THE parents of a teenager who opines on Bertolt Brecht and Brutalist buildings wish he would drink cider and vomit at bus stops like his peers.
Inge and Dave, not their real names, hoped their 15-year-old son Julian, who refuses to be referred to as ‘Jules’, was only going through a phase when he began blasting Shostakovich’s 7th through his speakers while ostentatiously flicking through books about Kandinsky.
Sue said: “We were prepared for vaping. We weren’t prepared for him wearing a black – sorry, charcoal – turtleneck while lecturing us on power structures in colonialist literature.
“When we worried about him mixing with the wrong crowd, we didn’t think it would be the attendees at a seminar on Composing Sonic Futures at the Barbican. We blame ourselves for calling him Julian.
“He downs a double espresso before school. He calls football ‘bread and circuses to pacify the proletariat’. He’s 15. He should be unconscious in a hedge, not telling the neighbours that their hedge is an outdated expression of English class anxiety.
“He scoffed at a man wearing Stone Island on the bus for ‘performing masculinity through consumer branding’ which is risky when he’s built like a bookmark.
“I was cleaning his room when I felt something under the mattress. It was Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation.Annotated. Colour-coded tabs. I sat on the bed and wept. You hear about this stuff as a parent, but never think it’ll happen to you.”
Jules said: “Mum and Dad have suggested a lads’ holiday with my friends. A Bauhaus walking tour in Berlin beckons.”