Us Against The World

Cyrus Quince. Where to start with him? Well, maybe the name would be a good place. He hated his name - said it was too extravagant and poncy to actually suit him. Cyrus said a lot of things were too extravagant and poncy. He liked dull, mundane things, which surprised me due to the circumstances of our relationship. They say that people turn out like their parents, but Cyrus loathed the type of people his parents tried to turn him into, and maybe that was why he was so hell bent on being normal. Not that he was ever normal, even by the slightest margin.

He wasn't just unusual in personality; his physical appearance was also one which could either repel or enrapture someone who ever had the pleasure to meet him. The pleasure was never known to whom it was festered upon though. He was like marmite; you either loved him or hated him, more often than not, the latter.

I was one of the few who were drawn to him. From the moment he stood at the front of my maths classroom and introduced himself, I was overcome with a fine sense of allurement. It was everything from his aloof stance to his enthusiasm for his subject which formed this fascination in his actions. Don't get me wrong - back then I had no intention whatsoever of creating a more than professional or vaguely amicable relationship with him. But it was that shadowy mystique which surrounded him that completely captivated me.

Later, he would be described as ''paedophilic, too unethical to serve as human and unfit to teach such young and innocent minds'', but never did Cyrus condone what he did. Not at any point did I see him as a leering, perverted, older man, because that is not what he was. He held outright self-hatred at himself and would express this at many a relevant occasion. But he was never good at hiding his emotions, and at the convergence point, he was controlled by them and acted on an impulse rather than oppress them and live in a world of close-ended yearning. To us, age was just a number; it held no true meaning between our interlinked lives. Twenty-four wasn't even old; he had barely reached his prime in my view. But to others, he was still in a place of chastity corruption.

The pinnacle of it all was that no one would ever understand. Of course they wouldn't and I didn't expect them to. It was the connected comprehension which brought us closer, that it was just us against the world. Against the outrage, repulsion and disgust from the rest of the human race.

To the older society, he was an immoral, twisted psycho that should hold no other but a degenerative position in life. For me and my generation, I was considered the girl driven to disparity in order to get good grades by screwing him. Dog, slut, whore - I've been called them all. I'd like to make a point clear here - not at any time did Cyrus try to persuade me to embark on a sexual relationship with him. In fact, he wished to prohibit it. Romantically involved, we were. Sexually, we were not. I doubt he could have continued living with himself if we ever had. He had trouble as it was, and even at that, he was still driven into a state of unquestionable insanity.

From those people who still stood by me, came another, somewhat more shallow aspect; what was the attraction? Cyrus wasn't exactly the most friendly of people. He had a stone exterior, but once you got past that brigade, he was affectionate, devoted, sympathetic and generally a loving person. It just took a long time to get through to his real persona.

To most, he wasn't particularly handsome, muscular or actually remotely good looking. He was geeky. Not the nerd geek, but the dorky type with an undying passion for his subject; he would get hysterically excited over solving quadratic equations. To set it off, he wore a pair of black rimmed square glasses and had a soft spot for telling truly awful jokes. Despite all this, he was a complete genius and had one of the world's highest IQs in history; he could retract into himself and just contemplate something scientific, mathematical or philosophical for hours. All these made up a miniscule section of the reasons about why I loved him.

Yet, the main one is that he listened. When no one else was around, he was the one who was there for me. He cared, he helped, and he was the only thing that kept me going through those times.

Most guys of Cyrus' age liked to go out clubbing, get drunk and sleep with lots of women. He liked to curl up on the sofa with a book in hand or to watch something on the television, particularly some mushy romance, at which he could cry his heart out. He could speak along with every episode of Doctor Who, every Star Trek and Star Wars and every Shakespeare film adaptation. He had a total sci-fi obsession; he'd go to the conventions and all galore. But he loved nothing more than to just cuddle up and talk. That was the strange thing about Cyrus - when you're outside the fort, he'd do anything to get out of your company, but when you're inside, he never wanted to let you go. Many women would hate that sort of clinginess, but I adored it. For once in my life, I felt properly wanted.

But none of this held any importance really, because, all in all, he was nine years older me. Not only that - he was my teacher. Practically every single interaction between us was completely illegal. That didn't matter though, did it? Because we defied those laws anyway? Wrong. Our lives only ended in being torn apart by those who just didn't understand.