1973-1975
You can be beaten to near death, tortured, or starved daily, but there will always be people who envy you. Because there are worse things. It's much scarier when you go unnoticed. A person becomes human when recognized as such by others. If no one sees you, do you really exist? Imagine being erased. No, you haven't died, you simply never existed, never did anything. No one will come to your funeral, deliver a touching speech while holding back tears. You were never seen, no one remembers you. It's a unique superpower that spies around the world would envy. However, believe me, you wouldn't like it. Especially if you're a teenager still hoping to change the world.
Steven Miller had exactly this superpower, which he unwittingly developed over the years. By the age of fifteen, he had become so skilled at being unnoticed that he practically vanished. Steven grew up thinking he was ugly. It's just that not everyone notices because they don't look closely. So, he had to try hard to make sure no one even thought about it.
His mother constantly took him to doctors. "What's the complaint? Who's simulating again?" the therapist jokingly asked when Steven and Lauren entered the city clinic's office together. His mother silently took off his sweater or t-shirt, and the doctor's expression immediately changed at the sight of the unnaturally sunken chest. The doctor's ironic tone disappeared, and he began to listen carefully to Lauren, conscientiously listing the symptoms of another childhood illness. Sunken chest – a diagnosis that's not fatal but quite serious. Any cold in this case could lead to complications, and no one could predict what exactly. In those moments, Steven once again convinced himself of his own hideousness. If he stayed away from people, maybe no one would notice him, no one would point fingers or scrutinize his deformities so closely?
Asthma, endless colds, scoliosis, and a severe form of flat feet that distorted his gait – all these repeatedly convinced Lauren that her son was disabled and her attempt at motherhood had failed. Accepting that your child is ill is not so difficult. It's much harder to come to terms with the thought that he's healthy.
On physical education classes, Steven usually sat on one of the benches arranged around the perimeter of the gymnasium. Sometimes, a classmate would notice him there and ask why Steven wasn't participating. In those moments, he was ready to sink through the floor out of shame and tried to discreetly put his hand in his pants pocket, trying to calm the growing tension. Soon, the kids got used to the fact that Steven didn't participate in physical education and preferred to pretend he simply wasn't there during classes. If someone accidentally caught his gaze, Steven would shyly look away the next second.
As he approached adolescence, Steven suddenly wanted to be seen. But as if in mockery, nature threw him a new problem: his face and body were suddenly covered in acne. Every time he approached a mirror, he saw a repulsive monster that he couldn't get rid of.
No group in the world can exist without outcasts. People desperately need someone to fear, hate, or despise. In adolescence, a person is just learning to build relationships, so those who play these roles are very noticeable. However, the object of contempt at least needs to be noticed, and Steven remained invisible.
The parents of his classmates were enthusiastic sixties activists who were trying to change themselves with all their might. An entire generation grew up with the firm belief that if you live by conscience and be a good person, the world will be a better place. Most of these people were forever trapped in the captivity of romantic ideals of the past, never understanding that "the world will remain the same." Their children looked ironically at their parents, who were hopelessly behind in life, but they still aspired to be someone better.
Sometimes at school, people would really start teasing someone or organize a "dark" event, but teachers usually quickly put a stop to such things. Even faster to notice were the girl monitors who were so desperate to earn praise that they were the first to sound the alarm when an outcast appeared in class.
Honestly, I don't remember him. It seems like he studied with us, went somewhere, but I only remembered this after looking at a photo of the class and seeing his name. I don't remember him standing out anywhere, neither in class nor after. The girls didn't like him, that I remember. To be in the group, you had to have fashionable things, listen to rock music, and he remained indifferent to all of that, but no one objected to him joining us somewhere, he just didn't want to.
From the memories of Steven's classmate
Steven, an excellent student, wasn't an outcast, but he didn't make friends in class either. Sometimes someone from the classmates suggested going somewhere together, and if they saw Steven, they usually invited him, but they never waited. Once, a few people gathered after classes to go to the "Globus" cinema, which was several stops away from school. Steven was invited as a formality. The boy understood this, but still really wanted to spend time in company. Suddenly, there was some commotion, one of the students remembered that he needed to stop by home, another suggested running to the store, and the rest decided to join him.
- Let's meet in the evening near the school entrance, - suggested one of the students. Steven nodded and headed to the school library. There was no point in going home, so Steven pretended that he urgently needed a book. Twenty minutes later, he went down to the first floor to smoke.
- What are you doing here? - asked the guard, a fifty-year-old man with a sunken face and small, deeply set eyes, exaggeratedly strictly.
- Waiting for friends, they should come by, - the boy replied, backing away towards the exit.
- Come to me, there's no need to hang around here doing nothing, - the guard said in a warmer tone and stepped aside, clearing the way to his booth. The boy hesitated for a moment but then took a step forward. - Just go straight, why are you stumbling on a level ground? - the man seemed to say friendly.
In Uncle Willie's room, there was only a sagging bed covered with a burgundy bedspread and a school desk cluttered with various junk: clock parts, wires, old sockets. Near the wall stood an old-fashioned radio receiver, from which popular hits of that time mixed with static noise were playing.
"Sit down, let's have some tea until your friends arrive," the man encouragingly said as he entered the room following the boy.
Steven obediently sat down and silently watched as Uncle Willie cleared a space on the desk to place the cups. The man was saying something, and Steven nodded and nervously fidgeted.
"Why are you sitting hunched over like that? Probably skipping physical education, huh?" the guard suddenly said dissatisfied. Steven told him about his funnel chest and roughly a third of his medical conditions from the medical record. The man listened to all of this with a skeptical smirk.
"Come on, get undressed, let's see what's going on there. Massage solves all problems."
Steven reached for the top button on his uniform but suddenly hesitated.
"Come on, come on, your friends can wait, health is more important," the man animatedly said.
Steven took off his formal jacket, shirt, and undershirt. Then the guard demanded that he remove his pants with boots and lie down on his stomach. The boy didn't understand what was happening, but the adult was so convincing that the child didn't dare ask questions. For some reason, it seemed like they would sound stupid.
When it was all over, it was starting to get dark outside. Steven shyly picked up his uniform from the floor, hastily put on his pants, and stumbled towards the exit. Uncle Willie was smoking in the window with a satisfied face, still pretending that everything was going smoothly and that there was no need to ask about anything.
There was nobody at the school, of course. Steven's classmates simply forgot that Steven was also planning to go to the movies with them. At home, Steven saw his mother literally glowing with happiness. The woman was bustling in the kitchen. The boy sat on a chair and only now noticed a vase of tulips on the table.
"What's going on at school?" Lauren asked dutifully.
"Everything's fine," the boy replied as usual, and then suddenly continued, "Mom, today the guard at school offered me to sit in his booth and have a massage..."
Lauren turned to her son, looking at him with surprise. It seemed like she didn't know how to react. The conversation usually followed a different pattern. The new set of words stunned the woman, and then angered her.
"What? What massage? Are these your silly fantasies again? Maybe you should use your head when you make things up? Eat now."
Steven quietly started eating his soup, occasionally glancing at the white tulips with dark veins near the bases of the buds. These veins resembled the veins on clean and pale skin. They twisted and dissolved, giving the flowers a sinister look. In the evening, before going to bed, Steven examined his reflection in the mirror and saw the same dark lines on his skin under his eyes, on his temples, and neck.
Steven no longer tried to make friends in class and tried to avoid Uncle Willie's booth. He was ashamed of that incident. He didn't understand the reason for this shame, didn't want to admit to himself what had happened, and the sight of the slightly open door to the room with a bed under a burgundy bedspread troubled his memory. No one would believe him, which meant it never happened. Uncle Willie resigned for some reason in the next academic year.
* * *
Was it really like that? Are we judging too harshly? You can't see the world only in a dark light. Steven's father, who was just over twenty when his son was born, had no idea how to raise children properly. Honestly, not many parents can definitively answer that question. The man wanted to teach his son a lesson, so he would get off the bus when the child started misbehaving. He aimed to toughen the boy up, make a real man out of him, and thought that pouring ice-cold water was the best way to do it. Lauren was not much different from many mothers of that time. She didn't know how to show warmth and care in relationships; she thought it was wrong. The woman grew up in a family where the world of adults existed separately from the world of children. It was foolish to have heart-to-heart talks with a child. No one treated her like that, and she didn't see anyone around her communicating in that way. And as for "Uncle Willie," it's hard to believe. It's still a good school; how could such a person work there? There's no evidence of Steven being assaulted as a child, except for a brief mention of this incident in one of the interrogations. Should we believe it? His parents didn't love him, and classmates avoided him... It's all too exaggerated. Gloom and darkness. In the late 1970s, poet Alexander Ivanov brilliantly showed how the mechanism of creating a "black reality" works by writing a parody called "Red Riding Hood," where the well-known fairy tale is told so darkly that it sounds funny. There is always hope and a reason for joy; you just need to look at things from a different perspective, don't you think?
A person cannot objectively assess events in their life, and they cannot always be sure if something really happened. We perceive the world through the prism of our consciousness. When a person recalls a "real" incident and when they fantasize, the same areas in their brain are activated. When we lie or tell an edited version of the truth, we ourselves believe that it really happened. Steven always suffered because he was rejected, shamed, and humiliated. That deaf, impenetrable wall that separated him from the world oppressed him. Only cries of horror and pain penetrated this barrier. For him, the fact of this barrier's existence was beyond doubt, although it might be difficult for someone else to explain clearly what it means. Joy did not reach his world, dissolving somewhere halfway. He noticed that people avoided him, although it wasn't always like that. His parents raised him as best as they could, tried to provide the essentials. Did they love him or not? It's hard to say. They probably answered affirmatively to themselves, but Steven, of course, thought differently. Nothing in the world exists "for real."
It doesn't matter how close Steven was with Uncle Willie: in his mind, everything was exactly as he described it. His mother didn't even want to listen to him, and he wouldn't have thought to share with others. He learned this lesson perfectly. People don't care about each other. If they hear something that threatens to change their lives, forces them to reconsider their plans, and compels them to take action, they prefer to simply ignore it. After that incident, Uncle Willie worked at the school for another year. And Steven just started avoiding him, and some other kids tried to avoid the caretaker's office too. No one said anything or discussed it, not even in secret. Steven remembered forever how it works. No one will say anything, everyone will stay silent, and soon they will even start doubting their own memories. At least, he doubted.