Suh-moking

I should be writing stuff for the show which is now 8 days away, but the Law of Wanna-do-this-instead has come down upon me with it's litigious might.

A friend of mine is putting together a collection piece (what a clumsy and vague explanation, you'd swear art was one of my cultural blind-spots) about smoking, specifically people's experiences or memories of it.  This is what I wrote.

*****

The piano cuts out again, abruptly.  The melody crashes short in an ugly bark of mashed keys.  Deep-set, pin-prick eyes glare imperiously out of their wooden container, the frustrated countenance of the music teacher is a physical extension of the dilapidated vertical piano.  Criticisms explode in place of the jaunty number of only seconds ago; shrill, piercing, heard but unheeded.

I'm only in the choir because I am a good boy.  I was asked to join, I agreed, like a good boy is supposed to.  It is a slow process of discovery for me.  My discovery is that I don't enjoy the regimented specifics of the big choir.  Singing becomes significantly less fun when I'm not allowed to warble wildly wheresoever my voice wants.

The class is split along alto/soprano lines, being a young group, tenor and bass hardly factor.  I'm sure there's something more societal and less biological in how the alto/soprano divide dovetails so perfectly with the male/female divide.  Or more specifically, male/female+camp males.  The girls undergo a grinding repetitive practice of their soaring soprano, like unfeasibly laborious angels.  The boys are trusted to behave in the back.

Mistake.

If I've learned anything from my time growing up as a boy, it is this: boys are not at peace quietly waiting their turn.  They are hardwired to be as rowdy and infuriating as is humanly possible without prompting all-out infanticide (kids in Herod's time were really annoying).  We talked about wrestling, and just as surely as icing sugar leads to cake, talking about wrestling leads to wrestling.  I am now 23 years old, and I still feel that I am only a pose and a dramatic glance away from a running lariat at any given moment.

As ex-housemates of mine would explain it, the teacher "lost her fucking bin" when we got too loud, her mahogany visage crumpling into fury as though portraying the effect of woodworm in time-lapse.  There's no way to plead wrestling-based innocence when your legs are tied to someone else's in a textbook figure-of-four leglock.  The teacher's tirade raged on, as legs came loose and we got to our feet.  My back was to the teacher, while my friend faced her head on, wearing his best "I'm disappointed in myself" face (copyright Conor Sampson (2010)).  I saw this as a personal challenge of mischief, and while he maintained his theatrical expression, I locked eyes with him, and under the shrieking crescendo of a bollocking, I narrowed my eyes in a broad parody of what I imagined cowboys to be, raised my hand to my mouth, and took a big old toke of my imaginary cigarette, rebellious nonchalance personified in glorious mime.  It is still possibly the funniest thing I have ever done.

He laughed, we got in worse trouble.

This is the closest I have ever come to smoking, and the closest to ever being naughty.