The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  Selma_Nella: Look at you talking! You made up with John and he isn’t half as fine as Keaton.

  HannaStacia: You wouldn’t understand.

  Selma_Nella: That you and Jasmyn are forgivers—for everything?

  HannaStacia: You of all people should know I’m not that kind.

  Selma_Nella: Good one.

  HannaStacia: By the way Séra says your username is a type of food poisoning and “Selma_Fudd” would be better. Like the bald dude from Looney Tunes. He says “it’s all in the forehead.”

  Selma_Nella: Send him a big voetsek from me.

  TheaElleC—Tri_SeraTops: Gossip! Jasmine-With-The-Eye also lost her virginity.

  Tri_SeraTops: Eh?! To who? Or…what?

  TheaElleC: Don’t be an ass, Séra! But since you want to know it was Layton Green.

  Tri_SeraTops: Layton? Basketball Layton?

  TheaElleC: Only one Layton at school. You weren’t at Tiff’s party on Friday. That’s where it went down. He says he was drunk, and he’s spreading rumours that she forced him. But people saw them through Tiff’s brother’s bedroom window and there was no force there.

  Tri_SeraTops: Oh shit! Tomorrow will be the best Monday ever! Layton won’t make it through basketball practice. We won’t let him!

  TheaElleC: Promise me that when you lose your virginity you’ll close the curtains.

  Tri_SeraTops: Of course!

  TheaElleC: And have some nice music. Like some of your playlists.

  Tri_SeraTops: Haha! Okay.

  TheaElleC: Maybe we should rescue Jasmyn from herself. Like, with a playlist with all of the sourest breakup songs ever. You can make one. Then we’ll put it in her locker or something.

  Tri_SeraTops: That’s lame.

  TheaElleC: True. I also know you’re thinking of a name and you have the songs.

  Tri_SeraTops: You know me too well. We shouldn’t be friends anymore.

  TheaElleC: What’ll you call it?

  Tri_SeraTops: “Soundtrack of The Disconnect”.

  TheaElleC: HAHAHA! I like it. Depending on how good it is, she might even repay you with sweet favours. “O! Séraphin! Thanks for saving me. Here’s a handkerchief and what remains of my virtue. Let it rescue you from yours!”

  Tri_SeraTops: I’m not chasing those waterfalls.

  TheaElleC: Hahaha.

  So it comes to pass that by June of their eleventh year both Jasmine and Jasmyn have lost their virginity. Jasmyn to Keaton, and Jasmine to a drunk Layton who approaches her at Tiffany’s party with the prepossession of a high school basketball star. Jasmine and her friends hang on the periphery of the makeshift dance floor holding glasses containing a potent concoction made of liquors and spirits unknown, sweetened by a litre of concentrated granadilla juice. They avoid the press of bodies in the centre and watch the writhing mass of pubescence taking cues from Ruppee’s “Tempted To Touch”, urging them to wind and grind.

  Layton stumbles towards Jasmine and pulls her against him. With him having a reputation for being a good dancer and her having no such accolade being associated with her, it is an awkward combination of apologetic waddling on her part and eager hip-thrusting on his. He pulls her against a suggestive bump in his trousers. At the song’s conclusion Layton is leading her off the dance floor.

  They make their way through the house, Layton pulling on door handles and finding a utility closet occupied by another boy and girl slobbering kisses on each other, a guest bedroom already occupied by another couple who, in flagrante delicto, are too occupied in their ecstasy to notice the intrusion, and, finally, to a bedroom at the end of the hall. They collapse on the bed. In an uncoordinated mess of kissing they hastily unbuckle their trousers. A voice in the back of Jasmine’s head reminds her to offer Layton the condom she has diligently carried around with her in the hope of winding up in a situation warranting its use. It is fumbled onto an erect member – she looks away most of the time, trusting in the providence of her shaking hands and whatever past experience Layton has had with such matters – and then finds herself roughly pressed underneath him.

  The first thrust shoots a pain through her. The second hurts even more. She bites her lip and pulls Layton deeper into her, determined not to let the tears in her eyes discourage him from the act. Layton is lost to his own rhythms. He metronomically hammers himself into a limp climax before collapsing on top of her. Jasmine, after a breathy minute, rolls him off her. Pain throbs through her. She realises Layton has fallen asleep. She stands up slowly. A colubrine crimson trail snakes down her leg, marking her disappointed entrance into the sexually exuberant world she has so desperately wanted to be a part of. She feels nauseous from the punch and Layton’s callous performance. She pulls on her clothes and walks out of the room, looking back at Layton passed out in the bed, his buttocks exposed above the belt line of his cargo pants. She re-enters the living room devoid of triumph. She calls her parents to fetch her from a friend’s house a short walk away. Even with her inebriation, a rumbling, volcanic stomach, a sore pelvis, she refuses to break the unspoken rule that no parent should ever be permitted to see the location of an unsanctioned house party.

  For the most part, Jasmine and Layton’s clunky dancing has gone unnoticed. On the dance floor everyone is equal. Jasmine and Layton slinking off the dance floor was also passed over. Everyone, even Jasmine-With-The-Eye, is allowed a sly snog or two. Jasmine and Layton’s tryst would also have gone unnoticed but for the singularly inimical chance of Paulus “Pontius_Paulus” Amukongo and Jurgen “Jurgen_Naut” Nacht who, after baptising an otherwise unobtrusive rose bush with their urine, are lumbering back to the house. They pass a lit bedroom with the curtains open and the Green_Layton himself pumping away like a piston – Like the brightest day and the darkest night had required all of Green Lantern’s might!”, “This Watcher could’ve turned his eyes away but someone must witness!” they will later write in various chat rooms – into the non-participating mass of Jasmine van Zyl.

  Gentlemen would look away, smile at each other, and walk away to raise glasses of cognac in honour of their conquering comrade. These are not gentlemen, though. These are teenage boys who given a choice between saving the world and watching it burn would pass the matches as long as they had a story to tell afterwards. In the advent of poorly regulated online privacy they set chatrooms alight with one-sided hyperbole and a few blurry photographs – megapixels have yet to become a consumer staple. This slight deficiency in technology is a passing mercy for Jasmine. In later years, other women will not be so lucky.

  By the time Séraphin catches wind of Jasmine and Layton’s bedding the rumours have become bloated with blame-laying and the convicting suspicion which follows unions between handsome boys and less-than-pretty girls. The story has morphed to the point where Jasmine spiked Layton’s drink, put a fierce hex on him, and, succubus-like, had her way with him. The power of rumour is so strong and the dangers of loyalty so dire even Jasmine’s friends do little to stop the spread of the gossip.

  High school life weighs heavily on Jasmine for a time. Thankfully, it is not too long before “Die Stem” calls to its seeds to come home and make roots. Her parents pack up their lives in Windhoek and make their way to South Africa. Jasmine acquiesces to the move without protest. She sees an escape route from the cycle of hastily silenced conversations when she passes by and the echoing emptiness left behind Layton Green’s username in a secret chatroom.

  AllThatJazz—Green_Layton: Why won’t you talk to me? This is fucked up. Why can’t you stop all of these rumours?

  AllThatJazz—Green_Layton: Okay, it’s all my fault. I slept with myself. Fine. You’ll be happy to know that I’m moving away. All the best with your life.

  And so it comes to pass that two months after Jasmine is pulled into the false advertising of Layton’s crotch she vanishes off a private school charter to pop up on another one, in a different country, her tale diverted off this story’s track by all of the unfortunate railroad switches listed here, lea
ving us only with Jasmyn.

  While Jasmine’s life death-spirals into depression, Jasmyn’s is quite different. Winter is conceding vast tracts of the Namibian landscape to a guerrilla spring which unpredictably attacks formerly dead or dormant vegetation with life across the country. The change of season brings with it the promise of a delayed but new start for Jasmyn. Her latest breakup with Keaton has held its course for three months. They are not talking, which means, of course, that they are tuned into each other’s activities via third parties. Soon, word comes down the gossip exchange that Keaton has moved on to someone new. Perhaps, Jasmyn thinks, it is time she did the same.

  Boys are renounced. She reclaims her starting berth in the netball and hockey teams. The stands fill up once more. She immerses herself in St. Luke’s academic demands. She even joins the school’s writing club, the Quill Club, which meets on Friday afternoons – a carefully chosen time slot that weeds out all but the most dedicated aspiring writers.

  Jasmyn is late to her first meeting and arrives to find the group’s twenty members working in groups of two. Mr Caffrey, the senior English teacher, casts around the classroom for a group she can join.

  “Séraphin, John – I’m entrusting this young lady to your care. Be sure to give our club a bad reputation,” he says with a wink. He smiles at Jasmyn to welcome her. She is a series of underlined repetitions, decent poetic analysis, and mid-level grades, if he remembers correctly. Girls unduly defer to her and boys wholly worship her. She is not like the other Quillians: comic book and video game boffins with intricate knowledge of the arcane, the mythical, the mystical, the fantastical; romantics with overstretched, flowery sentences; or literary aspirants, perspicacious in their wit, and voracious in their consumption of words. Still, the club has no membership requirements and Mr Caffrey is glad to see another student show interest in writing. He has learned to take them however they come to him, wherever they come from.

  There is a shuffling of chairs as Séraphin and John squeeze together. Séraphin pulls an empty chair next to him to John’s frustration. A better strategy would have been to place an empty seat between them so they could both sit next to her. Jasmyn gracefully descends into her seat and flashes the two boys a dazzling smile.

  “Jasmyn, we’re writing opening sentences that will get a reader to hand over their money to us,” Mr Caffrey says. “The kind of words that’ll make a drug addict buy a book instead of the next high. The scenario is this: teenage superhero or heroine begins to narrate their autobiography. Get creative. Avoid clichés. And no profanity. I mean it.”

  A groan runs through the room. Mr Caffrey is the only teacher at St. Luke’s who does not hand out detention slips when a swear word slips in his English classes. He himself has been known to let one or two drop while teaching.

  “Despair thy charm and let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped!’”—Oh shit! It’s about to go down! Isn’t this the kind of vocal badassery all these bullshit action films wish they had in their limp dialogue? Can you picture the moment? When Macbeth finally realises he shalt not be king hereafter? Is this not the coolest hier kom kak nou moment you’ve ever read? Look at all this imagery! A battlefield strewn with the dead and dying. Macbeth, covered in the blood of all the people he’s killed – a motherless sum’bitch for killing Duncan, having Banquo rubbed out, and having Macduff’s family murdered. Then, cue trumpeting and three-sixty-degree camera pan, Macduff rolls into town and announces he ain’t come outta no womb like the other punk bitches Macbeth has heretofore faced! Even your boys – Tupac, Biggie, Snoop, Dr. Dre, Eminem – none of them drop fire like this. No meaner line’s ever been uttered in cinema. You think I’m wrong? Okay, I’ll entertain you. Five hundred words on any line from a film or a song that has imagery better than Macduff’s line.”

  Mr Caffrey has realised the only way to make ancient texts relevant to this literature-scorning generation is to drop a cuss word. Anything with a parental advisory sticker is magnetic to them and the teacher out of touch with popular culture is shunned. His English classes are the most popular at St. Luke’s. He is also responsible for the effusive username creativity in cellphone chatrooms. The restriction on expletives in today’s writing exercise feels like a betrayal.

  Jasmyn’s group – note how quickly it becomes Jasmyn’s group – turn to her.

  “Any ideas?” John asks. His acne-crossed face reddens with his eagerness to please.

  “I’d rather add to your ideas if you’ve already prepared something,” Jasmyn says.

  “Not much,” Séraphin replies. “We started thinking about our character. John suggested we make him – or her – about our age, funny, awkward, and with some sort of struggle. Mr Caffrey likes a good character struggle.”

  “Cool.” A small frown creases Jasmyn’s forehead. The three muse on some opening lines. John and Séraphin sneak the occasional glance at Jasmyn.

  “Five minutes left,” Mr Caffrey says.

  Jasmyn sits up. “How about this: being a hero sucks because you never get to do what you want. That’s what the bad guy does. All you do is try to stop them. Basically being a hero is parenting, but with powers that can level a city.”

  “That’s funny,” Séraphin says, “because it’s kinda true.”

  “Mos def,” John says. “When you think about it, superheroes” he looks at Jasmyn – “and heroines, are always being interrupted by a bad guy, right? Doc Oc is robbing a bank so Peter Parker cuts a date with Mary-Jane short and The Joker cuts into Bruce Wayne’s wank time. Makes total sense.”

  “Easy on the Batman jokes,” Séraphin says.

  “Séraphin here,” John says, “is besotted with the Dark Knight.”

  “He’s better than your favourite, Superman.”

  “What’s wrong with Superman?” Jasmyn asks. “I think he’s cool.”

  John beams.

  “Fuck Superman,” Séraphin says. “Dude crash-lands on Earth, is adopted by a family just like that, and his biggest worry is a green rock? I have something better: Home Affairs and their queues. Let’s see him get through that shit faster than a speeding bullet.”

  “I’ve never thought of that, actually.” Jasmyn giggles. “You’re funny.”

  Séraphin glows.

  “Ready to present your sentences?” Mr Caffrey calls out.

  John reaches for a pen and opens his writing pad. “Jasmyn, repeat what you said. We’re going with that. Don’t worry, Mr Caff says we just need a start. We can fix it later.”

  When the group presents their introductory sentences to the rest of the class Mr Caffrey applauds them. “Excellent,” Mr Caffrey says. “I likey lots. Whose idea was it?” The boys turn to Jasmyn. Mr Caffrey finds it hard to hide his surprise – Séraphin’s storytelling abilities shine on Friday afternoons. The rest of the club murmurs. “Good, really good, ” he says as he turns back to the room. “All your opening sentences were quite good and, no, I’m not saying that to make you feel better about your pimple-ridden excuses for faces. I mean it. There were some clever ones, and some that could really explode on a page with some work. Like Jasmyn’s group here.” He motions for Séraphin, John, and Jasmyn to sit down. “Quillians, writers, readers, fellow knights of the word, remember our call to arms.”

  As one, the assembled club members say: “Truth first, then fiction.”

  “Then fame and fast women,” a voice calls out from the back.

  Mr Caffrey turns to Jasmyn. “Miss Wolff, welcome to the club. These are my charges, such as they are. Beware. Here be monsters.”

  The rest of the club nods to Jasmyn in welcome.

  She is one of them.

  She is a monster.

  And where there are monsters there will always be stories, and regardless of how a story starts, whether it is with “once upon a time” or “in the beginning” or some other way, say, with a long-forgotten essay, it is a general rule that the monsters will make the middle,
sometimes consciously, sometimes not, towards some sort of end.

  There were two Jasmines.

  One with an i and one with a y; one was pretty, one was not. They used to be friends but they are friends no longer. One is somewhere in South Africa, her fate unknown, the other is in the Quill Club, with Séraphin, sometimes part of his group, sometimes not, but around just long enough for the spark of a start to ignite and catch fire, here, once upon a private school enrolment charter.

  IV

  Everything is funny when you are a virgin and the girl who could save you from your chasteness is sitting on your bed across from you making bad jokes. That is why Séraphin, seventeen, virgo intacta, general knowledge aficionado, and junior prefect at St. Luke’s keeps a controlled stream of laughter flowing as Jasmyn talks about her family. Her father drinks enough for three people; her mother is sober for two. Her twin younger brothers, Raphael and Rainart, worship the ground Liverpool Football Club play and lose upon.

  “That’s actually funny,” Séraphin replies and, again, releases another parcel of laugher. Her family sounds pedestrian compared to his. But everything is funny when you are about to lose your virginity. Even Jasmyn’s family, which has nothing on Séraphin’s when it comes to quirks.

  Éric, in total contradistinction to his brothers, has just entered high school, becoming a steadfast member of St. Luke’s Friday detention programme. His misdemeanours are legion and legend: wearing incorrect school uniform even though he was dropped off at school in the correct attire; disrupting classes; leaving school premises during school hours; changing a teacher’s laptop wallpaper from a happy snapshot from a recent skiing holiday to a scandalous spread-eagle shot of a spring-breaker. He is the youngest of the trio and by the time he starts high school his parents have been worn down from reprimanding his older siblings over the years. Éric still bears the cherub looks of his youth. His cheeks are round and dimpled when he smiles or blushes, and his skin is light, lighter than his brothers, something which makes Therése proud and guilty at the same time. They are all her sons, all products of her womb. But there is a special unacknowledged pride she feels when she looks at Éric.