Beautiful Madness

When I was fifteen, I was raped by a Portugese boy who wore a bullet on a chain around his neck.
We had met earlier on in the day and I made the mistake of thinking he was nice and we arranged to see each other again.
He smoked cigarettes with alarming ease and had eyes the colour of black syrup.
It did not occur to me that he might be a Bad Person.
He suggested we take a walk along the beach and I agreed. For a while he was pleasant and talked about his dreams- of which there were many, and included, in no particular order:
earning enough to buy a good car
living in Chicago for a year
meeting Madonna
I listened politely, but the wind was picking up and my arms had goosebumps on them.
Then he said he wanted to kiss me and I let him, because I was fifteen and it seemed like that was what girls my age did, and I didn't mind anyway because he had eyes the colour of black syrup and wore a bullet on a chain around his neck.
The kiss was ok and I felt pleased that I had done it. Then I said I was cold and wanted to go back to my friend. He said that he was not ready to go and tried to kiss me again. This time something like a warning came on inside my head and I pushed him away and told him to stop.
Then he got all strange and his eyes got darker stll in a way I did not like so much and I realised something bad was going to happen.
I looked around but there was nobody.
He pushed me against the wall of a beach hut and took his trousers down, and there was something there, a muscle flexing, and I thought I knew what it was but I wasn't sure.
Then he got the thing out and it was large and scary and I knew what it was then.
I said I din't want to but he didn't listen.
He pulled up my dress and took down my knickers and pushed himself against me.
I was so scared I couldn't make a sound. It hurt. He pushed harder and this time it went inside me and it hurt.
I felt the bullet smacking against my neck as he stole my virginity, and I was so angry I had not seen it for what it was- an omen.
He didn't carry on for long, but it was enough. There was blood and I pulled my knickers up in the hope they would act like a sanitary towel.
I didn't know what to think. Was I pregnant now? I didn't know anything about these situations.
He was silent and stood looking at the sea, waiting while I pulled down my dress.
Then he turned to face me and his eyes were darker still- like a light that had once existed within them had been completely extinguished.
We walked back to where we had left my friend in silence, but when we arrived nobody was there and I realised she must be looking for me.
I told him this and he just shrugged his shoulders and said,
'I'll leave you to it.'
Then he wandered away, lighting up a cigarette, which glowed like a planet might when it dies.
I shivered for a while, just staring into the night, and then I heard my name being called, and I replied so I could be found and we could go home.

*

When I was little I loved dressing up.
But the standard Princess job was not good enough for me. No, I had to layer.
Dress over skirt over shawl over dress. And a crown of course. Probably made from cardboard- and daisies linked in somehow. A simple frock and shoes would have been far too mundane.
I would walk solemnly about, greeting the invisible frogs of my kingdom. I could see the dwarfs and the goblins- they hovered in the corners of my house. One night I flew down the stairs and they lined the sides- I could see them so clearly; the flashes of emerald green, the winks, the tassled hats.
They rejoiced in my adventure and I was Queen for a while on that hushed night, the sky outside a dark pit full of moon.

*

My friend found me and asked me if I was ok and I didn't want to upset her so I just nodded my head and we walked back to the Bed and Breakfast we were staying in.
However, when I went to the loo, there was a lot of blood still and I didn't know what to do, so I told her and she cried and then I cried a bit and felt better.
We decided we would have to go to a clinic in the morning which dealt with this kind of thing and with that agreed, we fell asleep in each others arms.
When I woke up, I felt groggy and uncomfortable, and did not know why- then I remembered what had happened and everything made sense. We left as quickly as we could and found a GP where a nice lady had a chat with me ( I lied) and said they could help me then and there without me having to go elsewhere. So I waited for a few minutes and then was called in to speak to a male doctor. I lied again and said I had had unprotected sex and need a morning after pill, because I realised I could not tell him what had really happened as I was too embarrassed and ashamed. He tut tutted at me and asked my age and somehow it was all quite simple and I got the pill. I swallowed it down in front of him and he explained it might mess up my periods for a bit.
I thanked him and left, realising I had lost my jacket (faux leather, shiny black) on the way to the GP.
This for some reason upset me more than anything else and I spent the entire walk to the train station in floods of tears.

*

In Hollywood, it seems everyone is expected to have perfect everything, which I find rather annoying and at the same time am probably brainwashed a bit by it too ( why do I shave my legs?)- which annoys me even more.
All the girls have perfect white teeth and faces that are pretty if you look kind of briefly at them. But if you study them a while, you start to see the imperfections that come from being perfect- like a lack of expression- even though they are probably smiling, a sort of mania in the eyes- like they are aware they are permanently running out of time, a blandness that covers the forehead and nose. They are so perfect they look odd and this makes them look kind of ugly.
Still, it's hard not to get drawn into this stuff one way or another. Men have expectations, we are told, sublimanly, and we'd better meet them. Though some men don't get affected by any of this obviously and don't care if you turn up to dinner with last night's make up on and a rice crispie dangling from your fringe.
It's what's inside that counts after all.

*

On the train we were subdued and I was obsessing over my jacket and where it could be.
I felt a bit sick and my friend was pale.
Somehow we had to get home and not give anything away.
My mum met us off the train us and I hugged her, wondering if she could tell, but she carried on as if everything was the same, and we told her the best bits and my friend even managed to make a joke about the weather.
We drove to her house and dropped her off, promising to speak soon. Her eyes did a teary thing but I shook my head and shut the car door.
My mum was in good spirits and told me about my brother and his latest craze which was lego.
It was all wonderfully, reasurringly normal and I gulped it down.

*

My mother is beautiful. Outside and in. She is older now, so the outside beauty is different- we all change. Her inside beauty is the same as it always was and I believe, always will be.
Her voice and skin can often bring me to tears- all good reasons, like memories which hurt a bit because they tug at your heart and you know one day they will be all you have got of a person. My love for my mother also hurts a bit too, because it's so powerful and often leaves me a little overwhelmed. At night sometimes in the dark, I feel my beating heart and breathe in and out slowly otherwise I will get panicky about what it means to love someone so much. My mother can have conversations, actual proper ones, where people take turns to speak and listen to what the other has just said. Most importantly, she has been doing this for as long as I can remember and when I was a child, she listened then too and treated me with respect.
Nothing beats respect. You don't command it, you earn it.

*

At school I felt out of place, like I had last seen it as the pure me and now was back as the corrupted me. I did not know how to act around my friends, who weren't really friends.
I started talking to this girl who was a bit wild and we found we got on.
It soon became much more appealing to go for walks together and smoke a joint, than to try and sit in Maths and wonder where my jacket was. Though I had to do that most of the time because I wasn't an idiot. So I formed a sort of balance, where I was in most mornings but towards the end of the day, when we had netball, I might suddenly get a headache and go to the nurse who was superbly vague and blind and offered a paracetamol with instructions to go back to the lesson as soon as I could (which she never checked to see if I had or not, and the P.E teacher thought I was with the nurse and also never checked) and I agreed and thanked her with my best smile to win brownie points for the next time- and disappeared for an hour or two.

*

I'm not religious but sometimes I would like to be.
I am what you might call Agnostic, which means:
1.
a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
adj.

(This is taken from the Free Online Dictionary - definition of agnostic).

*

We would wander down into the shrubland behind the school and lie on the grass and talk and smoke.
It was, I suppose, had we been in a film- a kind of 'coming of age' moment.
For better, for worse.
Our glossy hair fanned out behind us as we bunked school, smoking illegal drugs, our small breasts pointing out from beneath our striped shirts as we giggled and found things out about each other and ourselves. Looking back I find it strangely erotic- two girls in the early bloom of womanly youth having intimate discussions and realisations.
If only we had known how young we were.

*

I'm horribly scared of dying. It's not unusual, of course. It strikes me as odd sometimes that people are not just bellowing in the streets about it. But we all just have to get on with it. It's just sometimes it can hit me like a poker between the eyes: I am going to die. There really is no choice. You can't opt out of that one no matter what you do.

*

I started wearing short skirts. At first just to school, then at weekends as my social life got busier. It was my way of telling everyone I wasn't scared. That the Portugese boy had already done it, so I wasn't going to stand around denying I was attractive.
The devil-may-care attitude got me new friends and short-lived boyfriends. I would't let them sleep with me though. That would have been letting them be in control. Sex was power. that much I had learnt. What I was going to do with that information I still wasn't sure.

*

I have this reacurring dream where I am standing by a motorway, just watching all the cars go by. It is night and the headlights are beautiful. I watch the people going on with their lives and it makes me feel good, like there is always something to aim for, or live for or to get to. Even in the dark, they are still doing it. They haven't given up. They keep on going.

______________

(to be continued)