Authors: Matthew Formby
Besides Luke would probably be outshone by those who had been prepared for universities more adequately. From a very young age, the rich had every advantage. Private preparatory schools in the US and private schools in the UK prepared students - whose parents could afford extortionate fees - for a life of luxury among the elite. Even from when they were five years old, they could look forward to a life of lording it over others as a boss, living on bloated executive wages in businesses they would be ushered into by their friends in high places. Private schools taught students to be ruthless, rich, powerful and shameless - and of course they also educated them better than the schools the rest of the population went to. Until that was changed people like Luke rarely won. Was it worth taking on so much debt when the game was rigged? Most of the top jobs in banking, the media, show business, politics, real estate, education and pretty much anywhere else where there was money and fun to be had were dominated by this class of rich people. They set the rules to keep out everyone else as much as they could. Even when they were useless, they could still live on a golden goodbye payment when they were forced to leave.
Luke was just one of billions of people who have been robbed of a fair education. He would dread giving birth to children and dreaming of a happy future that might bely a harsher reality. He might get a job - like so many others he met and read about - and take on a massive mortgage before realising the price he was paying was not just in money but in happiness and peace of mind also. If only all the debt collectors, police officers, parking enforcement officers and officials of the world could realise that when they picked on poor people and those fallen on hard times they were not helping themselves. Not even helping society. Only protecting the interests of the rich. Most of them being used as tools. Many of them good people but pawns in someone's game. Many of them had been students at one time - alas Luke should become like them! They could not understand, so many enforcers of justice, how horrible life could be at the very bottom: for some this was because they had never lived in a sink estate or been to a bad school that dragged down one's entire life; for others it was because they have risen from humble beginnings among deprivation but had not the brain to understand any of it.
Luke once had a dream in which he was sat in an auditorium at the very back. A man in a tuxedo was orating confidently on the stage but there was no one else there except Luke. It must have been a rehearsal and Luke quickly ducked his head as his gut feeling said he was not supposed to be there. He listened to the man practise his speech and it went thus:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I propose we create a new kind of prison. One in which people learn every day they're there. One in which classes of all kinds are offered for the enrichment of society and the salvation of the individual. Gentlemen and ladies, I propose these prisons we shall call schools, colleges and universities. We shall run them through fear and our tool of terror will be to tap into man's desire for approval and popularity."
Luke was wondering who the speech was to be performed in front of and determined it was probably for the big wigs in politics and education. He looked around trying to identify the auditorium and then it began to look more like the inside of the Houses of Parliament. All of a sudden a large mottled hand had come into view and was about to grab him when heart running at a gallop he woke up.
Another concern about university was the fees. They kept on rising and were now so high that even if Luke did get a good job, unless he was extremely lucky, he would be paying off debt and still living uncomfortably for a decade or two. Add to that the ever increasing house prices in the United Kingdom and one had to ask, "Why?" There was also the issue of student behaviour. Luke had seen a news item on the TV about how pole dancing lessons had become popular in universities for the female students, with a society even teaching it in Oxford. Along with his personal experience of meeting students it seemed to confirm to him a lot of them were rather air-headed, career-oriented non-entities who were more interested in hedonism and setting trends than anything else.
Such people were not likely to get along with Luke as he was not the most uninhibited of people, even when he tried to be. A lot of women wanted to behave as badly as many men had for a long time and thus make the world an even more squalid and vice-ridden sewer. Unfortunately quite a few young women were of this frame of mind; and on the other side of the coin many young men who would be attending university perceived women as pornographic fantasies, having been encouraged so by decades of men's mags, reality TV and sexed up pop music. From music videos to sexed up films aiming for high ticket sales to gossip magazines, all were making pornographic behaviour by women a normal trend.
Perhaps it was no different than prostitution. For a long time there had been prostitutes both among the rich and the poor. For the poor, it had been a way for centuries to survive when there was no education or decent job available and for the rich, among the untalented or the greedy it was a way to maintain their lavish lifestyle. It would seem then to Luke that if women were having to resort to such behaviour to survive it was evidence that far from feminism having succeeded it still had a lot of work to do. Meanwhile, in choosing partners a lot of women favoured men who were aggressive and manhandled them, yet denied it - and if they were faced with the truth of their behaviour of denial, became enraged and accused men of being sexist. If men chose women solely on the size of their breasts or their figure, however, women would call them chauvinistic pigs and yet most did not see themselves choosing louts for partners as objectionable.
The latest public opinion surveys showed that women on average had more sexual partners than men. It was hard to believe, then, that so many females truly did not want to be sexually objectified - unless, that is, women had been taken in hook, line and sinker by the phony girl power that had been hijacked by commercial interests trying to sell them things. Feminism originally had been about attaining a moral and economic equality for both sexes but had been cashed in on by some opportunists who saw it as a vehicle to get anything females wanted at any cost. They shrugged their shoulders at divorce settlements with custody rights that benefited the mother at the cost of the father's, and indeed the children's, welfare. They turned their head and pretended they did not see women being given top priority on housing lists - this was not equality, nor even rational prioritisation... it was favouritism. But then, of course, each interest group from feminists to bankers to nationalists generally only pursues its own interests and neglects to notice the big picture.
It was not time for young people to rest on their laurels and shrug their shoulders as so many at university seemed to be doing. To binge drink on super strength lager, cider and beer. Then again, with the easy availability of pornography on the internet and its popularity, and the way that trend had influenced mainstream television, film, literature and music, it was hard to see how the clock could be turned back. Unless people could discuss how to live a more virtuous life and really wanted to, it was unlikely to ever happen - no law can stop the ingenuity of human beings. Only their conscience can ultimately rule them. For the time being, the widespread use of sex to sell products and the normalisation of pornographic images was making children grow up too fast - and sometimes suffer in their education due to their belief they could attain success through sexuality.
For Luke there was also the issue of making friends. He had not made any in college so why would he at university? He also had sometimes socialised on internet forums where students would regularly come to gather information for surveys. On a message board for people with Asperger's syndrome they would treat people like specimens to be observed, not human beings. None were interested in really getting to know anybody. They were filling a quota, making sure they got their degree. If universities were so good, why did they produce doctors that were so clinical and arrogant and often wrong? To become a doctor one had to study a normal university course, then a postgraduate course and then a doctorate course. It was the university experience threefold. No wonder doctors were so out of touch. They spent so long among privileged, educated people that they could only see the world from that point of view. To help the vast majority of the population would for them be impossible because they were nothing like them.
There had been news stories running for a few years about some students prostituting themselves to men during the course of their university studies to afford to make ends meet. How far the country had sank since better days! People coming from financially bereft backgrounds were being badly neglected. The education system would have benefited poor people more had it taught all of them how to speak with elocution and elegantly, instilled in them the art of formal dancing and how to present oneself in a way Oxford and Cambridge university expected one to present oneself. Those were after all the discriminating factors in becoming initiated into the elite and for so many naive youngsters they had been conned into believing any university education was worthwhile, never mind whether it was a highly rated university or afforded the opportunity to make contacts who would help one advance.
Luke could not forget the security guards that now roamed campuses. Long gone were the days of free love and sit-ins on the greens as men now patrolled and set the example of authoritarianism the students could expect to live by for the rest of their post-graduation lives. Overzealous protection of the non-existent but ever-imagined mass of normal humanity even extended to bigoted disability discrimination. Luke had once attended a free lunchtime concert at Her Majesty's Woecaster College of Music. During the quartet recital a young disabled man sitting with his carer regularly made indistinguishable verbal outbursts. It was clear to Luke he had no control over them and it was part of his impairment yet the young female student in charge of chaperoning the event consulted with another of her peers and decided to sternly ask the man and his carer to leave. "Excuse me but you're going to have to go as you're disturbing the audience," she had brusquely informed them.
Luke was not going to study; and so he began to look for voluntary work to do in London. He was not yet sure he could handle a job and had had bad experiences in voluntary work in the past. Perhaps things would be better down south though, he wanted to give it a try. He could not cope with his broken heart and he decided since he liked films so much he would try to write a screenplay about his and Jolly's story too. He could not cope with all the events that had happened to him and how nobody seemed to understand: writing it all down seemed to help take it off his mind and put it all into perspective. Over a course of four months he stayed up for long and late nights writing. Then in the day he would be running back and forth between the kitchen to make meals and to the computer write more of his script. New ideas would materialise every day so he started carrying a pad and pen around to write them down for posterity. That way even when he was out no idea had to be forgotten. It was not easy writing but it was cathartic and he began to feel he was coming to terms with all the grief that had overcome him.
He even felt thankful to Pete in a funny kind of way for dissuading him from learning the piano and guitar - what an unforeseen blessing that had been; how fate could deal one the most sublime hand. If it had not been for Pete then Luke could never have felt obliged to buy his storage unit. If not for the storage unit it would not have been possible to move so quickly when finally the long-awaited apartment he needed to exchange arrived. He no doubt would have never taken up writing had he developed more musically either; and now that he was becoming absorbed in it he could appreciate that would have been a great loss. Had he moved to London before accumulating all his grief he probably would never have written either; for now he experienced more warmth and sunshine, could wear what he wanted more often and had more access to open-minded entertainment and activities.
Luke was still often lonely, for his shyness was too hard to overcome. He made a few trips back to stay with his parents in Highlake. Though he always imagined he would hate them they turned out to be therapeutic. Despite not wanting to feel like a little boy anymore having his meals cooked by them most days and having people to eat with was a joy. He could cook recipes he never would at home because they would perish too quickly for one person. Then there was the advantage of clean air and peace and quiet. A few great strokes of inspiration came to Luke in his stays in Highlake. Sometimes it took getting away from it all to realize something he should have long ago. Before he had came to stay Luke had regularly got into arguments with his parents on the phone and when they would tell him about illnesses, even potentially serious ones, he would be sceptical about them; in truth he was in denial, he just did not know it.
Being around them in person made him realise how he should cherish them. They had partly made him who he was and growing old was not easy. Some of their health problems truly were worrying and he began to do as much as he could to research them and offer any advice or hope to them he could. As is often the case, distance had cut the emotional cord between people who had previously had it. Brought back again into intimate contact, it was strengthened once more. Near Highlake was the seaside town of Arcbay that Luke's parents would go to with him some days. Usually it would be just after his mother had finished her working week. Time there was refreshing reminding Luke of what he aimed for: to be near the vast ocean, so inviting in its possibilities and all the windswept people coming and going around it. At Arcbay in a shop Samantha found a necklace that she thought might suit Luke.
"What? Are you serious?"
"Yeah! Why not?"
"It looks expensive."