Clive often gets mistaken for the tennis player, Federer. His mates say he has the Federer brow and build, but, alas, not the Federer modesty.
They also profess that Clive inhabits the universe of the single dweller: himself. First person, singular, apparently is his pronoun of choice; that is, when he's not pressing 'me' or 'myself' into overuse.
He used to have an army of friends at one time, said my mate Ryan, but even in the chaotic, egocentric democracy that typifies teenage peership, he strove to be a totalitarian general.
A few mates that survived the years in his company even attempted shaming him into awareness of this unhealthy self-absorption but it appeared that the genetic foundation blocks had truly been set in concrete.
When I did get to meet Clive, I found him oddly engaging to listen to. He was well-informed and possessed a natural ability to narrate an incident (albeit one in which he featured rather prominently) with eloquence clothed in cocky confidence.
I came away with a positive assessment, thinking to myself that here was a man willing to disclose so much about himself to everybody, without exception, that the secret service would never be required to maintain a dossier on him, if it ever came to that. I learned, in the hour we were together, that he darned his own socks (ever since losing his mum at the tender age of five), sheared a sheep at the same age, earned a bachelor degree (in agriculture, the subject of his choice) before his father died, and then another bachelor degree (the subject of his dear father's choice, biology) just to make up in some way for being headstrong and also to prove, "I could do it".
Several acquaintances of his were around in the club the day Clive and I chatted (or rather, he talked and I listened) but not one of them ventured near. Ryan later said, "It's because he bores everybody with his 'I' talk".
I wondered what Ryan would make of Amrit if he ever chanced to meet him. Amrit, whom I used to know in India, represents an entirely different sample. He was in a stage play every single day of his life and he cast himself in two demanding roles - that of the paparazzi, and that of a supreme court judge.
Unbelievable
The dirt he managed to dig up on people was unbelievable, and his judgements were harsh to the point of excruciating. Even I, arguably a generous listener, would turn and flee at the merest distant sighting of the ill-famed Amrit trudging towards me in his hunched style, symbolically burdened with a tonne of gossip. And that supercilious smile that preceded the telling of something he considered "juicy" before rolling out his cannon of condemnation.
Yes, people ran the other way as though they were being pursued by Wrath. Just like the aforementioned Clive, Amrit was kept at bargepole distance, but in writing about the two men in this column it is their disparate similarity - pardon the oxymoron - that I found intriguing. For here, on the one hand was a man who, allegedly, could talk of nothing but himself. And there, on the other, was this guy Amrit who virtually knew naught of himself, so wrapped up was he in "the lives of others". Both shunned primarily I think because both chose to inhabit extreme ends of a social spectrum. Evidently, that is not where the bulk of humanity is gathered.
If the Clives and the Amrits of this world would deign to look about them, they would find that, despite the deserted landscape of their solitary existence, there's an endearing mid-course where they just might possibly discover an oasis wherein flows the lost stream of camaraderie. The trick for both is in finding the map that will lead them there.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
