Magic America

Of all the natural wonders of the world, fire is the most beautiful of all. The crackle and graceful waltz of the flames soothes the darkest and most blistered human soul, whilst the phoenix-coloured wisps of heat warm or burn us. Its danger is most enticing; an entrancing mixture of beauty and peril. The bad boy of the elements. And thus when my bedroom was partially devoured by flames, saving me from a fate worse than death, I stared at it for longer than I should have, and woke up in hospital with acute smoke inhalation.
It was better than being proposed to by the odious, opinionated oaf who had just stolen my virginity.

***

Gordon Fitzpatrick Forum. Every syllable drips with measured pretention. He lives to opine on mindless, stupid things; each opinion lacerated with a vile cocktail of ignorance, smugness, self-righteousness and pomposity. Any opinion which once ran parallel to mine will mysteriously change course overnight to provide us with another argument, one in which he will doubtless prove me wrong. He sings from a stale and narrow-minded songbook that reeks of ruthless ambition and, on occasion, of pathetic and obsequious wheedling designed to satisfy the former. Thus the teachers worship him as a god, and the students fawn over him – though alas, only to his smarmy face, of course – and when they tire of his incessant speeches, he misreads their signals and reads their apathy as awe. But I was the only one to never mask my contempt. Perhaps it was the way his grades always edged above mine by the merest of margins, or the self-satisfied smirk he dragged out to accompany each hideous melody of orgasmic teacher feedback. It could have been the way he wrote; so judgmental and inane, so lacking in finesse to the point of tedium, so frailly supported by lousy logic and mundane messages. Or perhaps it was the predictability of his likes and dislikes and political views. Each factor made me immune to the wide-eyed, ‘nice boy’ grin which came as a by-product of his attempts to make a new ally in the classroom. And as I repulsed each fake smile with a sour expression of revulsion, and each attempt to compliment my style or music taste, so the smiles transformed into sneers, and the lid on his true self was lifted.
Xenophobic, musically. A brat when faced with failure of any kind. The unfailing tendency to turn disputes personal, should anyone else’s opinion prove to be better thought-through than his own half-baked ideas. The only reason he has a girlfriend is because she is as horribly deficient in the personality department as he is; she punishes herself in such a way to pay for her own personal failings. Only a monster like him could be appropriate for a misanthrope wedded to hostility and melancholy, like herself. And thus, seven months ago, I found myself on the receiving end of a relationship-shaped punch from a vile mutant of humanity, a Mr G. F. Forum.
How could I inflict myself thus? Am I, in fact, a sadist? Not so. I hoped that having something to put in the Facebook relationship box would snap me out of this trance, persuade me to live a little. After all, the attention – despite being as wanted as leprosy – was flattering, and the first kiss intrigued as much as it sickened. It followed an explosive politics lesson, during which he stormed out on account of my ‘painfully lamentable and idiotically idealistic Liberal views’, and I retorted in bad taste with a dig at his failure to get into Oxbridge, which took everyone by surprise but tugged at no one’s heartstrings. The teacher immediately sent me out after him, virtually in tears for having ‘offended poor Gordon’, and I stumbled upon him, brooding in the school library. All the sixth formers at our school abide by an unwritten rule that the library is as appropriate a social ground as a funeral service is; consequently, only I am ever found in there, a martyr for my self-education in literature. But now the brunette demon stalked my territory, annihilating the solace I had carved for myself, indenting his buttocks into my chair, wiping out the legacy I had left for so long. His blazer spilling over my books, my beloved books; his mahogany eyes despoiling my bookcase-laden haven of serenity; his bulk encasing a conceited heart, where usually my sour one would be beating. He had conquered my land.
Aware of my presence, he gazed away, briefly vulnerable. The university issue was torturing him again. I was glad, despite knowing that karma would not befriend me for it; his utter certainty of success had sunk, deep into the water, and finally he too felt the agony of deadened dreams. Yet I, ever the underdog – the less attractive friend, the second-best in my classes to him, the second-favourite daughter to my parents – had defeated him, and victory tasted so sweet! Knowing it would be my only success against him, I held onto it with both hands until it numbed me to the idea of sympathy. And why should I feel sympathetic towards h, when he routinely clubbed my ideas into the ground?
So I sat opposite, and watched him watching the conifers as they tossed their verdant branches in the breeze. It had to be the conifers or the gunfire of the rain that he concentrated on, as the courtyard was deserted, and the deciduous trees had long been naked from winter’s wrath, and were as dull as beige to watch. I considered how his skin was the shade of the archetypal, pale Caucasian male, almost the colour of my acceptance letter. The irony. His hair was a windswept hazel mess, and his frame was too large. Stumpy, uneven nails that had been bitten were the only clues of his nights of paranoia (where he lay, bathed in sweat, fearing that he would never live up to his own titanic expectations) and they were tacked onto the ends of his pudgy fingers, blotted with ink from his over-opinionated pen. And his uniform was pristine, with just one insouciant sail of white hanging out of his trousers to remind everyone that he was approachable.
Eventually, his head turned, and I saw his eyes had misted over slightly, veiled perhaps in hate or in envy, or maybe even desperation. They twisted downwards, obscenely curving his eyeline to my chest, and the morbid fascination of my voyeur’s eyes became cloaked in a surly pall. He gained the upper hand and, in turn, replaced his jealousy with a sneer; I, seething, prepared a hand, moulded in the shape of his cheek for the perfect slap. There was to be no apology from either of us. Stalemate.
I rose. He rose, clumsily, towering half a foot over me, a predator. I was walked into a bookcase, the leather-bound cover of Pride and Prejudice indenting my spine as he kissed me. Two lusi naturae, joined at the lips. Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, I thought as our lips warred and wrestled. And after the bell had sprung us from our strange position, and the ruckus of excited eleven-year-olds had subsided, we lapsed into conversation.
“What are you doing?” He chuckled and raised his askew eyebrows, before fixing his eyes on my left breast. If only Miss Adams, our politics teacher who adored him from afar, knew that his gentleman’s behaviour descended into chauvinism behind closed doors.
“What are we doing, Cami. You didn’t exactly fight me off...” His deep voice rang with superciliousness. “...anyway, you need excitement in your life. You’re always talking crap about politics – I mean, you’re a Liberal Democrat, for fuck’s sake! – or you read shitty romance books that dress themselves in the word “classic” to pretend that Jane Austen was anything more than a virgin who put her frustrated sexual desire into books, or you write wonderful essays – wonderfully written, but piled high with idealistic wank. I mean, you believe in Communism, for Christ’s sake! And then, you’re obsessed with America. Jesus! You’re the most cynical person I know... after me, that is. Yet you buy into the American dream and all that crap! You hate everything about everyone in our school, and then you go home and read about the country which spawned Paris Hilton. Hypocrite! You’re a hypocrite! You can’t mope around all the time, wishing your friend Martina were still here. That’s what the girls say you do, all the time. You need something in your life. Something like me... so, we’re going to go out this evening, and again after that. First I have to write my Head Boy’s speech for this assembly, but after that... it’s us, now. Wear something lower cut this eve-” The crack of a slap on his fat cheek reverberates around the library. “And control yourself. Feisty bitch. See you after school, down by the gate.”
So I let it be, not having the energy to fight him off. He hated me, I hated him, and a relationship was just an extreme extension of that. After that conversation, things fell into the same routine as before; we shouted at each other in Politics lessons, and he judged me for everything I did, and I loathed his stuffy cologne of arrogance, misguided superiority and underlying insecurity. Except now I was trapped; he was my boyfriend and I was obliged to spend time outside of school with him. Time when his meaty paws would grope me outside and inside my clothes; the ultimate hypocrisy! Long gone were the days when Marty and I would condemn the morally corrupt ways of our generation, and lambast the concept of peer pressure. Now I was one of the low-lives, grappling with him instead of my conscience. Each time we kissed, it felt like self-harming; sickness in the pit of my stomach, pain, horror, regret, marks that I couldn’t wash away no matter how hard I tried. His saliva was more permanent than a tattoo, and less welcome; but what was I to do. Stuck in a rut since Marty left three years ago, bitter and stagnant, and with no way of waking up. The intensity with which I hated him was a good way of forgetting the events of two years past. Hatred was my anaesthetic. But it was unable to cleanse me of my poisoned soul and history – nothing could. And, if I were poisoned on the inside to such an extent, what else could I do but complete the cycle? So I embarked on a mission to sell my soul, or at least, the shredded remnants of it, to the devil. We had sex.
The details are fragmented; I will never know if that comes as a consequence of the smoke inhalation or if I’ve blocked it out. But I remember these things; white sheets. His hungry stare. Hatred. Self-loathing. Pain. Tears. Bloody stains. White-hot anger. Isolation. An apology from him. Silence. The proposal. The reflection of my gaunt face in the ring’s diamond. An attempt to form a rebuff. The fire. Blackness falls. The lamb had truly lost its way, its fluffy white coat gone coarse and grey. These thoughts come to me in semi-consciousness. I float between consciousness and sleep. Eventually the darkness loses its novelty, and my heavy eyelids twitch upwards.
Five figures sit blearily on seats by my bedside. A wonky, leering man’s face. (Gordon.) A scrawny blonde creature. (Lavender.) A brunette Russian doll. (Aleksei.) A man and a woman, the latter resting her head on the former’s shoulder. (Mum and Dad.) My boyfriend, sister, sister’s boyfriend and parents. Of the five, the sight of Aleksei is the most pleasing. I’m more fond of him than the rest. And, upon this realisation, I have a depressing moment of realisation, the sort which throws one’s existence into complete clarity, before Gordon ruins it by opening his over-active mouth and launching into a great speech in my hospital room.