The Family Law (10 page)

When night fell, we huddled upstairs with blankets and lay on our stomachs in front of the television. ‘Guys, I don't know,' I said. ‘Maybe we shouldn't be watching this.' But now the mob mentality had taken over, and we were in too deep. ‘Ben,' Andrew said. ‘It's about
clowns
.'

Everyone laughed, and I shut up. The first scene of
It
was probably the scariest. ‘We all float down here, Georgie,' the clown, Pennywise, told the little boy in the stormwater drain. Watching that scene, I thought my nine-year-old brain was undergoing a stroke; I'd never seen anything so unimaginably awful. The only redeeming thing about the film was Jonathan Brandis, the handsome blond kid from
The Neverending Story II
, who set out to avenge his little brother's death.

Everything else was terrifying: Pennywise coming out of the school shower's drains; Pennywise appearing between spinning lines of white linen; Pennywise appearing as the moon. This clown was inescapable. Scared to the point of tears, my cousins and I went to the toilet in pairs and kept the bathroom door slightly ajar as we peed. Because Pennywise also came alive in photographs, the next day I secretly took the TV guide bearing his image, tore it into shreds and pushed it deep into the garbage.

For months afterwards, I couldn't sleep. If I did pass out, it was against my will. In my dreams, I would be stalked by shadows of laughing clowns in badly lit sewers, before being knocked over, my arms pinned, my mouth covered, unable to scream. Even during the day, I'd feel faint if I saw an image of a clown with red hair. Family visits to McDonald's became harrowing. I even started wetting the bed, and found myself changing the sheets in the middle of the night. Andrew would always wake up, no matter how quiet I was.

‘Ben,' he'd say. ‘Again?'

‘Sorry.'

Without any lights on, we could only hear each other's voices.

‘Ben, it's just a clown,' he'd tell me. But even as he said it, I could hear the hint of an apology in his voice. Then, as I tried to go back to sleep, I'd be paralysed by the idea that Andrew was asleep already, since Pennywise only came for you when you were alone. But then Andrew would cough, and I'd cough a little too, and he'd cough back again, just to let me know he was still awake.

 

*

 

It wasn't until I was sixteen that I got my own room. Andrew left home and started living with Dad, one side-effect of our parents' divorce that I actually appreciated. Andrew's bed was shifted out, and to fill up the empty space Dad bought me a massive desk from an office supplies store. This desk was clearly designed for an executive or CEO. The sheer bulk of it made it impossible to change the configuration of my room anymore, even if I wanted to. My nightmares and bed-wetting had stopped, but during those first few nights alone without Andrew, I dreamt of evil clowns smothering me while I slept. When I woke, my heart would thump as though I'd been chased for an hour. I'd turn on the lampshade and catch my breath, staring at the spot where Andrew's fish-tank used to be.

Now that I've moved out of home, the only time I see my old room is when I go back to the Sunshine Coast to visit my mum. When no one else is visiting with me, I'll sleep where my old bed used to be. Old blu-tack stains mark the walls, and there are pockmarks where old adhesives have ripped off the paint. What was once a white wall is now the colour of old teeth. To my adult eyes, the room is unbelievably small, a box just over three metres square. It seems impossible that two people could ever have shared this space. My current apartment's kitchen is bigger than the room Andrew and I shared. Our single beds must have been like prison mattresses to have fit. No wonder we loathed each other: putting two growing boys in these confines was like putting two dogs in a ring.

For a recent birthday, Andrew gave me something unexpected. It was a fish-tank, complete with a proper filter, gravel and chemicals. All I needed to do was choose the fish. The pet-shop owner told me to get all females: it wasn't healthy for two males to live together in such a small space, he said. They'd kill each other. But weirdly, the two fish I've got now are males, and have endured for years, content to swim alongside each other, even though they're completely different species.

On Nudity

Most Chinese people are uncomfortable with nudity. They're not like the Koreans or Japanese, so comfortable in their bodies that they create communal bathhouses to bathe alongside one another, happily chatting the day away as they exfoliate dead skin cells from their breasts and arses. Even white people fare better than the Chinese. In primary school, I was shocked to learn that nudity wasn't an issue for some of my schoolfriends, who had even visited the local nudist beach in Noosa with their families.

‘Really, it's no big deal,' they'd say. ‘It's what everyone looks like underneath, you know?'

But as they'd casually recount their nude weekends playing French cricket by the seashore, all I could do was summon up graphic images: their mother's leathery breasts trembling while bowling; their father's testicles slapping his thighs like a violent pendulum as he ran from wicket to wicket. Then I'd try not to flinch as I had a small, private revelation: ‘Oh my god,' I'd think. ‘You have seen your sister's vagina.'

My siblings and I were the kids who used a complicated system of towels and hands-free shimmying to change after compulsory swimming lessons. We loathed school change-rooms. Showering and changing alongside our friends felt wrong, and it felt even more wrong in the company of our teacher, Mr Johnson.

‘Dude,' my friend James whispered to me after swim class. ‘Check out Mr Johnson's dick.' Both of us turned discreetly, to be faced with a monstrous, veiny rope of meat hanging between Mr Johnson's legs. It was enormous. Like a baby barnyard animal facing its bullish senior, my own penis probably shrunk a little that day from fear. Eventually, I would just leave my soggy togs on after swim class and let them seep into my school trousers for the rest of the afternoon.

The last time any of my siblings saw one another naked was when we bathed together as kids. However, there have been occasional instances – horrible instances – where this unspoken boundary has been transgressed. Most notably, Michelle once accidentally saw Andrew get out of the shower. She told Tammy and me the story one day while we were driving along the highway.

Tammy raised her eyebrows at her, then made a gagging noise.

‘Piss off,' Michelle said. ‘It was an accident.'

‘Oh, Michelle, that's foul,' I said. ‘When did you even get the opportunity?'

‘Don't look at me like that. I was only, like, twelve or something. It was at his old place, and I didn't realise you could see into the bathroom from—'

‘Someone please stop this conversation,' Tammy said, ‘before she starts describing what it looked like.'

‘What, his penis you mean?'

‘Michelle, I said
stop
!'

‘To be honest, it kind of looked like a long, hissing sna—'

We cut Michelle off by screaming violently. Though we were driving safely in a car, we may as well have been on a rollercoaster, or being repeatedly stabbed in the abdomen. These were bloodcurdling screams. The very idea that Andrew even had a penis was too much to bear.

‘Michelle!' Tammy said.

‘My ears!' I said.

‘Your ears?' Michelle said. ‘What about my eyes? They were the ones that saw it!'

She was right. Nodding solemnly, we touched Michelle's shoulder in a gesture of comfort and solidarity. ‘Touché,' we said. ‘Touché.'

 

*

 

Recently, my family and I found ourselves in Japan. We hadn't travelled together like that for over a decade, because there were some basic incompatibilities, such as pacing. Because of Andrew's spidery, stilt-like legs, he always walked ten paces in front of the rest of us and became impatient when we lost sight of him. Some of us interpreted this as Andrew not liking our company, though others insisted it was a disability that came with being so tall. Meanwhile, Mum would shuffle along like a sloth, but one that was armed with a digital camera. Her movements were naturally glacial anyway, but documenting everything she saw in a new environment slowed her down even further. By the end of the trip, she'd used nearly ten gigabytes in memory sticks in as many days.

We'd all made a pact to behave ourselves while visiting Tammy, who was living in Tokyo. As our travel guide, she had told us there were two seemingly contradictory things we'd be obliged to do once there: (
1
) buy clothes; and (
2
) get naked.
Onsen
are the country's traditional baths, where mineral-rich warm water is pumped from springs into a series of shared plunge-pools. Men and women are separated into their own sections, but everyone there is unflinchingly nude. Back at the hotel, we discussed visiting the baths as a family. Considering Andrew carried a bottle of instant hand sanitiser everywhere, it was perhaps inevitable that he would refuse outright.

‘No way I'm going to bathe where some guy's diseased arse-flaps have just been,' he said, flicking through the hotel's TV channels. ‘What if someone's just taken a dump in the water?

Has anyone thought about that?'

‘Are you sure you can't wear togs?' Candy asked. ‘Why do you have to be naked, anyway?'

‘Because it's a bath,' Tammy said.

‘
Ew
, gross. A bath with other people? No thanks.'

‘It's no big deal,' Tammy said. ‘Seriously, I've already done it.

It's just a lot of old women, and no one looks at you.'

‘Don't their tits hang down to their ankles?' Candy asked.

‘But it'd be like if you went to Paris and didn't see the Eiffel Tower,' Michelle said. ‘Or didn't eat snails, right? It's the cultural experience, or whatever.'

For my part, I vocally championed the idea of going to the onsen. How often did you get to see real-life naked Japanese people outside of internet pornography? Still, part of me had reservations, and they were mainly to do with my hairless body (which resembled a prepubescent girl's), the childhood scars on my legs, and those memories of my Year
4
teacher's penis.

In all of these discussions, Mum had been curiously quiet.

‘What about you?' I asked her. ‘Would you go?'

We were keen to hear her thoughts. In Japan, Mum had proved herself to be thrillingly unpredictable when it came to personal boundaries.
Entering a Japanese sex-shop selling bestiality
pornography?
Yes.
Going on a theme-park ride designed for Japanese
children?
No. Mum was sitting on a bed reviewing the digital photos she'd taken that day. She looked pensive and conflicted.

‘Well, we saw Mount Fuji, and ate a lot of sushi,' she said, slowly. ‘So no: I don't think I need to get naked with strangers to prove I've done Japan.' She shrugged. ‘Anyway: why would I need to go? I know what an old pussy looks like. Why do I need to see Japanese ones?' It was decided, then. It would be just the three of us.

 

*

 

Tammy, Michelle and I caught the Yamanote Line, then a shuttle bus to a nearby onsen. Mum also came along for the ride, insisting there would be plenty to see without her having to get naked and wet.

‘I'll just go shopping,' she said.

‘It's an onsen,' I said. ‘Not a shopping centre.'

‘Then I'll sleep.'

‘Where?'

‘I'll just find somewhere,' she said, shrugging. ‘You know me: I can sleep anywhere.'

On the bus ride over, Michelle intermittently buried her face in Tammy's shoulder and groaned like a little kid, something she does when she's nervous or about to be ill.

‘It's going to be
weeeeird
,' Michelle said. ‘You're not allowed to look at my vagina, okay?'

‘How are you going to avoid that?' I asked. ‘You'll be
naked
.'

‘Maybe we can just bomb-dive into the water,' Tammy said. ‘One hand over our pussies, the other one over our boobs.'

Michelle's face brightened. ‘Oh, I
like
that idea.'

At the onsen, we were given a few things: a small towel – big enough to cover your genitals – and a locker key.

‘Are you sure you don't want to come?' I asked Mum.

‘I'm going to the gift shop.'

When she had walked away, I turned to my sisters.

‘I don't think there is a gift shop,' I said.

‘Neither do we.'

After my sisters and I parted company to strip down in our respective change rooms, I started to fret. Undressing in a locker room is one thing; remaining naked and strolling around is another. There were other concerns, like the possibility of developing an unsightly erection. Not because I'd be aroused, but because it'd be like switching from briefs to boxers: I was afraid my penis would be confused and curious, like a provoked earthworm after its soil has been disturbed.

But after only twenty minutes of scrubbing my naked body next to male strangers, the whole onsen experience became a distinctly un-erotic affair. It was the weekend, and elderly men were taking a break from their retirement homes. Young white-collar dads had their toddlers with them, and loud gangs of naked thirteen-year-olds strutted up and down, joking with each other. After an hour or so, it seemed completely normal to be watching Japanese variety shows, sitting in a sauna hot enough to stew my face, surrounded by wet, flaccid penises.

Besides being deeply relaxing, visiting the onsen affirmed some universal truths for me, such as
Without our clothes, everyone
looks the same underneath
, and
All penises look like space aliens
. These men were skinnier than me, fatter than me, hairier than me, uglier than me. Some penises were well manicured and finger-like; others were woolly, stumpy and had so much foreskin they resembled deflated party balloons. But no one cared. It turned out that my Chinese body blended right in alongside the Japanese ones. It was comfortable. Homely, even.