Life of Manuel

Someone touches your arm. There’s literally nobody around though. You were walking casually down a side street in a small mountainside town.

Then with extraordinarily delayed reactions you jump into the bushes. You scream as if you’re about to be murdered.

Suddenly you notice the new station wagon hooning off down the road with a group of howling teenage boys.

You’ve been a victim to the touching game.

This is the game we used to play. We’d cruise the streets looking for victims, then one of us would reach far out the car window and softly touch them.

This was until one day someone taught us a lesson. This is our story on how the game comes to an end.

Mark, reached out to touch a big round looking fella as we approached from behind. He actually missed the touch. We all watched in anticipation for the big fella’s extraordinarily late reaction. It was a face of terror. Then it was complete rage.

At the same time we all realised he was donning a leather gang vest.

Oh shit.

The big fella jumped into his car. It was an old Holden. He caught up so quickly that he almost crashed into the back of us.

My other mate Scotty was driving. He whipped up the handbrake and onto a neighbourhood paddock. We skidded around in doughnuts almost getting crashed into multiple times.

This was the big fellas game now. He wanted to touch us. But he wanted to touch us with his car and smash us into pieces.

The cars screeched back onto the main road. Speeding through pedestrian zones as the big fella pulled up beside us waving his fist in hatred.

Scotty ripped up the handbrake abruptly to take us up a new side road. For a second we thought we’d lost him. Then all of a sudden he showed up. It was the perfect timing.

We just discovered we were jammed in a dead end with no way out.

He had us cornered.

He got out of the car and approached us. Then he raised a fist as if he was about to smash it through Scotty’s window. He was about to touch his fist with our faces.

His gang tattoos climbing up his neck were now present more than ever. We fucked with the wrong guy.

All at once we pleaded “we’re sorry, what can we do? We’re so sorry”.

He yelled at us “I’ve got ten gang mates out looking for you!”.

He said that we were toast. He uncontrollably spat out “I’m going to torch that car if I see it again”

We droned on apologising like a broken record.

Then all of a sudden something seemed to come over him. His demeanour went from rage to darkly opportunistic.

He obviously realised that our car was actually a pretty flash sports wagon. He worked out that we were obviously rich kids in their parent’s car.

Almost immediately he must have worked out that a big fella smashing up a few kids, in a small mountainside town, was not going to bode well for him either.

He continued with some less aggressive taunting. Then he somehow pulled himself together and politely asked us for money in exchange for release.

Neither of us remember exactly how we wound this all up. The adrenaline was pulsing through our veins in shock.

We scrounged through our pockets and handed over everything we had. It was $60.

He left with an ominously cheeky grin and said “well, you boys have a nice day then”

We sat in silence. Burned rubber tingling our noses. I think it was about three years before we ever spoke about the touching game again.

Lesson learned. That’s the last time I ever try to touch someone without their consent.

I was kicking and screaming, my lungs burning as if it was the end of the world. Non-stop, so many tears. I was absolutely hysterical. A red face, blocked up nose and a feeling of complete loss.

I remember the wooden front door to the house. The gold plated solid metal old school keypad lock that I was clinging to as mum left once again.

I kicked off again as if I would never see her. She was on her way out for a date night with the old man. I was kicking and screaming on the floor.

I continued to scream louder as I heard the car ignition fire up.

Again, I had convinced her to come back. I didn’t want her to go. I was 6 years old. I just did not understand.

Maybe I subconsciously knew my dad was an evil man? Perhaps I knew he was screwing around on her already?

Whatever it was, it’s a raw and vivid memory of mum leaving me.

She’s now gone forever and this childhood memory lives on forever.

Only reminded of this by the sobs of my 9 year old daughter. This time it’s her mum leaving again. My daughter can’t leave our room. She’s clinging to my wife while she packs her suitcase. My daughter doesn’t want her to leave. She doesn’t want to go to bed and not have her home when she wakes up.

My daughter sneaks back up from her bedroom. She’s crying again.

I can relate. I love my mum more than anything and I couldn’t bear to be apart from her. It hurts me to see her sad. I wish I could make her feel better.

And even now, I look at the moon. My mum used to say “Look up at the moon. I’ll be looking at it too. Together we’ll always be together no matter where we are.”

You and your best mates are driving 130 kilometres an hour and you’re halfway through a six hour journey to the mountains. Two of you have been drinking the whole way.

The problem is, you have self imposed rules of no more pulling over to piss.

There’s only one way to get it out now.

You wind your window down, grab the handle above you and slowly ease your self out. With your legs and butt locked against the side of the car as you tower out like some sort of drunken yoga monk.

Your heart pumps like crazy as you look ahead into the pitch black night. The headlights give you glimpses of an insight as to how far to the next corner is. You’re good for about 600 meters.

You unzip. Start to piss all over yourself. Then you try to piss quicker as the corner comes closer.

You slide back into the car and it hurls around the corner at double the recommended 60kmh.

You crack open another beer. You live through another piss cycle. You live to the tell the tale another day.

That’s the kind of stupid shit you do as a teenager. It was freedom. But at what cost?

Would I do it again? Hell no. Do I regret it? Fuck no. But don’t tell my kids.

You get smashed in the face with a spade. Now you’re called Doug. Your girlfriend dumps you. Your dog dies. Your wife finds out about the girlfriend. You accidentally eat a piece of shit, mistaking it for burnt cheese. Then you find out your mum has a grade 4 brain tumor. Today, you’ve had a shit day.

But no matter how bad today is, tomorrow will always be better—even if something slightly worse happens. You can still count on the day after that being better.

So go ahead, wallow in your self-pity. Grieve that shit out.

Because deep down, you know—tomorrow will always be better than today.

If you can crack a peanut between your butt cheeks, you’ve earned my attention. But seriously, who in their right mind would get a BBL (Brazilian Butt Lift)?

My bum has ballooned up with a hematoma, a lovely parting gift from an impromptu meeting with a metal rail while snowboarding. Now, it looks like I’ve got a rogue butt implant—just on the right side. In pants, it’s a whole power cheek situation, bulging and making everything squeamishly tight.

When I feel it, it’s an absolute mess. Like moguls on a ski hill, smooth one second, tough the next. Completely unpredictable and honestly, kind of munted.

So yeah, I’m opting out of a BBL for the left cheek. I’m just hoping the swelling deflates soon, and I can get my normal, perky bum back.

Sauna, ice bath, tennis, sex shop, beers, Japanese food… and fifteen thousand dollars in cash.

The randomness of my day is what makes life worth living.

Experiences are what make life. If I had a choice to have pimples or not as a teenager, I would take it. If I had a choice of doing prison for a month, without any charges, I’d give it a go. Happy or sad, easy or tough, I’ll always say yes to something I haven’t done or experienced.

Yesterday was a collection of random experiences all rolled into one.

How often do you find $15k in the basement of your house with outdated bills from twenty five years ago?

That’s exactly what happened to me. It’s kind of a mystery who’s cash it is. But it’s also not. I’m pretty sure it’s from the previous owner, who was a Y2K doomsday prepper. Now it’s mine.

The thing is, you’ve got to break up the cash so it’s below the $10k threshold of getting too many questions from the bank. So that’s what I did. I took $8,195 into the bank and tried to exchange it to current day bills.

The first bank was very cagey, “where did you get this!?” asked the teller.

I was nervously confident, knowing I hadn’t done anything illegal but also a bit on edge about what they’ll think. Did he really just find this cash under the house? Or is he a drug dealer?

“I found it in the basement of one of my dads houses and he’s asked me to come in and exchange it” I replied.

More questions.

They sent me on my way and I headed to my personal bank which took the cash, counted it three times and promptly deposited into my account. Success.

I love experiences like this. And all the nuances that come with it. Mostly the curiosity of the mind going in all directions.

Embrace life, say yes, and make the most of any experience.

Some mornings I wake up and I’m keen as mustard to rub one out. I’m horny as can be. And to be honest mornings don’t have a very high success rate with the wife.

So I need to make a choice. To jerk the gherkin or to not.

If I do pull one off, and there’s any chance of getting laid that night, my chances of getting it up—or finishing—become slim. Which I do not want to happen at any cost.

Also, if I do jerk off, I lose my mojo. My hunger to get laid with the wife is minimised. And this does not fulfil my desire to feel close to her or actually have sex.

But it does feel nice. And feeling nice is self-love. Self love is good for me. But so is intimacy.

So do you tackle the snake? Or hang out for a spooning?

I once contemplated tattooing “give everything” on my right foot. I chose that location because it’s my front foot snowboarding.

Its meaning is layered and profound for me. A perspective I inherited and admired from my mum.

You should always give everything you’ve got into what you choose. Whether it’s a son, banana chocolate chip muffins, or a giant snowboarding jump you are about to hit.

My mum put everyone first. She put everything she had into our family. She exemplified ‘give everything’ by always making you feel loved with everything she had.

Give everything when you choose your career. Put everything you can into being the best you can at your job.

Give everything as if it’s your passion. Never relent and make sure you’ve done everything you can.

I’ll never stop.

I promise to always give everything.

I will give everything to my wife, children and myself.

Give everything.

Picture this: One kid is screaming at the top of their lungs over spilt milk, the wife is having a go at you for forgetting to put the rubbish out and the other child is sitting there peacefully minding their own business. Just another typical family dinner.

Then there are the days when it’s just you and the kids. One parent, two children. There is no arguing or yelling. Everyone is happy as Larry, and everything is easy going.

WTF?

I mean what changes with two parents? Is it just the kids wanting to fire up? Is it that two parents are subconsciously trying to rile and draw more attention to them over the other?

All I know is that life is certainly pretty cruisey when it’s just me and the kids.

Who changes? The parents or the children?

Wapow! Sheesh… when you get into a tailspin you really whip everything in. A concept, an idea, it gets stuck in your head and then everything conspires to make that concept your perception. Your reality.

I can sense it. Your reality is all good. We see things the same. But then you see something slightly different. That’s when it happens. From one second to the next, your mind closes up. Bang. You lose your open mindedness.

You get tunnel vision. You believe something is so true that every little piece of information conspires with you. In reality, it was one point. A small thing, that completely spun your tail out. You’re in a tailspin and I can’t help you out.

It feels like there is only one light at the end of a tunnel. And it’s a car racing away from you.

It’s on you. It’s overwhelming and it’s affecting how you think. It’s affecting how you and the world perceive each other.

Take a breath. Take a step back. Everyone loves you. You’re appreciated.

Regain your composure. Go forth and be open.