How The Devil Introduced Me To God: Part Four — Foes

son-of-satire (69)in #nonfiction • 8 years ago (edited)

I advise that you be sure to have read through parts one, two and three before continuing. You will need to know what happened at the start of my life to understand my motivations.

Foes

With an arrogant assurance that God was nothing more than a myth, I welcomed the opportunity to continue down a path of devilry. I found reason to justify my continued misconduct through my ongoing studies in the realm of science. My freshly appropriated philosophy of survival of the fittest had begun to take hold of my mind, convincing me that humans have always been, and would always be inherent adversaries.

This mindset was reinforced by my studies of chemistry and physics, which had become the only two subjects able to hold my attention long enough to prevent me from acting out in class. I was taught of how; be it on the micro scale, where molecules collide together to cause chemical reactions, or the macro scale, where planets, asteroids and meteors clash together within a solar system— the universe in its entirety was a demonstration of survival of the fittest. At the time, I was overlooking an important factor that can be found within these examples, which is why I allowed this idea of ubiquitous destruction to serve as vindication for my own destructive behaviour.

Halloween's police chase had only been the beginning. That night had provided me with a taste for mischief— and I needed more. Much like the drug addict that is cursed by addiction, seeking out their next high relentlessly, I had become consumed with diablerie, and I found myself in constant pursuit of that next dose of mayhem-induced adrenaline.

Every night my new friends and I would find ourselves in some trouble— trouble that we went out looking for, that is. We would cause traffic disruptions by stealing roadworks-signs and diverting cars into roads that led to a dead-end, or by changing the road and street signs to cause confusion. We would use bolt croppers to break open the locks on the farmers' gates, causing the cows to get free and take massive shits all on the side of the road. Rocks were our friends too. We would use them to break windows, damage police cars, and to destroy almost every street light in the town to provide ourselves with better cover in the night.

Selfish we were, to say the least. We paid no mind to the financial damage we were causing, or the emotional damage. As I think back on things now, I can't help but wonder if one of those people we sent down the wrong road could have been on the way to see a loved one in hospital. Perhaps our actions were the reason that they never made it there on time, and were unable to say goodbye. It's unlikely, sure. But I'm able to recognise through reflection that one of the most important qualities I was lacking at that time in my life was consideration.

I cared not for the people I may have been hurting. In fact, I cared so little that I was unable to grasp the volume of people who were effected by my actions. I did learn of some though. You cannot act like this in a small town for long without making yourself some enemies. Be it friends or relatives of a homeowner who's windows we'd smashed, those who were unhappy about the growing police presence on the streets, or even that one lad who stepped in cow shit with his brand new trainers because of our actions— before long, there were many out there who sought revenge against us for one reason or another.

At the time, I was fine with this. If anything, it just provided us with even more adrenaline when we would be forced to fight some of them, or run away from the older ones who we would have been no match for. Sure, when I ran into some of these new foes when I was alone, it was a tad more unsettling. But, such is life I had felt, and it was nothing compared to many of the instances that had occurred in London. I was a little older now, and puberty had rescued me from the vulnerable physique that had made me a target during the earlier years in my life. I would have welcomed many more enemies as long as I had all my friends to share the burden with, but an unexpected rift in our social circle would soon change that.

It happened on a Friday or Saturday night. As per the norm for a weekend, we were all out and about getting drunk on the street off of cheap beer and even cheaper vodka. Considering my love for connecting with people, I am very grateful that one of the things I have always been best at is the art of conversation. Making people laugh is something that I have always been very good at, and always thoroughly enjoyed. I do not drink anymore, except perhaps on very special occasions. Back then however, the added confidence that comes with alcohol improved upon my conversation skills even further.

For that reason, I would typically enjoy speaking to girls rather guys on the weekends. In retrospect, the confidence I exhibited then must have stemmed from insecurity, because it was a desire to be thought well of by the females that drove me to want to impress. To a degree, I guess I valued myself based on the way I was perceived by others, rather than the way I judged myself. I suppose I should be happy for that, because my opinion of myself at that time, had I stopped to think about it, would not have been a great one. A true and honest look at the person I was becoming would have no doubt shattered any confidence I felt I had, which would have made earning the approval of others—especially females—incredibly difficult.

Nevertheless, I did feel confident then, especially on that drunken night. My friends and I had made our way to the busiest part of town so that some of us could get some food from the kebab van. Alcohol can afflict a man with a deep craving for meat, but it was not food that I was hungry for. As my friends went to order some food, I instead made my way to the wall across from the van where three attractive, tipsy girls had been sitting in wait for us. One was a girl who I knew to have a thing for me, one was a girl who had a boyfriend from the next town, and the third was a girl who one of my friends had very recently taken a liking to.

As my friends waited in line to be served some greasy meat before joining us, I indulged in some banter with the girls. My intentions were pure, I would say. Well, perhaps not so pure— I was a fifteen year old boy after all. But in regards to the girl who my friend wanted to get with, I had no intentions, nor even a desire to make a move on her. Unfortunately, however, this is not how my actions were perceived.

With me talking away, and the three girls laughing profusely, my friend got the wrong end of the stick and assumed I was trying to make a move on the girl he fancied. I don't know this for certain, it could have been as simple as petty jealousy that provoked him, but I would prefer to consider the former as the reason for his actions.

As the girly giggles persisted, I began to overhear—because the words were intentionally spoken loud enough for me and the girls to hear—some insults coming from the queue of the kebab van. My friend was, in very bad taste, making racial marks about me— something he had never done before. Being of mixed British and African heritage, I was one of very few people in the town that were not white. I had previously had to deal with a little bit of racism, but mostly from the aforementioned enemies, never from my friends.

Given the pathetic ideology I then held, the one that determined my value through the eyes of others, I felt I had only two choices. I could one; get very upset and go initiate a fight with him in order to soothe my wounded pride, or two; flip the mockery onto him with a witty comment. I did not want to fight with my friend, so naturally, I chose the latter.

Loud enough for him to hear, I directed a response to the girls that amounted to something such as, "Someone's getting a bit brave. He must be on his second beer now."

The comment had the desired effect, with the girls returning to laughter and my idiotic sense of pride restored. What I had overlooked though, was that my comment had now put him in the exact same position I had been in. Three girls —including one who he liked—were now laughing, essentially at him. To prevent further embarrassment, he now how had to come up with a verbal response that would redirect the laughter at me, or resort to violence to regain and retain his image.

Writing is a powerful thing, as it forces us to think. I now realise something that I had never even thought of until this moment. While he did opt to approach me, and proceed to pull out his keys and arrange them so that one was protruding between each of the fingers in his closed fist, it has just occurred to me that he most likely went with a third option that had, prior to this moment, been hidden from me.

I now don't think that violence was his intent. It seems more likely, that the act of threatening me, and a result of me backing down in fear of getting punched with a fist full of keys, was probably the outcome he was hoping for to negate his discomfiture. I didn't consider this at the time though, I felt he had chosen violence and to avert a punch to the face that may have scarred me with disfigurement for life, I instinctively punched him in the mouth.

He fell to the floor, and I causally turned back around and re-initiated conversation with the girls, stupidly thinking that it was over and things could return to how they were a few moments ago. This was yet another example of how naive I was in those days, for not only were the girls no longer in the mood for banter, but within thirty seconds, my friend had rose to his feet and a group of older lads had surrounded us and were making bets on who would win the fight which was potentially about to happen.

In spite of several attempts by others to urge us into further violence, luckily, my friend opted to turn around and walk home. I had been silly enough to believe that the next day we would simply apologise and call it for what it was— drunken stupidity. However, I was so very wrong about that prediction. He proved to be unforgiving, having his pride hurt too deeply to remain friends. I had told myself that I wouldn't invest much trust or emotion into my relationships before seeking out new friends, but unbeknownst to me until then, I had betrayed myself and my plans to remain unattached.

Somewhere along the way I had inadvertently allowed myself to value my friendships deeply, and I found myself more upset than I should have been to lose one. The only thing was, it was not just one friend that I had lost. This friend had been the one who's house we would all hang out at. He was the one who's room we would get drunk and/or high in before going out. We could also get free beer from a local pub at times— through him. So when he and I could no longer socialise together, a divide between the group was caused, and I would begin to see some of my friends less and less.

This was bad enough in itself. Things were made worse by the fact that we had made many enemies along the way, and it had been our numbers that had provided us with the security to withstand them. Now that the divide had caused our numbers to dwindle, those who sought revenge against us would have much more of an opportunity to get it.