Fuck you, Jake

It was hatred at first sight.

 The moment the professor saw Jake during the dean’s induction speech, he was utterly consumed by antipathy. Why he should have felt this way when the student was but one harmless face lost in a sea of freshmen, he never knew. That ominous feeling, however, never left him. He had met his arch-nemesis, an angelic boy of about 18 summers.

During the first few weeks of classes, after his initial despair when he realized Jake Worthington was part of his two philosophy lectures that semester, the professor did everything in his power to discourage the lad. He made his stance known, freely hurling acerbic abuse at him and yet, the fool remained undaunted in his absolute adoration, oblivious to the torrential hatred gushing over him.

The professor abhorred him. The mere glance of that blond tousled hair, that rosy, freckled face, would send his whole being into frightful fits of revulsion, physical protest to his unbearable presence. At first, the disgust was purely instinctive. As is often the case, the body was much quicker in reaching a final verdict, leaving the mind perplexed as to why he would so despise this handsome young man’s profession of platonic devotion. In time, his intellect finally caught up, frantically weaving reasons and arguments to justifiably loathe Jake. He usually thought of himself as a kind, understanding and patient person, especially with students, these infinite legions of doe-eyed blank canvases hungering for knowledge, begging to be moulded into scholars and intellectuals, to be given a purpose in life.

Yet there came this nefarious toad who, in one fell swoop, obliterated this self-image, fruit of decades of hard, conscientious daily labour.

How he resented Jake Worthington for that. At once, he had been turned into this unstable vortex of negative energy, spouting pus and pestilence to all in his life.

Not a soul around him could understand his fixation, his fuming, frustrated focus on the “frail little fucker”. How could they? To the untrained eye, the kid was merely a youthful pupil, idealizing a prospective mentor in his burgeoning passion for Philosophy, latching on to this wise father figure.

Like the poisonous parasite he was!

All his fellow chess club members, his friends, parents, brothers, stepsister, wife, mailwomen and cashiers, anyone playing a part in the professor’s personal life could discern was his irritability, belligerent outbursts and overwhelming obsession with this “atrocious agent of calamity”. They all remained none the wiser as to the reason behind this madness, one he couldn’t admit publicly because deep down, he knew of its steep departure from logic and sanity.

His harrowing hatred did indeed engulf all his relationships, none more so than his marital life. No matter his relentless efforts at leaving thoughts of Jake at university, he couldn’t help but radiate aggressivity and frustration, even to his treasured wife, the very light of his life.

He became increasingly distant in a futile attempt to spare his beloved from the anger that had taken control over him and would bark incomprehensible reproaches at her whenever she sought to reach him, lash out at any intangible provocation. After a few excruciatingly long and quarrelsome months, his wife tried to reason with him for the last time.

‘What do you mean this can’t go on? Of course it can’t go on, do I look daft?! Don’t you think I know? But there’s nothing I can fucking do. He’s just there. Always. Behind every corner. Ready to pounce with his idiotic smile and moronic questions. It’s something in his face, in the way he breathes with his mouth ajar. In his blushing cheeks, in his fucking flawless manners.’

‘But why can’t you just move on? It’s one kid, just ignore him! You are tearing us apart for one stupid kid!’ she screamed through the tears.

‘You don’t get it, do you? No one does. I can’t escape him, he’s all I’ve been thinking about. Constantly nagging me with his perfect teeth, his tweed jacket, his misquoting of Wittgenstein, his earnest ignorance. It gnaws at me every minute of every hour. But you can’t see that, no, it’s easy for you, you have no idea what it’s really like to endure this hell I’m in! No I won’t quit, and what? Give him the satisfaction? I would rather die, Audrey. I would rather fucking die.’

She realized then and there he could in no way turn himself back into the considerate man she once knew and loved, so intense was the change in his being wrought by the boy. She left one morning without saying goodbye or explaining herself. There was no need.

He could not bring himself to fault her. He was fully aware of the corrosive nature of his monomania and wouldn’t have wanted to drag someone he so adored deeper into this cesspool of putrefaction.

Alone at last, he could finally concentrate on the one thing that really mattered in his tattered, forlorn existence: the complete, absolute, irrevocable, thorough, cruel, violent destruction of anything Jake could ever represent. Arming himself with the harpoon of vitriol, he lowered his boat to the hunting grounds of his very own White Whale and set out to obliterate the jovial little twerp.

Insultingly enough, Jake remained blissfully unaware of his tutor’s vindictive crusade. He gleefully kept close to him, showering him with queries, praises, each a drop of fuel on the gargantuan inferno of his loathing.

Words and gestures could not possibly convey the scope of his despise. His every attempt at antagonizing the kid bounced right off his unflinching enthusiasm. Thus, the professor resigned to remain outwardly composed, mild-mannered, all the while imploding with fire and fury enough to rival a thousand suns.

He answered politely even, so numb with rage and indignation was his mind. Jake saw his queries quenched, his praises graciously accepted, never for a second sensing a hint of the professor’s inner turmoil. On the contrary, he felt encouraged by their continuous constructive communication and became more daring, more insistent in his questioning. He felt comfortable with the wiser man and, in a rush of self-confidence, started unabashedly opening up to the one he aspired to resemble while the professor explored uncharted depths of suffering.

This revolting ordeal took on Sisyphean proportions, each second spent in his junior’s presence an intolerable eternity. One could not even resort to the supplications of the Greeks to relate his plight, as inventive as they were. How could it possibly compare to pushing a mere pebble up a hill, to having an eagle amiably feasting on one’s regenerative liver, to gently rolling around in a wheel set ablaze, or having food and water constantly eluding one’s ravenous mouth. He would have swapped with any of them in a heartbeat, let them deal with Worthington!

Oblivious, Jake kept a steady flow of blabbering that Monday morning in the office, believing himself to be in the midst of an illuminating, intellectual epiphany, gently guided by his mentor, soon to recognize his tremendous worth and acknowledge him as an esteemed peer.

The professor could stand it no longer.

For the first time since his atemporal torture began, he peeked through the thick haze of his disgust and sprung into motion, finally seeing how to alleviate the agony of his situation. He left the room and started deliberately walking towards the staircase.

Jake felt this to be the second act of their fateful, life-altering conversation. Without skipping a beat, he followed his partner, still expounding on some profound insight imparted upon him by transcendental rapture. They kept debating through the steep seven floors. Jake’s excitement was reaching its paroxysm. Meanwhile, the professor felt comfortably numb, as if possessed by a dull demon and observing his earthly frame from above, through a fog of helpless surrender.

The stairs led to an open rooftop on the tenth floor, a famous, sumptuous view overlooking the whole city. The air was crisp, the sky clear, the sun bathed everything in a golden hue, suffusing a divine aura to the scenery below them.

At once, Jake knew it to be the setting for the third and final act. Only here, directly below the heavens, could a satisfactory conclusion be reached. A unified theory of Philosophy which content would illuminate his exalted brethren for millennia to come and guide the whole of mankind to a higher understanding of this universe, as well as the ones beyond it.

He felt ready to enter the last, conclusive step to his argument, to bestow upon his friend, his equal, the Truth he had so masterfully uncovered. Jake knew in his heart the professor would see beyond his youth and acknowledge his supreme wisdom, that he’d proudly accompany him through all the intellectual and academic award ceremonies his expounded theory would warrant, heartfelt speech at hand. Jake never felt so intensely alive, so aware of the magical beauty of the reality offered to him, surrounding all his senses. The universe was his, and he was the universe.

Meanwhile, as the professor leaned over the railing, directing all of his energy to resist the calling void, it suddenly came to him. For the first time in months, he knew what to do. He turned around, looked the boy straight in the eyes, forwent his sterile academic insincerity and uttered the last words he would ever speak to Jake Worthington, filled with rage yet strewn with a calm and clarity he hadn’t yet known in his life, taking over the pent-up hatred in his heart.

‘Fuck right off, you cunt.’

In an uncharacteristic moment of social acuity, Jake rapidly recovered from the initial shock and understood the man facing him, an understanding that retrospectively illuminated all previous encounters, as well as how delusional his feelings of acceptance had been. Wordlessly, he left both the rooftop and his philosophical aspirations behind, walked down the staircase to a future uncertain, yet all the richer for having had to face the cold hard truth, that sometimes, just sometimes, a good-looking wealthy white cishet boy wouldn’t be instantly, unequivocally, universally loved.