Curriculum Vitae - GCSE RESULTS
I guess school isn’t for everyone. It’s only when I look back at the time that I spent in ‘formal’ education that I realise that maybe it was for me. It should have been, at least. At the time I saw this institution as the pillow being gently – but firmly- pressed against the face of my dormant potential. I was a snowflake. An Individual. Looking back across this past in possession of albums of repressed memory photographs, all of this individual with self-cut dyed black hair standing with, and looking identical to, all his individual friends; it is easy to judge. I do however have to give myself some small credit for maintaining such strength of conviction, regardless of what pissant convictions they might have been.
The day that all of the newly released damned were called back to pick up our certificates of results, I was working. I had started work in my father’s office some time back; filing, typing, balancing cheque books – that sort of thing – in exchange for small change that to me was a fortune. I made my way to the school to collect the envelope that everyone said would contain my future. I opened it.
I should have applied myself.
I knew that there was going to be a party going on that night in someone’s house in the town, where there would be liquor and girls and music to celebrate the culmination of five lost years. It was all so… expected. I had caught word of another party going on in a park on the outskirts of town, A party for those above the vapid flag-waving and pageantry of the common herd. I didn’t know anyone that was going, but it had to be better than the prospective disappointment faced in the moribund reality of my classmates.
I finished out the rest of the day and bought a cheap bottle of wine, before heading out to the park in search of some new Bread and Cheese Club, some enlightened. I arrived and saw a warmth beating against some trees in the distance and as I grew closer I saw I was heading towards a small group of similarly aged youths huddled around a paltry fire for warmth. They had hardly the motivation to greet me, instead gesturing blindly in my general direction. There was no conversation between them and I surmised that they all must have come alone, all in hope of something greater, something not found in the company of peers but in the unbroken experience and company of uniquity.
I had neglected to bring a corkscrew so in desperation I smashed the neck off the bottle, being careful to catch every fallen shard. I brought it up to my lips for the first and only time and drunk deep, gouging and splitting laterally my pursed lip on the rough hewn edgeglass. Silently, I stood idly fording the stream of blood with my tongue as it filled my mouth with its metallic bite and I looked around at the wastrels and vagabonds surrounding me. How sad they seemed, slumped with nothing but ego and frustration to elevate themselves above those in the town, dancing, laughing, enjoying the last honest moments of youth. What had I become. I left them where they sat and wondered back into the midnight streets lost in the wash of orange lamplight. After some time I ran into somebody that I had met once or twice who permitted me a cold and uncomfortable night’s sleep in his summerhouse.
I can’t honestly now say that I am a completely separate person from that night’s wandering manchild and I do still , and should hope that we all, get that urge to tear away from the herd more than just every once in a while. Though now, every time I feel that self-important voice rise up within me though, shouting against the validity of others, sending me out alone towards flickering lights in the darkness, I try to think of those sad nameless faces around the waning fire. Sitting there forever smugly validating themselves in the black hollows of each others’ eyes.
