100% LIES

Part 1 (on Englishness) with anti Katy Acker sentiment. Plus some 2026 housekeeping. CW- mild reference to predators.

1. ENGLISH

He asked me to read for the umpteenth time. This was the prime humiliation of my life. Because I could not do it, i was now 15 but i still sounded like a little 11 year old me, before my mum checked out of my life, reading one painful word at a time. my head feeling hot with the burn of a whole class listening.

I had ran away from “home” and told no one. and all I owned for in one bag and was all stolen. Except the yogurt I’d been given by my granny that had squashed in the front pocket and gone rotten. given me just as my house was being raided. I’d not dared open it since. My older brother was the clever one, not me. people called him professor Walsh, he told everyone in his chemistry class show and tell how to make napalm. And that was the final final straw until it turned out he learned from a school computer, as we didn’t have one “at home”. The case was dropped. My mum tired to bring it up with them, saying why are kids allowed to do that at school, but there negligence was not considered a problem. Nor where there predators. It didn’t seem fair. and thats it for me, if i fall below 80% attendance they will take my baby brothers. What others called GCSE revision i called a hostage situation - it was no motivation.

Everytime I had to sit in class and we’re reading I’m sweating by the point it gets to me. In religious studies i’m arguing god doesn’t exist but in english i am praying for the end of class before it gets to me. My brother could read out loud before he started school, he’d read the papers to mum. He used to get picked for his beautiful reading in masses or assemblies. i could do an impreasson of how it sounded when he did it. but I never learned. In year six when i was ten I had had to deliver a speech in the Christmas play and I find out I could learn a page of A4 text in one night and pretend to read it. But you can’t do that in English. It’s to hard to guess where you’ll be and skip ahead to read it first when someone else is reading out loud near you, even to get a clue about what might happen. The best I could do is scan for the big words and try to guess what they could be. Every year that passed and i stayed the same, it went from annoying to unbearable not just for me but everyone else.

So we’re reading maybe the old man and the sea and it’s my turn to read. And the whole class is bracing for what it think is about to happen cause they used to me by now. I stand up and I say I’m not doing it. I petition my teacher. It’s risky as I’m thrown out of a classroom once a day. sometimes i deserve it, sometimes i don’t. Ive come to expect as soon as i do anything ever to get thrown out, i don’t know any place i am exempt from being thrown out. Because i dont have a bedroom “at home”. And I don’t know how to not get in trouble. And im always in a debt of detentions i owe. But amazingly, the teacher doesn’t send me out when i annonce it. So i go on, I say I know when I’m being insolent and disruptive and this is not one of those times. I tell him and the class I have tried everytime to do what’s asked. I tell them I have not got one bit better in years and that I am sure now I never will. I say I’m spoiling it for myself because I don’t know what’s actually going on in the words, because I’m trying so hard. And I’m spoiling it for the class because no one can enjoy this or follow what im on about. I tell him I should be absolved from ever having to read out loud again. And I should be allowed to admit defeat. Im never gonna get better, i have tried my best. This is the first time ive been honest with anyone in a fair few years, i guess since i lost my bedroom and all my possessions besides the ones in the bag. I supposed dishonesty is how i created a room around myself without having one. People without bedrooms dont know what honesty takes, they dont know anything about it. And I stood there at the front of the class ( they sit me at the front because I’m less disruptive) with everyone behind me silently waiting to see what the teacher will say. In the humiliating uniform of a blazer and a skirt which is compulsory for girls.

The teacher, he’s a prick. A known prick. Every girl in the school avoids getting too close to him because he makes them feel uncomfortable. You don’t want to be alone with him in a room, his hands try to tap us on the hips. i never told anyone, there was no one to tell. I wasn’t too worried at the time id had much worse by now. And here I was with no weapons in my pocket. In heart to heart combat with a total prick. Putting myself at his mercy. I was with no weapons. Only 30 witnesses behind me to protect me. And he said ok. He actually agreed with me. That I was that bad at reading. And I sat back down. I was free, this had become in the top three best days of my teen life. That was the day I made peace with English i guess. Though it was used against me after this many more times. But from that day we could start a relationship not of antagonism.

On my 16th birthday i gave up stealing and started to tell the truth, although that may have been to do with the fact that i was of legal smoking age, was responilbe for my criminal actions and no longer could i be kidnapped by the state, which is a cause for celebration to all underclass children. But I had the feeling no one really knew who i was and it made me lonely. Because i was 100 per cent lies. But maybe it was because thats when i got a bedroom again.

The next time i read out loud was in a recovery meeting. I was handed a card with a prayer on it. I read like my life depended on it. Very badly and shaking. After i slept for two days from how it exhausted me. I didn’t speak to anyone during the meeting I dare not lift my eyes. I was so afraid of being sent out because thats all i expected, and i thought if i get sent out of this class i’ll die.

After everything it did to me, I do love English. It’s all I have known. In my own off and odd way of doing it. Katy acker was someone who got an applause for breaking english as someone who rebelled against it but was not maimed by it. Someone who had rulership over it, understood it. i cant say too much about it because as i said i dont understand English. Poor people lose there health, children, freedom and homes because of there irreconcilability with english. And im sure similar can be said for immigrants. Rebellion to the english language is suicide, whether you’re trying to become a citizen, or trying to pass a GCSE.

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Welcome to 2026 all! welcome if your new here!!! i write about - art, anarchism, painting, homos, trying to mix the incredibly serious with sometimes hilarious, i’d say its a type of chemistry. Also, the school as a baby carceral system and psychic stuff (these two are very related but i will get to that later) i have a few bits of journalism grassroots stuff coming. Once a year i do a critical post as a class war treat to myself.

I’m on my dyslexia demon journey as you know, so sometimes when i am quoting writing by others i will include audios of me reading them.

I have been writing but i have not been posting because i have that cap perfectionism. sorry about that!! this year i will be posting every week. i dont know why this is so impornat but i have to keep writing things.

Some house keeping- a min requirement to read is gay thoughts!! so please, if you’re a heterosexual just do your best, you don’t have to do anything gay just thinking something is enough. because else your muddying this whole thing up. I am a channel and i cant do this without the jouissance of the readers ! it’s actually really important. I don’t want to end up like another gay club full of hetero’s because its more fun than the straight bars. So please- PRAISE THE GAY GODS and DO NOT GENTRIFY THIS VESSEL.

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Last thing - the masculine urge to contain the uncontainable continues and i have a new print of 2 colour riso of my current fave diagram !!! Available via Two Queens Gallery link below to buy!! You have seen (maybe) the feelings wheel, and the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, here is synchronicity reinforcement. Its a great can opener of sanity and simplicity perfect for any global reckoning. BUY IT HERE

Free Palestine, Fuck the police. NEVER GIVE UP!!! NEVER CAPITULATE!!

Thoughts are with the hunger strikers and there families.