*WARNING: Post is long.
If you distort Rupert Everett into awkward angularity, then skew and stretch him into lanky proportions, then you have an idea of what my friend Danny looks like.
Squint whilst looking at this picture for a visual approximation of Danny.
I first met Danny when I was doing honours at uni. We were all stressed out of our minds when I spied him, with his brown hair pointing directly up like some sort of wild flame. We struck up a friendship over statistics and essays, meeting up almost every night to prowl aimlessly around Indooroopilly, walking and talking as we went. Most nights we would end up at the St Lucia golf links. It is a beautiful and strange place at night, with groves of trees and a perpetual abundance of misty allies through them. As we tramped past ponds, rushes, and putting green we used to talk about life, death, and love, in fact anything but our tortured uni lives.
Should you feel like an adventure of your own, simply pick a slightly mental and unruly friend, and follow the map.
The golf course would usually then take us to the walking path along the river, where we would alternately traipse and subside, sitting on any one of the benches that dot the path. A few times when we walked that way, we saw fireflies come out, and follow us as we went. I had never seen fireflies in Brisbane previous to this, nor after for that matter, but somehow it didn’t surprise me. Danny, you see, is one of those people who fireflies follow.
With their little lanterns, fireflies often guided the way for Danny and I.
“I’m messy at the moment Fiffles.” he used to say to me, and he was. It was the perfect description for the sort of malaise that overtook him at that time, depression mixed with mania. His sadness was always peculiar in that it had an optimistic bent. His speech would speed up and his movements become jerky. I always saw in him this wild, wild spirit, sort of pressing to break free from its mortal prison.
Danny is a talented artist, and specializes in the spray paint variety. One day I went into the computer labs at uni to work on an assignment. I sat down next to him, and started tapping away, but soon had to stop. A strange odour was thick in the air and my head was starting to spin. I turned to Danny and mentioned it to him, but a close examination of his attire made his words redundant. He had spray painted himself a t-shirt, and with the paint not yet dry, the noxious fumes were slowly but surely asphyxiating the entire lab. Danny became so lightheaded he had to take off his shirt, and swelter in his thick jacket all day.
Graffiti on t-shirts, whilst acceptable in theory, can be deadly in practice.
At some time during that honours year Danny was riding the train into the city, when an orange vested locomotive worker came up and sat down next to him.
“You and I are going to have a good old chinwag, sonny.” he said to Danny. “Yes, we are going to have a natter and I am going to tell you your life.”
Prophecy, not being a standard component of train travel, was complimentary in Danny’s case.
In the fifteen minutes that followed the man told Danny such vivid and accurate information as to make Danny both frightened and intrigued. As the train slowed to a stop, the man got up and tipped his cap to Danny. He looked at his watch, and told Danny the exact time and date.
“Remember this,” he said, “because this is when I told you what’s what. You will never see me again. Goodbye.”
Danny, now more freaked out than anything else, embarked on a two week bender as a direct result of this encounter. He never did see the man again, but often thought about what he said, and the surreal nature of their talk.
The friendship between Danny and I was great in so many ways, because it really defied convention – the convention being the whole ‘men and women can’t be friends’ memorandum that we all received at birth. Additionally, no one was quite as good as him when I wanted to talk existential crises and meaning of life bullshit. Sadly, however, there was a hitch. Danny had a girlfriend of three years, who came to object to our nightly meetings and frequent coffees. Eventually she had it out with him, and Danny and I had to sit down and have a talk.
Jealous girlfriends cross here at night.
Even though I was sad in a way with our conclusion – we both decided it was probably better to see less of each other – in a way I respected the right of the girlfriend to protect her relationship. As we sat next to each other in that final talk, Danny had tears in his eyes,
“You know Fiffles,” he said, “I know this will sound odd but I really think that I’ve grown to love you over this last year.”
“Suck it up.” I replied, with feeling. And I meant it too.
We didn’t see each other for a while, probably around a good year at least, before getting back in touch at the start of this year when Danny commenced his PhD and got an office down the hall from mine. I really hadn’t thought about him much, to be honest, my main reminder being the beautiful drawing he did for me that hangs in my bedroom. If I ever did think of him it was with much fondness, and equal amusement.
After he got to uni we met up for coffee a couple of times, and surprisingly the talk between us was as natural and unconstrained as ever. He had bought a boat in the year that had passed, and now sailed as a hobby. He had also assaulted a policeman whilst drunkenly avoiding arrest, and narrowly escaped a permanent record. These incidents concreted my belief that no one part of Danny goes with any other, instead he is a strange jumble of unrelated interests and characteristics.
The arrest, I am informed, looked a little like this, and went down outside the Toowong Coffee Club.
A little over a week ago he came to tell me he was dropping out of uni to become a full time writer. This made complete sense to me, coming from the man who once spent a week painting the walls of an abandoned house with an assorted bunch of hobos.
Two days after his revelation, a friend and I went in to see my sister at the pub where she works. Coincidentally, Danny was there, fresh from 2-months of alcoholic abstinence, downing drink after drink with a couple of strangers he had met there.
I went up and chatted to Danny and his two new friends, one of whom informed me eloquently about 9/11 theories (that I had already heard), and why he thought domestic violence was the fault of women (I had not already heard this argument).
Whilst most of Australia says “no” to domestic violence, Danny’s drinking buddy says, “Bloody asking for it.”
Eventually Danny and I got a moment alone together.
“I’m so sorry Fiffles.” he slurred at me.
“Danny, that’s fine, you haven’t let me down at all dear!” I answered, taking a stab at the wrongdoing he was apparently apologizing for. “I think that you made the right choice quitting your degree!”
“No no no! Not that… I am sorry for all this…” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the beer stained counter.
“Well don’t worry, it’s OK. You can start not drinking again tomorrow!” I comforted.
“I’m going to get all maudlin on you Fiffles,” he interred, “and I don’t mean this.” I cocked an eyebrow in encouragement and he kept on going.
“What you must think of me!!” he moaned, “When we had this beautiful friendship and I let it be ruined by the most banal and base jealousy. I have let you down intolerably.”
“Danny!” I cried, getting into the drama of the moment, “Don’t be ridiculous! Never for a moment have I thought badly of you, you did what needed to be done!” I leaned forward, straining to communicate my thoughts, and make myself heard over the bad cover band.
“Yes, but there is more…” replied Danny enigmatically, “I really shouldn’t tell you this, but I am so drunk that I will. I need to tell you…”
At that moment we were cut off, as the domestic violence aficionado slammed his beery glass down on the counter next to us.
“Another drink mate?” he asked Danny. At that moment my friend appeared and pulled me to the side, imploring me to leave with him.
“I’ve got to go,” I said to Danny.
“It’s probably for the best.” he answered.
The bar where behind which my sister works. Good for getting beer, not great for sharing secrets.
A few days ago I bumped into him at uni. He was even more skittish than before, eyes darting and sinewy body in a perpetual state of motion. No talk was made about the night at the pub, what he had to tell me or anything else really. Instead, he cut the conversation off and bolted.
In a way I am glad he never told me that which would have probably turned out to be a boring confidence about his work or girlfriend. Instead, the situation is left open and I can embroider it such that it remains full of intrigue and mystery. In that way, it stays just like I imagine Danny, that boy who is inescapably lost, wonderfully weird, and often dogged by fireflies
