empire. I’m remembering how it felt to be fifteen, us lot, in a
party, feeling like the world was ours, like we fuckin’ owned it. I’m remembering how we cared about each other, how we got in fights for each other and robbed Tescos15 and built fires and got off our faces, it was exciting, wasn’t it? It felt real.
What even happened to us? We go parties now, and we’ve got nothing to say to each other ’til we’re fucked. And even then. We spend hours talking about parties from before, things that happened to us once, we spend life retelling life and it’s pointless and boring.
And so, I’m staring out at the kids, watching them slouching in their chairs and playing with their phones and suddenly I’m remembering the other day, sunlight through the window of a hot train, I’m sat there, heading into town, and there’s a group of ten or fifteen boys on some kind of field trip with their teacher, and they’re wearing nice uniforms, they must have been from a private school or something. I mean, I listened to them talking to each other and I wanted to cry, coz these were young men with beautiful voices and healthy hair and good posture, talking to each other in perfect English, and helping each other with equations and fuckin’ algebra and asking each other questions about how
to say this or that particular thing in French, and it didn’t seem fair. I thought of the kids here, in my class, with their squinty eyes and bad skin, mouths full of swear words and silence, and it didn’t seem fair. And I’m stood there and I
feel like bursting into tears and telling them all to run out on the streets and smash windows or something, do something. I want to tell them they’re perfect and they’re strong and tell
them to go out and live every minute of their lives from their guts, to go after what they want, to own this fuckin’ terrible city and get all they can out of life. But I don’t say anything do I? I mean, what could I say?
I say nothing. I just stand there and listen to them telling each other to fuck off, I stare at the broken clock, the work peeling off the walls, and I know this is the last time I’ll stand here in front of them, the last time. And I’m staring at them,
wondering what they’ll be like ten years from now. And then, suddenly, I’m thinking of Danny. I’m thinking of last night.
It was perfect. But then I woke up and I looked at him, and
I thought about the future. Six months down the line, a year maybe, two. I’ll be distant, worn out by him, and he’ll be pretending nothing’s changed, out of pride he’ll put his doubts away, convince himself to be this man he tells me only I can make him, this better man he talks about. But really, we’ll be sick of each other, we’ll be stifled and clinging to