The Custody of Byron

Or, why my daughters think your life choices need their immediate attention

Each day, I like to sit by the window and write. A few years ago, I completed work on a lengthy science fiction novel. I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it here, but I don’t have plans to publish it for some time; I want to get its sequel mostly written, first. But that book reminds me strongly of an Alexander Dumas novel, and it’s not what anybody might expect me to write.

Then there’s this other book I’m working on about a tricky, hyper-intelligent bobcat. That one is exactly the novel you’d expect from me. It reminds me of what Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams might produce if those authors were locked together in a cage with a bobcat. Also, the bobcat in my story enjoys scrambled eggs and traveling through time, so the narrative is somewhat complex, and not something I’m trying to rush.

The problem is Hattie and Boudica. These are my daughters, aged 9 and 11. Recently, I described them in my notes in the following manner:

“Hattie seems precisely the sort of girl who cuts her hair short, puts on boy’s clothes, and joins the crew of a merchant ship bound for the West Indies, safe in the knowledge that by the time anyone realizes she’s a girl they’ll already be afraid of her.

“Boudica, meanwhile, gets along far too well with her governess, and drags her into misadventure after misadventure. She collects pretty dresses and reads novels and books on natural history, and amuses herself by pick-pocketing suitors at balls. She lives a trouble-free life and never marries because men, in general — apart from myself, of course — are, in her estimation, dreary and self-important creatures, and also mysteriously prone to vanishing whenever Hattie comes to visit.”

My daughters don’t like to see me writing; they prefer for me to write when they are asleep. Also, sadly for me, they do not like to sleep. I send them to bed at 7.30pm and hear them singing and laughing most evenings until 9pm. I fall asleep half-an-hour later and wake up not long after dawn, with both of them on each side of me, staring at me like cats. Sometimes, they are outside the door, arguing about clothes. Most days, I simply wake up to the sound of their singing.

I have a firm rule — nobody is to speak to me until I’ve had a cup of coffee. But this is a rule they can easily circumvent because — well, I cannot seem to enforce any rule before I’ve had at least one cup of coffee. And so, I sit there, numb and helpless and sipping the coffee they make for me, while each tells me, simultaneously, whatever is going on in their minds this morning. Then they debate each other for a while; I sip my coffee and pretend to understand until their attention strays, then I sneak off my chair by the window and pick up my laptop. Then Boudica comes over, takes away my laptop, sits across my knees and sets about persuading me to see the world from her own point of view.

Today, her plan is to talk to Byron. He’s an old friend of mine, whom I met when he was an American student abroad, in Germany. I once threw a potato at him; I explained the matter thoroughly in a newsletter that is, in fact, older than Boudica. You can read it here.

But I was saying, Hattie and Boudica don’t think it’s fair that I have a friend like Byron (I also don’t think it’s fair, but that’s a different topic altogether). Somehow, both girls believe he should belong to them. They asked me recently who among them gets custody of Byron after I die, and I remember ... I remember this one time, in East Cambridge, Byron was sitting on the bottom stair, getting ready to come with us to Starbucks. He’d put on his socks and was momentarily befuddled — possibly because of Boudica who was, at that time, only eighteen-months-old. She tottered over, picked up his shoes and brought them to him. Watching Boudica, as a toddler, bringing shoes to a completely bewildered-looking Byron, makes me think she should have full custody of him. Granting custody of Byron to Hattie, after all, would be a mean thing to do.

So, each day I work here by this window and — did I mention the girls are on school vacation? Sorry, I should have started with that. Hattie and Boudica are on school vacation. Their interruptions are constant and I am suffering. Notice how I keep interrupting the flow of this story? This is intentional; I aim to demonstrate how addled they make me feel. The only reason I’ve managed to write so much, here, is because I promised them they could speak to Byron today. You know, if they are very good. Currently, they are cleaning the house.

They want to speak to Byron because without them (they somehow feel) his life will be sad and depressed. They might not be wrong. These days, Byron lives in a dilapidated farmhouse in a forest, just outside Philadelphia. My daughters do not approve of this. Another concern is that Byron seems to have grown a beard, and worse than that, he did so without consulting them.

I think the beard suits him relatively well. My daughters think the beard symbolizes a certain spiritual ennui, and they are in revolt against that beard in every imaginable way. If they had financial means, they’d be on their way to Philadelphia right now with scissors and a razor. To me, Byron somewhat looks like any man who lives in a dilapidated farmhouse. He looks precisely like any American should if they, for example, read the news and kept up-to-date with current events.

To my daughters, Byron is the living incarnation of somebody who hasn’t followed their advice. And that advice, in case you’re interested, is to sell all his material possessions and move to Australia ... because really, he’d be so much happier if he was here, doing as he was instructed — you know, brushing their hair for them, and listening to their plans and schemes, or perhaps holding bits of string for them while they wander away and forget what they were doing with it.

In broad strokes, I agree with them. Byron would be a lot happier if he was more compliant and cooperative with the rest of his tribe. Or to put it another way, if he only did what Boudica and Hattie (or their Aunt Zoya) told him to do, Byron would undoubtedly be happier. Even if the instructions didn’t make sense to him, he’d be better off if he went along with their ideas. This fixation of his with self-determination ... well, it’s a poor strategy, hence the dilapidated farmhouse and (I suppose) the beard.

Listen, I don’t fritter away my days pondering what’s best for Byron (I am, after all, a man) but I do suspect his peculiar situation merits closer scrutiny. He’s stuck in a farmhouse in a forest with his elderly parents, wondering what to do next. He’s been there for a few years and it’s becoming clear, I think, that no better alternate option will ever present itself. But you might suppose, that was his choice, right?

The problem with choices is that most people imagine that they are all of equal value, provided they are deliberate.

“It is his personal decision,” they’ll say, pointing at Byron’s beard, as if that decision alone contains its own qualification. Byron is American, and thus nobody in his orbit will venture anything but a positive opinion of his beard. Because, again, a consumer must make personal decisions. Such decisions are almost sacrosanct.

Boudica and Hattie, on the other hand, have a viewpoint that is inherently tribal in nature. Byron, as member of their tribe, is entitled to something that a consumerist conceptions of selfhood strongly discourage — which is, of course, honesty.

“Well, you look silly,” remarks Boudica, referring to his beard.

In her world view, Byron’s not supposed to be trying to figure out life on his own. He’s supposed to be fetching coconuts out of trees for diminutive little girls — which, I should mention, is what Hattie asked me to do for her yesterday.

(We live in the sub-tropics, by the way, so there are no coconut trees here. We would have to go north, I explained, to where I grew up, if we want to find coconuts. To which Hattie replied, ‘Can’t we just pretend?’)

Meanwhile, Byron dwells in a dilapidated farmhouse in a forest just outside Philadelphia. As I think about it now, I can’t help but wonder how that forest crept up around the farmhouse. But Byron’s people are famous procrastinators. His family wrap their presents each year at 10pm on December 25th. No really, it’s a thing; every year at that time, his friends call each other to discuss the matter with great delight and enthusiasm. And therefore, I somehow suspect Byron’s family have been watching the forest grow around them, and talking about sharpening an axe since roughly the 1980s.

If Hattie and Boudica were living there, alongside Byron and his parents and, for instance, their Aunt Zoya and everyone else they know, there would be no forest around that farmhouse. There would be, instead, acres of pasture and a freshly painted barn, and some of those cute woolly sheep — you know, the ones with the white wool and black faces.

All the Christmas shopping would be completed in June, and Aunt Zoya, being so well-organized and almost supernaturally brilliant at choosing and wrapping gifts, would have the Christmas preparations done by July at the latest. They’re really on top of things.

Byron’s greatest problem is that he’s working in relative isolation. Because in isolation, we are all just divided and uncertain, and therefore, easily governable by wolves. We exist more happily in small supportive communities. Not all communities are equal, of course; patriarchal communities are often as stupid as they are insipid. Whether its a biker gang, or a frat house, or a testosterone-fueled private equity firm or hedge fund — there’s something about patriarchal communities that devolves into primates throwing poo at each other.

No, even if they wanted to put me in charge, I wouldn’t want to be in a community led exclusively by men. I don’t even want to attend a barbecue organized by men. I want a close-knit community run chiefly by women — the good variety, who listen to what we men have to say, but without offering us any performative deference. And I want to see lots of children running around everywhere. Also, gay folk are reliably interesting and talented, and I especially want people from different cultures because — listen, I don’t know if you’ve ever been a member of an exclusively white-skinned community but, in case you don’t know, they’ll expect you to eat something called potato salad. No, my advice, bring some Sikhs into your community. Bring anyone in from anywhere — the more variation, the better off your community will be.

To paraphrase something I wrote elsewhere, maybe our best lives will always resemble the last few minutes of a film in the Fast and Furious franchise. Those films are mostly concerned with family and what that means, and — spoiler alert — it has nothing to do with blood or race. No, every movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise is truly wholesome stuff, and honestly the most positive representation of American culture that I can imagine. Sure, each movie is a thinly-veiled two-hour advertisement for beer, but it’s America, and if you want a post-racial, multi-ethnic story, it has to be wrapped inside a commercial for alcoholic beverages because we don’t want the oligarchs to get all nervous, do we?

Where was I? Byron, who is living in a dilapidated farmhouse in a forest. No, actually I was talking about being woken up by children and all their attendant nonsense. That’s right — it was the advantage of living, not as a lone individual but as a member of a diverse tribe. It’s about warmth and solidarity, and people squabbling good-naturedly, even mocking your life choices because they care about you.

Let me tell you the strangest part of all of this. I believe that, even if you don’t know me in person, I am nonetheless part of your world and part of your community. If you enjoy my newsletters, or if you read bits of them out to your family at the breakfast table — I know some of you do that! — then you’re inviting me into your community. And by writing about all this, I’m inviting you into mine. We don’t really live in isolation from one other, we’re just tricked into thinking we do. But there is signal in all this noise and it tells a different story if you know how to listen. It’s there at the end of the Fast and the Furious movies, and it’s embedded in all my newsletters ...

... which you should share with your friends, by the way, because, like, I’m not wrapped inside a beer commercial, but I do need your help reaching a broader audience. Wait, what was the other thing I meant to say? That’s right:

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel