The Story Behind the Worst Joke in Sylvestus

There were a lot of gems in that first ill-fated draft of Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum that didn't make it into the final product; some were simply lost among almost a hundred chapters that were a special kind of hell to trek through to try and find what was worth keeping, while others had to be sacrificed in scenes that had changed order or vanished completely, context that was lost, and characters who would no longer say that thing at that time. A few of them I was genuinely sad to lose, but honestly I can't even remember any of them now, while Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall is full of new quips and one-liners (and there's a fair few in Vol II, though we'll see how many survive the editing process; many darlings must be sacrificed at the altar of pace and tone).

I am still inordinately proud of "purus powder enema", mostly because I was devastated when I had to cut it because the three stages of the gag just didn't fit together any more - only to, on a later edit, manage to slide it back in before anyone could notice and tell me not to. It's probably not even something anyone has noticed, but I deeply enjoy it as one of the few relics of that first draft to survive. But this isn't about that. That's a good joke.

This post is about a bad joke. Really bad.

It's early in Vol I; we've just been introduced to Aemilius Germanus, owner of the town's largest brothel and absolute lecher. Sylv is an extremely opinionated narrator, both giving us insight to how he judges people, and leading us to join him in his conclusions - the entire first paragraph about Aemilius tears him down (in mirror of the first paragraph about Modius Capito, which establishes him as Sylv's charismatic equal), and for the remainder of their encounter, he slaps and gropes and slurps at women and wine until our loathing for him is beaten only by Sylv's. Then, casually, he offers one of his workers to Sylv. When Sylv politely refuses:

 

  

... Listen, I'm not proud. Let me explain: it's 2011, maybe 2012. I'm, idk, fourteen. Whatever age that establishes that all parts of this story are acceptable, which probably isn't any age tbh. It's English class.

Yep, trust me: you have no idea where this story is going.

Let's say fourteen. English class. F*ckin' nerd. You see, when I started high school, I had a lot of brains and very little social skills. I was quiet because being loud got me bullied. People saw brains and they made a judgement: boring, a prude, a snitch, no fun, stick up their ass. In class activities where we were asked to write a nice thing about everyone else in the room, my name just had forty lines of "smart" written underneath it, while everyone else had "funny", "kind", "pretty", "nice hair", "good at football", "good friend". By the time I left high school, I was an absolute menace: I could get away with anything, I bled charisma, I had a furious temper, I was pretty much the first person to come out in the entire school and I was determined to make my sexuality everyone's problem, I was vastly depressed and anxious and absolutely certain that I could overcome these things by being as loud and opinionated as possible. I started high school with 0 friends and left it with 1.5, but at least I was infamous, which in my opinion at the time was better than popular. I was well-known for escapades such as claiming it was acceptable to eat babies (... there was context), throwing up in Miss Sagar's bin in front of the entire class, and biting Juliet in netball so hard that I drew blood and got banned from anything except badminton for two years. I used to read supernatural porn- sorry, adult romances in class because I was allowed to read a book if I finished the work early (which i always did - remember, i was actually still smart) and I was always seated with the ~disruptive kids~ at the back of class (in the hopes that i'd be a good influence, LOL). In Years Seven and Eight, people thought it was funny to hit me on the back of the head in the corridors, because I always jumped out of my skin - the only way to stop them was to turn around and deck them in the face, an instinct that I still have to fight today whenever someone makes me jump. Because I looked weird and I was overweight and ugly, I wasn't even allowed to exist in peace in those early years; my classmates just thought of me as the teacher's pet goody two-shoes, but total strangers from other years would physically hurt me while yelling insults, usually about my gender. Ahh, transphobia :)

The person who left that school was the same person who started it in a lot of ways, different in a few others: the main thing that changed was people's perceptions of me. It took five hard years of mental breakdowns, slapping boys full across the face in Year Eight Art & Design, and calling someone a c*nt at full volume in Geography because I had no fear of God nor teachers, but I did eventually manage to overcome that initial snap-judgement of "oh, this one is ugly and smart, they're gonna be a kiss-ass who only likes classical music and Shakespeare".

... Though it's also worth noting that I didn't shy away from my smart-ass reputation; I did profess vocally my love of Shakespeare and my perfect 100% on both RE GCSE exams, I just made sure everyone also knew I only listened to heavy rock.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there is a very vast difference in those perceptions. And there had to be some middle-stages, where people were slowly coming to realise that I wasn't just a prudish smart kid; I was an asshole prudish smart kid.

... I wasn't even prudish, I've had some slutty periods, I just didn't appreciate boys literally trying to sexually assault me when I was thirteen in the name of "being cool", which was generally considered to be the same thing. Ahh, rape culture :)

One of those key moments, though, came in what I am now certain based on hazy memories was Year Nine. We were our English teacher's first class since she graduated. I had the biggest gayest crush on her I've ever had; I'd just watched the lesbian sex scene in Black Swan and I had some Very Significant Confused Feelings, and I mostly expressed these by being a sassy sh*t to her, a flirting technique I maintain to this day.

We were learning how to write... Travel articles, maybe? We were put into groups of three, sent to the computer room (do schools still have those?? One computer room per building where only about 50% of the computers have, at any one time, a chair, working monitor, keyboard, and mouse? The teacher never knew how to fix stuff and there were two techies for the entire school who were constantly on call so you either learned how to troubleshoot basic computer issues yourself or just sat for an hour doodling in the back of your book because there were no free working computers? Did i just go to a really, really bad school?), and told to pick a travel destination we'd been to or wanted to go to, research it, and make a brochure for it in Microsoft Publisher.

I was put in a group with two girls who were close friends who I knew vaguely and wanted to like, one of whom I would later bite in PE. I was at this point used to being gently mocked in group projects, and until now had been fairly willing to take it in silence, if it meant that, even if I ended up doing all the work, we would at least hand in a decent project.

The girls looked at each other slyly as we found a mostly-working computer and crowded around it. I knew something was coming and braced myself to smile through it.

"So, where do you think we should write about?" I asked politely, keen to just get on with the dang thing.

"How about the Red Light District?" one of the girls asked. They both erupted into giggles which said clearly that they had planned this in advance.

"Sure," I said, opening a fresh Publisher document and typing RED LIGHT DISTRICT in the title.

I will never forget the look on their faces as I did that. Awe. Terror. The realisation that their bluff was being called by the person they had least expected to have any cards. Recall, I hadn't done most of the things listed above at this point; they still considered me to be quiet, intelligent, boring, and easy to pick on. They had expected me to squawk and blush, or maybe gasp and clutch at my crucifix and say a quick prayer for their souls - and instead, I had run with it? Even typed it onto the document?

I was daring them to back down, and they tried, spluttering, "Wait, no - we can't--"

"Why not?" I asked, turning away from the keyboard to look them dead in the eyes, first one, then the other.

Silence. If they admitted they knew how inappropriate it was, then the entire affair fell apart: they couldn't be considered more prudish than this ugly motherf*cker. So they had to go through with it and hope that I backed down first.

Heeeere's the thing. I... Didn't actually... Know. What the Red Light District was. Ahem. I knew it was something inappropriate and dirty because of the way they reacted when I agreed, but honestly, in the moment she said "How about the Red Light District?", I had no idea what I was agreeing to. My poker face was entirely sincere.

Of course, I did later figure out what it was - maybe I picked it up in our discussions, or when we tried to search for images to go into the brochure and all of them were blacklisted by the school's censors, or I might have just Googled it when I got home that night, I don't remember.

But I was also drunk on that feeling, the moment their faces had frozen and then fallen as I agreed and typed it into the document. Like them, I couldn't back out now.

So I didn't. We returned to the computer room next lesson, and I boldly opened up the document, and while they sat there aghast, determinedly typed out three columns of absolute cringe-worthy filth. It was a masterpiece of innuendo. Nothing was explicitly mentioned, but it was bold as a 14 y/o whose sex education was Game of Thrones could write. I don't remember most of it - in fact, I only remember one line of it. The end of the opening paragraph.

"Whatever your schedule, the Red Light District has something, and someone, to offer; you can spend a whole day on these streets, or you can be in and out... As fast as you can be in and out!"

It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I had ever written - and I was already most of the way through The Red Prince.

Then, of course, came the moment of judgement: this was a class assignment that we still had to print off and hand in. At the start of Year Seven, I had forgotten a piece of homework and been literally screamed at by a maniacal History teacher until I had cried, and had proceeded to have nightmares about her that woke me with panic attacks for the rest of the year. By the end of Year Eleven, I would be walking into classes and loudly declaring that I hadn't done the homework so don't bother asking. This was... In the very middle of those.

Which is to say, when the English teacher walked over and asked how we were doing, the two girls managed to do remarkably accurate impressions of the computer room carpet. I turned with a wide smile and said we were doing great, a low sick nauseous weight in my chest. Could they suspend me for this?

"Let's have a look..." she began, leaning forward - and froze.

To be entirely fair, I think most other teachers would have given me detention at that point, at the very least. Thankfully, in an event that would become pivotal in my growth as a student, she was determined to be a cool teacher, she was in her first teaching job, we were her least problematic class, I was (at that point) not an especially problematic student, and she already been marking my work for several months, so she knew what I was capable of.

"Do you think that's appropriate?" she asked, voice cracking with a badly-concealed laugh.

"You told us to review a place," I pointed out pragmatically.

"Yeah! But not-- UGH! 'In and out... As fast as you can be'-- YOU CAN'T WRITE THAT!"

"It's not explicit." My voice was confident, but my stomach was butterflies. Were it any other teacher, or in front of any other students, I might have dropped to my knees and wept for forgiveness, but I was caught in a perfect storm of gay feelings, bravado, and the two girls' awe-struck expressions. "None of it is explicit."

"Are you seriously going to hand that in?"

A trap? Maybe, but no time to back out now. Angelic polite smile time. "Yes."

"Would you let the headmaster read it? Are you just doing this because you think I'm a ledge?* Or would you hand it in to any teacher? Would you print that off and hand it in to me right now if you knew I was going to show it to the headmaster?"

... do or die. No backing out now. If you break, your blossoming reputation is in tatters. What do you value, your education or your reputation?

"Yes."

She groaned again, threw her hands in the air, and walked away, muttering, "You're going to get me fired..." as she did so.

We finished it in silence as I tried not to cry. We printed it out and shyly hid it between other people's work on her desk. It mysteriously found its way into the shredder and never saw the light of either the headmaster's office or indeed anyone else's eyes ever again.

I remembered, always, what I had done. I held it in my heart, that moment, all the promise it had held, the birth of the person who was willing to stick to a joke even when it got them in trouble. This attitude would earn me plenty of scoldings and marks lost later, but right then, it was worth it. I am no longer the kind of person who gets into such p*ssing matches, who will wreak their revenge on wrongdoers and bring violence to the netball court in the name of reputation. I will tear down a f*cker when they need it, but on the whole, my values are those of forgiveness and good intentions. The winner of a p*ssing match is not the one who p*sses hardest, longest, or most accurately, but rather the one who sits patiently on the sidelines, takes a photo of all the people p*ssing in the street, and sends it to the council so that they can all be fined.

But that person needed to exist before I could grow. My tongue needed sharpening before I learned to sheath it except when necessary; my jokes needed to be tested before I could find the right audience. I may now write sarcastic prose and scathing poems about entitled men, but at the time the only thing that stopped a fifteen year old boy from grabbing my breast was to bite him until I drew blood.

So I snuck that line into Sylvestus. As a reminder of the person who wrote The Red Prince very badly so that one day they could write Sylvestus very well. As a shout-out to the person who suffered and snarled so that they could grow. And, of course, as a tribute to an English teacher who definitely should not have had to deal with that shit for three years, but who did, and nurtured a young writer as she did so.

May we all forgive the people we were before, and shape the way for the people we will become.

* early 2010s uk school slang; ledge, short for legend, a teacher who lets you get away with anything, brings in unhealthy food as reward for good behaviour, or is liable to perform "cool" stunts in class; high praise usually reserved for science teachers with access to bunsen burners and explosive chemicals