Theme Park at its Darkest

Conclusion

The truest indicator of a story’s legitimacy is ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ test:

‘He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.’

Before I write anything, I’ll often verbally try out an idea on my friends to see if it draws them in. If it works, it convinces me that I have the right to their attention. There is a degree of conceit in expecting someone to listen to your story, so essentially, it needs to ultimately be about them.

Being bullied at high school is a universal story, and every listener reacted with absolute horror at the part where he grabbed me by the nuts in the supermarket, issuing exclamations of horror and often, iteration of the phrase, ‘sexual assault.’ 

After the exchange of text messages, J- simply disappeared. V- and I had a minor disagreement also, and have since stopped talking. I haven’t pursued it, as I think she’s probably had to give up our friendship.

She posted a photo on Facebook of the two of them at MONA. It’s a terribly awkward photo, the selfie almost always looking awkward when taken by the middle-aged person; as a form, it definitely belongs to the millennials. She looks like she’s lost and angry, and he just looks terrible. He looks like he’s aged into his sixties.

As for myself, this is a long, convoluted selfie that essentially went nowhere. I began writing it mid-2023, when most of the events transpired. Writing a story as it’s happening puts you in a very strange, uncanny place, as you can feel the resolution bearing down on you like the boulder that chases Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but unable to actually see it.

Writing this was a huge piece of work. I could have held onto it and fashioned a fictional climax, but that didn’t feel morally correct; a blog, or this blog, at least, requires I tell as much of the truth as I can manage.

My speculation about his silence is that he is scared of the confrontation, but doesn’t care enough about his own sense of honour or masculinity to front up. Perhaps he is wiser than I am in this respect; it is obvious to me now (and was probably obvious to you, the reader) that he has been crucially wounded and humiliated, and all he really wants is his relationship with V- to work. Pathetic, but understandable.

Perhaps all my sabre-rattling is proof of immaturity. Something about my high-school experience has become lodged inside me that I don’t have the strength, or insight, or maturity, to let go of.

As always, the reader is correct. I am trapped inside the cat’s eye; in fact, I am probably the piece of plastic within the prism that creates the optical effect in the first instance.    

This entry was posted on April 30, 2024 at 10:20 pm and is filed under The Duel with tags Harvey Keitel, Indiana Jones, MONA, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Duellists, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 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.