Oh brother...

To say that I am a bit of a day dreamer is a bit of an understatement. I like to see myself more as a modern day Walter Mitty with a fringe. Usually what’s going on in the real world isn’t half as fun as what’s going on in my head. When I’m out walking, on the train or trying to sleep I get myself into a kind of reverie that can totally block-out the rest of reality. My favourite day-dream is the one about my imaginary twin brother, Johnny.

John Lincoln would be a tall gawky dude named after grandpa, who looks like my dad with eyes like my mum. He’d wear scarfs in the winter, and cut down singlets in the summer, and grows a beard just to annoy Scooter. He could be sent into space as Earth ambassador for ‘guys’.

Johnny and I would live together in a messy home somewhere in Sydney’s inner west. He could look at the kitchen and it would be filthy and, despite my best efforts, our mum would always look disappointed at the state of the toilet. Every other month I would rage and decide I will move to a nice clean girl’s house, but the ever changing parade of Johnny’s hung-over mates, strange girls, rescued kittens and children he teaches guitar in the living room would keep me there, to be their hostess with the mostest.

My dad would have made sure that Johnny was musical and if he wasn’t in a band, he’d working in JB, Billy Hyde’s or Allen’s Music. The discount he gets is worth it and our music collection would rival all. Eventually we’d run out of storage space, and would have to sell the keyboard he bought me one Christmas to make more room. We’d use the cash to buy a slab and drink it in the garden and make up country songs about the people we knew.

Johnny would be handsome, in a hipsterish, groomed way that men are when they were raised with sisters. When we were teens, he was Dingo and my personal Ken doll, with the distinction of being the first guy at school to wear skinny jeans. I would constantly be fielding questions from girls of my acquaintance about him. I’d tell them that he was hopeless, they’d only get hurt, but I knew that it was him who was always falling in love every Friday night only to be heartbroken on Sunday.

We would jokingly resolve that that brother and sister were enough for each other and to spend the rest of our lives together, knowing there was no way we would ever let that happen. I would keep making morning cups tea for girls that I secretly resented and he would keep telling me about his friends that said I was cool. Eventually we would go our separate ways, partner up and marry. He said he'd be a groomsman, because to be a male maid of honour is weird.

I have three sisters, who are the best sisters in the world but if Johnny was there, life would have been different. Johnny would be able to be brave, to deal with life. His eyes are calm and clear. Johnny is all that I am, and all that I’m not.