You’ve seen it all before.
Two young men, full of beer-fuelled rage, are squaring up to one another in the middle of the road. They pull off their shirts and begin scrapping. A third youth circles the pair, a self-appointed referee; in this kind of contest there is an unwritten code, and keeping to it is as important as the outcome.
The fight has attracted two or three dozen other spectators. Like you, they have little else to do but watch the spectacle reach its predictably inconclusive denouement. The last buses have gone and taxi drivers know better than to cruise for business in this part of town at closing time on a Bank Holiday Monday.
But not everyone is obsessed with the action. A group of scantily clad girls are talking in low voices, casting furtive glances in the direction of someone they recognise. You catch one or two of their words; they leave you in no doubt that this individual is a shady, sordid character, a wrongdoer, an undesirable.
Yes, you’ve seen it all before.
But this time there’s a difference.
The person they’re whispering about is you.
Slinking away through unlit back streets, your shame clings to you like a bad smell. It’s no consolation to know that your conscience is clear, that you committed no crime. You took a risk, and now your reputation is in ruins. The responsibility for that lies with no one but yourself.
It takes you an hour to walk home. A rolling news channel plays inside your head, the topic under discussion the events of three weeks ago. Voices you fear may never leave you, each one changing your life for ever.
An allegation which, if substantiated, we would have to regard as gross misconduct.
You are strongly advised to have a solicitor present during the interview.
That guy they mentioned in last night’s paper…was it you?
I don’t care whether you want to talk about it or not, your mother’s stood next to me in tears…
And it’s all down to an error of judgement. You thought that it was okay to show the boy sympathy, to tell him you felt the same way, to put an arm around his shoulder and assure him that there was nothing wrong with having those desires.
Well, it wasn’t. He took it the wrong way. You would have done the same at his age. Of course you would.
You try to look on the bright side. You haven’t been arrested. You’ve been told that you’re unlikely to be charged with an offence. Your family and friends have stuck by you.
It doesn’t work. You’ve lost too much.
Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. You weren’t happy, you know that. Could this be the moment you’ve been waiting for?
A new town, a new job?
A new name?
But when you imagine writing that letter of resignation, knowing every word will be seen as an admission of guilt…
You’ll see this through. Face it, you haven’t got the guts for a completely fresh start.
Or the figure to wear that dress you’ve kept in the wardrobe for more than a year.
You walk on, every step taking you closer to the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.
Comments
Not entirely sure...
On the good side, I like the internal monologue and the clear ambivalence the main character has. The fact that he's passing by a fight scene shows that he's still trying to function in what I assume passes for his normal life.
On the bad, I'm unclear what 'the event' was. Some ambiguity is fine, but this one is so vague that it overshadows the rest of his monologue. If that's what you were going for, good job. But it feels like you wanted the narrator to be sympathetic, and that's hard at the moment when his 'error of judgment' is so undefined.
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Thanks for pointing that out,
Thanks for pointing that out, Titania. It was clear to me, but then I've had the story in my head for two or three weeks.
The protagonist is innocent of everything except stupidity. The days when anyone working with young people would risk being alone with one of their charges, let alone coming into physical contact with them, have long gone. Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps not.
In that case...
I understand that all too well. Having something clear in your head makes it too easy to gloss over it on the page. But let me take my guess then, and see how much came across.
The character was a teacher - I'm not 100% on this since teachers aren't known for casually passing by street fights, but maybe from an inner city school? Anyway, teacher... He tried to counsel a boy who was being teased about being gay. The boy either misinterpreted or misrepresented it as a come-on and that started a massive overreaction.
Was that close to what you'd intended?
Like I said, that was my best guess, but I had just enough hints to take it the opposite as well.
Still enjoyable to read, and obviously it had me thinking about it,
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
You're more or less spot on.
You're more or less spot on. If that's not a complete contradiction!
What I wanted to get across was the conflict this character experiences. He knows he acted with the best of intentions, but in the eyes of the world he's now lumped in with the kind of people he's always detested.
The fight scene was similar to one I witnessed in Hartlepool about 15 years ago. It was stags locking antlers, nothing more. But you don't get involved, because that's when it turns violent.
very different
Interesting use of 2nd person narrative. I hope there's a part 2?
Nothing planned at this
Nothing planned at this stage.
As for the 2nd person narrative, I guess I've been listening to too much crime fiction on BBC radio.
Really good to read.
I really like the neutral outside party narration. It is also a very pointed social cometary about the state of the world thank you for writing this.
Huggles
Michele
PS I truly understand the point of the dialog in your head not being understandable to those outside of your head. The " it sounded so good when I wrote it down" let down.
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Good but...
Could use some fleshing out. Was this an intentional fragment? It feels like part of a story. But a really interesting part!
Looking forward to more and thanks for sharing.
I liked it.... and it made me remember....
.... leaving a Transformation store in Manchester (200 miles from home) dressed in a business suit I'd bought that day, made up and wearing a lovely dark auburn wig that I'd owned for a year but never worn....... going out into my car and setting off driving, with underwear and heels I'd bought and never worn, around the streets of Prestwich, where I'd never been..... stopping at the gates of a municipal park - where I had no idea if people got mugged - and I got out and went for a walk!!! Mad???? I felt I was, but I also felt inspired, because I'd planned it all - the buying of the skirt and top, the heels, the transformation with make-up and a hour sitting just relaxing before going out......
Was that an error of judgement? No, because I wasn't mugged.... I didn't see a fight... I wasn't recognized....
I was a woman at last - free, for a few hours!
xx
Not Sure
I'm not sure if his faux pas was in putting his arm around the boy's shoulder, or something else. If the boy was tormented by being falsely accused of being gay, or falsely called a girl, or falsely accused of wanting to be a girl, and one reassures him that it's okay to be gay, okay to be a girl, etc., then he will react badly.
If a boy insists that his name is John, and a bully insists on calling him `Alice' and a girl, who would one believe? The sane answer is obvious, yet oh so often, the bully is believed. Perhaps denial of the bully's claim, and screams to stop it, are taken subconsciously as affirmation of the claim. Perhaps some random guy -- might even be a teacher -- comes along and calls him `Alice', and then is perplexed when the boy tells him that his name is `John'.
Perhaps it didn't happen in this story, but when the tormented boy finally reacts badly, the tormented boy is the one punished.
In "Back to the Future", when George is being bullied by Biff, Strickland goes straight for George and chews him out.
-- Daphne Xu
Thinking of himself
The mistake is he sees himself in the young boy and wishes to give him the solace he wished someone would have given him. Now faced with a giant misunderstanding as to his intentions there is little wiggle room. He feels he has nothing left to lose so why not go down fighting the useless fight. It won't make things better but he's like one of the men he saw fighting - he gets it out of his system for the moment. No wiser a choice than the two guys squaring off for little or no reason.It's another version of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
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