How to Be Happy

by David Burton

  ‘No cheese?’

  Cheese was Ray’s favourite thing in the world. It was cheese, Pokémon and Austin Powers with Ray. That was his entire world.

  I shook my head. ‘No. No cheese.’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  This was a clear and serious accusation from him. It wasn’t a joke. I really was an idiot. He even seemed personally insulted that Mum hadn’t put cheese on my sandwich.

  Simon slapped Ray sharply on the back of the head. ‘Who asked you?’

  ‘Hey!’ Ray yelled, as Simon laughed at him.

  Even though I could see the slap had hurt, I laughed too.

  ‘Stupid dickhead,’ Simon said. ‘What are you, a freak? Not everyone has to like cheese.’

  Ray was silent. I could see he was hurt. If Ray and I had been on our own, I would’ve tried to explain to him that calling people idiots is probably not a great idea. But it had felt so good to have a friend stand up for me.

  ‘Yeah, freak,’ I said.

  I selfishly believed I had filled my Aspergers quota. Our lunches often became about Simon calling Ray names and telling him to shut up.

  I never stood up for Ray. He stopped hanging out with us at some point. We didn’t go looking for him.

  With Simon and Mary, life became brighter. Mum and Dad’s apparently inevitable divorce never came. The tensions seemed to dissolve as the year settled down. Mum and Dad still battled with depression regularly, but I was concentrating on other things.

  Mary and I discovered Harry Potter together, which, in terms of major life events, is almost as important as YOUR ACTUAL BIRTH. Lunchtimes regularly involved rushing to the library to pore over the latest instalment in Harry’s adventures and attempting to make predictions about upcoming books. We would also discuss Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Discworld and Doctor Who at length. We were nerd soulmates.

  There are few reasons I would ever wish to be a teenager again, but I could be persuaded if it meant rediscovering all of these stories again for the first time and finding my unabashed passion for them. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was joining a fraternity of teenagers that had existed since the 70s. The socially awkward, tragically unathletic, deeply intelligent teens. Lean, gawky and uncertain, we were destined to cling to the sparkling wonders of fictitious worlds as if they were lifelines. They are lifelines. They offer an escape from a world that has declared war on the introvert. Schools relentlessly celebrate outgoing students, catapulting the contemplative introvert into group work, team-building and utter hell. While our genetically gifted extroverted counterparts found their freedom on the sports field, Mary and I found it inside our own heads, in rich worlds that were infinitely witty, imaginative and heartbreakingly not real, in spite of our ardent longings to the contrary. How we wished we could escape to a faraway planet. This collective imagining was the greatest feat of romance I could imagine.

  Simon, meanwhile, taught me chess, but only in a way that meant that he would always win. A lot of our conversation was based on competing with each other. We became fierce rivals in politics. Simon’s family was staunchly conservative; they eyed my family’s liberalism with suspicion. Mary would watch on as Simon and I did battle over Australia’s immigration policy.

  ‘They’re coming in to destroy our country!’ Simon would yell at me.

  ‘They’re coming in because they’re running away from their own destroyed countries!’ I’d yell back, outraged that he could be so callous.

  ‘You’d believe anyone’s sob story.’

  ‘You’ve got no heart.’

  It would have been so much easier if we were less interested in the world and could’ve solved our constant competition for the alpha-male position by bashing each other behind the bike sheds.

  I often found myself wondering how or why we were friends. It was a bizarre relationship.

  Friendship with Simon and Mary made high school tolerable, but I yearned for greater acceptance from my peers, especially a few of the prettier girls. They never seemed to notice me, ever. To be fair, it’s hard to notice someone who hides in the library playing the Harry Potter trading-card game while loudly exclaiming that Alexander Downer is a terrorist.

  But I swooned whenever a girl dared to give me a smile. I was a sucker for the girls whose names sounded like they had come from a fairytale film.

  There was Christine Pennyworth, whose endlessly cheery demeanour and kind words made my heart sing an opera and my mouth make socially inappropriate squeaking noises. And Danielle Rosen, whose hair matched her name. Danielle kept all the footy boys in line, and made them all show off for her, and she giggled all the while.

  I needed something to get their attention, or any attention. I needed to show that I could be funny, and smart. I didn’t want to go through high school as the quiet nerdy kid no one noticed.

  I needed drama.

  Drama wasn’t offered in the first year of high school, but I leapt at the chance in the second year. Mrs Coates was head of the drama department. She wrapped up our final first-year English class by asking me to stay back.

  ‘You’ll be joining me in drama next year, won’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course!’ I replied. I was ecstatic. The more time with Mrs Coates the better.

  I was not the only one who thought so. Mrs Coates was new to the school, but under her leadership the student numbers in drama absolutely exploded.

  First class. First day. Theatre sports. You run into the space and make up a scene off the top of your head. You get embarrassed quickly, but if you get over yourself and just play in the scene, it’s actually quite easy to be entertaining.

  I was embarrassed every day. I was shoved into walls, called a faggot, and the target of countless spit balls—what did one more piece of humiliation matter?

  With that uplifting thought, I stood on the side as two of my classmates began a scene. They were giggling, embarrassed as the entire class looked at them, waiting for them to be entertaining.

  ‘Hi, um…Phil,’ said one of the girls, before collapsing into a fit of laughter.

  ‘Phil’ could only laugh in response.

  For some reason Phil was the funniest name anyone had ever heard.

  ‘Focus!’ yelled Mrs Coates from the back of the room. ‘Find a way to introduce something new into the scene.’

  ‘Phil’ managed to restrain his giggles for a second to mutter: ‘…have you seen the cat?’

  Well.

  That was my cue.

  I got down on my hands and knees and sauntered into the scene. The class broke out into a sudden explosion of laughter. I sat, licked my hand and groomed myself.

  For the first time since I’d arrived at high school, my peers looked at me with respect. With my lips pursed and my bum in the air, I felt my heart swell. And from that day on, I was viewed very differently. I was given a sudden promotion up the social ladder.

  I was as surprised as you are.

  Every scene in drama became about how big or outrageous I could become. I was funny and unpredictable. I had dared to do what so many others had found too terrifying: to just try. I was no longer Faggy Nerdy Da
ve. I was Crazy Drama Dave. It was a role I wore easily and welcomed. And it wasn’t long before it went beyond the drama class and into every part of my social life.

  Everything became a performance. On a sports field I had been absolutely lost and would usually sit on the side trying not to get noticed. Now sport gave me regular opportunities to show off.

  Forced to play soccer? I would run around the field commentating the action in an inappropriate and racist faux-Mexican accent.

  Called a faggot? I’d put on a lisp and a limp wrist and flirt with the idiot that dared to mess with me.

  Internally, I was a different person. I suddenly had the strength to get through the day. I was convinced I had learned a valuable lesson, and it was one I wanted to share.

  Mary, still the social outcast, was experiencing great anxiety one afternoon after a bunch of girls had been mean to her about her weight.

  ‘It’s easy,’ I said, freshly arrogant from my new survival strategy. ‘Just don’t be yourself. Be someone else. You’ve got to put on a show for people. That’s the only way to survive.’

  Mary nodded in mute acceptance.

  Worst. Advice. Ever.

  3

  The Swimming Carnival

  For New Year’s Eve, in typical nerd fashion, Simon, Mary and I decided to stay up and watch a Red Dwarf (dorky sci-fi sitcom) marathon. Although exhausting, it was delightful, and one of the rare times I can actually remember behaving like a normal teenager at my house.

  Partly because of the twins, and also because of my own shyness, visitors to our family home were extremely limited. Having my friends over was a rare occurrence in the high-school days. I felt comfortable with Mary, who understood family weirdness instantly and didn’t begrudge the twins’ eccentricities or worry about the sometimes chaotic kitchen, or the piles of dog poo out the front, or the smelly bit of carpet in the hallway where the dog frequently pissed, or the sewing room that was almost impossible to enter because of the stacks of hoarded fabric.

  Mary’s house had similar signs of oddness which made me feel right at home. Her stepfather had painted a mural of a misshapen horse on one of her bedroom walls and there were stacks of magazines and boxes in various corners.

  When Mary was giving me the first tour of her house, she wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  I tried to reassure her. ‘This is great!’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘It’s all right, I guess.’

  I sat down on her bed and looked at the horse on the wall. ‘I can’t believe your step-dad painted that whole thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she smiled.

  ‘Do you get on with him?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a good guy.’

  I suddenly realised that I knew very little about Mary’s family.

  ‘When did he and your Mum get together?’ I asked.

  ‘About five years ago,’ she said. Her eyes moved downwards again. She was picking at her fingernails. They’d been covered in glue from a boring Religion lesson in last period. She did it all the time. I could tell she was thinking, and I wasn’t sure if I’d hit on a sensitive spot.

  Then she looked up. ‘They met at the Walsh Home.’

  I was surprised. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘The mental home?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah. He was a patient there. She was a nurse. She ended up pressing for his early release. She said she’d look after him. They fell in love really quickly. It was all a big scandal.’

  ‘That’s amazing!’

  Mary smiled. My head filled with questions. Before I could ask, we heard the front door open.

  ‘Mary?’ came a voice from the lounge room.

  Mary’s mum was home. In an instant, I saw Mary’s body change. She looked down again, sighed, and took to her nails with a fresh fervour.

  When I went home to my own mum later that day, I told the story of Mary’s mother’s mental marriage with excitement.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ I gasped.

  Mum was immediately doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s what Mary said.’

  Mum’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  Mum has always acted quickly. It was only a matter of days later that she hung up the phone with an air of triumph. I muted Doctor Who on the television to find out what she was so pleased about.

  ‘That was Mary’s mother,’ she said. ‘It’s a lie. They never met at a mental hospital. They met through work.’

  Oh, God.

  ‘You asked her about it?!’

  Mum nodded, happy with herself.

  ‘But Mum, don’t you think she’d be embarrassed and not tell you? Isn’t it the kind of thing that would be a family secret?’

  ‘If it’s such a family secret, then why is Mary telling her friends? Sounds more like Mary’s making up stories to impress people.’

  I didn’t let Mum see that I thought she might be right. I was too embarrassed by her snooping. Now the whole thing seemed ridiculous.

  But why would Mary lie?

  The next day at school, while Simon and I ate lunch and Mary read a book, I asked her. I tried to do it sensitively.

  ‘So, you won’t believe what Mum did last night,’ I began. ‘She rang your mum and asked about the whole story of how they met.’

  Mary’s face instantly turned pink. Her eyes grew wide with fright.

  I continued. ‘And your mum said it was made up.’

  There was a tiny pause before Mary laughed. Great, big, raucous laughter. ‘Of course it’s made up,’ she said. ‘I was just being silly.’

  I laughed too, but I was confused. Had it all been some kind of weird joke? I started to ask more questions, but Mary just laughed in response. After that, whenever I offered to go round to her house, she made excuses about her parents wanting her to study. I didn’t visit again.

  Simon’s house, which I visited often, was a tightly controlled domestic unit. Every space was tidy and wiped clean. Bedtime was strict. Evening prayer was essential. Simon’s father was a looming and intimidating presence who banned Simon from watching ‘inappropriate’ television shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and other programs that were ‘obscene’.

  Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a reality show where a bunch of gay guys did a makeover on a messy straight guy. My parents and I thought the show was hilarious.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ Simon said when I tried to recommend it to him. I was pretty sure he’d never seen it.

  I had little awareness about the differences between our families until Simon pointed them out, starting with the messiness of my home.

  ‘Do you ever, like, clean the kitchen?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘It just doesn’t look like you do.’

  I looked around. I saw the kitchen through Simon’s eyes. There was stuff everywhere. An industrial-sized tub of peanut butter on the bench. A large pile of bills and paperwork. Pet-food cans. A bowl of apples, bananas and pears, all at different stages of life.

 
‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.’

  My house was too messy. I added the complaint to my growing list of teenage resentments about my family.

  The Three Amigos were not destined to have romantic couplings. Crazy Drama Dave was funny—cute, but not hot. Not having a girlfriend or boyfriend didn’t seem to bother Simon and Mary a lot, but I was vocal about my desire for a girlfriend. I felt like I had spent most of my life longing for an intimate partner. It was a grand and impressive vision in my head. A romantic soulmate. Someone to share my deepest thoughts with. Someone who would convince me that I didn’t need to perform or compete with them. Someone I could be at ease with. I imagined finding a person who could share the burden of my secrets: all my worst fears about no one at school liking me, or that my family was unusual and that I might be unusual too. Someone who could hear all of that and still love me.

  It was now almost two years since that first drama class. It was exhausting being Crazy Drama Dave all the time. If I could just find this one brilliant person, my life would be better in every regard.

  Plus, you know, I was horny. But more on that later.

  So I went hunting for this mysterious wonderful soulmate who was waiting for me, somewhere.

  Christine Pennyworth could have been that person. Always smiling, always smart, kind-hearted and funny.

  Yes. I should ask Christine Pennyworth out.

  I spent many lunch hours with Mary and Simon, making plans, trying to summon up the courage.

  ‘Okay. All right,’ I would begin. ‘I’ll just go over and ask her out. Now. Right now.’

  Simon shrugged, sipping from his coke can. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  Mary looked up at me with those big eyes. She didn’t eat or drink much at school. She just sat with a book in her lap. ‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’