This is an old piece of work, written at 3am on a warm Melbourne night in the year 2000. I considered editing it, but figure it is what it is: the thoughts of a half-drunk twentysomething watching his life slowly parting from that of his oldest friend. It’s since had a second lease on life, slightly changed, lightly polished, and included as the second chapter of Falling.
There’s an episode of 21 Jump Street I call the ‘3.3 Seconds’ episode (bear with me.) In it Hanson’s girlfriend gets shot and killed in front of him, and her death – as a result of his inaction – consumes his life. He watches the security tape over and over hundreds of times. He works out the things a person can do in 3.3 seconds, and despite that he didn’t manage one vital act – reaching out and saving her.
That episode aired when I was still in high school; last or second last year I can’t remember. The whole 3.3 seconds thing was making the rounds, I remember Drew using it as a joke or something in something he said at the time.
Drew.
Drew who was always better-looking than me. Drew whom the girls occasionally compared to Johnny Depp. And me who never got any of that.
Drew who was gorgeous; me who was goofy.
There’s a lot you can do in 3.3 seconds. You can take all the anchovies of a piece of pizza. You can ring a doorbell 22 times. Flip through 17 channels with your finger on the remote. You can shoot a human being in 3.3 seconds.
Inaction is something that haunts me. You can tie your shoes in 3.3 seconds. You can lose the best thing you ever had. You can go from love to destitution in 3.3 seconds.
Drew who’s gonna be a dad in a little over a month. Me, who’s sitting here half-full on vodka, writing this. About 12 years after that episode aired.
You can go from boyhood to fatherhood in 3.3 seconds.
I haven’t been friends with Drew in a long time. We hang out when I go back to Brisbane, we shoot the breeze, and in a lot of ways he’s as insincere as he ever was. He smokes too much, has plans that don’t seem to pay off. But he was my best friend once. And I’m afraid for him. On May 6th I’m going to be a friend’s prom date. On May 6th he could be looking into the eyes of his first child.
You can realise you’re getting older in 3.3 seconds. You can realise you don’t really know where you are. You can feel like a 17-year old in 3.3 seconds.
Once we were walking through town at night, and there was a homeless man who looked like Santa Claus. I asked if he needed anything. Drew wanted to know why I was stopping, wasting my time, the group was walking on without us. I bought Santa three cartons of orange juice. When the girls asked what was going on, Drew took the credit. They said “You’re such a nice guy.” He smiled at me knowingly. Me who couldn’t believe it. If he’d told the truth, I would have been called an idiot. But, for Drew, it got him laid. He was a Nice Guy.
A lot can go through a person’s head in 3.3 seconds.
Drew’s my age. The only friend I’ve got, so far as I know, who is actually my age. Twenty-seven. His body is falling apart. It’s not his fault, it’s something he’s had since birth. Not life-threatening. Osteogenesis Imperfecta. Low calcium count. Bad teeth: yellow, crumbling teeth; brittle bones.
I remember once – I was maybe thirteen – and Drew had come back to Cairns after moving to Ipswich. I’d been looking forward to him getting back for months. I woke one morning and he was standing there, by my bed, smiling at me in bright morning light. And I smiled back. And his face dropped when he saw the braces. He just wasn’t expecting it.
Then I see him now, for the first time in ages, and he’s balding. Mr. Don’t-Go-To-The-Store-Without-Spending-30-Minutes-Fixing-My-Hair. Mr. Mousse-And-Silhouette. I’ve only got to smell Silhouette now and I flash right back to the late Eighties. But now I understand how he felt when he saw my metal-and-teeth smile. The shock of the unexpected. The startling reminder of your own slow decay. Denial.
You can imagine yourself and a friend passing each other, headed in opposite directions, in 3.3 seconds.
Drew had his time when he was a kid, while I got to watch, and now he’s a dad. I had nights mulling over all the popular opinion aimed in my direction, and now I’m wondering why I didn’t do something about it. It wouldn’t have taken 3.3 seconds to say something that would have changed all that, maybe.
Inaction is something that haunts me.
You can doom yourself in 3.3 seconds. You can lose the best thing you ever had in 3.3 seconds. I can look at Drew now and be happy for him in no time at all.
I can remember some of the good times in 3.3 seconds. I can realise that, actually, I owe him the happiest point of my entire life. I mean _real_ happiness. Undiluted, pure, straight from the source, one-hundred-percent kill-me-now-because-it’s-all-downhill-from-here happiness. We’ve got secrets no-one would believe. In a way we’re falling apart together.
I wonder if he’ll be a part of my life 12 years from now.
I wonder if it’ll be a boy or a girl.