Magic America

This must be Cain’s room. It’s tidy on the whole, but nonetheless I learn more about his life than I ever wished to know; a whole stack of Nuts magazines, battered and ripped from God-knows-what, lie dormant beside his bed – double, of course (well, if his parents can afford it and his hectic schedule of screwing demands it...) – and there’s a montage of photos on the wall. Me and my lover sit on the bed. There’s a gulf between us, but there always has been.

He’s seething. I let him seethe. The montage takes my eye. In closer detail, it shows pictures of a multitude of girls dolled up to caricatures – glorious scribbles of coal lining their dead eyes, clay caking their pores, scrapes of a bloody lipstick. And then I see the preening girl in the second row, right of centre. Sheet of gold hair, apple cheeks, obtrusive nose. Lavender. It’s a montage of all the girls he’s had his way with. I shudder, nauseous, and search for gossip. A morbid fascination for the grotesque nature of the world, no matter how physically sickening it is. This wall is a dictionary of girls in my French class. Heather Baker – short, loud-mouthed, desperately insecure about her pancake-flat chest; Erin Smith – glamorous, sharp-tongued, a secret romantic poet; Georgie Noble – not much of anything, as exotic as stale air; Lin Me – Chinese, oh-so-stylish, oh-so-silent, a nice person! Finally! And now Gordon has a grip on his tongue, and thankfully not a grip on mine, and the match begins – he serves. May the best player win.

“When did you decide you were going to America?” he asks, coolly. There’s a flash of something indescribable in his dog shit eyes. Something feral.

“Wednesday. When I got out of hospital. Marty invited me.” In my experience, short sentences fire him up. Gordon losing it is always a joy to behold – the ultimate control freak, losing control. But losing control in a way which is detrimental to his social standing, unlike sex and the like; he loses control during these activities, but the thought of being on some sexual pedestal with his friends renders it appropriate to let go of his sober, joyless self every so often. Imagine – he is not just a deviously intelligent, socially active charmer, he is the king of fornication too! It helps that getting the famously frigid, ever-uptight Camomile Pop into bed isn’t so much of an envelope of love as an achievement for him to write into history. His epitaph will namecheck this, I’m sure.

“Three days. I’ve spoken to you twice in those three days. Didn’t you feel the need to share this information with me? ...your boyfriend?” The latter two syllables are venomous, vitriolic. A threat. One tiny shiver rattles down my spine in fear or loathing.

“Not really.”

“When are you going? How long for?”

“Week after we find out our results. For a week.”

“Escaping the country? You think you did that badly? Anyway, speaking of me being your boyfriend, I never did wheedle out a response to my proposition, did I?” My entire body jerks sideways of its own accord and I black out, briefly. But not for long enough; no trap door opens beneath my feet and no fire rescues me in its scorching, winking arms.

“...Proposition?” Ignorance is a liar’s dream best friend – secondary only to ambiguity. “What proposition?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I can tell when you’re lying.” I smirk, my treacherous jaw hidden under the dim light that blurs us. If only he knew the truth; the fact that I have been acting simultaneously ambiguous, evasive and ignorant towards him and everyone else (with the honourable exception of Paul) on an important matter. I bat off every mention of Oxbridge, I take care never to incriminate myself with closed lies and I feign temporary amnesia when the former two cannot cloak me any longer. For this is my true gameplan.

The only truly cathartic response to wreak revenge on the brute who despoiled both my heart and my innocence – oh, so many months divide the two – is not merely to deny him his star-high expectation of Oxbridge, but to be crueller still. Stooping to the grimy, evil levels that this personal therapy takes has almost certainly slashed my chances of a decent reincarnation or friendly karma, but nothing could clean the tar from my heart in the way that his utterly heartbroken, destroyed expression will when he finds out that I have rejected his Valhalla for something a little less repulsively pretentious. No formal mealtimes for me, clad in robes stitched with the blood of the lower classes; no living in a disgustingly arrogant bubble, seedy with nauseating superciliousness and the suicidal effect of a less-than-90% mark on one’s pride; no toxically competitive run-ins – Gordon and me have had enough of those to last a lifetime – in either academic prowess or monetary matters; no Oxbridge, just a realistic breath of life in which I can drown, far from the twee gardens and detestable label of being nothing but an Oxbridge graduate forever more. For who would employ you for personality, wit or competence when you had the stigma of a boat race attached to you? I shun the traditions and the castles, unable to tolerate the saccharine reverence of buildings and insufferable adherence to customs with no relevance to a modern lifestyle. The cushion of Oxbridge may give me a one-way ticket to employment after graduation, but give me hardship and frustration, make me a better being! Build my character, lest it go soft and plump in the absence of underachievement. I refuse to be some mannequin, moulded in the shape of a worker who cannot transmogrify into anything more than that; as a voyeur, I will judge on the actions and morals of a person rather than the intelligence and class of one. Matriculation robes will not be pulled over my eyes. Gordon will crumple at the sight of my entrance letter to my university – not his – and crumble, as he is unable to say even that he has a girlfriend at Oxbridge from whom he can absorb contacts and reputation. Every day that edges closer to the exams’ Judgement Day is a day closer to my greatest achievement and the most abhorrent actions of my life. Twisting my life so that a slap on the face of his ambitions resembles more a murder, a brutal massacre on his future.

“I can’t remember anything from that night.” A fat black lie. His eyes narrow into something sinister.

“You don’t remember losing your innocence? You don’t remember the way I held you when you cried, sobbing for the loss of your childhood? You don’t remember the way you shivered as you gathered up the stained sheets and dumped them in the washing basket? You don’t remember how you stared at me when I asked you to marry me at some point in the future-” Every goosepimple on my dirtybody stands up, prickling with hate and sorrow. He hisses every single syllable so softly, leaving every word irrevocably polluted for eternity, and I see the fire again – a mere memory reflected in his eyes by the light.

“Why would I marry you? You hate me!” I exclaim, mistakenly vocalising the latter sentiment as some sort of feeble payback for the verbal knives he has thrown at me, tonight and before. His expression grows at once incredulous and softer.

“Cami...” His wheedling politician’s voice. My blood curdles, thick as poisoned milk. He is the definition of sweet and sour this evening; the sugar takes over from the vinegar in his tone and countenance. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you! ...except, perhaps, David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher.” I wait for his sarcastic smug victory smirk, a recurrent pestilence of his, post-quip, but it never materialises. He clutches my hands with his, those pudgy palms squashing mine. “Don’t you see it every time I look at you? Can’t you see it? We’re nearly the same person. You’re a carbon copy of me. Oh, Cami, don’t shrug like that – I know we have our differences; you want to burn Dave at the stake, yet you’re all ears for his tea-boy – the chocolate teapot of current British politics – and you’d die for America whilst I’d be the one stabbing that noxious plastic state. But in personality, we’re carbon copies. Our traits are imprinted on each other. We are one and the same – twins – no two are as alike as we are. That’s why we argue... that’s why it seems like we hate each other... because we’re all, all of humanity, little pieces of coal, and we’re waiting for someone to light us – but who better to light us than the most dangerous match? And why are you dangerous? Because I see everything that is me in you. And what if I see something detestable in you? It reflects on myself! Opposites may attract, but a fire was never lit with a snowstorm. We are, for all intents and purposes, the same. You want success so badly it eats you, and I’m the same... you want power, it goes to your head, and so do it does to mine – it’s so apparent!... you want Oxbridge – or, rather, you’ve got Oxbridge – my God, I wanted it too! And I can’t bear the fact that you’re in and I’m not, but I love you – so much – that I can tolerate it. I could never tolerate it for another girl. But it’s so bittersweet! The love just burns the wound further! Yet the only way to cope is to keep you close, so I can’t resent you from afar. The resentment just – I don’t know – it makes everything more intense between us; so intense, but not stupid. I’m stupid for you – you’re so grounded towards me! And then – to make it worse – I see the way you look at Lung, and the way you tell him your secrets and open up for him, and the way you respond so energetically to him – you’re so run down around me. God, I can’t stand him and if it weren’t for your reaction to him, I’d rather vote Labour than swap shoes with him for a day – but the spark in your eyes when you were talking to him earlier made me think that I’d kill to be him, have his pompous life forever than be stuck in this!” On finishing his monologue, panting, impassioned, he tugs agitatedly at his flabby body, thankfully clothed, and gazes at me in a way I can neither describe nor comprehend. Pompous? Paul? Takes one to know one – but Paul is the epitome of the unassuming servant, who turns everything to gold. And Gordon is the master who is arrogant with little evidence to back it up. Yet I ponder; am I like him? Am I as despicable as him – a vacuously imperious animal beneath the surface? Here is Gordon’s naked emotion – proof that indeed, he has doubts in life about himself – little did I know I wielded so much power over him. Unless, of course, it’s an oblique attempt to get me to adore him once more, so he may have the upper hand, and may raze my sanity once more.

“So, effectively, you want a clone of yourself to marry. I’m so glad you’re not a narcissist.” He opens his mouth to deny it, but spare me the excuses. “You would do that, wouldn’t you? – you’d clone yourself and then fuck the clone, if you could. If you could change its gender, that is. You’d want to look into the mirror when you had your arms around each other and see perfect twins so you don’t have to consider how the other person feels, because you can assume they think the same way as you – I don’t. Marriage? – I hate marriage! You know I hate marriage! Just because my idiot little sister is planning some meringue to wear down the aisle in her fantasy future wedding to her Russian doll doesn’t mean I want to get married. Just because my parents have been married for nearly twenty five years doesn’t mean I want to follow that example. I’ll die before I say ‘I do’ to anyone.” To be tied down thus – what a drag! To commit to one person forever – how dreadful! To never make a choice for just yourself, but to lead or be led by another person – sickening! The thought of waking up, morning after morning, to the same face – worn by age and familiarity – and to be so comfortable that you stagnate together in front of the television every evening is so frightening to me at my age: why do all my peers see a fancy dress and a diamond ring as an incentive to wreck their lust for life?

“You’re so fiery. Look, Cami – I don’t care if you don’t want to marry me – just tell me you love me. You never say it. I know you’re frigid with emotion, and you never want to open up and neither do I. Who wants to look weak in front of the plebs, eh? Vulnerable – I hate being vulnerable. But as equals, I can tell you this – and I regret not having done it sooner – I love you. Do you love me? Oxbridge is nothing compared to your acceptance-”

A splitting rush of remembrance stabs into my memory. A recollection of the last time he told me he loved me. I lose all the rest of his unbearably, uncharacteristically gooey prose in my film-like flashback. The day of the fire. The day I was deflowered.

I am on the bed, in agony. I analyse everything to myself, a rash of rhetorical questions. This is making love? This is the great secret of humanity? No – we are not making love. There is no love between us. He is stoned on testosterone and hormones, as high as a kite on pleasure and skin; I am earthed, aware of nothing but the terrible comedy of his facial expressions as we consummate, and the shame that seems to rot my entire body, a film of disgrace covering my carcass. A layer that I can never scrub off. Everyone raves on about the joy of skin-on-skin, the beauty of the intricate paintings of nerves in taboo curves, the mystery of the human jigsaw being solved – but is this really it? What is the point of being alive, if we are intended only to swap sweat and cower in embarrassment as the other person makes horrendous faces of physical exertion? A piteous excuse for existence, if ever there was one! Who could be aroused by such a thing? If there is a God – he must be a sadist, to women at least!

And then he is almost there. It is then that the dreaded three-word phrase strikes. Through tortured facial muscles and gritted teeth as he struggles to restrain himself, he says it. “I love – you –” he exhales, and then makes a hideous noise, frees me from sexual purgatory and starts panting on my newly soiled shoulder, until his breathing slows and he rolls over, exhausted with sexist delight that he had had his fill of bliss, and I not mine. Not that I could have ever found anything to shout about with him present, naked, face writhing in sin. I realise to myself that now, I am one of them – the ordinary teenagers. I am vermin.

Now, I think to myself that it will be a surprise if I ever revisit fornication or say those words in my lifetime, with these awful memories to haunt me.

Gordon is waiting. Unable to commit myself to the biggest lie of all, I shrug, make minimum eye contact, and leave with emotional baggage in hand. Cain barges past on the stairs, hand-in-hand with Jade Dellor, a manatee with humanoid features and farcical, whorish facepaint, and they burst into his room to find a trembling Gordon. They don’t wait for him to leave before clothes are ripped and condoms are filled; I don’t wait for him to leave with me, out of guilt or spite...

Paul drives me home, platonically.