people are like without reflection?
It's getting closer to three a.m.. Andy aims a kick at the sleeping bag. ‘I hate that guy.’
Andy has a shit job and no girlfriend. Though most of his friends are now coming back, he has yet to leave the country. He laughs then crosses his legs. ‘And we've got the same name.’
Farewell parties are pointless. It's sad enough being accompanied by only men on a Friday night, but we also bumped into Andy's Dad outside. They don't get on so it bummed Andy out, which dragged us all down. The restaurant had business cards for wallpaper. There were managers, insurance salesmen, spa pool makers, plumbers, people whose workplaces you see every time you drive through satellite suburbs. The table had been set for four not five. We squeezed together.
Nearby two women, thirty-ish, were picking at salad. We won't see Andy 2 ‘for five—’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘—maybe ten years’. Such melodrama in an old friend is disenchanting; it's you who's beginning to move away.
Rubber steak, sirs, with sauce and no greens. We remembered how Chris and Bryan once lived for three months on potatoes. Bryan is now in Australia. Chris lives somewhere provincial. He decided not to go back, sold a lot of his clothes and kept drinking. The veins on his nose were exploding because of booze. He liked it. He thought it was funny. It is funny. We laugh with ancient gusto.
Friendships made in the late teens are accidents of generosity. You have so much love and joy there's enough even for the undeserving. Later, when discretion is required, there they still are: your friends.
‘Hey Andy,’ said Andy 2, ‘I'm glad I met your old man tonight. page 127 Now I know what you'll look like when I come back.’ This is cruel. Andy's father is 56, more maybe. Andy is about half that; also he tries not to resemble his father in any way. Andy made a face. Andy 2 laughed. I have two friends called Chris and three called Anna. Didn't our parents have any fucking imagination at all? Andy 2 is unsocialised, or as we say, ‘nuts’. We laugh at his madness; finally Andy laughs. Someone pulls a business card from the wall. We resume eating.
Here is Andy's complaint, five hours later: ‘He insulted me right in front of you. All my friends. And you laughed like it was the funniest thing.’
I remind Andy that he let Andy 2 stay here.
‘He's a mate,’ says Andy. This is not the end of the matter. ‘… As if staying home is so bad. Where do you pricks go, anyway? Nowhere. As if you deserve something for running off, for leaving your friends and then coming back and expecting everyone to fall over you.’
I've heard this self-pitying nonsense from Andy before. Usually it's aimed at me. I'm in the clear tonight, and drunk, so I respond. Does he want credit for staying home? I say, ‘You're behaving like a big baby.’ Andy's sensitivity about his weight is notorious.
His hand moves, fanning the cold air. ‘You're such a pussy. Still living with your Mummy and Daddy.’
‘I've only just started temping,’ I say, ‘this job could end at any moment.’ Andy takes my drink and skulls it provocatively. Before I left I fantasised that I would face an improving quest, the reward for which would be a place, the place I knew they had always been holding for me, in the ferocious and important world. In fact I did the most banal thing imaginable. I spent money. I bought an air ticket, used it, earned some money, which I spent; then I spent my credit card limit, and finally I had to come home. I'm not the person who bought the ticket, but here I am, back.
And I am not weak. I tell Andy about the press-ups.
Shortly thereafter I square the toes of my shoes on the kitchen lino and straighten my spine. I'm drunker than I thought. Andy stands over me, his hands on his hips. This is so lame. By completing the press-ups, I'll make my point. The argument will continue.
I spread my arms, immobilising the floor.