Hero of the Revolution

‘Can you describe the field to me?’ asked the Adult Literacy teacher in what sounded like desperation.

‘Whit d’ye mean ‘describe the field’, - a field’s a field, isnae it?’

'I mean, where could this field be, how big is it, is there a road near it, or a railway line? Are there flowers in it, or animals, or people; what kinds of flower grow there, how many animals are there, and what sort?’

'O I've got tae coont the bloody daisies have I? How many cows eat how many dandelions and shite how many times a bloody hour'. This last statement was delivered in an unconvincing parody of the teacher's 'Kelvinside' accent, promptly abandoned for native Doric. 'Ah've tell't ye, a field's juist a field; a plain ordinary F-E-E-L-D field!

The young teacher - he was still only a student – breathed hard, running nicely trimmed fingernails through prettily styled hair. Why oh why had he ever let himself be talked into taking this Adult Literacy evening class? He longed - would he once ever have believed that he would long - for the clean suppressable faces of his daytime suburban ten-year-olds. Before him, a burly lout slouched scowling over a half-empty page.

It had seemed a fine, worthy aim to bring the light of culture to society's oppressed; to arm them with weapons of literacy and articulate speech, the better to confront the ruling class and challenge its exploitive hegemony. After all, the poor working class hadn’t been to Fettes. This at any rate had been the theory. The reality was this brawny delinquent, glaring in truculent ingratitude at all comradely attempts to correct his false consciousness. The teacher was also uncomfortably aware of the lad's well-worn, very bulgy jeans, and tattooed arms sprouting hairily from a tight and ripped tee-shirt. Thoughts unrelated to world revolution began to assail his mind. The rest of the class was assiduously scribbling its composition. He decided to try a different approach.

'Imagine Duncan,' he said, sitting down at the empty desk next to his glowering pupil. 'I can call you Duncan, can't I?' No response. Brushing fair hair from his glasses, the student teacher continued. ‘Imagine that you’re on the shop floor, and there’s a strike, and the rank-and-file – that’s the other lads – have elected you, Duncan, as shop-steward. Now, you’re going to have to confront ruling-class bosses with posh accents and swanky educations......’

'Like you, you mean?' cut in the scion of the proletariat.

The teacher ignored this. ‘...With classy educations, and they're going to use all sorts of big words and fancy phrases to confuse you and make you feel a bit..er..inferior, and blunt the cutting edge of your just demands.'

The son of the workers crossed his left ankle over the right knee, revealing luxuriant black hair tumbling over a white sock, and pushing his massive bulge into even greater prominence. Gulping, the teacher gaped at this, then reddened on finding the youth staring at him.

'Ye're a poof!' scoffed the warrior against oppression, 'Ye’re a fuckin' queer, aren't ye!'

The student shot a nervous glance round the room, but nobody seemed to have heard. 'Now Duncan, we're not here to talk about me,' he said in a low-voice.

The hero of the class struggle began very deliberately to rub between his legs, while fixing the teacher in a leering gaze.

'I bet you'd love tae suck my cock' he said 'I bet ye're juist dyin' tae get yer gab round my big stiff wullie.'

'Please Duncan, keep your voice down.' Desperate, the teacher noticed a nearby woman pause in her essay and throw them a curious glance. His tormentor winked at her and continued more loudly.

'I bet you'd fair love my big prick straight up your West-End jessie's arse.' The vanguard of the proletariat shoved two provocative fingers into his button-fly, ostentatiously rubbing the swelling contents. 'Have ye no' got a hard-on yet?' He peered at the student teacher's crotch. 'Aye there's some wee thing waggin' at me in there.'

The teacher's low rapid tones sounded urgently against the growing surrounding whispers. 'OK Duncan, you're right - I'm gay, but listen, man. That's only a source of solidarity with you. Truly, like. I mean, I know what it's like to be oppressed too, same as black people, and working-class people and women, and all other oppressed groups in this society We've all got to struggle together, you know, shoulder to shoulder, man, against our common class enemy and the capitalist system. You see, Duncan, if only you’d read what Marx and Trotsky say about….’

The revolutionary hero turned on his scarlet quarry with a huge grin while the class gaped agog. ‘I cannae read, can I, ye queer pillock,’ he shouted. ‘Is that no why we’re baith here?’


	[Jim Scott] [A Boy A Book A Story] [Darkness] [Pat from Lancashire] [The Quaker Oats Man] [A Matter of Conscience] [Picnic] [Incident at a Railway Station] [Cauld Comfort Kail] [Moral Uplift] [The Soldier] [Madonna] [Hero of the Revolution] [The Messenger] [Tramlines] [Innocents] [Unlucky Dip]