PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC McARTHUR
STYLING BY BRAULIO GONZÁLEZ
This story was featured in Issue 19 of GAYLETTER Magazine. It didn’t contain any text, so I am sharing a story about my first roommate, my brother, to accompany it.
My first Roommate
By Tom Jackson
My first roommate was my older brother Nick. We shared a room when we were little. At night he would lay in the bunkbed above me and rub his feet against the sheets. His feet would make this very particular sound that I longed to replicate. I liked how crisp and cozy it sounded. He would never tell me how he made that sound, no matter how much I bugged him.
Born with one useless kidney, and another that worked at about 20% capacity, my brother was in and out of hospital his whole life. He was poked and prodded. Stuck with needles. Cut up so many times it looked like he’d been in a series of knife fights. He was on more medicine than any one that young should ever have to ingest — big horse-sized pills he could barely swallow. At one point my parents were told to stay the night at the hospital with him. The doctors didn’t think he’d make it through the night. “Say your goodbyes,” they told them. But the worst never came. At least not then.
When not in the hospital, he was bullied mercifully. Kidney failure stunts your growth. He was two years older than me but half my height. “Why is your brother so small? What’s wrong with him?” was a common taunt/question. How do you explain renal failure to a 7-year-old?
He got his first kidney transplant when he was 13. We were on vacation in Queensland, in the North of Australia. Every vacation was planned strategically close to a hospital, as he had dialysis 3 times a week. Each session was 5 hours long. A hulking machine replicated the kidneys’ function of removing waste, excess fluids, and salts from his blood. We were staying in an apartment building surrounded by coconut trees. While my parents and brother were at dialysis, my sister and I would throw coconuts from the 6th floor balcony, hoping to crack them open. My parents had a beeper that my brother’s doctor had given them. One afternoon it beeped; a car crash, a young man dead, a healthy kidney now available.
He had the surgery, and was suddenly the beneficiary of a fully-functioning kidney. He was given growth hormones. He grew taller than me. Much taller. He was quiet. Like a veteran of a horrible war, he had gone through so much trauma. He started smoking, eating bad food. He wouldn’t take his medication. My dad would keep track of his pills, “please take them,” he would beg “they keep you alive!”
I couldn’t connect with him. And I resented him for it. He was so angry. We lived in a victorian house. The walls had two layers of red brick. He slammed his bedroom door so many times he put a crack in the wall above the frame. Do you know how hard you have to slam a door to put a 3 foot crack in a double brick wall? You have to put your whole chest into it, over, (“BOOM”) and over (“BOOM”) again. Day in, and day out.
The only time I felt like I could connect with him was the last time he was in hospital. After a few years his body had rejected the first transplant, he received a second one a few years later, but there were complications. He was on steroids and some other medication that was making him feel crazy. He was so scared. “I don’t know what’s going on. Why do I feel feel like this? I don’t like this.” It dawned on me that in the 26 years I’d known him, I’d never seen him show fear, or any kind of vulnerability. As much as it hurt to see him suffer, it felt like the first, and only time, I could ever see the real him. I treasure that visit to this day.
My brother knew I was gay, I came out at 19, but I was the only one who knew he was gay.
It was my mother who found him. He was on the floor, unresponsive. A heart attack. A fresh member to the ‘27 Club.’ A family doctor had prescribed him something with calcium in it. It interacted with one of his other medications, or at least that’s the story we tell people. He was reckless. He still wasn’t taking all of his medications. He chain smoked and ignored his doctors orders. One time I opened his closet and dozens upon dozens of whippet canisters tumbled out. I also drank and smoked, but I wasn’t hosting a stranger’s kidney, that my body could reject at any moment.
I was on the bus on the way to the advertising agency I was working at. My sister called me. “It’s Nick…I think he’s gone.” I don’t remember much else. For some reason I stayed on the bus. I went into my office and sat at my desk. My creative partner Tian asked me what was wrong. “I think my brother died. I probably should go.”
And I went. All the way to New York. His death wasn’t the only reason. But it was one of them. I wanted to be as far away from all of that pain as possible.
For years it was treacherous to even think about him. Let alone speak, or write about what we all went through. I never liked when people would say he was gone to soon. Of course it’s what you’re meant to say, but it diminishes the life he had. His life wasn’t too short, or too long — it was his life.
Sometimes I lay in bed at night and I rub my feet against the sheets and try to recreate that sound he made. I still can’t quite do it. I guess it’s a sound only he could make.
An amazing piece, and incredible tribute. Thank you for writing and sharing this, I can only imagine how hard it was.
Jesus, Tom. You made me cry. That was absolutely beautiful. Bravo.