To Jump, Perchance to Fall

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I had resolved it with myself; tonight would be the night I finally dared to jump off the cliff of self-restraint.

I was at a party – one where everyone was teetering on the brink, they were so doused with intoxicating liquids. It was the after-show of the school production of Grease and the cast seemed adamant to render all common ‘misconceptions’ about the ‘youth of today’ true. What better way to aid that attempt than to lose my last, tattered shreds of self-respect?

Alcohol had not yet seeped into my system.

This meant that, whilst everybody else was deciding that it was a good idea to kiss each other senseless, take illegal substances and dance like it was the apocalypse, I was sitting in the only available quiet corner, my thoughts going round the same resigned spiral again and again.

I’d been confessed to a number of times; someone’s sister had been redlighting, Sandy’s boyfriend was abusing her and the lead violinist had cancer... just a confirmation of the world’s glorious nature.

Instead of acting on my resolution to lose my inhibitions, I played with the scattered runs, ladders and rips in my tights. I wasn’t dressed up for any conscious reason; it was my subconscious telling me that I was sad, lonely, desolate.

What I’d wanted when I’d agreed to come was still unclear. I had a main part, I was expected to turn up… but the director hadn’t type-cast me as Rizzo. So what I was here for? Not drink, as my behaviour went awry when alcohol was involved; not for drugs, as I didn’t want to die... like that. The answer lay in longing. A longing I’d chased away with bitter bad memories for the past year. A longing my resolution would hopefully satisfy. But no one went for the girl in the corner.

I had always arrived at the same conclusion: Eugene was already going out with Frenchy; Doody, Sonny and Putzie were too young; Vince Fontain was with Marty since the director suggested Method acting a few weeks ago; Zuko was not to be contemplated, for fear of unlocking unwanted memories; my only option was Kenickie. I glanced over to where he stood leaning moodily against the mantelpiece, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

He was type-cast.

I sighed. My resolution seemed failed already. I would give up without even a vague attempt. I always did. I went to these parties to test myself. Not to see if I could hold out against the pressure but to see if for once I would attempt to jump. If I would ever dare to step off the cliff. The answer always seemed to be the same, and the answer was no. But tonight… I had hoped tonight would be different.

“Rizzo!” cried Eugene, as he collapsed next to me, “You legend. Where’s your drink?”

“I’ve had a sprite,” I replied, watching the wreath of smoke curl around Kenickie’s head.

“Sprite?” Eugene echoed, “You need alcohol.”

“No I don’t.”

Eugene waved his beer can in my face, “Take a sip.”

“No thanks,” I replied.

“Go oooon,” he teased.

“No,” I repeated.

“You’re scared.”

“Merely too sensible,” I said, catching a brief scent of alcohol on his breath.

“Scared,” he whispered.

Silence reigned for a moment, the can hung midair in front of my face, teasing, tempting.

“Go on,” he whispered, once more, low in my ear.

His breath swept the curve of my neck. I breathed deeply, my stomach twisting with an onset of indecision and familiar nausea. The cliff was looming in front of me and I had a growing urge to jump. Alcohol had gotten me into this mess, maybe it would get me out of it. Tonight would be different. Tonight I would jump off the cliff.

“Fine,” I declared, taking the can from him and downing it.

“Good girl,” Eugene said, kissing me swiftly on the lips before heading off into the crowd which packed the kitchen and terrace. My lips tingled from the alcohol and his kiss.

But then my head span and bad memories brimmed to the surface.

Anyone for spin-the-bottle? Seven minutes in heaven?

Kenickie flicked his cigarette into the fireplace across from me. I felt his gaze resting on me and looked up fiercely, ready to defend myself from a repeat performance.

“You’re such a slut,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked aggressively.

Kenickie raised an eyebrow in lazy confusion, “Back at you.”

He took a swig from the bottle at his side, then tossed it into the grating. It broke in a ringing clash of glass, the last molecules of alcohol bursting into violent red flames that flickered briefly and then expired as quickly as they’d appeared. Passion rose in my throat. My mouth yearned to kiss him. I swallowed.

I’d stand up, pull him forwards and kiss him, long and slow – hard, forceful, his lips locked on mine. I grimaced as the idea turned into a memory. No, I would just sit still.

Or he could sit down next to me, his arm around the back of the sofa, lean over to say something, his lips grazing mine as I turn – a vice-like grip around my neck, pushing me back against the wall - I made myself sit still.

I could take him by the collar and lead him outside, pull him into the shadow and kiss and kiss and kiss – shoved and battered and bruised, broken into so many pieces. I tried to sit still.

But the thought of his lips on mine, burning, passionate mutated into his body crushed against mine, crushed into mine, forced into, forcefully melded.

I leapt to my feet, unable to repress and unable to think. I hesitated in a whirl of old and fresh emotion. Kenickie watched me, eyebrow still raised, quizzical, his look scorching. I burned inwardly for a second then chose escape. I forced my way through the crowd, onto the terrace and into the garden where, without the haze of smoke and the oppression of claustrophobia, my head ached.

“You ok Riz?” Eugene asked, emerging from the foliage with Frenchy, both concerned.

“Yeah I’m-”

Footsteps behind me on the terrace, I turned around, cut off mid-sentence. Kenickie stood silhouetted in the light pouring from the living room, light that mingled with the pounding music in a detached manner.

Eugene looked up at Kenickie, grinned and pulled Frenchy back inside. I rubbed my arms raw in a vain attempt to warm them and dispel the degrading memories into the frigid night air.

“You cold?” Kenickie asked.

“I’m always cold,” I replied, pushing up grass with my heel in a desperate attempt to distract.

“No joke,” he muttered, pulling off his jacket and holding it out for me.

“No,” I said, waving it away, “Don’t. The gentleman thing doesn’t suit you.”

“It doesn’t suit me?” he repeated, slinging the jacket over his shoulder with a shrug.

Somewhere in the middle of this conversation he had moved, now stood only a little distance from me on the dark lawn. I noted the trampled grass, cigarette butts and broken glass with a sense of detachment. I shivered again, self-conscious under his gaze. Silence reigned, awkward. I thought back over the last few weeks – I’d let my guard down; toyed with emotion, every night I’d yearned to do something about it; every stage kiss felt more reality than rehearsal; I’d been caught in his gaze across the stage so many times; I’d wondered at the feedback from our director, saying that we’d created a real sense of chemistry – it was all my imagination though.

The silence kept going, like the elongated end of a chord before a CD skipped to its end. But the silence was waiting for an unexpected hidden track. He moved first, catching my waist, pulling me towards him. And somewhere in the next few moments of claustrophobic silence we tangled together; his lips on mine; my hips against his; an uninterrupted line of contact from my chest to his thighs; my hands in his hair, his on the nape of my neck, mine caressing his back, his caressing mine.

Get drunk, spin-the-bottle. The bottle span, hit my foot, my surprised mouth received a kiss and my head span. A stranger’s hands roamed my body. Flesh crawled. Stop, think, struggle, kick, bite, scream.

“Ow! What? What did I do?” Kenickie asked, nursing a bloody lip. He backed away, one hand cradling his chin, the other surrendered in the air.

“I – I – I’m sorry.”

I’d lashed out at a memory and hurt the present. Violation traced my skin again; I felt dirty, sick, ill. A lonely rabbit trapped in two very bright headlights. I ran away, down to the end of the garden. The darkness closed in around me and I threw up by the side of the shed.

I had tried to jump but hadn’t cleared the cliff-face. There was a memory at the top, holding me back, threatening in my ear, laughing at my failure. Holding me without license, a vice I couldn’t escape. You’re such a slut. I was going to grow old and die alone. I was never going to be able to look at Kenickie again. All because I couldn’t get one moment out of my head for ten minutes. My body was consecrated at a single, bloody, blasphemous shrine to an unholy god and try as I liked I couldn’t place my sacrifice elsewhere. I threw up a second time, tears sliding pathways down my frozen face.

Cried out, everything suddenly seemed very clear in my head. I wiped my eyes, chin and mouth, smoothed my top down, walked back into the light of the house, pushed through the crowd again. Found the one who had done this.

“I hate you,” I told him softly, low and savage in his ear.

He frowned at me, then laughed to dispel his confusion, “You ok Rizzo?”

“No. I’m not ok,” I replied, “But I will be soon.”

You’re such a slut. The memory aggravated an already sore wound.

Snap. Danny Zuko’s head slipped to the side under the sudden force of my fist. The crowd parted around us in a single intake of breath. Somebody reached to check Zuko, as he stumbled dizzily.

“You little bitch,” he cried.

I strode fast away through the parted sea of people. The punch had broken through the floodbanks of my mind and memory flooded forward in an unchecked torrent.

I want you – his voice, low and savage in my ear. Him, ingrained in my flesh. Imprinted. Ripped into me.

Allowing my walk to become mechanical, I thought no longer. I simply let my feet guide me. The sound of the music and voices died away behind me, and the dim incandescence of street lights dwindled as I left the estate. Someone’s footsteps followed mine. I didn’t look behind.

“Rizzo!”

I ignored the voice, kept walking. I had tried to leap, to jump off my imagined cliff of self-restraint and had found myself stopped. My obstacle was only him, so I was going to rid myself of Zuko. Going to wash him from my skin once and for all.

I paused briefly to remove my shoes from my feet, threw them sideways into someone’s empty concrete garden.

Don’t pretend, you want me too, come on – low and savage, in my ear. His hands digging into my flesh. His hold the fear in my guts.

“Rizzo, please, stop!”

I couldn’t stop. I was finally moving. I was finally doing something. I was taking a run-up in order to leap over Zuko and off my cliff. I had had a quick glimpse of the future which waited for me and I was determined to outwit it.

The bridge appeared up ahead.

I pulled my t-shirt over my head, dropped it to the pavement.

Think you’re so damn gorgeous - low and savage in my ear - think you’re everything.

The tarmac changed to stone under my bare feet. I trailed a hand across the coarse stone edge of the bridge. I stopped halfway across. Wound my tights down to my feet, pulled them off slowly, deliberately.

“Riz, what are you doing?”

Washing him away. Getting rid of him for good.

“Rizzo?”

I contemplated the rushing water below me. Took hold of the lamppost, drew myself up onto the parapet. Stood in my underwear in the single pool of yellow lamplight.

The quiet voice which had followed me from the house party became temptingly desperate below me, “Don’t. You really don’t want to do that. Rizzo!”

“Why doesn’t anybody use my real name?” I asked softly, watching the pattern of yellow light over the rushing black water.

“Everyone uses cast names during a show.”

“Gwenllain. Means ‘fair flood’… and my middle name, do you know it?” I leant my bare back against the numbingly cold metal lamppost.

“I - I don’t - you’ve never said -”

I looked around to where Jan stood, small and fragile in the yellow light.

“It’s Patience,” I said.

“It’s pretty,” Jan said, unsure of how to answer the deranged girl standing half-naked on the bridge.

“It’s ill-fated,” I replied, “It means ‘to suffer’.”

I walked the tight rope parapet a few steps sideways, watching my shadow flicker across the ever-changing current down below. I had suffered.

“Gwen, please, don’t-”

“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked her, a dangerous sense of detachment entering my chest. I could do anything now…

“Come down and explain,” she begged.

“It’s a little late for explanations,” I replied.

A little morsel of pity rose in my chest for this poor girl who would witness the next few moments. But I was overwhelmed by my bruised heart, a cradle full of sorrow that needed to be spilt, awash with dirt that needed to be purged; and I was hypnotized by the rushing water of the black river.

“Tell them…” I thought absentmindedly for a moment, “Tell them I needed to be clean.”

“Gwen!” Kenickie cried from down the road, “Gwen, no!”

My heart panicked at the sight of his sprint. Everything had seemed so simple but he complicated everything dreadfully.

“And tell him,” I breathed, “Tell him I love him.”

I took one more look at Jan’s fragile figure, took one last glance of his beautiful figure running towards me, then stepped off into the air. It swept past, parting in a single smooth motion.

“GWEN!”

Cold, cold water on my every side. Cold, clean water. First parted, enviously cool against my skin then rushing over and under me, pulling at the dirty handprints which had shaped my skin, carving it clean and smooth again. I would not allow Danny Zuko’s trespass to imprison me. I would not die old and alone. I would die in my own time. And my own time was now. I sighed out my last held breath into the freezing water and resigned myself to the flawless current.