The Night Before

I started out as a normal kid. I was brought up on a diet of American television, somehow ignoring the moral lessons always implanted within their plots. I was amazed by their ideas of the truth, of what is ‘real’. They were, for the most part, Disney cartoons, ridden with stereotypical portrayals of Jamaican crabs and Arabic monkeys. Masked in ‘political correctness’ and morality, they left me cold.

My home and family were the typical childhood dreams of aspiring businessmen across the Western world; a North London double-fronted, semi-detached, 4x4 in the driveway, the Independent on the breakfast counter, Radio 4’s tones echoing around the conservatory daily and two point four children scraping Aryan skin on the patio. I never wished to subscribe to liberal society, but it was a condition of living in leafy Islington. I even thought that rebellion was far too passé, so I did my utmost to accept the ideas of my parents, but still struggled with some of their ideologies. As you will see I have the tendency to over-intellectualize and tore apart my family’s views on immigration, race relations and particularly religion. Many would argue that this in fact was conformity, but since the fall of man, humanity has done everything before, and I thought it was time to give up striving to be an individual – someone who’d turn out to simply be just like everyone else.

My particular vice isn’t simple drug abuse or a failing character trait; I have not yet surrendered to either, though no doubt others would disagree. I find solace through belief in something greater; I suppose I call it a ‘God’, because all I see around me is yet another lost generation. Each of us floats about in the ether with no purpose, no moral compass. It seems to me that we are just small particles of dust in an unkempt room, all of us bumping into one another with little care for the world outside. I do not want to be that and I do not want to do that. I want a purpose to die, not a reason to live. Once I’ve found that, I’ve found something worth fighting for. But until then I’ll ‘fight for my right to party’, as the song goes, and let my moral compass lead me astray.

Unfortunately for my unassuming associates, when they collided with the moral messiah that was me, shit happened.

____________

My whole life was infused with an overdose of American culture. As a younger child I was in love with the sweet rhetoric of American music heroes like Miles Davis and Billy Joel. This quickly turned to cynicism, however, as throughout my early teens I found life to be the opposite of this kind of fiction. When so many other musicians seemed to harp on about how the teenage years are the best we have - falling in and out of love being the highlight - Weezer didn’t: they wrote songs I connected with. Songs like ‘Tired of Sex’. Thank God for bands like them, because I was never given the ‘birds and the bees’ talk. I never had the childhood sweetheart many seemed to have had. I only cared for my own emotions.

I became mired in the empty teachings of secular love and learnt my sexual education from the pornography on the Internet. I soon found myself surrounded by airbrushed genitalia and well-endowed actors, all fantasies that set the bar way too high for my first experiences. The only thing that came close to the reality was the faking of it all. I didn’t change my behaviour to try and rectify this – in fact, I did the opposite; I began to adopt the detached emotions to sex from the images of cleanly shaved, well-tanned Californian girls and guys.
My overuse of the Internet started me thinking that I was getting lost in the digital age, in the noughts and the ones that swirled invisibly around my head without even moving a hair upon my perhaps overly groomed body.

Now I find myself several streets away from my house. I catch a glimpse of July 6th’s Daily Mail on the black marble worktop of Osrick’s Islington home. Osrick was not a friend; he was one of the acquaintances I bumped into when I was out at night, usually in East London. I never truly connected with him, he had a constant disregard for any of the morals I held dear. I’d always watch Osrick laughing and indulging himself in multiple forms of drug abuse whenever we were out. From this I gathered his only passion was to seek pleasure however meaningless or insignificant, and this bothered me.

As I contemplated my host’s personality traits, the Georgian door to the garden opened with an abrupt swing, and the sound of adolescent angst could be heard over the sirens echoing around the streets. It sounded like a restrained arguing interrupted by laughter.
“You better not be planning on dropping all of those, I put in for half that shit”, someone said to me.
“Would I ever do that to you Osrick?” I say, pausing as I smirk. “Nahh, I’m just eyeing up your sister actually, she’s a bit of alright, ya know?” I continued.
“No, I don’t actually Macbeth. She is my sister and all… You tosser.” Osrick probably did know, how could he not? It’s not often you were graced by six foot blondes with the bone structure of a Greek Goddess in central London. Furthermore it was a well-known fact at most North London Colleges that she was the best-looking girl within a five-mile radius.
“How old is Juliet anyway?” I ask.
“She’s fifteen, and if you lay a hand on her I’ll stab you in the back”. Osrick said.
The pathetic threat did little to disturb me as I stared transfixed at the wooden frame in which there was a family photo of Juliet lay. The picture must have been taken on holiday, for her tan was natural and even, unlikely to have been found in a London Summer.
“Well”, I say, trying to keep a straight face. “Text me on her sixteenth birthday, she’ll be legal then…”
“Don’t try and change the subject Macbeth. Just give me the fucking bag.” Without hesitation I handed him the see-through plastic wallet. The bag, which was probably once used for containing some menial item of stationary, now enclosed six perfectly shaped objects that reminded me of candy, and my childhood. I remembered my mother’s favourite motto, ‘You’ll ruin your appetite Macbeth!” as I thought about the similarities between the two.

“Escalus said these will fuck us up for a good few days, they are just in from some shit hole in Eastern Europe apparently…” Osrick seemed rather confident.
“More like Dagenham…” I rebutted.
“Well that’s just some shit hole in west London - and Macbeth, don’t be so dismissive.”
“Can you cough up the twenty quid you still owe me for these?” Osrick asked.
“It’s in East London. And…” collecting my thoughts I continued, “just subtract that from the eighty you still owe me for that coke you ‘borrowed’ off me two weeks ago.”
There was an unintentional sharp tone in my voice, as if my true I feelings were escaping. Osrick ignored my statement and replied hesitantly,
“What’s in East London?”
“Dagenham…that’s in East London!” I laughed.
“Oh, fuck that! And… and… and,” he stuttered, “Macbeth don’t live in the past”, chuckling as he spoke, “You’ll just dig up too many old graves, and you wouldn’t want that coming between old friends like us, would you…?”
“If we’re ‘friends’, Osrick, how come I don’t know you surname?” I said, as I looked him up and down.
“Macbeth, it’s time you stopped being a loner. There’s a party outside, come out and socialize…You can stop perving on my sis, while you’re at it, too.” Osrick said.

I had no need to reply, I thought. Osrick thought he was funny - a jester perhaps, but I didn’t want to waste a night arguing with him. However, this didn’t stop me from saying to myself, I really hope you die, as I watched him walk away.

“Good…”Osrick continued, whilst standing in the doorway.
“I’ll be out in a second”, I said, leaning over the kitchen island - a strange affair that looked as though it had been ripped right out of an American T.V. soap - to retrieve a full bottle of Absolut Vodka.
“Good idea, Osrick said, “Bring that too.”
I thought about leaving the alcohol there just to be contrary, but I didn’t wish to cross my host. Osrick is the type of person who takes the credit for everything, but to me this just seems like an insecurity. I guess I want him to be as insecure as I am. I thought that this belief that insecurities would fail us all is probably just a fear of reality, and I did all I could to hide this from everybody else. I guess this made me an actor worthy of an Academy Award, but I shall get onto that later.
I caught my reflection in a George Foreman Grill and checked my hair before leaving for the garden. “Fucking Americans,” I mumbled to myself as I checked my pocket for an unopened pack of Marlboro lights. I grabbed the Russian vodka and made safe my iPod. Osrick carelessly swung the Georgian door open until it nearly fell off its brass hinges and lead the way into the warm summer night.

The garden was abuzz with the mellifluous voices of no doubt privately educated teens. Having been to my fair share of these kinds of parties, this sound was more like white noise; something a person gets used to over time.
But for all the beautifully delivered words there was the occasional colloquialism, which cut through the air straight to my ungrateful ears. For most of the time I tried not to let this bother me, but tonight this attitude was rife, as thick as smoke in an East London pub.

As I gazed around the garden, which was still speckling with the last rays of summer’s twilight, I wondered if this beauty was imaginary. As I was thinking this Osrick spoke quietly in my ear,
“There she blows”, he said, pointing across the garden.
“You wish she did...” I replied, slightly too loud for his liking.
“I’d like to see you get Ophelia’s number!” Osrick challenged me.
“You only got her number because she borrowed your phone to call home…” I could see where this conversation was leading, nowhere to be exact and I looked for a way out.
“Well she’s here now, isn’t she?” Osrick said, as if he had won the debate. I let him believe this and told him to go put some fucking music on so I wouldn’t have to hear a boy talk about his dad’s new BMW and how he recognizes the girl he’s trying to chat up from Synagogue school. This girl, who must be a ‘Tangerine dusk’ on the Dulux colour chart for the obsessive amounts of fake tan that cover her skin, looks far less than enthused. They’ll marry, I think to myself. And she’ll be content with the Aga hob and Smeg fridges he’ll buy her and he’ll be overjoyed, well, adequately pleased by the standard of oral sex he’ll receive weekly. The experience with businessmen twice her age in overpriced nightclubs in Leicester Square in her teens would now come good, I mused.
“Ahh, true ‘lurve’,” I mutter, as I breathe in through my nostrils the warm smell of summer and take a seat.
The bench I am sitting on is directly in Ophelia’s line of sight. There she is with her perfect posture. She’s sitting slightly away from her friends but is perfectly framed by the trellis behind. I can only make out her beautiful silhouette due to the light from the five cigarettes her friends are smoking, which are illuminating the London sky and the half-dozen girls.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask upon Osrick’s return, genuinely disgusted at his music taste.
“This is Kanye West’s new album, ‘Late Registration’, how sick is it?!” He says, with a smile.
“How sick is it?” I answer. “It makes me sick. Who do you think I am? Do you think I’m from effing Brixton?!”
“You’re a fucking racist faggot, Macbeth.” Osrick said.
“I’m not.” I say. “I’m just a realist. I realise I am a posh white boy. So how do you expect me to relate to a black American rapper? A rapper who glamorizes everything I loathe?” Osrick seemed to be keen to continue.
“You only loathe that, because you are lucky enough to have been surrounded my money your whole life Macbeth. You take it for granted.”
“And you don’t, I supposed? I may have been surrounded by money, but not excess, and diamond encrusted toilet seats! I’m fucking changing this shit before I hit you.”
Before Osrick can make a snide comment I stand up and head for the iPod, smiling as I imagine myself the winner of the this particular argument. I’m now moving through the crowd that has surrounded the kitchen door since I last left the room. I’m making a conscious effort not to trip up on the uneven patio, trying not to humiliate myself. Thankfully I don’t succumb to this humiliation like usual and I push someone smaller than me aside, trying find where that hideous music is coming from.