Everyone is everyone except you
Everyone is everyone except you by Jordan Hamel. Dead Bird Books (2022).
RRP: $30.00. Pb, 72 pp. ISBN:978-1-99-115062-2. Reviewed by Hester Ullyart
The acknowledgements of Everyone is everyone except you begin as follows:
‘As an irony-poisoned millennial I feel I should give a content warning for the following sincerity.’(p.69)
Which should tell you a lot.
Reared in uptight town where
‘men don’t get sick they rust’,
(‘The worst thing that will ever happen to you hasn’t happened yet’, p.3)
where young captains smell of stale beer, disappointment, closeted shame
‘don’t tell the boys for God’s sake don’t tell the boys’ (‘Suitcase’, p.4)
we orbit rotten masculinity, outdated religious belief, slaps on the back desperately filling up the cracks of a society failing its men.
But kids grow up, some move away. And in the city, older, a self-propelled doubt is real, amplified, majorly loll-worthy, take
‘You’re not a has been, you’re a never was!’ p.43:
‘I used to think I was meant for great things
until I nearly died choking on Very Thin Vogels
watching Mighty Ducks: D2 after
chairing a Flash Fiction zoom conference’
Hamel is dexterous in his dark humour wordplay, flipping off society-burning statements that rattle the diaphragm like a new generation dad-bod Mae West, somehow following up with a punch in the tender burger gut, thumbing at the bruise.
This debut teems gloriously awkward, forbidden dial ups on the family computer, shock-jokes about buttplugs over the Sunday ham. It ponders ambition vs pointlessness, sturdy life lessons from 90’s blockbusters, distraction, the odd world we live in where vacuous priests don’t give you answers but add you on Facebook as you scrabble with depression (‘Death Coach’, p.46) it’s celebrity gods, the insinuation that everyone knows you’re ‘different’, so if you could appear at least to be trying to erase your OTT existence, thanks.
It’s the book I want to gift every ‘soft’ kid that dared muscle through rough knuckle huddled masses in bar or supermarket, scrummed together like cattle, macho dream mooing as one, heading for the slaughter house.
‘they poke me expecting their hand to go through me ….Jesus never had to endure this when he was around.’(‘I was kicked out of Religious Education for making a mash-up of The Passion of the Christ and System of a Down’s Toxicity’, p.7)
In ‘The Jordan Hamel committee of failed relationships’(p.55) past loves gather monthly around a cheese hedgehog. This is intimacy stuck on the beach ball of doom, whirring, but Hamel is honestly, really, a romantic. See p. 25 as the title continues
‘I’ve spent too much time thinking about running away with you’
‘But where would we even run to, Carterton? I’m in terrible shape.’
Whipsmart, eye-rolling-at-reflection-in-the-macbook-teetering-on-the-edge-of-the sin-stained-bed, if Hamel is sick of himself he’s thankfully wise enough to reject the toxic normative more. His work is as beautiful as a stained glass window, bringing in the light. Just that well, this particular stained glass window depicts the angels giving head.
If Hamel’s going to Hell, I vote we follow. At least we’ll be laughing through eternal tears.