It was Art School

It was Art School, the National (and the only) Art school South Africa had back then, so it felt like a privilege to have been accepted in. Others there might have thought the privilege was on the side of the school, lucky enough as it was to have them there.
I was weird, and I knew it. Even I didn’t like me.
Why didn’t I just die? As events unfolded and classmates took on names and faces, and attitudes that told me which ones would possibly hang with me and which would positively not, I began to plot a plausible way to live then, if death was not going to be an option.
I would be nicer, sweeter, chattier, like the rest of them, the popular ones at least.

Somehow that fear just took over me, the same fear I had when my mother would address me, usually shouting, or at least through clenched teeth. I can’t say I understand why, but suddenly, I was afraid. They all seemed so much bigger than me. These were not simple folk, who I could dupe with my big talking. Oh no. These were smart kids, rich kids, worldly kids. These were educated, informed, experienced in ‘the things of the world’, as my Sunday school teacher would have put it. One girl drew her boyfriend’s penis from memory in an art project. Unthinkable! I didn’t even know what a penis looked like. Well yes, I had touched one, my boyfriend’s, once. But I never looked, and even if I had, I would have had to look a whole lotta times to be able to draw a thing like that from memory!
Then there was the girl with the awesomely entertaining boyfriend and life and family, who would tell us all lip-smacking stories at break time about how cool she really just was. The truth is that she really was cool, and I bet her boyfriend was too, and even her gran, who they spoke to nastily, it seemed, for good effect.
I counted myself awesomely lucky to have a few indifferent ones mixed in the bunch. They didn’t seem to care if I was their friend or not. That I could work with. But the fear made me want to be bigger, cooler sometimes. So I invented stuff, things I would do, places I would go. I let that ‘other person’ live a bit, like I did at home where I couldn’t be me. ‘Cept these kids were sharp – they sniffed me out! And quickly! The one ‘indifferent’ girl wanted nothing more to do with me. She was furious at my lies.