Running for Home - 13. September 13, 2021

September 13 2021

So I’m in a bit of trouble. Not real trouble, not really. Well, big trouble, actually.

Look, it's hard to frame this properly, and no matter how I put this into words I'm going to come off looking like a bastard in one way or another. I’m having one of those moments where I’m not sure whether I feel proud of myself or disgusted. It’s just another instance of me getting caught up in the moment, in a flash of anger, and doing something idiotic. After I calmed down and got out of my self-righteous headspace once my students left the class I realized how bad I fucked up. I owned up to it before word even got to the top. Emma was far less pissed off about the whole thing than I thought she would be. Far less than Sean was, anyway. He’s the vice principal here, Frost’s right hand man. They’ve apparently known each other forever. Emma said she was in her early-mid 20’s when they first met. Emma’s got to be about fifteen years older than me, and Sean maybe twenty. He’s old enough to be my father, but it doesn’t really feel like it. There’s actually a lot of sexual tension between Sean and Emma, but she’s already denied to me that anything is going on between them and insisted she has absolutely no interest in him. They could probably smell the bullshit in fucking China.

Oh yeah, Sean is actually my old classmate Theresa’s dad. I found that out a couple days ago. Surprisingly cool guy, even if he’s a bit wary of me. Justified, I guess, since he’s been both an Interpol agent and an X-man at various points in his life and I’m just a piece of shit former criminal. His powers are similar to Theresa’s what with the megasonic screaming, flying and all that jazz. Just none of the power of suggestion part. I had a moment during our meeting where I seriously thought that he was going to scream at me so loud that he’d blow my head off. Some people would probably say he would have been perfectly justified doing that. I’m glad Emma was there to moderate him.

Anyway, I have a real mixed bag in one of my English Lit classes. You’d think they’d be well behaved considering that it’s a senior, advanced placement course. Unfortunately they’ve already surprised me with their stupidity on several occasions and school hasn’t even been in for a month. One of the main instigators is this asshat named Julian Keller, a rich bitch born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Complete asshole, huge ego, attitude problem, family issues, the works. Emma has a soft spot for him, for whatever reason. She told me he reminds her of me. It pisses me off because she’s sorta kinda right, except for the part where this kid is rich as fuck and I was a welfare baby. He’s a telekinetic with potential approaching Dr. Grey’s. Scary thought, that, but Emma doesn’t think his powers will develop to the point of him being capable of complete molecular disintegration and reintegration. She also thinks he’s less of a danger of becoming unhinged, though he does have some mental health things that need attention. The lack of telepathy and other psionic gifts helps with the not coming unhinged a bit, she says, so he’s not really the same situation as Dr. Grey. Here’s hoping. Regardless, he’s just a snot-nosed teenager with nowhere near that level of power development yet, though, so I don’t have much to worry about.

Yeah, so Julian’s been a problem from day one, creating distractions for the whole class sometimes but mostly just doing stupid shit that pisses me off. Today he decided the reading they were supposed to do in class sucked and got bored with it and started playing with a fleet of paper airplanes above everyone’s heads. He didn’t appreciate it when I torched them all and told him to get back to work or he was next. Of course, he started mouthing off and I don’t take shit like that from any of these brats. I told him to come up to the front of the class if he had something to say to me. The idiot did, and before he knew what hit him I had him bent over my knee with his pants down so everyone could see those god-awful Superman boxers he was wearing. Asshole probably thinks he's fucking Superman, too, so I gave Julian the spanking his mama had never bothered to do.

In the end, this guy was all talk. It was all I could do not to laugh at him while I did it. He was so deep in shock and embarrassment that he actually broke down and started bawling as I layed into him. I didn’t do all that much, actually, because I started to feel bad for him. I was still pissed, but I think that was the moment that something percolated in my head that I was way out of line. The class was beyond horrified at what was going on in front of them. Well, all of them except Julian's girlfriend, Sofia Mantega. She didn’t seem particularly horrified at what I was doing at all. If anything, she looked a bit smug. Thinking about it now, it's a bit unnerving and not something I ever would have expected to be her reaction. Sofia is actually one of my best students, both behavior-wise and with the work she hands in. Emma told me she’s been a good, moderating influence on Julian and I agree. All the other students in my class seem to respect her, too.

So yeah, corporal punishment and purposefully embarrassing students in front of their peers isn’t exactly acceptable behavior for teachers nowadays. Quel surprise, right? They could have fired me for that. Probably should have. Fuck, if Julian wasn’t already eighteen, I would automatically have had sexual abuse charges filed on me and I’d already have been carted off to the nearest prison equipped to deal with mutants like me. My life would be over. Again. All these years, all these years trying to build a life for myself again, to do something with myself that made real change in the world… it would all be down the drain and I’d be back to the same thing I was before. A fucking criminal. No, it would be worse. I’d have sexual abuse of a minor on my rap sheet and it would follow me anywhere I’d go. Publicly listed. Never ending shame. Just thinking about this makes me want to pull my hair out and scream.

Emma told me she had called Julian into her office to get his side of the story. She asked Julian if he wanted to file assault or sexual assault charges because that was also well within his rights. Julian shook his head and quietly muttered that he didn’t want to do that. Emma being Emma, she did a quick scan of him just to see what the hell was going through his head because this was not normal behaviour for someone with an ego like his.

Julian’s friends had started to take the piss out of him over the whole thing after classes were finished for the day, and he’d not really been able to take it. He walked out on them before they’d even really started. Again, unusual. Apparently Sofia sat down for a serious talk about how he had been behaving over the past few years, not just in the classroom. They’d had minor chats about things here and there over the years, but Julian had only ever made minor adjustments to his behaviours. Adjustments that were enough to avoid losing friends or avoid more trouble. They talked about why he thought it was normal to always be on the verge of losing everyone in his life because of the way he treated them. They also talked about the ways in which he’d always been punished before, and how true public humiliation had never been a factor. Before today, everything else had been almost like a badge of honour. Something about today, though, hit him much harder than anyone would have thought. Emma didn’t go into too many more details of what she saw. Really, they were probably irrelevant and even more of an invasion of his privacy than she’d already given me.

Emma told me that part of the reason he had such a strong reaction is because Julian’s ego was built on pillars of crystal. Stronger than a house of cards, but easy enough to shatter if you knew how to hit it in just the right place. She’s been working with him since he began his schooling here because he was on the road to develop narcissistic personality disorder. Emma had made headway, but in some ways he was always on the edge. She’d been reluctant to do anything extreme, though. This could be a stroke of luck for her in Julian’s treatment, but it had the possibility of building his ego up higher in the bounce back rather than give a lasting good outcome if they weren’t careful about it. They would be having a staff meeting with all his teachers to monitor his behaviours closely over the next few weeks, and she was going to have a few long chats with Julian about what has happened. Emma had some confidence in an ultimate success. I asked why she was so confident, and she just scoffed and told me she was a telepath and a licensed therapist and she’d bloody well know where her patients minds were at more than anyone. That woman has more credentials stuffed up her ass than I ever would have imagined, considering she was a rich girl who probably wouldn’t have had to do anything with her life if she hadn’t wanted to. Here’s hoping she’s right.

I still don’t know how I feel about this. What I did to Julian was nothing, other than the public part. The bruises my father gave my behind and sometimes other places when he was unhappy with me, those were punishments. This was a fucking slap on the wrist. But my parents were ignorant trailer trash. I know that. That’s why I was taken away from them. It’s crazy that after all these years I still have moments where I find it hard to accept that there were a lot of things about my family that weren’t normal or acceptable. But hey, I was just a stupid snotty kid who didn’t know better, right?

I’m pretty sure Sean must have wanted me gone after this. I was a risky hire and all this has done is demonstrate exactly that. If this was anywhere else, my ass would be canned. I’m going to get some form of formal disciplining after they finish a review, whatever that means. I have a feeling it’s going to include cut to my paycheque, among other things. I don’t really care about the money, to be honest, so let them take some of it away. They are paying me way too much as it is. I’m supposed to be making my living as a writer, not here teaching school. But I took this job, and when I do something I do it 110%, if not more. I don't deserve what they are paying me.

The worst part of this, for me, is how personally ashamed I am. I don’t like admitting this. The old me, the pre-Iraq me, would have never admitted to this. Maybe would have even been pissed off that people would have the gall to tell me I'd done anything wrong in that situation. But I’ve tried so hard to work out my anger issues and impulsivity. I’ve really come a long way. I mean, fuck, I didn’t even destroy the apartment when Dom walked out on me. Not even when I found out he’d been cheating. Most people would say that breaking some shit in a situation like that wasn’t beyond the bounds of reason, and for someone like me to have the self control to refrain from it says a lot. This was an extraordinary lapse, and I hate myself for it.

I guess there were some lessons to learn all around. Hopefully this whole incident translates into some better respect from my other students, at the very least. It's still early in the year, but hopefully this is the last time I really fuck up.