right on the precipice of something new

(note: contains sensitive language, sexual content)

I suppose I should begin with that cologne. Verdant and fresh, it very much is my first association with work, with professionalism. My dad used to splash a sheen onto his stubbly neck, early in the morning. Calvin Klein, it was. That smell, of grapefruit in a clementine sun, of skin scrubbed new in the shower, of someone ready for the world. 

That smell made my heart thump as a child. Beating and booming in my chest, it meant he was off to work. Off to practice dentistry. Away from the soft sunlight of home, where my mum would bake crusty bread and speak with the smiling mailman and let us eat from the chocolate chip bag. That smell meant he’d miss all the quiet comforts of home during the day. As a child, that smell bespoke an adult world where I had no place, and no right to be. 

From time to time, I used to go to his work to visit him. Usually as he wanted to stick sharp instruments in my little mouth, scrutinizing my tiny teeth. Or, more commonly, as I rode along with my mother as she went to speak with him during working hours. I’d sit in a waiting room fragrant with disinfectant, watching from afar. My dad would seem hurried, deep dark frowns on his forehead. My mum would seem timid, an imposition, a delicate reminder of the safety of home, briefly gracing the intensity of a working office. 

~

“I had a patient today from the middle-east, Sala. People come from all over the world to see me, they really do. From Hong Kong, from Germany, from Brazil. It’s wonderful. And you’d have that too. You’d make a fantastic dentist, Sala.”

~

Back at home with my mother, after a visit to his office, I’d feel the tremendous heaviness of my dad’s importance to our lives. With what soft whispers would my mum then speak of my dad. As if he was always listening, even when away. “I must cook dinner now, Chris. He’ll be back in a few short hours.” I’d slip then, back to my quiet room. Looking out the window at the afternoon, as someone ambled by with their dog, I’d wonder about my future. I’d feel a tight ache in my chest. A feeling, perhaps, that I’d never live up to him.

After my parent’s separation, a few years ago, my Dad moved into a tiny dark apartment closer to the edge of town. He suddenly became part of the shuffling group of apartment residents that would go straight from their front doors to their cars in the morning, and from their cars to their front doors at night. He suddenly, I felt, wanted to smudge out all extraneous thoughts. Suffocate them with a steady daily rhythm. He wanted nothing to do, anymore, with dreams or curiosities or excitements. I watched him with worry at this time. His disillusion with life grew like a puddle of ink blotting through thin paper. It, ever so gradually, saturated everything.

I’d visit him in the evening, right as he was getting back from a run. I’d tiptoe in as he bumbled around the kitchen. The sweet, sour smell of acrid sweat would follow him as he pulled together some simple dinner. Salty marmite on burnt toast, lashings of grassy butter. A mottled brown banana afterwards, with a smudge of mayonnaise. Meals of marginalized men. Meals of men who, ever so slightly, feel as if they’re being forgotten about. 

~

“I’m knackered today, Sala. They don’t give me a break there. And the work is all shitty, too. Fillings and badly done dentures. And the patients giving me a fucking hard time. It’s exhausting, man. It’s not good. If you’re going to do dentistry, pick a good practice, Sala. Don’t work for idiots.”

~

We’d go on a Sunday morning for breakfast. Down the undulating green summer roads, going far too fast, we’d keep the windows fully down. Warm breaths of summer air would rush in, snatching the words from our brief conversations. Insects would scream in the forests, as if deeply threatened by the warming sun. Driving along, I always wished to change places with them. To escape into the woods, live briefly but loudly. Not feel the pressure of growing up.

The cafe would be bright and frothy as we entered, full of clattering dishes, bacon perfumes, tanned earthy skin. Over eggs benedict, runny-yolked and nourishing, and cappuccinos, chocolate-dusted and creamy as panna cotta, we’d probe each-other with the hesitant curiosities only found between an aging father and his struggling son.  

“There’s no need to rush into anything, Sala. But you can always fall back on a profession. You’ll be fantastic with anything you choose to do. But a profession is well paid, and well respected. But I’ll always support you darling. You won the literature prize when you were young, don’t forget. You’re a wonderful writer. But the professions give you security, Sala. Anyway, no-one listens to me anymore. Especially not your mother.” 

He turned back to his cooling coffee, face pregnant with some new emerging worry, with a look I hadn’t seen before. My heart thumped in my chest. Like as a child when I smelled the sillage of his cologne. We both looked at the meadowy waitress, busying herself with wrapping silverware. As if she could rescue us from the sudden seriousness of our conversation. She turned away with blushing cheeks to chat with the food-smeared chef, about blue-eyed boyfriends beside midnight summer lakes. To chat about a cloistered world of verdant simplicities which felt light years away from ours. 

The way back home would be much quieter. Windows closed, air conditioning on, my dad would always seem to have a comment on the tip of his tongue. He’d stave it off, as if he knew it’d break my heart. As if he knew that his heavy realities would stomp on the grandeur of my youth. As if he knew that so few people get away with following a passion. But how to say this to your youngest child? And so, he’d say nothing. He’d instead demonstrate his slight unease with a mundane comment, which did nothing to relieve the tension. “Have you met anyone at university, Sala? Asked anyone out for a coffee? Don’t worry too much. You worry too much. Just get stuck in. What’s the worst that can happen?” 

My life, at that time, seemed a practice in not knowing how to answer my Dad. A horrible feeling, like my tongue was dry and swollen in my mouth.

Back home, he’d fall asleep in the mustard yellow armchair. And I’d be left to the dusty silences of his old farmhouse. Creaking around on scrubbed wooden floorboards, my head heavy with worries, I’d pass the fat, slow afternoon. And again and again I’d think: should I just listen to him, just heed what he says? Should I, just like that, give my life to his well-worn path. Pursue dentistry, and cast off this daft inclination to follow my heart, my passions. My life felt so precariously balanced during those hot summer afternoons. Ready to tip and spill towards disaster at any moment. Thankfully, he slept while I thought. 

~

“You have to choose something, Sala. You just have to. Give yourself the best chance you can to make a bit of money, son. What is the name of your degree again? Something in politics, you said? And what exactly will you do with that? I’m not putting pressure on you. I’m just curious. What’s your plan, man. You always need a plan in life.” 

~

We had just made love behind a big boulder on the beach. Deserted aside from us two, soundless aside from the slap and lick of the tide, colorless aside from the bone-white of the sand and the ink-blue of the stretching ocean, it seemed the right place for sudden intimacy. As if sex was the only act that could match the purity of the place.

She was my first girlfriend. The first ever person to take an interest in me that extended past a few cursory days. We met at work, a herb-scented natural grocers, where I had taken a job mostly to distract me from life’s bigger decisions. She worked in the body section, and I bumped into her while scurrying upstairs for a lunch break. We exchanged our first few tender words while customers milled around us, looking for goat milk soaps, sulfate free shampoos, and bamboo hair brushes. Easy to fall in love somewhere like this, I remember thinking. 

Her hair smelled of almonds that day. And the air around us the salt tang of the ocean. The two intermingled as I drew closer to her damp skin. A simple thought came along with the breeze, and tiptoed through my mind: this is what’s most important, this is what’s most important. I kissed the pale patch of freckled skin that lay over her heart, as we pushed against the gritty sand. Her breath quickened, along with mine. In the dappled sunlight she grasped for my side, and I held the back of her slender neck. Someone far away, perhaps the next beach over, let off a resonant laugh. We both slumped on our backs, exhausted, spent, full of something good. The sun seemed so kind, then. Absolving us of life’s worries, we lay spread in its turmeric rays. Like jellyfish drying out on the beach.

As we tottered back to the car, over the sand like hot charcoal, our fingers met and interlaced as our arms swung like clock pendulums. A boat dangled on the horizon, seeming the size of a fingernail. She smiled at me, with eyes round and brown and confiding. A look that said she’d like many more days like this. Long and lingering quiet adventures that bring you as close as you can to someone else. We scrambled over the rough rocks that brought us to the carpark. Ours was the last car left.

While she loaded the back with our bleached blankets and picnic bags, I ducked away to phone my Dad under the pollen filled shade of a tree. As the phone rang and rang, I watched with smiling eyes her white cotton pants flutter with the wind. I was put through to voicemail. He must have been working. 

“Hi Dad. I’m just at the beach with Georgia. We’ll be back home in a bit. I just wanted to say I’m fine. And that you shouldn’t worry too much about me. I’m going in the right direction. Of that I’m sure. But I can’t do anything other, in life, than what feels right. To figure out who I am, I have to plunge into uncertainty. It may take me ages to figure life out, Dad. Or not long at all. I’m not sure yet. But I need your love. Now more than ever. Please.” 

We drove back along shadowed forest roads, through chlorophyll-green haze. Away from the beach, back towards my Dad, back towards life. I felt lighter, almost free, as if I could’ve floated up and away from the carseat. I wiped a hot tear from my cheek, as I reached for her small soft hand. Holding it tight, breathing in the sunset air, I realized I’d never exactly be what my Dad wanted.

But, as she squeezed my hand back, I realized something else: that there was nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all.