When I tell people that I fancied my English teacher, which, on the whole, I often do, I’m always concerned that what they are picturing is something horribly saccarine and cliched, that they are, in effect, imagining my life as some sort of black and white 40s film entitled “Growing Pains” in which I am played by Shirley Temple and he is played by Jimmy Stewart. Shirley thinks she is attracted to Jimmy because she isn’t really an adult yet and is mistaking her love of English and her respect for Jimmy’s position of authority for an emotion, fortunately Jimmy is kind and understanding and guides Shirley through this period of her life without once giving her a quick feel until, a few months down the line, she meets a nice non-threatening boy of her own age and all the issues are resolved and everyone feels developed (even though their characters are deeply underdeveloped).
If people are imagining this I can’t say I blame them, it’s the sort of thing that the words “I fancied my English teacher” naturally conjure up, but it wasn’t like that at all.
If there were to be a film of it I would probably be played by an unknown Lithuanian prostitute turned actress and he would be played by Owen Wilson in prosthetics. It would just be that kind of film. “Die Schmerz de Wachstums” would be painfully long at a full 3 hours and almost nothing would happen for the first two. Rather than being full of mutual respect and Shirley Temple songs it would instead be full of a lot of unresolved mutual sexuality. David Lynch would direct the last five minutes of it which would be entirely comprised of horrible flashing images set to the music of Wagner. It would end abruptly.
Incase no one ever makes it though, and we all pray they don’t, I’ll give you a quick relatively unemotional run-down here.
When I had first met him, aged 13, there had probably been something very innocent and pure about the whole business. All at once I had looked across a crowded room/assembly hall, etc. It had never been what my mother termed "respect and admiration" (this was her cover-all for any emotion experienced by people under 30,) but was from the start, on my side, a fully committed adult relationship, I really put myself into it.
For the first few years I figured that when he came to his senses and reciprocated we would probably have to move to a moor, away from the society that would judge us so, and closer to rivers and streams and other things that were pure, like our love.
For the few years after that (or if you prefer, the second hour of the film) I figured that moving was not strictly necessary and that we could probably get by with just fooling about in a low key way between lessons and after school at his flat. There didn't have to be anything particularly star-crossed about our relationship, just a faint mutual affection and a great deal of soaring well-orchestrated sex. We both liked Blackadder and The Clash which was enough to see us home in terms of common ground. I wasn't a stunner but I didn't still look like a child and I wasn't actively hideous. We were well suited enough for a brief affair. Surely?
By the time I reached sixth form, having given of myself in our imaginary relationship for five years, I had effectively run out of patience and wanted him to just give me a hard screw so we could all move on with our lives. I mean really! How long did I have to wait? I was actually in his class now which I had never been before, the oppertunities were plentiful and he had clocked up five years of sex debt. It didn’t even have to be good, it would probably be quite angry sex, but just something to speedily lay to rest the now time honoured link between him and romance. Every so often I would still think of him in his moor-bound capacity, or of us wandering back to his flat, but mostly I was impatient and unreasonably convinced of my own entitlement to him, rather than lovelorn.
Towards the end of the first year in sixth form, for no reason, he showed us a film about nuclear war. Ah, Mr Lynch, how good of you to step in. He took real glee in how distressing it was and it was distressing, the certificate was only a 15 but I really don't trust anyone, 15 or otherwise, that could weather that film, uneffected by it. It had been banned, and while I'm not pro-censorship it deserved to be and the British Film Board aught to have burned all copies of it while they were at it. The subject wasn’t something I had ever really thought about before. I realise looking back that this was because my brain was storing up a lifetimes worth of occasionally thinking about nuclear war in order to compress it into a period of about six months during which time I would be lucky if an hour went by without me graphically and horrifically envisaging it. It made my brain melt.
I wont bore you with the details of the months directly following my viewing of the film during which time my melted brain settled in a trembling pool at the bottom of my skull, completely incapacitating me. Someone told me about a month ago that when I say “melting brain” what I actually mean is “adjustment disorder” Aside from the fact that this sounds like something that people who have had their gender realligned go through a month into the change, I felt that it might be a bit hasty as a diagnosis. I am fairly convinced that that type of thing usually comes on after divorce or redundancy or trauma, and I think that “after watching a nasty film” would probably be conspicuously absent from a list of precipitating factors. But whether pathological or otherwise my point is that the long term effects of my Melting Disorder were that teacher and Film sort of became inextricably bound up in my jellied mind.
This did mean that the link between him and romance was laid to rest, though in a much less sexy and much more vomity way than I would have liked. I didn’t not fancy him but I now couldn’t even imagine him but he was surronded by firey death and laughing gleefully at it, the moor on which our mansion of gothic romance had stood was now an irradiated tundra and whenever we went to walk close by the rivers or streams I found that there were dead radiation burnt children floating in them. If we walked back to his flat after school the people of Rochester highstreet were invariably vomiting up their stomach linings, crawling, weeping, eating their own afterbirths and reaching out quivering hands to us for help. It’s hard to stay aroused when that kind of thing is going on.
He left the school shortly afterwards in a blaze of radiation poisoning and horror. I wasn’t glad to see the back of him because he still owed me some sex but on the other hand it would be nice not to have a daily reminder of the fact that humanity would soon end in a poisonous-fireball of it’s own creation. I think his last words to us as a class were “now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds,” either that or “Fuck The Leather-Clad Head!”.
I forget.
But anyway that is “Die Schmerz de Wachstum” from it’s innocent beginning, through the 2 hours/five years that doesn’t have a plot, to the traumatically Lynchian ending. I basically enjoyed the ride apart from that last bit, and besides my brain has re-solidified now and I only occasionally almost vomit in fear when I mistake fire alarms for the five minute warning. I’d be happy if I saw him again to either write off or receive that sex debt he so clearly owes me. His choice.
If some poor filmicly progressive soul does make “Die Schmerz de Wachstum” I hope they do a good amount of audience testing to ensure that it won't melt anyones brain and that if the BBC shows it once and bans it that the people in charge of the DVD realise give it a higher certificate than 15. They can stick this post on the DVD extras, too. Just a thought.
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