Hey, dude

He’s a big guy. He has big teeth and a big winning smile. He is all charisma. His voice is loud and rich and sonorous. The world holds space just for him. Pockets of air already in his shape: this is the sense of it. He says, hey dude. He says, yeah man. He has big broad shoulders and bouncy blonde hair. His background—the fact he is so posh and so handsome and so kind—means he does not really understand why people would ever be mean or crabby. Chill out. The world is one big party. Hey man. He always takes off his shirt when he fucks. He is happy with his body; the one bestowed upon him. It is smooth and perfect. There is a tribal tattoo on his shoulder and this does not embarrass him. Why would it? Hey man. Hey dude. His laugh is alive, a thing unto itself. It explodes from the centre of the room. 

Each morning he does fifty press ups and fifty squats and fifty crunches and runs five kilometres. He drinks green juice and litres of cool water. He does not bite his nails. He can eat as much as he wants without worrying. He just always looks like this. Inside him is an undeniable bright centre of self. It shines from his pores. It is visible in the colour of his hair; an angel glow, the spun gold of fairy tales. Yeah man. Yeah dude. He was fourteen when he discovered girls liked him. He was fifteen when he discovered what that could mean. They want to mother him. They savour the taste of him. They want two things at once. Hey dude. Such is life. He loves them only as far as they reflect his own light back at him, like cats eyes on the motorway. He speeds past them. They grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. They disappear entirely. 

Hey man. Hey dude. He is the endless day. He shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. His sister is severely anorexic. Always has been. She is in and out of hospital. She reads Julian of Norwich in bed, hypnotised by the weeping wound of Christ: a gift, a contrition. She roleplays as Julian on forums for aspiring anchorites and anchoresses, imagining piercing those abdominal muscles with her spear and pressing her mouth there. She wants to crawl inside and leave her body, foetal and misshapen, amongst the soft mushroomy folds of torn skin, walking on and on without it. Weightless. The hospital smells of bleach and the whitish dust inside surgical gloves. Squares of honey-coloured light on her blanket. Children laugh and pass an iPad between them. On days like this she wishes it would go on forever. 

His friends compare his sister’s body to survivors of Auschwitz, or Buchenwald. They trade photos of her. Hey man. Hey dude! Come on dude, be real dude. Knock it off. He knows they're joking. She is beautiful, his sister. Inside and out. She taught him to ride a bike and bake a cake and pretty much everything else. She kissed the scabs on his knees. She held him when he cried. His parents were always at the other end of a very long table. Faces warped in glasses of wine. Within her there is not so much a reflection of his own shining light but a light all of her own; soft and blue and glowing. 

At a party he hears someone say they saw a glowing blue owl whilst camping in Nevada. He says, like an alien? And they say, more like a Native American spirit actually, dude. And he says, that sounds like my sister. And everyone else at the party says, what the fuck do you mean by that dude? He just smiles. He knows what he means. Of course he does. Get real, dude. 

His friends consume great quantities of cocaine and make offensive jokes. They do it in a knowing schoolboy way, chalking it up to the psychopathic qualities of the drug. He joins in but he isn’t very good at it. Being racist, that is. Though he tries. He is beautiful. His mouth is dry. His sister’s condition is deteriorating. Hey man. Softly now, dude. His father believes in God but he doesn’t. Why would he? He drinks pints in the sun. He gets blowjobs in the summer with the window open. Anything is possible. At his sister’s funeral they play Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Three weeks later he looks out the window and there is a glowing blue owl in the night sky and its eyes are white as anything and it just floats. It just floats. And in its eyes he sees nothing but himself. Hey man. Hey dude. Inside the self there is another self. A space within a space: fractal, everlasting. 

Pink shapes on his eyelids, the sound of his eardrums vibrating. Love is a falling inwards. He is crying, he realises, and the tears are falling like diamonds on his six-pack and he could even forgive his friends for the jokes they made. They’re good guys really. His sweet boys. They're cool and they know him better than anyone. They're all he has. They're funny as fuck, too. Hey man. Sorry to hear about your sister. That's ok man. Take it easy, yeah? That’s right. Tomorrow’s a new day, dude.