Monday, October 17, 2005

My Kingdom...Part 1

I awoke to the sound of church bells and peacocks and thought about the one person in my life that used to keep me sane and relevant. Simon was a guy of great understanding and he wallowed in the beauty of everything that surrounded him. His papers on the great philosophers always sounded a lot more interesting when uttered from his mouth. I used to watch the lines of his lips as he caressed the difficult surnames over and over again in an oral explosion of education and theory. Simon was an interesting catch and boy I was happy on the day that he took my bait...but that was a long time ago. Letters shared and filed, conversations recorded on a now fading memory like the grooves of an old 78 record hissing and slowly dying...dying...there was a word that had caused emotional turmoil, a word that in 5 letters can cause a moments stopping of the heart, a well of water dripping down from an eye gland or a fall to the knees as if kicked by the giant imaginary rabbit that used to be your friend...

The University doors opened on freshers day to welcome us on our impending voyage to adulthood. The days spent here would decide which social category we would fall in, which industry would welcome us with open arms and which sexual gender classification we would finally fall into. Confusion reigned as we surveyed the landscape of dillapidated early 70's architecture mixed with a frisson of art student decor and design, the fragrance of the caretakers polish reminding us of home comforts such as detention and parading about in your underwear in front of the obviously bent gamesmaster. The gamesmaster knew he could rely on me for a good show, something that might have got him a prison scentence today but something that gave me my first experience of involuntary erection, a trick that made the girls blush and the boys laugh and taunt. Now I would be happy with just one friend, a person I could communicate with on the same level, someone who realised that their sexuality might be offensive to some, someone who I wouldn't have to fear if I confided with them. We lined up awaiting allocation to the halls...this scared me, i was so used to my own company and now I would have to share 3 years of life with a person whom i did not know or really had any interest in knowing. As we all stood there it was like being singled out by the nit nurse at infants..."Justin Ruppet, come out to the front of the class please"...those words engraved in my psyche manifesting itself as an abhorrent fear of plastic combs. That was me, Justin Ruppet, now a helpless victim of the system awaiting his compadre in study.
"Justin....Justin Ruppet?"...I snapped out of memoryville and looked at the awaiting student body head..."yes, i'm here"..."Room 2c...you will be sharing with...", this was it, the final declaration..."Simon Morning". First thoughts, what do i say to him "Morning morning?"...god i was helpless. Out from the crowd stepped Simon, his smile melted my fear like a match to an ice cube. Simon Morning, obviously middle class, wolverine eyes, designer clothing, carrying a copy of Proust looked over and just mouthed two words "Lets go"...we strode off in silence, me slightly behind wanting to be aware of Simons every muscular movement. He hid it well if he knew I was eyeing him up and just turned around ocassionally to see if I was still following. We took our cases up to the first floor of the halls and I took the lead in slowly opening the door to our new home.
Simon took the bed by the window, it was a fairly large room with two good sized desks, its own toilet but that was it... a spartan sea of council magnolia without a hint of testosterone led decor. We looked at each other and laughed. Simon took his jacket off and threw himself onto the chosen bed, springs and metal bedstead grated with each other and let out a scream of industrial madness. "Fuck" I shouted, and i realised emabarrassingly that this was the first word I had spoken to the guy that now shared my life, but it seemed oh so relevant...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fab, looking forward to part two, maybe you could post on Wednesday! Gx