Theme Park at its Darkest

The Antagonist

J- kicked the football towards the sun, leaping into the air as the ball sprang from his extended foot. It continued to climb as he returned to earth, his kicking leg gracefully extended as if it willed the ball forward on its ascent, its slow pendulous flight in sharp contrast to the chaotic spread of the players beneath it.

In that single, incandescent moment, the high-school hierarchy was set. It was as undeniable as gravity, and we felt it at dancing classes when all the best-looking girls to whom you had stitched your most ardent secret fantasies made a bee line for him.

He was square-jawed and handsome; stubble at sixteen. I remember the way his legs looked in a pair of shorts; they had planes, and were covered in curly hair. At seventeen, he was a man.

I was little more than a tangle of disorganised limbs. My legs were, in comparison, long and thin and almost completely hairless. I looked like a pair of pliers wearing shorts. My curly hair grew straight up and away from my head like an explosion.

I played house football once. I was instructed to go into the centre as I was tall and should therefore be the ruckman. I had no idea of the rules. I was yelled at that I had to jump for the ball.

I’d played some basketball when I was younger, so when the ball went up, I jumped for it and was surprised by the impact of the other ruckman as he sank his stops into my leg. I was shoved sideways on the way back to earth and the whole game tilted away from me.

Later, I came into possession of the ball, purely because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suddenly surrounded by screaming players, all making identical shouting faces regardless of the colours of their jerseys, I ran a few steps, someone blew a whistle and the ball was taken from me.

To this day, I still don’t know what I did wrong. I had no idea what the hell I was doing but the proof I was incapable was both public and undeniable.

After that, the only sports team I joined was the first eighteen smokers. I avoided sports like the plague. I just couldn’t stand to have the proof of why I was such a failure, why I was so weak and ugly, shoved into my face in a public forum.  

My mother said that it was a good thing I went to boarding school because she was worried about what my father would do to me if I stayed living at home. Unfortunately, once I graduated from school, I had to move back.

My father insisted on referring to me as a boy, and did so pointedly in front of other adults. He had always been moody, and would lash out physically when he’d reached the limit of whatever was on his mind. Anyhow, one particular day, he struck me after I let a door slam in the wind.

I agonised about it all day and that night, did what I thought I needed to do. I confronted my father and tried to talk to him about the way he had treated me and how it made me feel.

He refused to listen, or discuss, and shouted at me until I backed down and cried, drenched in shame, while my mother watched from the shadows.  

This entry was posted on January 19, 2024 at 6:25 am and is filed under The Duel with tags boarding school, Football, ruckman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.