It was part of a deal, or so they'd been told. Psychiatric evaluation. The term made Tom slightly queasy. It sounded like he was up for review – fit for society. Or not.
Like they used to say about the horses at the stables. Bomb-proof. To be safe to ride a horse needed to be bomb proof, not easily spooked.
Tom felt fairly bomb-proof himself.

His biggest trouble was coming up with innocuous associations when presented with the ink splatter flash cards the shrink showed him.

A bat.
Honestly, it looked more like a vagina.

A...umm, toad. Big toad.
Enormous testicles was more like it.

Butterfly, definitely.
Tits.

While the grandfatherly type sitting in front of him hummed and nodded encouragingly while he jotted down notes, Tom couldn't help but wonder what his band mates saw in these ink splatters. Surely he wasn't the only one to be seeing tits and ass in these!

Four mandatory sessions and maybe Tom would be found to be bomb-proof after all.

It was his last session after a cruelly busy day of work. The armchair seemed to suck him into its middle and the monotonous hum of the air conditioning, coupled with the unctuously drippy voice of the shrink weren't helping much either. It felt like he was about to fall asleep at any moment.

“So this would be really just for you, Tom.”
Bed. Warm, comfy bed and sleep. Oh yeah.
“Tom?”

Tom snapped back to reality with a suppressed huffing sound, blinking the threatening sleep out of his eyes and mumbling rapid apologies under his breath.
“It's okay, it's late and we're all tired.” Psycho-gramps stuffed his pocket watch back into his breast pocket.

“Write a letter to yourself and advice yourself in the past. Your younger you. Things you should have done differently, missed opportunities, behaviour patterns that you wish to break, that kind of thing.”
Sheets of paper, dotted with scrawny handwriting, were stuffed into a manilla folder and laid down on a little coffee table. A register of the contents of Tom's brain.

“And I mail that to you when I'm done?” Tom asked, biting down a massive yawn and the man opposite him chuckled softly.
“No. This is for your eyes only. Just an effective way to get your thoughts on paper and structured,” he said and Tom snorted out a breath.
“Who knows...you might just discover some new things...” The soft chiming of the longcase clock marked the end of their last session.


He came home to the crammed studio apartment. The hallway was littered with pairs of shoes and bags; Bill's jacket had fallen off the hook, the little strap of cord serving as a hook had ripped out.
Passing Georg's room, he heard the soundtrack of screeching tires and roaring engines, Gustav's triumphant whooping and the stamping of feet.

There was still light in the kitchen. Bill sat at the table, track pants and a faded hoodie, hair tied into a messy pony, the ends still dripping wet from a shower before. An opened bag of coke fizzers lay on the table, the shiny, caramel coloured sweets spilling out of it, rolling over sheets of lined notebook paper.

“Chinese take out in the fridge.” Bill didn't even look up at him while he popped a coke fizzer into his mouth, chewing vigorously as he crumpled the sheet of paper up in his fist and started writing again.
“Ordered you Kung Pao chicken.” Another sheet of paper was ripped off the pad and balled up. The paper ball sailed past Tom in the vague direction of the bin as he made his way to the freezer.

Not even bothering with warming up the food, Tom sat down at the table opposite his brother, watching Bill doodle around aimlessly in his notebook while he listlessly poked at the pieces of rubbery chicken.

“Had your last psych-session tonight?” Bill scribbled away, the scraping of the pen almost unnaturally loud and Tom hummed around a mouthful of spice, chicken and rice.

“Balls, dicks and pussy,” Bill mumbled, seemingly to himself and Tom choked on his food.
“Excuse me?”
“The Rohrschach test...those ink splatters?” Bill waved his pen through the air.
“I swear there's no way in hell you can see anything normal in these things!” Bill laughed and fumbled for another coke fizzer.

“The shrink told me to write a letter to myself,” Tom muttered, rolling his eyes again just thinking about it. He washed down the sticky mixture in his mouth with coke.
“Everyone of us got that assignment,” Bill said, finally lying down his pen and turning the note pad upside down.
“You're doing that?” Tom pointed across the table at his brother's place, that was still littered with crumpled paper balls, and candy wrappers.

Bill's eyes flitted across the table hectically, chewing on his bottom lip before his mouth opened and closed wordlessly – the usual behaviour when he was nervous.
“There's nothing wrong with it,” Tom suggested, in an attempt to put his little brother at ease.

“Maybe I will.” Bill rolled one of the fizzers around on the table, intently watching the path the candy described between the crumpled paper balls. “Though I don't really know what to write...”

“Got nothing valuable to share with your 'younger you'?” Tom mocked, supplying the quotation marks with his fingers.
Bill simply rolled his eyes as he gathered the scattered papers, arranging them in a neat pile.
“Hardly,” Bill chuckled as he got out of his chair, leaving Tom with his cold and soggy chicken and made for his own room.

It was nearing two in the morning when the light in his bedroom was eventually turned off and Bill went to sleep; the notepad securely stuffed under the mattress.

* * *

Dear Bill,

I'm here to give you advice. Sort of. It's not like I am that much wiser by now. None of us is, I think. Anyways:

Call your mum more often. I know you're rolling your eyes right now (I used to, too). It's not that hard to call her and you know how bad you feel after one of those sparse phone calls. Guilt is not exactly the best feeling in the world, so here's one easy way to get rid of it.

Pay attention in school. You'll need the English and, oh my God, don't get me started on the French!
If you want to dish out more than your standard “Je m'appelle...”, then perk up!
Force Tom to do the same, by the way. His staple “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” is getting a bit old too.

Wish Saki a Happy Birthday right the first time around. You'll only do it in 2007 for the first time and then you'll feel bad because the man's face lights up like a freaking Christmas tree, he's that happy you even know his birthday.

There'll be like...you're 14 years old and David will get kind of strange and it probably shouldn't be so hard to write about this right now.
Just don't let him touch you, okay?
I know you'll be thinking about telling Tom (I did, too. Still do sometimes.), but just don't. He's better off not knowing. Plus, it only ever happened once, so yeah...

Always use condoms. There will be one time where you don't and you'll spend a good two months crossing off days in your calendar, waiting for the test results to come back.
They were negative, by the way.

One last thing, I guess. I know you've grown up with the belief that you should share everything with your brother, but seriously now: It's selfish.
Telling Tom what happened before the band got signed, why you probably got signed in the first place? That you were stupid enough to not use a condom and that you popped PEP pills like candy for four weeks straight?

There are times when Tom has this look on his face, even when only something minor happens to you, like the one time you fell down the tree that used to stand in the back garden and broke your ankle. That look of total horror.
Remember how he slapped you because you scared him so much? We still cried afterwards but not because the ankle hurt (which it did) but because Tom was so scared and we did this to him.

Imagine the look on his face if you told him all these things, the unprotected sex, David, all the shit I got myself into, you will still get into (seeing as I was never any good at heeding advice and you're probably not that much better off either). You just can't tell him.

You'll feel bad about this, like I still do most of the time.
Sometimes you just love a person so much, you have to numb that feeling because if we actually were aware of how intensely we love that person, it would become unbearable. We think that makes us a bad person, that we reject this love, that one person, but that's not true. Or so I tell myself.

See you around, I guess...