As I am writing this it is my birthday. It’s also my flatmate Wyatt’s birthday. This is the first time I’ve had to share a day that, to my mind, is something special and rather unique to me, with someone whose own life intrudes so personally upon my own. Obviously, I knew in the abstract that my date of birth was shared with people, but there is a difference between knowing I shared something so personal with Canadian Spree shooter Kimveer Gill, or American actor Tom Hanks, and the guy whose kyak is propped up outside the door. For one thing, I have a reasonable hope of becoming more famous than Wyatt as I age, unlike that murderous bastard Hanks.
I’d like to pretend my shock and awe at this was something other than narcissism, but I am done lying to myself about anything excluding my weight. I, like everybody, find little things to make myself feel special. Things that encode me as a unique individual eeking out an existence in a way that hasn’t been done before on our planet Earth. So with the discovery of Wyatt’s shared birthing, I suffered a small crisis of self. Panic overcame me, and for a split second I questioned whether I was in fact an autonomous entity. I have concluded that I am probably not. Stink eh?
This wasn’t the first time I suffered such a crisis, oh no. You see, a small while ago, while I was a theatre student at this very university, I started hearing rumours that I’d said or done something funny, and while yes, it is possible, or even probable that I had indeed committed some mirth-generating act, I was fairly certain that I had not quipped that particular wittism. Like all self-aggrandising narcissists, I of course claimed that, yes, it was me. Then, I paused, reflected darkly and drank out of the old jam jar that happened to be the only clean drinking vessel in Studio 77’s green room.
I dug into this matter over the following weeks, and discovered to my dismay there was another person stumbling around the same stumbling grounds as I—large, hummocked, obsessed with the same nerdly theatre and amusements as I.
I wasn’t surprised to find that we both wore the shitty Farmers brand clothing for huskier gentlemen. I avowed to meet this man face to face and confront him for stealing my essential me-ness. I plotted against this fellow, and thought of all the beautiful and aesthetically pleasing ways I could stop him from being me.
Straight murder was one option, but first I’d have to ceremoniously disfigure this chubby funster. Perhaps a quick plunge into a vat of an undisclosed chemical, ala the Joker would be the best for him, so his brain would be fundamentally disfigured as well as his face. Maybe it would be easier just to slash him with a knife, and keep on slashing until he looked more like a Picasso portrait than I ever could. Perhaps it would be best if I merely poisoned him with some sort of tasty gelato laced with strychnine. That would give him a grin that I would never be able to comfortably produce, and it would be permanent. Yes. If he were anything like me (and he was), he’d like the taste of gelato… Coconut gelato. He’d eat it all up and ask for more. God knows I do.
Sadly, when I did meet him at a party off of Constable Street in Newtown, I wasn’t overcome by the same rage I had initially felt. No, instead I was rather drunk and seeing my eyes, his hair, our horrific stretch marks. I was soon brimming with a frantic wonderment. This lasted for all of a minute, before I had to rapidly flee and sit outside across from where former Salient theatre editor, Jackson Coe was lazing. Panicking I repeatedly and vigorously jabbed at my arms, gut and legs to make sure they were still connected to me; I noticed I was breathing rather hard, and came to the conclusion that of course, this other me, this ever so slightly blonder, younger me, was controlling my very lungs, swamping my brain’s electro chemical stimulation. He was absorbing and rearticulating my Ka.
This would not stand. I made a new vow that night, to never again steer myself into a position to meet him again. To whit, I would never go back to finish my theatre degree, and instead pour more effort into my film papers. At the time it seemed the only sensible thing—after all, he could have his precious theatre, I would have my precious “not having my body parts controlled by some other fuck.” Some would say that I was over reacting to what was actually a common enough thing, sometimes people who aren’t related to you happen to have similar physical and intellectual characteristics. After all, we can’t all be that uniquely stunning international student with the really large freckles all over her skin, making her look like some sort of divine leopard woman. If we were, we’d all look the same anyway, and that poor international student would have to go through the same crisis that I have faced.
Later I would begin to speculate that maybe the universe had needed someone like me to be born with certain qualities at a time and place like Wellington in the 1980s. But along the way realised that I’d fucked up and turned on their back up plan, turning another relatively small child into a rapidly chunking and frumping amusement machine. Bitter at the universe having just thrown me away without even bothering to explain how exactly I’d fucked up my place in the world, I turned on television. It was a small feature on E! News talking about Chris Farley: another obese blond. I watched as that fatty fell down and made funnies, and realised… hey, that fucker died of an overdose before he reached his potential: Chris Farley assassinated himself with excess at the same time I started realising my own horrific weight and disturbing artistic voice. The universe helped kill him for me. I was here to take Farley’s place, and until I died Uther Dean couldn’t do fuck to my destiny. That week I tracked Uther down and vowed to make, if not friendship with the lad, then at least a glowing acquaintanceship with him.
Uther, I reach out my hand to you, on this the day of my birth to say this: I don’t want to kill you anymore. I think.