Dark Place

There is beauty in this life of ours. We come into the world overwhelmed with the vibrancy of everything. Then we change and beauty is hidden behind the waterfalls of our pain. Life it seems, is a return to what we once were. Only in returning do we understand. Rote learning the meaning of this strange existence of ours.

Turned out that I didn’t know Dan, even having known him since the final year of university. I know him more now than I ever did. That I will never know the whole of him pains me in a strangely sweet manner. My world is a better place for having Dan in it and I intend to know him more as we are gifted the passing of time. Somehow, I know myself far better for Dan’s existence. There is alchemy in our friendship. I know the exact moment that we forged gold from the usual grey matter that masquerades as the bond of friendship.

I suppose it was a road trip. Neither of us referred to it as such. Road trips are the stuff of American movies and the middle classes attempting to prove credentials that they’ll dine out on for decades thereafter. No one on a serious journey of discovery would ever say they were on a road trip, the same as I don’t take pavement trips to the local shops. 

We shared the driving. This wasn’t my plan. I won the vote on who’s car we should take. My intent in that victory was that I should drive. I find that I’m at my best in the driving seat. This is only the case in my car. I’m not a control freak. Which is exactly what a coercer would say. I have a lot of work to do on my winning fake smile, and the various other accoutrements of the abuser if I’m going to snidely wrest control from the unsuspecting. Quite frankly I have better things to do with my time.

Driving is doing. I didn’t quite know what to do. Dan’s parents had died within a year of each other. His Dad passed a month ago; I dunno how the old bastard lingered for so long. Sheer stubborn will, I suppose. Dan’s words as he broke the news to me when we met for a beer. He’d said nothing until we met. Waited until we’d covered the usual ground which included the business of the Breasticle Appreciation Society. The agenda for the society was always uplifting, as would be expected when deliberating over such subject matter. I did say that there is beauty in this life. There are also some things that don’t change. There are those who have been disparaging about our society. Mostly women. Those women don’t realise how lucky they are in having breasts. They take them for granted, whereas Dan and I would never cease to behold our twin globes of joy with a reverence beyond countenance. Besides, men need hobbies and this one has no barriers to entry other than an appreciating nature and a vivid imagination.

Funny really, that there is a time and a place for certain subjects. In the car I couldn’t light up the proceedings with “in’t breasts brill!?” Perhaps it was the serious matter of the driving that always precluded this. The drive to Yorkshire was as serious as it gets. Dan was returning to his folks’ place after a very long absence. The information I had to hand with regard to said absence was scant; not been there in years. This brevity verging on nonexistence was unusual for Dan. I don’t want you thinking he’s a taciturn man. But on that particular day there was that about him. A brooding silence that had me thinking that he was in some way emulating the man who had brought him into the world. We are carbon copies of our makers with little clue as to how to move beyond the hardwired code of our upbringing. Comedy can be a rebellion against all that our parents are about. My folks would certainly take a dim view of my membership of a tit fanciers guild. 

Dan’s assertion that he should drive for at least part of the journey was met with little resistance. I hadn’t packed anything by way of rebuff, nor had I remembered to grab any clues as to how I should be in the presence of my grieving friend. I had leaned too heavily into my preference for the front seats of a car to tackle the tougher subjects of life. Both driver and passenger are eyes front. They have a focus upon the road. In my experience, conversation can flow far more easily, barring the punctuation of junctions and cars that are totally out of control as the useless article in the driver’s seat attends to anything but driving. 

The silence that we shared wasn’t uncomfortable when it came to Dan and I. That we shared the silence was testament to that. It didn’t sit between us and so it wasn’t something to be addressed. As the drive went on, the silence intensified and I then knew that this was anticipation. That for once, we couldn’t live in the moment, as this present moment was a means to an end. And so we had a growing anxiety for the future that awaited us at journey’s end.

Once we were in the North itself, I considered what awaited us. This began with an uncharitable thought. That Dan knew where he was going and therefore he at least had a framework to work within. Whereas I was in the dark. Ergo, Dan was keeping me in the dark on purpose. I even reached for the eventuality that he could so easily put me out of my acute misery. Then I took to thinking about what I could do about that. Began with calling him out on his unnecessary behaviour and retreated from that bold assertion to small fry questions I could ask in order to relieve the pressure building in the car’s cabin. Instead, I opted to open my window a smidge and calm myself. The mind can be a dangerous playground at times.

As though he were reading my fevered mind, but more likely due to his own wayward thoughts and the feelings we were sharing, Dan asked if I fancied sticking a CD on. My car is old school and this run was as far as it had been in a long while. I grabbed at this suggestion and for the next hour we blasted tunes into the stale air, even managing the semblances of smiles at times. Good old music. A balm for tricky and sorrowful times.

Rural Yorkshire approached and I didn’t need to ask whether we were nearly there yet. I was driving during this last part. Counter intuitive I know, but I think Dan wanted to take a look around and reacquaint himself with the landscape of his childhood. We see things differently from the passenger seat, and he was returning in triumph. He was the king of his life having vanquished the dragon that stands between a person and finally becoming. That was what I saw as we returned to Dan’s childhood home. We all see what we want to see. Tailor make a reality that suits us. Dan always suited me just fine. Few people are like that. Diamonds in a world of coal.

I’m sure that there are parts of Yorkshire that are beautiful. No need for fancy dress, make up or just so lighting. Breath-taking with a simplicity that cannot be denied. The view to either side of the road we travelled was attractive. I suppose you would say striking, and in that blow it struck me that there was cruelty here. More felt than seen. The landscape leading to the stone cottage sitting betwixt ribbons of drystone walls should have brought a smile to my face. Vibrant scenery that could so easily be rendered grey and bleak. A promise of fleeting pleasure followed by the lingering pain of hardship. This for me was a place to visit. Not one I could see a child growing up in. There was a whispered challenge upon a wind that was more than a breeze. This was a place that tested a person, and if there was enough material, it would forge something of worth. A tool to beat the land into submission.

As we neared the house itself, I felt a strange form of foreboding. A painful compassion for the boy that Dan was and still is. For the better part of us is the child who defies the world around it and refuses to grow into a poor compromise for conformity’s sake. I looked upon the cold stone walls and shivered. The house itself seemed to be a vengeful ghost staring into me from the windows of bedrooms that had imprisoned the exhausted. I knew from my very first acquaintance with Dan’s childhood home that this was a terrible place for Dan to grow up in. I don’t need to say much more on this. This was knowledge that was felt as truth. Here was an icy absence that haunted. The restless, lamented past residing in the cold stones themselves. A parent allowing the other to blight the life of their only child. The detail of which parent committed which particular crime an irrelevance. This was a partnership and disregarded guilt was divided between two people who should have known better. Who did know better, but had no interest in being better than they were. They were too tired and too busy prioritising anything but the child they had chosen to bring into this world. Their choice not his. A spiteful, premeditated betrayal to perpetuate the betrayals of the bloodline. A pedigree of misery to keep the blood pure. Only through pain does one learn their place in this world.

I was acutely aware of our brotherhood as I sat observing this grave of innocence. Peering through the window of the car like a craven tourist. A Victorian thrill seeker wandering his best friend’s nightmare asylum. I was exposed to just one echo of what Dan had to endure and it damn well nearly undid me. I bit my lip, dug my fingernails into my palms, fought back tears for the boy I often glimpsed as we cast aside our masks and laughed at the absurdity of the life we were compelled to live.

The shame of it all was I didn’t want to leave the car. In the aftermath of the revelations I had been privy to I wanted to go home. I craved the familiarity of my life. Here I was exposed. I understood my vulnerability all too well. Don’t make me do this, I remember these words welling up inside me. A plea to the presence beside me. My cowardice was elemental. A blind, thrashing animal in the thrall of fear fuelled by the knowledge of a pain that undoes. Was this my survival instinct? Now I gaze upon it from the safety of my mind lab I’m further shamed by the experiments I performed upon that part of me. We make of ourselves twisted things in the pursuit of pleasing others. None of it leads to any good, but here we all are, smiling through the unnecessariness of the complexities with which we cloth ourselves. Sharing the only thing we have in common; pain.

Of course, I got out of the car and continued with our great adventure. Not through any sense of comradery. Nothing as noble as that. I didn’t want to lose face. I was appalled at the prospect of displaying my cowardice. Going through with this was the only option I had. Most achievements are won via blind stubbornness. The glorious narrative is added after the fact and with little reference to the facts.

“So this is it then,” my need to fill the brooding silence made of me a pathetic thing. In a way, I was being true to my state. 

Dan smiled and nodded, seeming to sense my neediness. A friend in need is a friend indeed. “It is,” he confirmed. Something came over him then. A switching of modes. An old habit that would die hard, “first things, first. We’ll need to set the fire. It’ll be colder than a witch’s tit in there. It’s the stones you see, if they’ve not been kept warm they turn the place into a fridge.”

I wanted to make light of the tit comment. We’d yet to place witch’s boobs on our agenda. So many rich seams to mine. Plumbing the depths of indecency like the naughty school boys we would always be. This wasn’t the time though and certainly not the place. This dour mausoleum commanded begrudging respect. A dowager aunt sucking the joy of life from the marrow of my bones. There was only challenge here. Gravity dragging me down the face of a grater to remove all my bravado and see what I was really made of.

The inside of The Crypt was indeed cold. With the promise of becoming colder with every miserable moment spent inside what should have been a home but was devoid of the essential ingredients necessary to ever become one. 

“Just a mo,” I told Dan as he crouched by the fireplace and constructed a fire with an expertise I was unaware that he possessed.

He nodded, but remained focused upon his task. All purpose. Conducting one of the rituals that kept him together throughout his time here. Finding purpose and attempting to be of use to people who had violated his worth from the outset.

I walked outside and took my phone out. Saw what I already knew. My connection to an illusion of civilisation was dead. The function I required remained. I took photos of the cottage. Walked further and further away in order to capture the setting of this place. Smiled to myself at the lie these photos represented. In two dimensions I was capturing a beauty that didn’t exist. The stark reality behind the façade was hidden. 

Returning to the house, I found Dan holding the front page of a tabloid against the mouth of the fire and I laughed at the absurdity of it all. 

He peered at me curiously, “drawing the fire,” he explained.

Phone still in hand, I took a photo, “it looked like you were putting the fireplace out of its misery!”

Dan raised his eyebrows and smiled, getting the joke and finding further meaning beyond the quip itself. 

“Look out!” I cried and with a presence of mind wrought from experience, Dan deftly pushed the burning paper in to the fire. 

“Good sign that,” he grinned.

And that there was our first moment in the trenches. Even under fire and with grim consequences closing in all around us, we found it within ourselves to reach out and light the darkness. 

The fire was a welcome distraction. A dancing fake that did little to warm us. Thankfully, Dan had planned ahead. Knew more of the terrain than I. The single malt that he’d been saving provided a brand of warmth that afforded us respite from the cold all around us.

As he poured the last drop of whisky into our makeshift glasses, Dan dropped a bombshell, “there’s only one bed.”

I nearly joked that he’d got me here under false pretences and now was a hell of a time to come out. I’m glad I didn’t. All the same, I can’t help myself. More so in Dan’s company, “well, I don’t have tits and neither do you, so we should be fine.”

Dan shook his head in faux disappointment at how low I could take the conversation. We both knew that between us we could go far, far lower than that. Brushing our underbellies upon the long grasses of our misspent youth instead of flying high as was expected from us.

“Besides,” I added, “we’ll freeze to death if we don’t huddle together for warmth.”

Dan waggled his eyebrows as he has a wont to do, “you’re a huddler, eh? One more of your hidden depths revealed!”

“Touche,” I said, waving my chipped and tannin stained teacup at the room in which we were encased.

Dan nodded at that. This a rite of passage only just begun. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t know Dan until that weekend on the Yorkshire Moors. But I hadn’t known this history of his. In the knowing of it I knew him more. Everything about him shifted through the lens of that weekend and our bond became eternal.

The progression from fireside to bed was all part of a ceremony of brotherhood and of love. In that cold place where Dan had been taught of a love that was nothing of the sort, he curled into me and cried. And as I held him he professed his love for me. In that moment our love went beyond the both of us. Transformed everything around us. As the intensity subsided, Dan fell asleep in my arms and I saw some of the magic that had occurred. Gazing down at my friend’s slumbering form I experienced a peace I had never known possible. 

In the grave of his childhood, Dan had found love at last. Rescued the sad little boy who always deserved far more than he was made to endure. We shared that and much more. Let go the ghosts of pasts that tethered us to misery and pain.

The following day, as we left that cottage, my eyes saw anew. The sun’s rays were burning through the grey clouds. Lighting up the landscape with the hope of better days. A reminder of the cycle of life. The winters we must endure in order to make our way to times of rebirth and the joy of growth.