The Fragile Ordinary(17)

I didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of college boys.

I didn’t want to go to a party where no one knew me and wouldn’t care to know me.

I wanted my friends to just sleep over at my house so I wouldn’t be alone the entire weekend.

No doubt seeing the thought in my eyes, Vicki’s expression fell, disappointment clouding her features. She gazed at me in reproach, as if to say, You promised you’d try. And I had promised, hadn’t I?

Feeling angry butterflies at the thought, I nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

While Steph practically bounced in her seat with excitement, Vicki’s disappointment melted into gratitude. “Thank you.”

I smiled in return, but inside I was already dreading this weekend more than I dreaded end-of-term exams.

*

When the girls asked me if I wanted to hang out with them after school the plan had always been to lie and tell them I had a dentist appointment. Before lunch I would have felt bad about the lie, but after stewing over our conversation in the cafeteria I didn’t feel guilty about heading into the city without them. Being corralled into doing something I didn’t want to—being made to feel guilty for not wanting to go to some party with strangers—made me feel resentful. It also made me feel even more insecure than normal. While most days I could argue that wanting to live inside the world of books more than I wanted to live in the real world was perfectly rational considering how boring and sad my life was, there were days like today when I couldn’t. Because Vicki and Steph made it seem like it wasn’t normal. And maybe they were right.

Maybe there was something wrong with me.

Maybe I really was a weirdo.

Good thing I was going to the one place I didn’t feel that way.

After school I hurried home and changed out of my uniform, and then I caught the bus from Portobello High Street in the center of town. It took me into the city, to Edinburgh University, and from there I walked to Tollcross where my favorite café was. Pan was this almost ludicrously hipster café for poets and artists. There was a mishmash of murals painted on the walls, and a gallimaufry of furniture, including tables and chairs, sofas, armchairs and beanbags. Rugs of all sizes and colors had been thrown across the scuffed hardwood floors, and the café counter was discernible as such only because of the coffee machine behind it and the cake stands on it. At the far end of the room a small stage with a mic awaited poets and musicians. While I ordered my usual—a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top—a young guy, around college age, was onstage reading a poem from the crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

Taking a seat at the back of the room, loving how no one here paid attention to me or my ruby-red Dorothy shoes, I took a sip of my hot chocolate and listened. The guy’s voice trembled and his hands shook, but it was hard to tell if it was from nerves or because of the subject of his poem.

“It was like a knife of white heat

Plunged into my chest

Exploding in a myriad of pain and anger.

Like a long lost letter unopened,

Its pages waiting to bring

A sudden dawning;

To complete a puzzle that once

Had been so difficult

For a little boy to understand.

The realization is consuming in its accompanied rage.

Does he know what he did?

A little boy suffers as another

Parades his falsities

To an audience of jesters.

His teardrops fall

Among the court of

Villains and victims,

Whilst another’s falls silently

Behind his eyes and down

Over his broken heart.”

As much as I loved being at Pan, soaking in the good and the bad poetry and the fact that you could be a purple elephant in this room and no one would care, I could never dream of getting up on that stage and reading my own poetry aloud. It was only upon visiting the café that I’d discovered something depressing. Apparently, I belonged to a group of poets that had fallen out of fashion.

A poet whose poetry rhymed.

The only poets here who rhymed were the spoken word artists—those who wrote slam poetry.

I wasn’t a spoken word artist.

And the only other kind of poet I’d come across in Pan were the free verse poets. Maybe rhyming wasn’t cool anymore. I was a lover of Robert Burns, William Blake and John Donne. I loved rhyming. I loved the challenge of it. But I knew that a lot of people thought rhyme felt forced and that poets shouldn’t be constrained by it.

Being in the minority didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my work. Pan was the one place where no one made me feel abnormal. I did not want to put myself in the position of being judged by a crowd of people I admired.

Shoving my worries aside, I lost myself in other people’s thoughts, emotions and imaginations. The poetry café was another escape. The surrealism of the venue, with its murals and tie-dyed fabric billowing across the ceiling like a canopy, made it feel as if I had walked into a dream. Here, I was in a bubble in the same way I was when I cracked open a book. Yet, it was different because I was alone without really being alone. I was surrounded by real live people who liked the bubble just as much as I did.

“Comet?”

The familiar voice made me tense.

No.

This wasn’t happening.

Not here, where I was perfectly anonymous.